Hiveword

Short and Sweet(TM): You can now generate random locations by continent in Hiveword’s random place generator: The Country dropdown lists all countries (like it always has) but now the continents are included at the top of the list for easy selection. The screenshot above is from the public generator but the in-app version allows you to quickly add locations to your story (as always). Selecting random places from a continent is great because, while you may know the region of the world you’d like to source from, having to choose one country at a time is quite limiting and is less conducive to the joys of serendipity. I hope you… Read More »Random Locations by Continent

If you’re like me, you currently have dozens of browser tabs open for reference. Or, perhaps you make browser bookmarks of the web pages you’ll want to refer to later but will never find again. Sound familiar? Hiveword Plus now has a better solution with an uninspiring name: Bookmarks. In Hiveword, you can now attach bookmarks to your settings, characters, items, custom types, or whatever. As a result, the bookmark is right there with the thing it’s relevant to. You can also name the bookmark and add tags and notes to it. The name is optional and will default to the web page’s title as it is in the screenshot… Read More »Track and Search Your Web Page Bookmarks

From the beginning, Hiveword has had a filtering mechanism for quickly isolating/highlighting scenes and chapters by certain attributes such as POV character, setting, etc. It’s a very powerful feature by itself but today I’m excited to announce that it’s now even MORE powerful with the addition of filtering by text search. Hiveword Plus users can now filter based upon words in a scene, character sheet, journal entry, or anything else in Hiveword. As a Hiveword Plus user, you’ve long had the ability to search all of your data for certain words by using the global search mechanism. This type of search returns hits against everything so you could see results… Read More »Filtering with Text Search

You may have noticed that it’s been unnaturally quiet around here. There’s been a dearth of new feature announcements, tweets, blog and Facebook posts, etc. What’s going on? Hiveword newsletter subscribers know what’s going on. Be sure to subscribe to the newsletter if you want the freshest news. I suppose the title of this post is a spoiler but today I’m going to talk about the long overdue Hiveword redesign. What follows is the content from a past newsletter describing the changes.     In the last newsletter I mentioned the Hiveword redesign that is underway. In this edition I have some screenshots for you! My goal with the redesign is to… Read More »Hiveword Redesign

Things have really been buzzing in the Hive of late. My previous posts described several new features: List page details toggle for reduced scrolling Hiding default (aka “factory”) fields Optionally showing custom field descriptions In this post I’ll describe some improvements to the “My Types” menu. It’s not terribly exciting like the last two features but I think it is a nice usability change. Here’s what’s changed: The number of custom types is now in parentheses Types are sorted The list scrolls (as opposed to having one long list) There’s a quick link to manage types Removed the submenus in favor of inline icons If you have Hiveword Plus (the… Read More »“My Types” Menu Improvements

In my previous post I talked about the icon on the right below and that it toggles the default Hiveword fields off and on if you have custom fields. I also teased the new icon to the left of it. These new icons appear on the edit pages for characters, scenes, etc. This post is about the icon on the left. This icon toggles the display of custom field descriptions if any are provided. The icon won’t appear if there are no custom fields with descriptions. The show/hide description toggle works like the show/hide custom fields icon next to it: namely, the setting is remembered across sessions. Here’s a screen of custom… Read More »Custom Field Descriptions

In Hiveword Plus you can add custom fields to the “factory” or default types such as scenes, characters, etc. Your custom fields display above the factory fields under the assumption that, since you added them, they must be pretty important. Here’s an example of some custom fields on the character page: The “Bunch O’ Fields” section is custom, obviously, and the default fields start with the Basic section. As I mentioned in my previous post, Hiveword Plus user Darren B. has taken Hiveword’s customizability to stratospheric heights: he’s done a full replacement of Hiveword’s fields. (As an aside, I don’t recommend duplicating fields that Hiveword already has. The reason is… Read More »Show/Hide Factory Fields

Quiescent. What a fun word. Quiescent is what this blog has been over the summer. But, as everybody knows, winter is coming so I have a flurry of blog posts planned about recent additions to Hiveword. Today I’m going to talk about the new show/hide details toggle on list views. While this feature won’t save the world it will reduce scrolling for serious Hiveword users. Previously, only the story, scene, and chapter lists had a summary/details toggle. Those lists try to convey a lot of information at once and the toggle on those pages is for adding data (the summary, actually) to each row. These toggles have not changed. The… Read More »More show/hide capabilities

Hiveword user Matt N. requested that extension fields be included on the various list views. This feature is now live and affects both the basic and Plus versions of Hiveword. First of all, what do I mean by “extension fields?” Hiveword Plus has a feature called Custom Fields and Types. A better name might be Custom Templates. To my knowledge, this level of customizability is unique to Hiveword. Anyway, with this feature you can create new classes of things to track such as spells, spaceships, etc. But, you can all extend the factory types such as scenes, characters, etc. For example, you could add “Date” and “Scene Purpose” fields to… Read More »List View Updates

TL;DR: The inaugural Hiveword newsletter is coming soon. You should sign up now to learn and maybe win a prize! As an overall entity, Hiveword currently has two newsletters: one for the Writer’s Knowledge Base (WKB) and one for Knockout Novel. I’m going to phase out these two newsletters and make one all-encompassing Hiveword newsletter. This will give me much more room to explore content which will range from interviews to highlighting new features in all of the Hiveword products. The first Hiveword newsletter will have an interview with an author who will open your mind to the educational and business aspects of short stories. It could change your life. Or at least… Read More »Hiveword Newsletter