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Archive for the ‘Blogging’ Category

Part of what I do is evaluate new Web technologies and a lot of my time is spent looking at new web 2.0 technologies. One of the very cool developments in the Blog world is the development of some really first-rate 3rd party editors. I use Microsoft’s new Live Writer in the Windows world and I am in the process of looking for an equally good editor in the OS X world.

Today I am looking at the Freeware Beta offering from Qumana. Connecting Qumana was pretty straight forward and simple so it passes the ease of install threshold. Next is the UI and it too is very functional and intuitive. It is limited however, with very few options bells or whistles. To be fair though it does do the simple things simply and is a big improvement over the text editors built into Blogger, WordPress, or TypePad and that is really where the rubber meets the road.

Qumana does have a spell check built in, the ability to color, bold, italic, underline, strike through, change font family, and font size.

You can add a picture.
You can align your photo left, right, center, or default.

You can add links, and it has the ability to handle multiple blogs. It also has hooks for inserting Google Adwords, Tags and html. It has a WYSIWYG and Source View for power users mode.

The bad news:
The Qumana editor does not allow you to create a page, or if it does I have not found out how.

While trying it out on my BlogSpot Blog I could not for the life of me figure out how to add and upload an image. Every time I tried to add a photo to my blog it would only add the image with a local link to my desktop. I figured OK, maybe the only way to add a photo is to have them already uploaded and link to them. So, I added the photo I wanted to use to my Picasa album and copied the image link. But when I published the article, nope, no image. After about an hour I gave up.

Overall I think that Qumana will satisfy the blogger in every Mac lover. The price is right, and it is a great replacement for those pesky built-in Blog editors. However, it still is not as good by far as the Windows Live Writer by Microsoft. It seems that there is a lot of room for improvement in the Qumana project. It would be nice if someone came up with an editor that was in the same league as Live Writer for the Mac. If you know of one, please send the link my way I would be happy to try it out! 

With the release of Microsoft’s Live Writer Beta, an already solid tool for Blogging gets a feature refresh that keeps the 3rd party Blog editing tool well ahead of the competition. In my previous article I wrote about using Live Writer to put the power of Blogs in the hands of non-technical personnel and how that has helped spur Blog adoption at my company. With the release of the beta 2009 version I think my job just got easier.

Some of the key new features in the ’09 release focus on image editing and how to make images even more compelling in your Blog posts.

 

Here we see some of the cool photo features in the ’09 Live Writer. Image 1 shows the Polaroid-style borders and in the 2nd image we see the new ability to add a single pixel border with a new tilt effect.

 

In the second row we see the new nifty reflection effect  and notice the various sizes of the original photo. Live Writer does a great job of resampling your photo for the various sizes you need in your post. In the second photo I have used the advanced photo settings to enhance the brightness and contrast. This feature allows you to make that dark photo lighter or vise versa without having to go back to your Photoshop file.

While the photo improvements are impressive, Live Writer has also had its table functions enhanced as well.

One of the best features of Live Writer is its support for copying Excel content and having it rendered correctly. Below is a table I copied from Excel and pasted into Live Writer.

Microsoft has a real winner with Live Writer, the only thing that could be better is if they would release a version for Linux and the Mac. If they did that then my life would indeed get even easier but as it is Live Writer is clearly the leader in 3rd party Blog editing software. Give it a try, I bet you will like it too.

What if I told you there was a FREE 3rd party Blog editor that can be a game changer in your efforts to improve your corporate Blog adoption? What if I told you it works with most of the major Blog vendors and that it handles images, does a great job cleaning up Word code, and allows newbies to author great looking articles? What if I told you it was made by Microsoft? I know I just said free, good, and Microsoft in the same breath, but it is true and you should take a look because you may be missing something if you don’t.

I know that most long-time Bloggers are quite comfortable with the built-in editors that come with Blogs such as TypePad, WordPress, Blogger, etc., but if your company is like mine and Blogs are opening up to more and more non-traditional Bloggers, take a look at Live Writer by Microsoft. I have had amazing results and much lower long-term support levels using this tool and frankly those that have adopted it love it. In an earlier article, I wrote about my efforts to create scalable Web 2.0 Intranets with Blogs as the backbone. Live Writer has allowed me to rapidly down-level the skill set necessary for content creation from fairly technical Project Managers to Administrative Assistants and more junior non-technical personnel. In one of our largest divisions we were able to replace a Web contracting firm for content creation and maintenance with a single Exec Admin and we get better results.

The only downside to Live Writer is that just like most Microsoft tools it is Windows only. Our company, like most with large Engineering divisions, is not Windows only. But if your company is like mine and the vast majority of the non-technical community is Windows based then this requirement becomes a non-issue.

Intrigued? Download it, take it for a test drive and you may just be surprised by the capabilities of this free Blog editor.