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Pronunciation Patterns
This is an amazing program and have found it fun to study english as a second language. There are sound, video and picture examples for each vowel and consonant of the alphabet to show how to properly pronounce each letter as well as words from vocabulary lists. If you have a microphone, you can record your voice and see how your voice inflection compares to the program's example. Also it offers translation of english words to your native language to understand the word. Lastly, the technical support for this program is amazing. If you have any questions about the program, you can email them and usually receive a response quickly. If you are looking for an english language program, I STRONGLY recommend you take a look at this program before purchasing anything else.

American English Pronunciation Patterns Professional 4.2
I have used this product. It helped my pronunciation a lot. I used it everyday to practice saying words that I encounter everyday. This is a very good tool to learn how to speak English more fluently.

One of the best with great support
I bought Pronunciation Patterns about 7 months ago, and since then I'v been using it regularly as my first source of acurrate pronunciation.

Just in the first week I got a bunch of rules that I dind't know! For instance, I realized that the "t" in "debt" dind't sound, and that the "w" in "owe" neither. I used to say "folk" with a strong "l", but guess what? the "l" a silent! :)

In the first month I could say that I corrected many very old pronunciation mistakes I had been reproducing for years.

Also, I liked the "sound diagram" feature, where you can review graphically the sound of each recorded word, and compare with your own. It is simple great.

At the begining I thought this product was expensive, but really, it's worth having the confidence that, once reviewed in Pronounciation Patterns, each word I said is correctly pronounced. Besides, each word sound was recorded from an american native speaker and ESL specialist instead of a "robotic" sound that other software use.

*** Awesome Product ***
First I would like to convey special thanks to Mr. Wang for his unique pronunciation software.

After using the demo for only 20-30 minutes a day, I had to have the full version. It offers everything you need to improve your pronunciation with thousands of useful words and examples. The Pronunciation Patterns greatly helped me in improving my English pronunciation, it is much better than using accent books (and Audio Cds) because one can play and replay the stuff with just one click. There are many more advantages of having it like: creating your own playlist, integrated browser which allows you to get information from "[...]", "VOA News" etc, mouth video clips as opposed to pics, text to speech, and other interesting features.

This program is a must have for anyone who need to learn or improve their ** pronunciation **, reading, and spelling. The cost is little on the higher side, but no doubts its worth buying.

I really love this product, it is exactly what I have been looking for.

Wonderful software to improve pronunciation
I found this software very helpful to correct my pronunciation. After using this software I am now more aware of my pronunciation and the various rules that are followed. Also this program effectively uses "Patterns" which in itself is a unique way of teaching that stimulates "Right Brain" and makes pronunciation easy to follow, understand and remember.

In addition, customer service is excellent. I had trouble installing the software on my computer and when contacted I got satisfactory reply within a day.

The stated info differs from the CD info
The information on the CD jacket differs from the information in the Amazon description. The Amazon description states that this product can be used by Macintosh computers and it can not. The cover does not state that this is availabe for any Macintosh platforms only a Windows platform. This causes confusion for Macintosh users.

A real bargain for .99!
1000 books available for reading and research. Easy to store; gives author dates; classic works; all the books you don't have but need to reference in school or literate research. Auto load; also own their Encyclopedia. Just as good.

Decent content, poorly formatted
This product contains a wide variety of public domain literature, organized by author or type. But it comes across as rather cheaply made (odd capitalizations, word breaks)--it looks like someone cut and pasted the data from somewhere else, and didn't bother to reformat it afterwards. It's fine for the price, but I'd hardly call it a polished product.

Enjoyed the ride but totalled the car at the end.
I'll be brief.

*) Answering the huge battery of questions forced me to look at my novel from different angles and made me reconsider direction in many scenes based on the POV of my reader. Now that was fantastic and rated five stars.

*) Storyweaving is a huge let-down. After many hours answering detailed questions where the user has to use the help button to decipher their Dramatic-specific terms, I was notified that:

[I'm not required to complete the exposition part of the Storyweaving and that I can go ahead and create my scenes.]

If I build my own scenes and chapters, what did I pay for?

Option two: I let the program build a scenario for me and let me tell you; this was a most bizarre use of the information that I so carefully crafted a provided.

Two stars for storyweaving + Five stars for everything leading up to storyweaving divided by two = Three stars.

Dramatica 4 reviewed at Microfilmmaker.com
"...This is a helpful program and a worthwhile investment for someone struggling from writer's block or who has difficulties organizing his or her ideas. If the user is willing to sift through the terminology, he or she will gain a useful tool to aid his or her writing..." -Jessica Lake, Microfilmmaker.com

Even the demo makes this software shine
I have heard about Dramatica Pro for years and never touched it. Now, I finally gave in to get the demo--and stayed up till 3:00 o'clock in the morning! I could not afford to lose the valuable information it was giving me. For those who know their story ahead of time, great! Dramatica helps you know it better. I knew my story dealt with the issues of trust and identity. I knew how these things played out. What I didn't know was that about Impact Characters and the total relationships between my themes, my characters, and the action going on. Using Dramatica forced me to answer questions that probed even deeper into my story than I had known how to go. For this alone, I would buy the software. Particularly so I can go to sleep at night and continue in the morning.

Only One Like It
I have been struggling with Word with Tables to create two column scripts for over 10 years!! Thank heaven that the guys at Final Draft have made a program that keeps the columns lined up!!! Really, it is a pain, with everything out there to make a script that will only be a few minutes - it takes over 3 hours of sweat to get it right. The program doesn't do a lot, but what it does do it does with precision and ease. If you write AV two column scripts, GET THIS PROGRAM. It is worth it!!

Best Software for the Application, but needs work
It actually does what it promises to do.
Because many operations can be completed with a single keystroke, and because it is flexible, it cuts the time of writing a script in half (compared to Microsoft Word). The manual is very well written, which should be no surprise.
In more than a month of use, it crashed on me once, but I have not lost any data.
It still needs a little polishing. In particular, it locks the user into only 4 structures: character, dialog, video, and parenthetical. This needs to be modified to conscribe to news reporting and reality television norms such as Voice Over, On Camera, and other common elements of modern scripts.
I recommend modifying the keyboard shortcuts by moving them to function keys. I am using F1, F2, F3 and F4. Much easier than 2-key commands.
However, it is a good value, and it has no competition.

WONDERFUL Product! Very versatile and easy to use.
I've been using this program for about two years now. It is so versatile. So many choices in making up worksheets. I love that I can tailor my daughter's penmanship to what she really needs to work on. Specific letters, cursive, manuscript. Whatever she needs to work on and I can keep it at her level. I often make up worksheets with her spelling words, so she gets practice at both spelling and cursive at the same time.

I also love all the font choices. We use Palmer Cursive, but there are many other choices as well. I highly recommend this product.

lstone
Great product! My 4 year old son excelled in writing his letters after we started using this software. It is super easy to print out what ever letters (or words) you want the kids to practice writing. I love how it will grow with my pre-schooler to elementary school when he starts writing sentences and paragraphs.

Praises for Startwrite
I ordered Startwrite on Tuesday and received it in the mail on Thursday! Talk about great service. I
have already begun using it with my four and six year old sons. I love the flexibility of the program -
copywork, scripture memory, spelling words - the ideas are endless! Thanks for making a great product
available at an affordable price(...)

"Know How" comes with bonus tool!
Final Draft is the industry standard for scriptwriters. The software is intuitive and easy to work with. It does all the formatting work for you and is loaded with templates from different types of scripts (Movies, Movie of the Week, TV series, Sitcoms...) even well known TV series like 24 - if you want to try writing for those guys. Smart entries remember scene headings, characters and many time saving information. You can print character reports to hand out to your actors, scene reports and track your actor's lines throughout your script.

But seriously folks, what piece of software would be worth anything without knowledge what can use it for. That's where Syd Field's workshop comes in handy. Field is a very respected scriptwriter and an even better mentor. The workshop takes you through the creative process of writing a story, giving life to your characters, letting the dialogue flow through them... in few words: using this blueprint to create a great script. Syd Field's knowledge and expert advices alone are worth the retail price, but you get the software as a bonus.

Fantastic Product
I have found this product to be very comprehensive and extremely user friendly. I would recommend this to anyone starting out in screen writing.

the best screenwriting package money can buy
This package is a must have. You really feel good about spending that much money because it's a good package. I bought mine from thewritersstore.com and I got even more stuff for 9.
This package is a great tool for all screenwriters. If you are having your doubts like I was about which software to get, just go with final draft and be happy.
I could rave all day about this software, but the time you can spend reading this you could have already bought the thing. Go buy it.

Screenwriting made easy
My first screenplay was formatted manually, and I know I made some mistakes. Final Draft will help eliminate those errors. I am looking forward to thanking Final Draft when I win the Oscar for Best Screenplay!

Use it every day
I usually adhere to low-tech solutions to my problems, but note-taking and organization has always been something I've failed miserably at. OneNote has been an absolute blessing. I can sit in class and look-up what the teacher is talking about with Google or Wikipedia and then copy images/text directly from web pages into OneNote. It's incredibly simple to use. My only complaint is that it deviates from standard Office formatting practices in that I can't use predefined or define a set of styles for text. If I want to have a subject heading, I just have to bold it and increase the font manually. Overall, I'm still really happy with it, though. I've barely touched the full functionality of OneNote and am curious to see what else it can do.

K-State Student
Being a college student on the go, a notebook computer is essential to my academic success. I have been fortunate enough to be a Beta Tester for Microsoft OneNote, and this program is amazing. Designed for Tablet PCs, it still works great on my Desktop and Notebook. I am capable of typing all my notes as the professor lectures. Many students enjoy paper and pen due to the ability to draw and sketch as needed. OneNote allows you to use mouse or touch pad to enter charts, graphs, or sketches right into the notes. Notes are easy to print, save, share, and sort with OneNote. In the past I always wrote my notes and had to try to pay attention to the professor, read the overheads, and write straight and legibly so I could read the notes for later. I always had to try and read three different things at a time. Now, I can just type away while looking at the professor and overheads allowing me to pay better attention to the professor.
Why is this better than Word? Because it is designed with the power of Word, but with all the easy to access tools needed for Note taking. Colored Pens tools, fonts, bullets, outlines, all easily accessible from the Menus. While I love my Notebook computer, I love it even more with OneNote! Microsoft OneNote, making College Students Life easier!!!

Unique and useful from Microsoft!
First of all, I am not a big fan of most microsoft software. I do like their operating systems but I feel that almost every other microsoft program has a superior and cheaper competitive software package. However, they have really done something with One Note.

One Note is a program designed for taking notes. I think microsoft had students in mind because as a student, I got a copy for free. So, I thought I would try it. I never thought taking notes on the computer would be so easy and so helpful. I don't actaully use it for class (prefer a notebook), but I use it all the time for other computer related items.

One Note has an infrastructure to allow a complicated system of organized notes, if you want. Or, if you just want to jot a bunch of information down in one place on your computer without worrying about margins, printing and formatting, then it easily does that too.

I use it for internet shopping and research. As you browse the web, you can easily copy text and screen clippings with One Note. If you are going on a trip, and have flights, hotels, car rentals, meeting agendas, maps, directions etc - One note is a wonderful place to consolidate all that information in one place organized however you want it to be.

My favorite thing about One Note is that you can format the information however you want without the program trying to format it in the way it wants (Other microsoft programs are notorious for this). Anywhere you click on the workspace you can add information to that very spot.

In conclusion: This is a program for taking personal notes. It is not good at formatting, printing, or publishing in any form. However, it is very good at letting you organize in your own unique and personal way. If that is what you need, this program is a good choice for you.

More than One Question for OneNote
Above all, a notetaking program is supposed to make it easy to organize and find notes. With that purpose in mind, certain omissions in the program startle. Ordering notes within a section is as easy as it should be, but why did Microsoft make it hard to organize across sections and even harder to organize across folders? You can transfer a note from one section to another, but you cannot transfer it to a specific location within the section in a single operation. To transfer between folders, you have to use ordinary drag and drop. Software is supposed to make these processes easy, not complicate them with an anachronistic imagry of paper sections.Organizing and reorganizing is of the essence for notetaking, and the Office suite, of which OneNote is part, has a multi-clipboard. Why did Microsoft omit giving OneNote access to the Office clipboard, when OneNote is the Office product that needs it most. The functionality is already present in Office; Microsoft had to go out of its way to omit this functionality for OneNote.The saving grace of OneNote is that the underlying technology is very powerful. It gives you the ability to take notes by various means and to put them anywhere you want on the page. The core technology is powerful, but the feature set MS has chosen to develop lacks a rational foundation and appears impulsive.