Another Hugh Howey appreciation post, links, and more software I use. 10/14/26

Howey, author of the Silo series and Beacon 23 among other things created and recently released an open source writing software program called Neo, available through his website, here. If memory serves, the creator of Scrivener is a writer who couldn't find something that suited their needs so they built their own. Howey did the same thing, and upon test driving it the last few days, I gotta say Neo will likely be (already is) my go to application for book writing.

I remember a few blog posts ago I mentioned I was using IA Writer for the blog. I founds something I like better. For a few months now I've been using StandardNotes almost exclusively for blog posts although I can't recommend this product just yet. It's too expensive for what it is. Really I liked IA writer because it has a split pane view when drafting. The left pane is what you're writing, the right is after markdown is applied, but IA Writer's cross platform sync doesn't work well for my needs. StamdardNotes does that and more.

Where StandardNotes excels for my needs:

Where StandardNotes fails:

Look, I love all these features and it's everything I could ask for in a markdown editor, but $120/yr is about twice I would expect to pay for something like this. The thing is StandardNotes is owned by Proton and their thing is super duper encryption and privacy. So, I get that super duper encryption costs money, but, that isn't a feature that's important to me. Anyway, I've paid for the next year and I'll see if it becomes something I can't live without. IA Writer ticks some of these boxes but StandardNotes ticks all of them. I'll revisit this topic when it's time to renew.

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raindrop Raindrop is a bookmark manager and you’ll likely just know if this is something that could be useful to you.

I use several different browsers (a dedicated post about browsers will arrive here someday). Edge while logged into Microsoft 365 on there with Bing as my default search. Chrome while logged into google on there with Google as my default search. Vivaldi with duckduckgo as my default search for generally browsing the web (and I have a lot to say about Vivaldi for that browser post), and several others. I have different bookmarks on each of them and often have a bazillion different tabs open on them. Raindrop is a standalone app and a browser extension that syncs bookmarks seemingly across everything. With a click or two I was able to put all my bookmarks there. With another one I was able to bookmark and close all my open tabs.

It’s made my life so much easier.

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Neo is new and exciting to me, and I just loce the story behind it. Howey had ideas for his dream writing app and just built it and gave it to the world.

raindrop is just fantastic and I think I can’t live without it.

and StandardNotes, although a little overpriced for what it is also is fantastic.

So to recap, check out Hugh Howey’s Neo, raindrop, and StandardNotes

That’s all for now.