Google
has a program called Scribe that suggests words and phrases as you write, and
even suggests endings to your sentences.
Here’s
what happened when I started the sentence “Call me Ishmael” and chose the first
option Scribe suggested:
Call me Ishmael review of
the literature on the subject of the present invention is to provide a login
for this account. The following content has been identified by the YouTube
community as being potentially offensive.
You
can also play around with it by just typing the first letter of a word and see
what comes up. In this instance, I started with “George is a” and then randomly
typed first letters and let the program complete the words, with this result:
George is a member of the
National day of lactation.
I
can’t see how or when this function is going to be useful, other then as a
random word generator for “forced association” brainstorming. That’s when you
start with a question or issue and use random words to give you an idea. For
instance, let’s say my issue is procrastination. Here are three words generated
by Scribe when I entered just two letters, and the idea that come up (this is
unfiltered brainstorming):
Bl
= blogging. I could blog my plan for the day and invite readers to claim $1
from me any day I don’t achieve what I set out to do.
Tr
= traffic. I could draw up a map of the tasks I need to do, to see what would
be the smoothest workflow.
Yo
= youth activists. I could delegate mundane tasks like shopping to young people
looking to make bit of money.
So I'll be turning to Scribe when I want to brainstorm. The other times, the word that completes S is Shhhh.
(For ideas on how to get
more done, check out my book, “Focus: use the power of targeted thinking to get
more done,” published by Pearson. There’s more information at
www.focusquick.com).
