Distraction Free Writing
You might have heard of WriteRoom, a distraction free writing system. Its for people who enjoy the simplicity of a typewriter, but live in the digital world. WriteRoom is a full-screen writing environment for Mac. Unlike the cluttered word processors you’re used to, WriteRoom is just about you and your text.
I became very intrigued by this program as writing requires focus on words while document editors add all these features that are great, but distract us from the words. I found myself being distracted by the font, the size, the decoration, orphan words, call caps, small caps, etc. I am a designer so yes, its inherent that documents are well designed. This leaves my brain exhausted. We all know that multitasking is great for computers, but sucky for humans.
Being that the screen is so minimal it might take a second or two longer to learn the software and the simple things like opening and saving files. But once you get the hang of it, its pretty nifty.
I do recommend WriteRoom for writers. With one caveat. It costs $25. I understand the brilliance of simplicity and whatnot, but $25 for a text editor? So I found JDarkRoom (thanks to robrohan.com). JDarkRoom is presty much the same application, build on Java and FREE.
This is probably part of a bigger topic of the trend of simple applications that have a price attached to them are being reprogrammed and offered for free. This makes your brand the only differentiator… but thats another post.
Enjoy.