Picasa. This Google program makes it easy to manage your photos online and off. Users can download a photo editing and management program to their desktops which makes it easy to mail, upload or post photos to a blog or they can use the online albums provided by the program.

Desktop. Make it easy to find everything on your desktop with this application from Google. It allows users to search through their email, computer files, music, photos, chats, and web history to find what they need and also allows them to install useful gadgets to their desktops.

Page Creator. This program from Google allows users to design and build webpages and then publish them to sites hosted by Google. Users are offered 100 MB of storage and the program comes with a variety of preloaded templates and layouts.

Sites. Create and collaborate on shared websites with this tool from Google. Users can create a simple webpage, collect relevant information and choose who can edit and work on the project with them.

Talk. You may have heard of Google Talk but did you know that it’s not only a chat tool but can be used for VoIP conversations as well? Users can make the most of the service, and enjoy its integration into their Gmail accounts.

Trends. Get easy to read graphs of Web trends over time with this tool. It allows users to track searches over city, region or country to see when certain topics were of more interest to browsers. Users can also take a look at Hot Trends which displays the most popular searches over the past hour.

Cookin' With Google. Have some random ingredients in the fridge but aren’t sure what to make with them? Maybe this Google-based tool can help. Enter in a few ingredients and it will give you recipes in several different categories.

1. Download this OPML file: google-reader-subscriptions.xml (25.02 KB)
2. Open your Google Reader (or RSS Reader), and find an option where you can upload this file.
3. Presto! You've recreated my library of RSS feeds.

To put it less glibly, the publishing industry isn’t being forced to confront a radical shift in consumer behaviour caused by technology, because that scenario just is not happening. Customers aren’t forcing the issue by choosing to abandon books and read pirated text instead. And this means the problem isn’t there to be confronted.

Publishers know what’s costing them book sales—it’s the general public’s overall apathy toward reading. There are a few loud complainers about pirates—generally authors, rather than publishers …

Without a pirate threat to fail to “beat,” publishers are under no obligation to “join” them. Which could explain why most of them continue to encumber their books with useless DRM, and to charge more than consumers are usually willing to pay. E-books only account for half of one percent of total book sales, and there is no significant pirate threat to make them get serious.

Those of us who read books, and those of us who write them, will be equally enthralled with [this] interview on Harlots’ Sauce Radio this month. You’ll find her savvy in her assessments of the industry’s ‘buzziest’ new toys, such as Authonomy, Smashwords, and Kindle 2, and frank in her judgments of trade dinosaurs like Publishers Weekly.

In the modern world of business, it is useless to be a creative original thinker unless you can also sell what you create. Management cannot be expected to recognize a good idea unless it is presented to them by a good salesman.

1. What's going well for you?
2. What are you trying to ignore?
3. What's boring you?
4. How do you want to be remembered?
5. Who do you love?

1. Writers spend a lot of time avoiding what they really need to do, which is to dedicate themselves to their writing. If it's what you really love to do, then do it. (More on this below.)
2. For writers of stories, do you know the answers to these questions for your protagonist? It can lead to some major inspiration if you're stuck.
3. Finally, the awareness that is advocated in this video, through asking these questions, that's the awareness that's vital for any writer—observing the world and being mindful of our reactions and other people's reactions.

The irony of commitment is that it's deeply liberating - in work, in play, in love.  The act frees you from the tyranny of your internal critic, from the fear that likes to dress itself up and parade around as rational hesitation. To commit is to remove your head as the barrier to your life.

—Anne Morriss

When I think about "authoritative voice," it seems more applicable to instructional or informational pieces. If you're writing a personal essay or memoir, then I would say you need an authentic or distinctive voice more than an authoritative one. Figuring out a voice that is natural and authentic to you is a long process; writers refine their voice over many years. I'm not sure I have a single trick or tip that would help you nail it.

However, you can find excellent advice in a book by Vivian Gornick, The Situation and the Story, that talks about how to craft personal stories with great resonance. It's all about knowing what's unique about YOUR perspective on something, what makes your "I" perception different and interesting, apart from all others.

For any of you who have read Eat, Pray, Love: That's an example where the writing and voice is very distinct and confident, but I wouldn't characterize it as authoritative.

You might find the book The First Five Pages by agent Noah Lukeman to be helpful, because he identifies all the mistakes that writers tend to make that can turn off agents/editors (or lead to the "didn't fall in love with this").

There's also a great book by Donald Maass called Writing the Breakout Novel that identifies how novels can reach that next level of rich scope and detail that makes them truly magnificent. (And he has another book releasing this spring called Fire in Fiction that should be helpful for anyone who's missing that inscrutable quality.) Of course these books are for fiction writers, but for anyone telling a story with characters, many of the same principles apply.

But from my perspective: This "no love" response usually means one of the following things:

• Your characters weren't compelling or original enough
• Your story wasn't unique or engaging enough (in the end, it all comes down to story)

You may have the technical skill down, but you haven't yet crafted something that really sets itself apart from everything else that's out there.

Or, it could be a simple matter of not having found the right agent/editor who WILL fall in love with your work. It takes time.

This will sound terribly unhelpful, but you can decide to have confidence in your writing as soon as you're ready to have confidence. It's really just a matter of making that choice. No one can give it to you.

There's a story about a master violinist and his student. Roughly paraphrased, it goes something like this: The student asks, "Tell me, am I any good? Should I keep pursuing this?" The master replies, "If you have to ask for my permission, then you don't have what it takes." (If anyone has a link to the original story, please share!)

Same applies to writing. Of all the people who set out to write, of those who succeed, it's the ones who most doggedly pursue it, no matter what people tell them (not the ones who are the most talented).

Writing takes persistence more than confidence or talent. And in fact, a little lack of confidence is good for most writers. It pushes you to do better.

And in regards to pleasing an editor, try instead to think of your reader. Don't write for the editor, write for your intended audience. Take the focus off of you and how much you succeed with the editor. How much are you succeeding with your reader? What does your reader think? That should help alleviate many of your concerns.