I’m searching for some new bloc writing software. I’m not happy with my current choice, Zoundry for a couple of reasons. First, they have an affiliate program and aggregate multiple accounts, such as Amazon and buy.com. This seems great but when you go to your account blog they last report on sales was from 2006!! So I’m really not sure if someone clicked on something, bought something and Zoundry got the money for it, that I’d ever see it. It just seems a bit ‘off’ that they don’t have any reporting up to date and this put up a huge red flag (I have since stopped using the referral part of the program).
Second is the formatting. Ever carriage return or Enter is a new paragraph. I just want each Enter to be a new line so things like bulleted lists are closer to their main paragraph. Plus, it’s a pain to copy from Word into the application and it often cuts off words and then drops down a few lines.
Some other gripes are the spell checker is kinda funky and editing posts from another piece of software can be hard.
What it does well is link and embed photos. The links to things like wikipedia articles are simple and easy. Photo thumbnails and uploads (once the account is in place) are extremely simple and I like the wrapping of text with no though. It does a good job of organizing posts for multiple blog (like our other blog at Organic Reviews.org ) and it’s quite handy that it will drop whatever is in your clipboard into the link section when you wish to make a link.
So I’m looking for something new and free. I’ve tried Scribefire which is a pluggin for Firefox. It’s handy but missing some usefulness, like good picture handling. Plus the list of blog pings is smaller than Zoundry’s. I also have to use it just in Firefox and I’m looking for a stand alone. Zoho is an online tool as well. RocketPost costs $100. MarsEdit2 is only for a Mac.
I think the two likely candidates are Windows Live Writer and ecto. Both look like they’ll fit the bill. I know some people have a strong dislike for all Microsoft applications or, well, things in general, but for me if it works I’ll use it. There is no computing Nirvana out there if you listen long enough. I’ve found people who complain about Microsoft apps a LOT (I’m not talking about the normal quibblings most of us have) tend to complain about EVERYTHING a lot. Mac OS, *nix, Atari…..it’s never good enough. Those people I tend to tune out.
I’ll give Windows Live Writer a try first as it has some 80 pluggins, some of which look quite handy. Check back later for an update!
