Windows

A couple of years ago, when I started tinkering with long-form fiction writing, I attended some events for National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo. Among the attendees there was a lot of talk of using Scrivener as a tool for organizing your writing, and as a place to keep your details. I looked into it, but it was kind of pricey—and the license was such that to use it on my Windows PC and my MacBook, I'd need to buy it twice, which did not appeal to me at all. So I muddled along for a year or so, starting my novel with a pair of LibreOffice Writer documents: one for the novel, and one for my notes on people, places and things, along with some ASCII sketches and a folder full of pictures and scans of drawings I'd made...

In developed countries, the ability to access and edit Wikipedia easily is taken for granted, but in many African countries, where access to reliable electricity and broadband are limited, that's not the case. I recently interviewed Florence Devouard, who is working on several open source projects to help close gaps caused by poor access to online information. She is co-leader of the WikiFundi project, as well as other projects related to Wikipedia and Africa, including Wiki Loves Women, a women's information initiative, and Wiki Loves Africa, a media contest that invites the public to contribute photographs, videos, and audio to Wikipedia. All projects are part of the WikiAfrica movement...