Peregrinas » Applications

Reviewing Qumana Blog Manager – So far, so good…

Laurie Ashton — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 04:01:51 +0000

Qumana is the latest in a bunch of desktop blogging applications I’m testing, all in an effort to see if there’s one out there in Internet land that’ll be my magic bullet, working flawlessly with all the features I need.

Qumana 3.2.3, updated 1 May 2009

Installation was a breeze. The first hiccup happened when trying to set up a blog. My WordPress settings were not automatically recognized even though WordPress was on the list of acceptable blogs. Manually fill it out, then.

There was a field called "Endpoint" that had to be populated, but with what? I guessed and added http://myblog.com/xmlrpc.php and was happily correct. I guessed that because I’ve installed enough of these blog applications and that xmlrpc thing almost always comes up. But would an inexperienced user figure it out? I’m thinking better documentation is in order, personally.

Considerations

No forums. That means no users helping users, no transparency of outstanding bugs or issues. No way for users to express interest in features they want.
Contact form – that seems to be the only way to report bugs or get help of any kind.
FAQs, Knowledge Base – on the site.
No indication if Qumana is still in development or if it’s a dead project.

Bugs

Can’t manage to get beyond 100 to 200 blog entries downloaded/synced from the blog server.
Inline images doesn’t work with thumbnails from my own site, which I know is up and running properly.
If I click on an image, to make it a link for example, Qumana sometimes adds in height="16px" and "width="16px". Have to check in HTML view since that’s the only way to know.
If there’s something wrong in the HTML, the blog entry cannot be opened, which means it also cannot be fixed through Qumana. It also means that there’s no way to tell what’s wrong and if it’s something as simple as a missing closing tag. It also means that the entire blog post is gone unless you’ve published it.

Feature Enhancements Needed

I would love to have smaller icons, which is not presently an option.
I’d love to be able to customize the toolbar, including turning off the advertising icon entirely since I don’t plan on using the Qumana advertising system.
Formatting for Heading1 and so on. Really, it’s so needed. But, after manually added them in Source View, the heading text is appropriately larger and bolder.
Show post slug or permanent URL. Duplicate posts happen, unfortunately, through a Twitter application, and I delete those duplicates. Because refresh does nothing to delete posts from the Qumana side that I’ve already deleted from the server side, I either need to remember to delete the duplicates before refreshing, or I need to delete through Qumana. Deleting through Qumana means I don’t know which post was posted first, so I’ll still need to go to the server to correct the post slug (post-slug vs. post-slug-2).
Support for native tagging. There is no way for me to add my WordPress tags, so if I want them to show up on my blog post, I’ve got to go to my WordPress blog on the server and manually change/add them there.
Images – flow is supported, but align for left and right is not. Plus Qumana adds extra HTML that I don’t want there, like margins and padding – my CSS handles everything I need.
Captions as an image thingie is not recognized and disappears from the HTML.
Ability to turn off pinging Qumana and Technorati servers. Really, I should be able to make my own decision as to which servers, if any, I ping.
The frames for the various windows don’t stay how I put them. I have to continually resize the bit where Date Created, Categories, Allow Comments, Allow Trackbacks is to make it big enough to actually use.

The Good

Source view, or what I’d call HTML view, wraps properly. Hallelujah!
The interface, while not blazingly pretty, is reasonably pretty enough and reasonably intelligent and intuitive as well.
Basic formatting is present and, thus far, seems to work well.
Blockquote is treated separately from indents and outdents. Also Hallelujah!
Posts can be saved. Another Hallelujah!

The Summary

So far, Qumana is not painful to use. It doesn’t have me screaming or tearing my hair out. It’s missing some key-for-me features, but it’s more workable and usable than most of the other blog editors I’ve used thus far.

So far, sadly, this is my top choice if nothing better shows up. Which means manually adding WordPress tags and correcting image and formatting HTML code if I end up using this.

It’s days like this that I wish I knew how to program.

Meanwhile, it has enough features with still no crashes after a month and a half of writing, saving, and publishing blog posts through Qumana that I’ll be using this as my primary blog editor until/unless I find something better.

Meanwhile, these are the desktop blogging platforms that remain on my list to try out:

Windows Live Writer
w.bloggar
BlogMate plugin for TextMate
Thingamablog
Stuffr
Elicit 1.1.7 by Bingo Bango Software (domain appears nonexistent, software not updated since 2006). Not sure if I’ll give this a try – likely too old to work well with Windows 7.
Bytescout Post2Blog 3.0.1, 28 June 2007 (date added to downloads.com)
Chrysanth WebStory – 90-day trial
LIPIDr Blog Client – freeware, last version: 2007
QTM
Semagic
WB Editor

The ones I’ve reviewed:

Mac-OS-only desktop clients I can’t use since I’m on Windows:

Bleezer – mac only
Blogo – Mac only
MarsEdit – Mac only
Ecto – Mac only
MacJournal
QTM

Ones that are otherwise out for me:

Zoundry Blog Writer – it became Zoundry Raven, reviewed above
Scribefire – Firefox plugin, not desktop blogging platform
AIRPress. AIRPress no longer exists. Its domain is owned by squatters.
Flock – web browser with built-in blogging, not desktop blogging platform.

If you know of other desktop blogging clients for Windows, please let me know. I’ll add ‘em to the list and take ‘em for a test drive.

Additionally, if you’re looking for more blog clients for other platforms, including mobile platforms, check this out.

Tags: blogs, blogging, desktop blogging platform, blog manager, blogging software, Qumana

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Post revisions in WordPress

Laurie Ashton — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 00:16:00 +0000

With the duplicate entries I was seeing in Zoundry Raven,

I started to wonder if it might be something with WordPress itself, so I started searching. And I found a few forum threads about this. Like this one and this one. And the overwhelming WordPress party line as expressed in the forum threads was "but of course it should never be turned off. There is absolutely no reason to ever turn it off."

WordPress 2.6 introduced a new "feature" called revisions. I put that in quote because not everyone agrees that it’s a feature, especially since it cannot be disabled. I’m in the camp of not wanting revisions, personally.

See, with revisions, the revised copy of your blog entry is saved in the database. If, like me, you edit it when you notice spelling errors, punctuation errors, an updated link, updated information, or whatever, you could wind up with 4 or 10 or more copies of that blog post in the database. And apparently, that’s exactly what has been happening.

Because I’m nosy, I checked, and sure enough, in my database, there were multiple copies of a lot of my entries.

If those post revisions account for why those desktop blogging platforms are downloading multiple copies of blog entries, then either a. WordPress has a bug that means that this is what desktop blogging apps get or b. developers of desktop blogging apps aren’t programming their apps correctly to take this into account. Personally, I don’t know which it is. I do know, however, that it’s a huge pain in the butt.

I did further searching and found threads by people who want to turn revisions off or delete the extra revisions. But then this thread seems to indicate that it isn’t just revisions that’s causing problems, but also autosave, which also saves duplicate copies of posts. Of course there are plugins to deal with that.

I installed Revision Control, but still got extra revisions or autosaves saved to the database – honestly, I can’t tell the difference.

Also installed Delete Revisions – that deleted 80 revisions the first time I ran it, but then a day later, there were four more, which told me something else was going on (the autosaves).

That led me to installing WP-CMS Post Control, which, theoretically, ought to put an end to not just saved revisions, but also autosaves. Now I’m going to have to find an easy way to delete them. Easy as in not going into the database and doing it myself.

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Playing with BlogDesk, another desktop blogging application

Laurie Ashton — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 07:39:12 +0000

We’ll see how this one goes. At least it hasn’t crashed yet.

BlogDesk Version 2.8, build 400 from 22 February 2009
Windows 98, NT, 2000, ME, XP and Vista
Free

Considerations

The forum is nearly dead. Infrequent posting. On the other hand, very few threads have no replies. It has both English and German sections.
There’s help, FAQs, and so on on the site, along with integrated help in BlogDesk itself.

Bugs

Again with not being able to download more than 100 posts from the server. At least the developer is honest about it, posting this in his forum:

There is nothing I can do – the interface between BlogDesk and WordPress only allows to read the last x posts from the beginning. And at some point, that’s too much. If you want to edit very old posts, you need to login to WordPress.
Except that there is, he either doesn’t know about it or doesn’t want to deal with it. One way, and the easiest I can think of, would be to allow an import of a WordPress database. And this bullet really belongs with the bullet before, but there’s no easy way to properly format this in BlogDesk, so while this is not a bug, it’s not great, either.
Downloading posts from the blog server – also did duplicates and triplicates. I figured out why, I think – it has to do with revisions in WordPress and how WordPress keeps adding them to the database. Thing is, I talked to Fahim about it, and he mentioned that he had to deal with that when revisions were added in WP 2.6 with Blog, his program, so he knows it can be done. The developers who don’t deal with it are either clueless or lazy. Or, he added, how revisions are handled may have changed since then, and it may be that WordPress is being shipped with defective code. I have no way of knowing.
It looks like those blog entries that I downloaded may have disappeared. They’re now gone. Next day – yup, they’re gone. I guess I have to re-download? Am I going to have to download them each time I want to use them? Are they never stored in the database or something?
I can find no way to re-load posts from my blog server into this program. Either it’s hiding, or it doesn’t exist. I don’t know which, but I’ve looked pretty much everywhere.

Feature enhancements needed

While I can apply H1, h2, h3, etc., I have to do it in Source view. There’s no way to do it in Normal view. And I have to do it by manually editing the HTML code. But, oddly enough, now that I’ve manually added h2 to the headings, they’re clearly visible as such in Normal view, so it’s partially handled. Odd.
Only basic formatting is available, and I mean basic. Bold, italics, underline, strikethrough, foreground colour, background colour, justifications, bullets & numbering, and blockquote. But that’s it. More needs to be added.
inline ability to view images would be nice. And while some HTML formatting is added when images are posted, it’s not excessive like other desktop blogging apps.
Inline viewing of images would be nice.

The good stuff

The interface isn’t pretty or beautiful, but it’s pretty enough and certainly functional enough.
Ten minutes in, and it hasnt crashed yet. Twenty minutes in and it hasn’t crashed yet. Next day – it hasn’t crashed yet. Looks like this one is stable.
It didn’t lose the post I started writing yesterday. Well, howdy!
It’s functional where it claims to be functional. Yes, this is a basic blog editor, but it’s functional.
Features, like adding images or links, are available through a right mouseclick, along with cut, copy, paste, and so on.
HTML wraps properly in HTML view.

The summary

BlogDesk is stable and does what it claims to do. It’s not overly pretty, but it’s pretty enough and fairly intuitive. It doesn’t do funky odd unwanted stuff like some of the other programs. However, it’s too limited in its feature set. It’s… okay. It’s what I would expect from a desktop blogging app built about, oh, five years ago. In fact, Fahim’s Blog, when I started using it over six years ago, had more features than BlogDesk has now.

Still, if all you need are basic features in a desktop blogging application, this would definitely be a reasonable choice.

Meanwhile, these are the desktop blogging platforms that remain on my list to try out:

Qumana Blog Editor – ad centric
Windows Live Writer
w.bloggar
BlogMate plugin for TextMate
Thingamablog
Stuffr
Elicit 1.1.7 by Bingo Bango Software (domain appears nonexistent, software not updated since 2006). Not sure if I’ll give this a try – likely too old to work well with Windows 7.
Bytescout Post2Blog 3.0.1, 28 June 2007 (date added to downloads.com)

The ones I’ve reviewed:

Ones that are otherwise out for me:

Bleezer – mac only
Blogo – Mac only
MarsEdit – Mac only
Ecto – Mac only
Zoundry Blog Writer – it became Zoundry Raven, reviewed above
Scribefire – Firefox plugin, not desktop blogging platform
AIRPress. AIRPress no longer exists. Its domain is owned by squatters.
Flock – web browser with built-in blogging, not desktop blogging platform.

If you know of other desktop blogging clients for Windows, please let me know. I’ll add ‘em to the list and take ‘em for a test drive. Similar Posts:

RocketPost-powered

Laurie Ashton — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 05:04:43 +0000

I’m running the fully-functional 7 day trial of RocketPost blog software with all features enabled, or so the advertising says.

Anconia RocketPost 2 Pro 2.5.441
$49 professional (unlimited blogs), $29 home (1 blog), free – basic (1 blog on Blogger or Live Spaces)
Requirements: Microsoft Windows® (Vista, XP, 2003, 2000, NT, Me, 98), 20 MB unused hard disk space, Internet access

I’m using Windows 7, and even though it’s not listed on the accepted Windows O/S list, because Vista is, Windows 7 should be completely compatible.

I had a long, long, long post written yesterday about RocketPost, the good (there was very little), the bad (of which there was lots), and the ugly (which was screaming ugly).

The short version of yesterday’s post? RocketPost sucks. Hugely. It has more bugs than my backyard, and considering that I’m living in a tropical country, that’s a lot.

The extended version? I hate this program so much that it pains me to have to write it again. No, really, my stomach hurts.

It deleted one version. Will I get this one written without it also being deleted? I have no idea. What I can tell you, though, is that I don’t have the patience to go through the whole thing again, so I’m going to get this done as quickly as I can.

Considerations

Lack of transparency. There are no user forums on RocketPost’s website. No way for users to interact with each other, give each other help, or for a user to see how long an issue has been a known issue.
FAQs are not visible except by doing a search. No way to browse through FAQs.

The bugs

RocketPost crashes frequently. Yesterday, after installing it, it crashed something like 7 times in 10 or 15 minutes, maybe more. And they weren’t random crashes – I could duplicate every single one of them, and those duplications I’m not counting.
Formatting sucks. Trying to assign a H1 or so on crashes the program.
You know how, on RocketPost’s website, it says “Full blog import. Download all your existing posts and get started in less than 5 minutes.”? They lied. I can’t get more than 100 posts no matter what I do.
Of those 100 posts, many are duplicated or triplicated. Many. I haven’t counted them, but I’m willing to bet that at least half of the posts downloaded are duplicates.
It eats posts. See my opening paragraphs.
To get bullets to work, I have to click on the bullets icon twice.
While I only set up one blog on RocketPost, RocketPost still managed to pull in all the categories from all my blogs (the settings are elsewhere on my computer, so I’m wondering if RocketPost imported them from somewhere). So the dropdown category list shows ALL the categories, not just the ones relevant to this blog.
Refreshing the categories from the server changes nothing.
Additionally, RocketPost added a category called “General” that I can’t delete.
Keyboard shortcuts have a tendency to not work, although they do sometimes. Odd.
RocketPost assigned a permalink to this post. Which I can’t change. Thing is, I have WordPress set up to assign permalinks the way I want them set up, and RocketPost is not capable of figuring that out, so it should just stay out of this.
Preferences that I had set yesterday have been reverted to default today. Lovely.
Categories that I assigned did not carry through to the published post.

Feature enhancements needed

Keyboard shortcuts are limited. More are needed, as are shortcuts through the right mouse click, which I depend on for things like images and hyperlinks. Instead, for images and hyperlinks, I have no choice but to use the menus. What a waste of time.

The good

RocketPost has a reasonably pretty and intuitive interface.
Yeah, sorry, that’s it.

The summary

Good looks and an intuitive interface are not enough to rescue this desktop blogging program. It has serious bugs that need attention before this application should ever be considered.

I had more points in bugs and feature enhancements, but I don’t want to torture myself any further with this program. Also please know that I did not test each and every single feature – not even close. There were too many bugs to bother seeing how it behaved with multiple blogs, for example.

Meanwhile, these are the desktop blogging platforms that remain on my list to try out:

The ones I’ve reviewed:

Ones that are otherwise out for me:

Bleezer – mac only
Blogo – Mac only
MarsEdit – Mac only
Ecto – Mac only
Zoundry Blog Writer – it became Zoundry Raven, reviewed above
Scribefire – Firefox plugin, not desktop blogging platform
AIRPress. AIRPress no longer exists. Its domain is owned by squatters.
Flock – web browser with built-in blogging, not desktop blogging platform.

If you know of other desktop blogging clients for Windows, please let me know. I’ll add ‘em to the list and take ‘em for a test drive. Similar Posts:

Taking Raven out for a test drive

Laurie Ashton — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 08:24:31 +0000

It’s official – I’m looking for a desktop blogging application, and Raven is next in line for me to test out. Will it work or not?

Zoundry Raven Beta 1.0.375, built on 08/05/08 (no idea if that’s May 8 2008 or 5 August 2008).
System requirements: not easily found if they’re listed. I still haven’t found them. System requirements for previous versions are listed, but not this one.
Free
Open Source

I’m using Windows 7, and even though it’s not listed on the accepted Windows O/S list, because Vista is, Windows 7 should be completely compatible.

Unfortunately, within five minutes of installing it, I was already seeing problems.

Bugs:

It could only handle downloading the latest 200 posts from my blog, and beyond that, it crapped out, same as BlogJet. Raven offered a more detailed error message than BlogJet did, but it’s so unhelpful with all of its gobbledegook high-level geek speak.
Of those posts it downloaded, many were duplicated or triplicated. Uh, yeah, that’s just not good. At all.
Raven has this weird image problem. Insert an image into a post, and even though I do not enter any numbers into the fields for the image size, Raven does it for me, along with a checkmark in the “lock aspect” field.
- My images are already at the exact size I want them to be.
- The image sizes aren’t even consistent – sometimes it’s a reasonable shape, like square or rectangular, although not necessarily the shape the image was originally in, or flat as a pancake.
  This one, for example, is locked at 28×30. The original image is 200×150.
- This one, for example, is locked at 461×30 even though the original image is also 200×150. The long thin images happen when the alt text has a lot of characters entered. I verified that by posted this image twice, once with no alt text, the second time with a lot of alt text. The first time, it was also locked at 28×30, whereas the second time, it’s locked at 461×30. Am I the only one who sees a problem with this?
- No matter what I try to do, that image is staying locked. I can change the image size, but some number has to be entered. Try to remove the numbers or uncheck Lock Aspect and it reappears again, whether I do it through design view or xhtml. What is up with this? This is not something minor–I have images in nearly every post. Multiple images, frequently. My images that I’ve already uploaded to exactly where I want them. For this to be happening is grossly inconvenient.
Raven seems to see photos from major photogallery websites just fine and displays them inline as the blog entry is being written or edited. The photos on my site, however, it does not. I suspect that this is what’s at least partially leading to my image problem mentioned above. That, and the software thinking that, because this is a WordPress blog (even though it’s self-hosted, not at WordPress.com) and it thinks that image sizes are necessary for the images to display properly. Except that that’s not true for a self-hosted WordPress blog and there is no way to turn that off.
Edited to add: This one I noticed just after publishing this. The H2s that I used to mark up the various sections were deleted just prior to this entry being published. Despite me saving the post first. I confirmed by trying it two more times. So, no H2, H3, and so on after all. That would be a major problem. Major. And sadly, it took me until now to notice it. I checked the other entries I published with Raven, and they’re also all missing the formatting I had added.
Edited to add: Noticed this while editing in WordPress itself that Raven, to create the Technorati tags at the very end, adds unnecessary (by my standards, admittedly) HTML code, all of which is intended to enhance the Zoundry page rank. Here’s what it looks like:

Raven. Do not manually edit. http://www.zoundryraven.com –> Technorati : Raven, desktop blogging platform

The stuff I bolded is what I take objection to. More so because of the scare tactics associated with “do not manually edit”, although the sheer lack of necessity in assigning classes with do not exist on my css is not lost on me.

Categories that I assigned from within the program did not carry through to the published post.

Feature enhancements needed:

~~There’s no formatting options – no bold, underline, strikethrough, bullets, numbering, indent, outdent, and so on. Nothing. Is it hiding somewhere? Do I have to turn it on?~~ Ah, I see. I have to go through View – Perspective – Browse and then open the post. How very odd. And not entirely convenient. That really should be more intuitive. And it turns out that it works fine, showing the formatting options, in subsequent uses of the program. Bizarre.

The XHTML view does not wrap lines. Meaning that scrolling side to side is necessary. This is cumbersome and a pain in the buttinsky. This should not be that difficult to implement.

It looks like Raven doesn’t differentiate between drafts posts and published posts, and this may be why it’s downloading duplicates and triplicates. Will have to verify, of course.

While I can change settings for each account – because, yes, it can also handle multiple blogs quite easily – I can’t change the name for that account. Which sucks, because I didn’t know what they meant by Account when I set up my first blog account and would like to change it. Which will mean deleting it and starting over.

If I opt to ping any of the pinging sites, Raven pings them every single time I publish, which includes when I edit the entry and re-publish. There’s no setting to ping it once the first time it’s published and not after that. I’m going to have to set up the pinging on my WordPress site itself – each of them, indivudually – rather than let Raven handle the pinging for me.

The blog posts are not sorted in date order. They might be sorted in Post ID order as set by WordPress or by some random internal number assigned by Raven. In any case, I cannot change the sort order to suit my preferences, which is date order. This will make life more difficult for me, unfortunately.

Other problems:

The forums are empty. There are a lot of posts that have no responses, and that goes back about a year. Ouch. So no one’s paying attention, no one gives a hoot.

Since they decided to go open source with this software, I checked out their page on code.google. Two whole people *cough* working on the project. Latest updates to the code are January of this year. One issue is listed (ID 1). No one’s updating here.

There have been no responses to my bug reports or forum posts. Granted, it’s only been three or four days since my first one, but nothing? At all?

On the plus side:

Those blog posts that were previously downloaded did not disappear, unlike BlogJet.

It can save posts.

It keeps my drafts separate from my published entries, which makes it immensely easier to keep everything straight. Especially for me, the girl who has at least a couple of hundred partially written blog posts. So much easier to keep straight.

It can keep track of pages in addition to posts from the blog. Well, hallelujah! BlogJet couldn’t do that.

It has formatting such as Heading1, Heading2, blockquote, and so on.

I can easily publish an entry to more than one blog. Easily. Very very easily.

And it can easily handle more than one blog.

Pages and posts are handled in separate sections under the blog account. Which makes it handy for finding stuff.

Adding links can be done by highlighting text, then rightclicking and selecting “add link”. Much easier than BlogJet.

Bug reporting is built in. Very very very nice. Very. That brings me happiness, actually. And I’m impressed.

Fahim’s already asking what it’s written in. It’s Open Source software, which also means free in addition to him being able to make changes to the code. It’s possible that he can make the changes I need to get it working properly.

So far, and this is now only about 20 or so minutes into using Raven, it’s miles ahead of BlogJet in terms of features and functionality.

Summary

The first day or two I used Raven, I thought it had possibilities. I have a work around for it not being able to load more than the 200 most recent posts, so that’s not a huge issue for me.

The image size issue, however, is pretty big. Huge, in fact. The image issue is so huge that, no matter how good the rest of Raven seems to work, this is a deal breaker.

Yes, I could do a workaround, ie by manually entering the exact size of each image I post, but that would be extremely time consuming and I’m just not willing to go there unless this desktop blogging platform actually ends up being the best one in existence.

I sincerely hope it is not.

As for Raven, as soon as this entry posts, this test is over and I’m moving on to the next desktop blogging platform.

Wish me luck!

Meanwhile, these are the desktop blogging platforms that remain on my list to try out:

Qumana Blog Editor – ad centric

Windows Live Writer

w.bloggar

BlogMate plugin for TextMate

Thingamablog

Stuffr

The ones I’ve reviewed:

BlogJet 2.0.0.10, released 13 September 2007

Zoundry Raven Beta 1.0.375, built on 08/05/08

Anconia RocketPost 2 Pro 2.5.441

BlogDesk Version 2.8, build 400 from 22 February 2009

Ones that are otherwise out for me:

Bleezer – mac only

Blogo – Mac only

MarsEdit – Mac only

Ecto – Mac only

Zoundry Blog Writer – it became Zoundry Raven, reviewed above

Scribefire – Firefox plugin, not desktop blogging platform

AIRPress. AIRPress no longer exists. Its domain is owned by squatters.

Flock – web browser with built-in blogging, not desktop blogging platform.

If you know of other desktop blogging clients for Windows, please let me know. I’ll add ‘em to the list and take ‘em for a test drive.

Technorati: Raven, desktop blogging platformSimilar Posts:

Taking BlogJet for a test drive

Playing with BlogDesk, another desktop blogging application

Reviewing Qumana Blog Manager – So far, so good…

RocketPost-powered

Post revisions in WordPress

Taking BlogJet for a test drive

Laurie Ashton — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 09:36:00 +0000

I use a desktop blogging platform for writing my blog entries. It’s something I’ve always done, and was, in fact, the whole reason I found Fahim in the first place. I started with Fahim’s Blog, but lately, it hasn’t been serving my needs quite as well. Fahim’s switched over to a Mac, so doesn’t do any development work for Windows any more, so he suggested I switch to something else that’s been kept up-to-date a bit better.

BlogJet is one of the apps I’ve taken for a test drive–it has a 30 day trial period, thankfully. Unfortunately, it hasn’t worked out as well as I would like.

BlogJet 2.0.0.10, released 13 September 2007

System Requirements: Windows 2000, XP, 2003 or Vista; Internet Explorer 5.5 or later; 10 MB free disk space.

$39.95 for single user, unlimited blog. (There are other pricing schemes – you can find them on their website – but this is the cheapest).

I’m using Windows 7, and even though it’s not listed on the accepted Windows O/S list, because Vista is, Windows 7 should be completely compatible.

Error receiving more than 200 posts from the server

The first problem I encountered was this. I posted to the BlogJet forums.

- BlogJet 2.0.0.10
- Windows XP
- WordPress 2.8.1
- http://srilanka.laurieashton.com (~1400 posts) + http://lmashton.com (720 posts)

I’m new to using BlogJet and haven’t decided if I’m going to continue using it or not. Whether I do or not depends on whether this following problem can be fixed.

I have four blogs. Two have no problems receiving posts from my server, but they also have less than 200 posts each. The two blogs I have problems with are listed above.

If I try to receive 200 or fewer posts, it retrieves those with no problem. If I try to receive more than that, I get the following error message:

[Boring error message deleted that basically means that trying to retrieve all those blog posts results in a memory problem at the server end.]

Which looks to me like it means doing this sync is trying to take up more memory than my server allows. Since I can’t change how much memory I’m allocated, either I need to fix something or I need to find another way to import all my blog entries in.

Suggestions?

The answer I got was basically that I was out of luck since there was no other way for BlogJet to import old posts.

Happily, Fahim is a geek and found a workaround for me, which I also posted to the forum:

I’ve solved this problem by exporting my entire WordPress blog. Then set up a virtual server, installed WordPress to that virtual server, and imported the entire WordPress blog. Then I changed the hosts file to point the URL for that blog to the virtual server. Then retrieved the entire blog history of posts.

I did that for both of my larger blogs. It’s a pain in the butt to do, so I would rather not have to do it again, but it works.

But that wasn’t the only problem I encountered.

Old posts disappearing

I also posted this to the forum and am currently awaiting a response.

- BlogJet 2.0.0.10 Trial
- Windows 7
- WordPress 2.8.4

The blog URLs don’t seem relevant since it’s happening with all of them.

I’ve just noticed that, as I post new blog entries, old ones – as in, the ones at the very beginning of my blog – are disappearing from the BlogJet history. They still appear in my blog just fine and I get no error messages. But those older blog entries are no longer available through BlogJet.

Is this a “feature” of the trial version? Is there a finite number of blog posts that BlogJet can hold, and when it’s full, it starts dumping old ones from history?

While I do have a method in place now for an alternate way to retrieve those old blog posts (see this forum post), it’s a time-consuming pain in the butt that I’d rather not have to go through.

Is there a way to fix this or is it going to keep happening?

I like keeping all of my history since

It serves as a backup on my own computer in the event that something goes severely wrong on the server and backups there are lost or corrupted

I have a tendency to go back and edit old posts. Like when tagging was introduced to WordPress and I started adding tags to old posts. Or when I changed the locations for where I stored my images.

It’s faster to scroll and search through locally-saved posts than to run a search on a website, especially with the Internet speeds that we can get here.

But if my old posts are going to disappear, and I can’t easily retrieve them in light of my first problem, then BlogJet suddenly becomes a lot less convenient.

Native tagging is supported.

Or so BlogJet claims. In reality, I haven’t *yet* been able to get that work, whether in Windows XP or Windows 7. And it’s not related to any tagging plugins–removed those to test it out. It just doesn’t work. The tags become Technorati tags, but will not become WordPress tags.

BlogJet support.

Oh, yeah, this is another problem. I’ve gone searching through the forum posts looking for answers to some of my problems. The number of posts that go unanswered are… well, they’re worrying. And when they are answered, there seem to be an awful lot of “BlogJet doesn’t support that” or “BlogJet can’t do that” or “It’s coming up in a future release, but I can’t tell you when that’ll happen, and no, I can’t give you a patch now.” There’s even been a comment to the effect that the upcoming version of BlogJet is a complete overhaul, which isn’t a problem in and of itself, but that it may lose features.

Missing features

Um, there are still so many basic features that it doesn’t have.

Like the ability, in WYSIWYG view, to make text Heading1, Heading2, Heading3, and so on. I instead switch to HTML view to accomplish that.

Or the ability to easily make a backup of the database with all the blog entries. Instead, I go through Explorer through Documents & Settings to the location where the BlogJet data is stored and make a copy. That’s a hassle. Yes, it’s something that I can do, and easily, but what about everyone else out there who isn’t as skilled with computers? Sure, you can do a backup of a post, but what, you’re supposed to go through and manually do a backup of all 200 or 3000 posts? That’s not at all realistic.

How about saving an entry in mid-type? I can publish interim versions as a draft, but that’s not quite the same.

A decent dictionary. This one doesn’t recognize words like “website”, and certainly doesn’t recognize a lot of plurals for nouns that it does recognize. Bizarre.

Or less basic features, like the ability to set a default URL for images? I keep all of my thumbnails in one place on my website’s server, and that’s where I always point the images to. That would save me time.

Unwanted “features”

It also has “features” that I don’t want. Like it adds unnecessary HTML. Um, no, I have a css style sheet which specifies all the styles I want for everything. I DON’T want BlogJet to add anything other than what I specify and only exactly what I specify. So when I add a
tag, I want just the
tag, NOT
.

The end result

At the end of the day, it looks like BlogJet is still too completely unsuitable for my needs. Which is unfortunate. It has a nice looking interface that’s reasonably intuitive, it mostly works, and, at $39.95, it’s a decent price that I would have gladly paid. If it worked.

If you use a desktop blogging program that you’re happy with, please tell me about it. If it looks good, I’ll likely take it for a spin and see if it works for me.

Meanwhile, these are the desktop blogging platforms that remain on my list to try out:

Qumana Blog Editor – ad centric

Windows Live Writer

w.bloggar

BlogMate plugin for TextMate

Thingamablog

Stuffr

The ones I’ve reviewed:

BlogJet 2.0.0.10, released 13 September 2007

Zoundry Raven Beta 1.0.375, built on 08/05/08

Anconia RocketPost 2 Pro 2.5.441

BlogDesk Version 2.8, build 400 from 22 February 2009

Ones that are otherwise out for me:

Bleezer – mac only

Blogo – Mac only

MarsEdit – Mac only

Ecto – Mac only

Zoundry Blog Writer – it became Zoundry Raven, reviewed above

Scribefire – Firefox plugin, not desktop blogging platform

AIRPress. AIRPress no longer exists. Its domain is owned by squatters.

Flock – web browser with built-in blogging, not desktop blogging platform.

If you know of other desktop blogging clients for Windows, please let me know. I’ll add ‘em to the list and take ‘em for a test drive.

Tags: Blogging, software, geekery

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Potentially useful software

Laurie Ashton — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 08:14:49 +0000

AdesClrPicker – capture colour codes from anywhere on your screen. Extremely useful for those times you find the perfect colour in another application or image and want to transfer it to your web design or such.

Link Popularity Check – lets you check your own website’s link popularity through a few search engines.

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Write or Die?

Laurie Ashton — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 00:20:14 +0000

Write or Die is a software application that could be useful to you if you’re a. a writer and b. procrastinate writing. As their slugline says, Putting the "Prod" in Productivity! Hopefully not a juiced-up electric cattleprod, though…

With Write or Die, you type your text in their text editor, and whenever you switch from the text editor to, say, a browser to research canaries in Papua New Guinea, it starts a countdown. Or even if you just stop typing. If you don’t return back to writing in the time you’ve set, there will be consequences.

Like your text will start disappearing, word by word. Of course, that’s Kamikaze Mode.

Gentle Mode pops up a reminder to continue writing. Normal Mode will cause an unpleasant sound to play on your computer, and the sound won’t stop until you start typing again.

Plans include an Electroshock Mode.

Caveat: The text box for this program is not an editor. You still have to copy and paste what you wrote into a word processing program if you want to keep it.

Even though I’m not sure if I want to use this, I sure do appreciate the programmer’s sense of humour.

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Norton Internet Security 2009 Not a RAM Pig?

Laurie Ashton — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 01:06:01 +0000

Nope, it ain’t, and that there were many claims that NIS 2009 was not as resource intensive as previous versions was the only reason I gave it a try.

NIS 2008 nearly crashed my system, and many previous versions of Norton AntiVirus actually have crashed my systems. Norton has, historically, been the problem child of the antivirus world. It has a reputation for being a resource pig.

But Fahim installed NIS 2009 and reported having no problems with it and, more to the point, reported that it took up much less RAM than previous versions. So, knowing that my notebook with 1/4 the RAM of Fahim’s would be the real test, I decided to install it and give it a try.

Comodo Firewall used up about 38MB of RAM during ordinary usage. Free AVG Antivirus used about 50-58MB of RAM. that gives a total of around 88-96MB of RAM.

Compare that to NIS 2009, which is both firewall and antivirus, running at 8MB of RAM. 0_o

One tenth? If it had been half Comodo and AVG, I would have been happy. But this? It’s astounding. And evidently, all that work that Norton put into redesigning their software so it was more efficient and used less resources paid off. In spades.

I’ve been using NIS 2009 for two weeks now, and it’s worked pretty well. A few curses, but nothing more than any other program. All in all, it’s been working very well, not crashing my system, not hogging all the RAM or CPU power – just doing its job and doing it well.

I have but two complaints.

One. When it does background tasks, an alert window will pop open. Sometimes, it won’t go away until I either reboot or use a process explorer to kill it (it can’t be killed through Windows Task Manager).

Two. NIS 2009 automatically moves to quarantine all files/programs/components that it deems high risk. This is not an option. It cannot be turned off, a user does NOT have the option of making decisions about how to handle high risk items. They are moved to quarantine, period.

This would not be a problem if NIS 2009 didn’t have false positives, but it does. That’s not so much a problem for the average user, but over here, we’re not average users. We use beta software, we use software that Fahim wrote, we use open source stuff… You get the idea.

And sometimes, this perfectly legitimate software is flagged as high risk and is moved to quarantine without so much as a…

NIS 2009 does allow a person to set exceptions and to restore things from quarantine, but it can be a bit convoluted and complicated to get it done. Pain in the butt.

Fahim contacted Norton to find out if there was a way around this, but he was told no, and even though he asked for his query to be escalated to a supervisor and requested a response, hasn’t had one. Two weeks ago.

I understand that, for the average computer user, giving options is not necessarily a good thing – they might make the wrong choice or, worse, not now how to make an informed choice. But we’re not average users. We’re geeks, Fahim more so than I. We know how to make informed choices. We know how to do whatever research is necessary. We’re on the end of hardcore users, again, Fahim more so than I.

We want the option of making that decision. We want to be able to use whatever software we want without having major hassles installing it, i.e., the files disappearing. Or without having to disable NIS 2009 in order to get a program to install.

So it’s back to me wanting to use software the way I want to use it, not the way the software manufacturers think I should use it.

NIS 2009, with the much much much smaller and more than reasonable resource usage, is a winner That it hasn’t crashed my system or caused any kind of even remotely noticeable slowdown in two weeks of usage is a major plus. If NIS 2009 would give me the option of choosing what to do with what it considered high risk problems, then I would consider it nearly perfect.

It works well enough that we’re switching over permanently. Or as permanently as it ever gets with Fahim.

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Changing of the anti-virus guard

Laurie Ashton — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 00:35:26 +0000

Yep, it’s true. I’ve been sucked into Fahim’s perpetual cycle of switching anti-virus every few months, only now, it’s expanded to include firewalls. But this time, it’s partially my fault as well.

I’ve been using AVG Free version 8.0 with much happiness. It’s a decent program, it works well with little to no fuss on my side of things, and it’s free. What more could a girl want?

But I’ve also been using Comodo firewall, and that doesn’t bring me happiness. This, however, I recognize as also my fault.

I’m not a typical user. I want to see for myself which programs have firewall access and to what extent. What programs are sending information out to the net? And yes, I DO want to block some programs that might otherwise be considered as legitimate.

With Comodo, I can’t really do that. Yes, I can manually block programs, but I can’t see a list of which programs have access or are blocked.

For most users, this is fine. They want a firewall program that just gets the job done without bothering them. Most users want to be able to install a program and never have it bother them again while the program just does its thing, updates silently, and so on. I understand that. For those users, this program is probably quite fine. But I’m not them.

So Fahim convinces me to switch over to Norton Internet Security 2009 (NIS 2009) since it’s supposed to be much kinder on RAM usage. While it works well for him, my computer, with 1/4 the RAM of his, will be the real test. So uninstall AVG and Comodo time.

And that’s when AVG begins to irritate me, although this is not a purely AVG problem, but rather, something that more and more programs are apt to do lately.

After uninstalling AVG, it launched a tab within Firefox, probably asking "Why did you uninstall us? We’re perfect!" Except. In order to unintall AVG, I had to shut FireFox down, so launching a tab in my default browser meant starting FireFox up again, and this is where the real problem lies.

Instead of the two windows in Firefox that I had when I shut down, somehow the second window was suppressed and didn’t load, so now the second window of tabs is gone. Piss on you, AVG.

Uninstalling Comodo also launched Firefox to open a new tab, probably also with the whole "Why are you uninstalling us? We’re perfect" bit. Except I never let those tabs load. Fie on you, Comodo.

Seriously, these software manufacturers need to stop being so arrogant and self-centered.

What is so complicated about launching a dialogue box instead saying whatever they want with a link to a web page if they must have one? Why must they load a web page in my default browser? Why must they insist on starting up an external program?

But then, that’s my main complaint anyway. I actually do want to do things my way, not the way the software says I have to do it. I don’t like the assumptions and decisions that some software manufacturers make. I don’t like that they’re more concerned with

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