Life in a Single Word

To keep my day going on track, I track work and progress in as simple form as possible. There are many tools available to link work together with other work so people can see how efforts effect other parts of a project. ToDo lists work great.

Before we get to a check list of what the day holds, and even before anyone works on a project plan – we map out what we are trying to get done and the many parts of what will make our finished deliverable a success.

A great tool to do this is MindMaps. For anyone who is not familiar with MindMaps, think of it as a core deliverable with all of the parts that make it possible spidering out from the center. There are thousands of books on the subject and many software titles available to help. A whiteboard is all you really need to set one up with a group, but software is nice if you need to share or change later.

If you look around on the Internet for MindMapping posts, you will find that people can really get into the process. They put descriptions on each of the spider legs and all kinds of fun drawings. For us, here, let’s keep it very simple and explore what you can say with just one word.

From MindTools:

Mind Maps are more compact than conventional notes, often taking up one side of paper. This helps you to make associations easily. And if you find out more information after you have drawn the main Mind Map, then you can easily add it in.

Mind Maps are also useful for:

* Summarizing information.
* Consolidating information from different research sources.
* Thinking through complex problems.
* Presenting information in a format that shows the overall structure of your subject.

A couple of the better known MindMapping software solutions are: www.thinkbuzan.com and www.mindjet.com/ – they both offer all kinds of videos and instructions.

Information Tamers has a very nice article taking your through the process of simple to very detailed. Not being wrapped around a particular software, the post is about the how and why for using MindMaps.

Since, so many great ideas start when your not at your desktop or in front of a whiteboard, there are a couple nice apps for the iPhone and iPod Touch. There are actually about a dozen apps, but these two are ones I actually use because they make it easy to share via a free box.net account (you can also upload to your desktop via your wireless network or email). The outputs can be an image or PDF if you just want to show someone your ideas, or they can be imported into your desktop MindMapping app.

The smaller screens force me to keep the lines to one word. Let’s see if I can stick to that when using the apps on a iPad when it comes out.

iThoughts

iBlueSky

There are many words of inspiration that come to mind when your writing a note to someone. A quick note or a card can motivate a person to be their best. While a word describes the message you want to send, a card with COURAGE on it has limited impact. Some people will get it, but most need a bit more to align with.

The folks at Healthful Changes have done a nice job of aligning quotes from famous people throughout history to match the Words of Inspiration. A card with one of these quotes may have more of a dramatic impact. You will still know the word that describes the emotion your sending with your message, the reader will understand what your trying to say.

Some of the words expanded with quotes include:
WISDOM
THOUGHTS
SUCCESS
RELATIONSHIPS
POTENTIAL
LEARNING
HOPE
FAITH
ADVERSITY

If you didn’t know, like I didn’t know, there is a more technical side to rhyming words. Especially when it is in a poem where readers spend more time analyzing ever word. I will list out some greast resources below, but to start, here is what makes up different kinds of rhyming words:

End Rhymes (blue/shoe)

Last Syllable Rhymes (timber/harbor)

Double Rhymes (conviction/prediction)

Triple Rhymes (frightening/brightening)

Beginning Rhymes (physics/fizzle)

First Syllable Rhymes (carrot/caring)

rhymer.com offers a online search engine for words via their 93,000-word dictionary. They also offer a desktop version of their software for faster reference.

rhyme.poetry.com offers a search engine for rhyming words with a few extras – Organize results by syllables or letters and can include phrases.

A post about rhyming words wouldn’t be complete without a mention of words that can’t be rhymed. Most everyone has heard of Orange and Silver. There is actually quite a list of words over at “List of English words without rhymes”. This page is good to glance at before spend a weekend trying to finish of your poem where you need something that matches up to ‘wolf’ only to find out that there is such word.

Nothing too serious going on here, it’s all for fun!

Looking around Flickr today, I was overjoyed to discover Raham has taken on the challenge to have a Flickr area of Single Word images. He has 356 images in the group currently, and looks to be growing. While it’s nothing more than a bunch of pictures of words found everywhere in the world, that is what makes it fun!

From Raham about adding to the collection:
The Purpose Of This Group

To collect a large database of photographed single words.
Images of photographed words (not text created with a graphics program, nor screen-captures).

Rules

Images must be of a SINGLE word, cropped so that word fills the image.

There are things that I find that are must see items. Most of those, I would personally endorse saying that you should visit. This particular item I found interesting and “worth a mention”. The site allows you to pick a word that best describes your Web site and have that word associated to your site. There are over 7,000 words assigned.

“The Big Word Project has been set up by Paddy Donnelly and Lee Munroe, two Masters students from Northern Ireland, who are exploring what different words mean to different people. The project allows you to purchase a word from our list to represent your site. Your site will then represent this word in our list and when people click on it, they will be taken to your site. The project is aimed at changing definitions and creating a new tapestry of words, meaning altogether different things.”

The creators do charge for that single word association which gives me mixed feelings. I can see someone in a school or for a fun project doing this for free. I don’t have an issue with anyone making money and these folks have a effective simplistic site that makes it unique… you decide. Even if you don’t ‘buy’ your word, it’s a site to visit when looking for one word associated with one site.