After I wrote a post about the changes in Lion's Dictionary app and made suggestions about how Apple could still improve it, I got a nice email from a reader asking if I would write an article about some other writing tools I use. One of my favorites is Visual Thesaurus by Thinkmap.
Visual Thesaurus is an interactive -- almost organic -- dictionary and thesaurus for your Mac. Enter a word, and you'll be presented with branch nodes displaying synonyms or antonyms for that word. The lines between the words are color-coded to indicate parts of speech. Depending on how you are using the word, click on its proper definition and then delve down through the semantic relationship of the word by clicking on its node. The whole process is a really fun way to find the right words you are looking for. You almost feel like an explorer traipsing through a thesaurus thanks to the interactivity of the app.
In addition to containing 145,000 English words, the app also features 39,000 proper nouns and American and British word pronunciations. Visual Thesaurus is available as both a web app and a Mac/Windows app. The web app costs US$2.95 per month or $19.95 per year. I opted for choosing the actual Mac app, which costs $39.95. The advantage of the Mac app is that you don't need an internet connection to access the thesaurus, which is handy if you're like me and commonly take your MacBook to various non-connected places to write. Visual Thesaurus for the web requires Mac OS X 10.0 or higher, an internet connection and a web browser. Visual Thesaurus for Mac requires Mac OS X 10.0 or higher.
Visual Thesaurus is a great tool for writers originally appeared on TUAW on Thu, 14 Apr 2011 20:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Source: http://www.tuaw.com/2011/04/14/visual-thesaurus-is-a-great-tool-for-writers/
mac software macrumor news apple macintosh computer store new apple news mac refurb store apple stock news macintosh computers
RIM's co-CEOs shot back at mixed early BlackBerry PlayBook reviews that savaged the tablet for the unfinished state of its software. The company's Jim Balsille didn't believe it was "fair" that people attacked the PlayBook for the lack of native e-mail, calendaring and other core apps. The device was perfectly usable by the roughly 60 million existing BlackBerry owners, he told Bloomberg, as they could bridge their phone to the PlayBook and check the information stored on the BlackBerry itself....
Following its buyout of rural Verizon and Alltel assets, AT&T has announced it will begin offering cellphone service to residents of Montana. The region was previously served by Alltel and those 150,000 subscribers will get a rebranded service. They will also get the choice to buy AT&T's portfolio of services and devices, including the iPhone 4....
Adobe has patched a critical vulnerability in Flash Player that the company said criminals were already exploiting with malicious Microsoft Word and Excel documents.
