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Blogging from your Desktop

Sunday, February 18th, 2007

For a while now I have been using the Windows Live Writer as my desktop application for my blog, and overall I have been pretty pleased with it, but these last few days it seems to of developed a bit of a glitch.

I am not certain if this is because of some change in how WordPress works with the 2.1 install or if it's some update in the Live Writer that is causing the problem but so far I have not been able to work out what to do to correct the problem. The simple solution? Switch back to using "BlogDesk", which seems to have no problems with publishing to my site and has let me set up posting images pretty easily.

BlogDesk

I recommend this desktop application to all blogger's, though it may not have the looks of "Live Writer" it has a few extra dictionaries that you can add:

English (US and UK)
German
French
Italian
Spanish
Swedish
Danish
Croatian
Czech
Polish
Slovenian
Dutch
Latin

Another nifty feature is that it allows you to save template posts as well as drafts, so if you have a weekly update or special repeated "Top 10" type post you like to make you can save yourself the hassle of setting it up every time.

Is there a desktop blogging application you would like to recommend?

WordPress.com adds the VodPod widget

Thursday, February 15th, 2007

Announcesd on Tuesday by Andy was the addition of VodPod as a new widget on all WP.com sites.

I am very happy to announce a new widget that is available to all WordPress.com blogs: Vodpod.comâ€™s video sharing widget. Vodpod has tagging and voting and LOLâ€™ing and everything else youâ€™d expect from a Web 2.0 mashup and weâ€™re just as pleased as parking meters to have this widget on WordPress.com!

This is a prety nifty little widget that allows you to save your favourite videos from around the web straight on to your blog page sidebar with just one click. If you want to you can upload your own videos to your VodPod account and have them on your site too, a nice easy way to include some vlogging on your site if that is your kind of thing.

I have it installed on my Whedon blog if you want to go check it out.

Is this thing on?

Saturday, February 10th, 2007 I am trying out "Performancing" today, another on-line blogging tool to try out! I seem to be having a few teething problems, probably all down to me and my usual inability to read instructions properly. It's almost an aversion! Anyways, this is mostly just by way of a test post to see if I have got the settings right. Let's hope the image posts too!

(Apparently not! I had to edit the post on site to get the image in, but I will try again tomorrow)

Online “Writer”

Tuesday, February 6th, 2007 Today I am trying out "Writer", which I discovered via lifehacker. It is a Darkroom style on-line word processor that is minimal but gets the job done and allows you to post directly to your blog where it is saved as a draft (at least that's what it does in self hosted WordPress), so go give it a go! Head over to: http://writer.bighugelabs.com/ No registration necessary, but if you want to be able to access your saved docs from any computer rather than just the one you created them on you will have to sign up. It's also a good idea to protect them this way in case you delete your cookie at some point. You can change the font colour from the default Green to Amber, White or shades of Grey, or you can even enter the text colour code of your own preference. The auto-save feature works pretty well too, and there is a word count tool, but there is no spell checker so make sure you spell check when editing your draft before posting. Do you use Darkroom or any similar distraction free application to help get your work done?

Widget World

Tuesday, January 2nd, 2007

At the moment I am trying out some of the widgets at widgetbox, there seem to be plenty of gizmos over there, some of which could be useful, or just plain fun! I came across them over at profy.com in an article on the growing use of widgets, there are also some other useful links over there that are worth checking out. As to the usability of the widgets, well at the moment I seem to be wrestling with them a little. They are probably idiot proof, which in my world is defined as being yet further proof that I am an idiot.

Stickies v5.2b

Sunday, December 24th, 2006 I thought I would try out the desktop Stickies that I had read about in Computer Active magazine, they seemed like a good idea for a procrastinator like myself, an "always on" reminder of what it is I am supposed to be doing (instead of blogging), an easy way to keep track of any URL's that I might want to refer to instead of adding a bookmark.

Stickies 5.2b -What is Stickies? Stickies is a PC utility I wrote to try to cut down on the number of Post-ItÂ® notes I was leaving stuck to my monitor. It is a computerized version of those notes. The design goal behind Stickies is that the program is small and simple. Stickies will not mess with your system files, or write to the registry. Stickies stores all information in a single text-based ini file. Stickies will never support animated dancing figures, or play "Greensleeves". They are instead yellow rectangular windows onto which you can put some text notes. Once created, they will stay on screen until you take them away. Just like a real sticky piece of paper.

Source: Stickies v5.2b They are highly customizable, you can choose the background colour you want to use, set its opacity and font style, even choose Bold or italic if that's your bag. There are also different "Skins" that you can download so that even the top bar can be customized to suit your desktop theme. So far I am impressed, the install was straightforward and I was able to set it up to work in the way I wanted it to with just a couple of clicks. Screen shot:

I adjusted the top bar to a fairly deep red to fit in with my wallpaper and I adjusted the opacity so that the stickies don't interfere too much with the overall look when not in use, giving it a bit more of a "Vista" vibe. All in all, I think they are pretty good

Windows Live writer

Tuesday, December 19th, 2006 I have been using "BlogDesk" to compose and upload my posts since I started running WordPress on my own site, and though I have found it to be pretty good a lot of people seem to recommend "Windows Live Writer", so I thought I would give it a go for a while. The main improvement I am immediately seeing over BlogDesk is that the writing environment is a little less harsh. The fact that it loads the Theme settings right in to the editor is helpful as you can see more clearly what your finished product will look like. Here's a screen shot for those who have never seen it in action:

Link to Windows Live Help

Favicons

Friday, December 15th, 2006 If you take a look above there should now be a little image in your browser bar. The picture is what is called a favicon.ico (Favourites icon), and I think it looks kinda neat. My favicon

I put the picture together using Photoshop Elements 2.0, but I still needed to save it as a .ico file which isn't one of the extensions used by this software. I am not sure if the later versions can handle this format, but for a while there I was stymied. Eventually I found this handy little site, chami.com, that has a favicon generator that is free to use. I also discovered that the Irfan viewer does handle .ico files, and as this too is free I thought I would download it and give it a whirl. It seems to work pretty well. If you dont want to make your own favicon but fancy using the standard WordPress logo used on their own sites you can download it from wordpress.org/support by entering favicon.ico in to the search box and hitting enter. Setting the favicon up to work properly was a bit of a trial for my level of competence, but as you can see I got there in the end. Once you have uploaded your icon via your FTP client to your root folder you then have to insert this script: <link rel="shortcut icon" xhref="http//yoursite.com/favicon.ico" mce_href="http//yoursite.com/favicon.ico" > in to the header section of the theme you are using. If you decide to change themes don't forget to add the script again!