There are many tips and tricks to get you started writing out there. Participating in projects like NanoWrimo (National Novel Writing Month) or making a New Year’s resolution (you can even take a contract out with stickk.com on yourself) can help you but these are just goals. They only tell you that you have to write certain number of words every day. They don’t give you a real practical way to actually start.

Your new year resolution to write every day can be good for deciding whether you should sit in front of your computer and launch your word editor or you should sit on the couch and turn on the TV. They help at the moment when you are getting up from your dinner table.

Now you are at the computer, staring into a blank screen. Pure, pristine and massive.  This blank screen is staring at you, almost mocking. You stare back, feeling quite lost. You feel like you will never fill this blank space, let alone finish writing what you intend to write.

That’s why I need a tool that’ll get me start typing and keep typing and not delete anything I have typed so far. Something that will just keep my fingers moving.  Actually I would not mind a word processor that won’t let me delete words. If I press ‘delete’ or ‘backspace’ keys, it should cross out the characters instead of making them disappear. Make that screen look full, even filled with mistakes or false starts. Then whenever I hit 50, 100 words, give me something that will make me smile and feel good. Encourage me to keep going.

Give me a word processor that will nudge me to get started in the first place and keep me going. One that will stop me from opening up a browser and looking up on the internet on one thing or other and I realize “Ohh, I haven’t written anything in last 5 minutes.”

That’s my wish for 2011.

Shareholic is a tool for people who are addicted to sharing the content they found on web through pretty much any communication channel. The list of services they support is quite long but it was pretty easy to customize which ones you want to use. I think just the fact that I’m posting something right now should prove Shareholic’s usefulness.

The second extension is called Zemanta. To be honest, I am skeptical of the quality of its recommendations. I’m hopeful to be proven wrong.

Related articles by Zemanta

• What Is Zemanta? (yearn2blog.com)
• Google’s Chrome Extensions and Zemanta (mobilebull.blogspot.com)
• Google Chrome for Mac and Linux: They’re Here [Browsers] (gizmodo.com)

Product Innovation Through Playing Games : InnovationGames

This site was recommended by the session leader of  Product Innovation Session. It appears to be a  collection of interactive techniques/games you play to ultimately define your product’s future vision.  The site and concept are based off of the book with the same name.

• Crucial Conversations
• Crucial Confrontations

• If you just want  a quick and easy intro to graphic design, try The Non Designer’s Design Book.

• If you just want to add some visual thinking to your life, try Back of the Napkin.

• If you really want to get into the details, try About Face 3.

At the Innovation session, I mentioned this awesome little book called Why Not? by Barry Nalebuff and Ian Ayres. (Side note: these guys are  the guiding forces behind Stickk, another one of my favorite sites.)

If you were at ProductCamp Boston and have anything to add, please let me know in the comments!

• What stores I shop at and how much I spend at each
• What credit cards I have/Which banks I use
• Who my friends are
• When I will not be home (from my flight confirmation emails)
• How much I spend on gifts and for whom
• Any social network acct I have and access to them
• Any web app I signed up

Google Calendar

• My social calendar : when I meet up with my friends, what we tend to do
• My work calendar : what my meetings are about (if I use outlook sync)
• My personal appointments (doctor visits, waxing, haircut, massage appointments)

Google Reader

• Blogs I read
• Blogs I pretend to read by subscribing but not actually reading
• Blogs I deem important enough to share with others
• My guilty pleasure blogs (blogs that I never share but read 100% of the posts)
• Content type I love
• Which friends’ shared items get my attention
• The fact that I am an occasional insomniac (from the hours I use GoogleReader)

Web History (Google.com)

• Basically every web search I made

Google Maps

• Knows my home address and my office address
• Any new place I look up directions for
• Any road trip I plan
• My commute hours from my live traffic searches

Google Profile

• Knows my real name
• Knows where I work
• Knows what I do for a living

There’s probably even more that I don’t realize. Isn’t it terrifying? What else does Google know about me? About you?

Street View’s split screen, when it’s working.

(Credit: Google)

Here’s an oldie but a goodie. Feed Rinse is a super simple and user-friendly way to tweak RSS feeds before subscribing to them in your favorite reader tool.

With it you can pick which authors or keywords you want to exclude, giving you complete control over what ends up filling your feed reader. For example, on Webware’s RSS feed you could very quickly choose to only get posts about Google (which is possible on our main site using tags), or a handful of keywords at the same time.