Very soon after I started blogging, I started using a blog editor to power up my blogging (and prevent the “aiiigghhh I lost my connection and my post!!!!” which was very common at conferences, still is actually). In those days I was using Qumana for the most part, which makes sense since I was a part of the company and helping guide the growth of the app.
For its time, Qumana was a fantastic blogging app. It was almost perfect (I was always pushing for more and better refinement), but Qumana has long dropped from my toolkit as it hasn’t really been updated in a long time. After Qumana, I used Windows Live Writer. Again, almost perfect and probably one of the few apps I miss since switching to a Mac.
Right now my app of choice is Blogo and it’s good enough, but maybe not as great as I’d like. I have ecto, and while it’s good, it lacks a few refinements and doesn’t seem to have any active development going on, which always concerns me when choosing (and paying for) an app. Yesterday I bought the MacHeist nano bundle and it comes with MacJournal, which has a post to blog function. All of which has made me wonder if there is a perfect (Mac) blog editor, and if there is does anyone care?
What got me thinking about this is Paisano’s post on WebWorkerDaily about the “death of blogging” and the iPad as its potential savior (is there anything that the iPad isn’t going to save?):
What’s the Problem?
I think part of the problem with blogs is that they are too static and dull. We need to infuse new life into blogs and make them more dynamic. Just as Flash added a freshness to web sites when it first appeared on the scene, we need to do something that will change the game for blogging.
The other part of the problem involves the incredible shrinking attention span of readers/viewers. Hollywood learned long again that motion pictures need to reach out and grab the audience right away within the first 10 minutes or else its opening weekend will be its last. That’s why most movies look and feel like music videos these days. Quick cut editing and special effects reign supreme. Even the publishing industry has taken its queue from the movie industry and insist that its authors write tighter and more exciting stories.
link: The Future of Blogging – WebWorkerDaily
The key here is the writing part of the blogging problem. I have now three apps for writing and note taking. Between Scrivener, where I do most of my book writing and a lot of other writing as well, Yojimbo, where I gather a lot of the links and such researching for books, etc., and MacJournal, which I haven’t really tried yet, I have a lot of potential blogging firepower, but little practical connections.
I can easily gather a ton of stuff in Yojimbo (I love it’s drop-tab area), but I can’t pull it together and publish from there (easily). I can write my brains out in Scrivener (which I do), and I can pull in a lot of stuff into it, but not as easily as Yojimbo, but I can’t publish directly to any of my blogs. The best I’ve been able to do is write it and copy and paste. I still have to add links and images to finish off the posts. MacJournal … well it might be able to post to my blog (I haven’t tried yet), but the whole collecting of stuff part is lacking.
Then comes the critical question—does anyone really care?
I can’t remember the last time I saw someone using an editor (someone who I hadn’t shown the benefits of blog editors, btw) to post to their blog. Everyone just logs into their blog and posts directly. What if you can’t get online? Oh well. I guess it will have to wait.
See, I think that the how people post influences what they will post and the quality of the end result as well. Look at the default post area in WordPress 2.9.2:
That is not a lot of area to post in. It is confined and cramped. Yes, I know that you can make the post area bigger, but we’re talking defaults here (and most people never change the default settings). Don’t you think that small area leads to shorter posts? Here is the default posting area of Blogo (and this very post!):
Huge difference, eh? Lots of room. Space to see ideas develop. I think one of the ways we can all improve blogging is working with better tools to improve our writing.
Now, I just wish I could find it.
It’s well worth noting that on of the early versions of Qumana was built on a semantic note-taking principle and you could easy mix and match different things you dropped into to make a post (or other documents as well).
What I’d really like is the writing interface of Scrivener coupled with the drag and drop into a notes area (with tags) like Yojimbo and being able to post as easily as Blogo. Anyone?
little verify code for a beta site:
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