I needed to move all my Firefox settings from the Windows desktop to my iMac, but the utility I usually use for that sort of thing—mozbackup—is Windows only. Cue panic, because I can never get the hang of poking around in the mysterious Firefox profile stuff (and at this point I probably never will). But Google to the rescue! Google Browser Sync is a Firefox extension that will sync all your Firefox settings between different computers. And it worked so well! (And so easily!)

This is going to be so boss when I need to travel with my Macbook—just a quick sync and bam! I’ve got everything I need for work, webwise. Awwwwwwesome.

If all you need is a simple word processor to get your writing done on, here are some choices.

Q10 (Windows)
I used this for NaNoWriMo last year and loved it. Here’s why:

1. It goes full screen, blocking out all the other usual computer distractions.
2. You can set a timer–great for “word wars” with yourself.
3. It makes old-fashioned typewriter noises when you type (no “ding,” though, when you hit the “enter” key).
4. You can have it keep track of “partial counts,” which for my purposes meant that I could know how many words I’d written so far that day just by glancing at the status bar.

The downside is that it can be buggy. Three or four times during NaNoWriMo, it decided it wouldn’t let me save the file I was working on anymore unless I saved it under a new name. Every now and then the word count stats (including the one that told me how many words I’d written that day) would stop dead (but it only takes a keystroke to start it back up again). Finally, the alarm wasn’t all that reliable. It would just sometimes…forget that the alarm was set? I don’t know. I would still use the program again, though, for NaNoWriMo, and in fact I wrote the first draft of my xmas_rocks story with it late last month.

Like the other programs I’ve mentioned recently, Q10 can be run from a USB flash drive.

Writeroom (Mac) and Darkroom (Windows)
Like Q10, these programs (Darkroom is a clone of Writeroom) run full screen, getting rid of all other distractions. They’re word processors stripped down to the very basics.

RoughDraft 3.0 (Windows)
RoughDraft offers more features than any of the above, like rich text (RTF) capability, a sidebar “pad” for story notes, and the ability to have several documents open at once in tabs. It also has a “screenplay” mode for easy formatting of scripts. I’ve used this program a lot in the past, particularly because of the ability to make story notes alongside the story.

Zoho Writer and Google Docs and Writeboard
You don’t even have to carry a flash drive around if you use these online word processing applications (however at the moment you do need to be connected to the Internet if you want to work on your story via Google Docs or Writeboard; Zoho Writer, on the other hand (and ironically) uses Google Gears to allow you to work on your Zoho documents offline). All three of these systems are especially well suited for collaborations. And hey…now that I’m thinking of it…I bet these systems offer a great way to share stories, too. Like this!