February 03, 2006

Online Blogging Tools: Writely

Yes, you're right! I'm learning from Steve Rubel in blogging again, and he brings Ten Blogging Hacks today, and I quoted the main points below:
1) Blog Alone or Together with Writely
2) Automatically Post Your Daily del.icio.us Links
3) Auto-Insert Technorati Tags Using ecto
4) Blog from Your Cell Phone
5) Get a Cool Icon for Your Blog
6) Tell the World Where They Can Find You
7) Meet Your Blog Neighbor
8) Make Money with Your Own Blog Schwag Store
9) Create a Blogroll in One Click
10) Give Readers the Option to Subscribe to Updates via Email
And now as you have seen, I have used some points and my blog changed a littel from the last time you came to. Thanks for his 10 recommendations. Well most of the contents can be read from his blog. What I wanna share with you is a online blogging tools: Writely that introduced by Steve. Maybe most of you are same with me in seeking for a good blogging tools. I’ve tried blogger, blogger for word, performancing, and Qumana (I found it from my Google Ads). Well I should say all of them are excellent to be a blogging tools, both online or offline. And they have a nice looking user interface that encourages you to keep writing and updating your blog. It’s surely a important element for a rocket blogger such as me. You could easily find their pros as soon as you take a try for one of them. But I would like to share some drawbacks with you here:

Blogger:
Easy to use and a one button blogging, but it’s a nightmare if you post image on your blog after you finishing you text edition.

Blogger for Word: Integrate all Microsoft word’s editing function including formation turning, spell and grammar checking. But it’s indescribable that it doesn’t support image and table. Something more, it makes lots of HTML rubbish in the post.

Performancing:
Good and great if you need image inserting to your post! What a pity I found no where to modify font type and set font size by pounds.

I need a one stop blogging tools but what I’m doing is write a draft by word, then paste to notepad for filtering the HTML rubbish. Then, paste to performancing to insert figures, and publish my post to blogger. It’s not the end, remember that performancing cannot modify font type, I have to login to blogger.com again, and using the online blogger editor to set my favorite Trebuchet MS font type. Can you believe I use more than 4 tools to publish every single post in my blog?

OK, here comes Writely, the main different from the blogging tools above, Writely is an online blogging tools and you could ask another to edit the post for you before you post to the public.



And the post won't be deleted but stay on Writely's website for your further modify. That means I can blog even my notepad is not on hand. And the most amazing feature for me is the "Undo last edit" tab! It's the only online blogging tools I've ever seen that contain this function by a realtime caching mechanism. Though the spell checking is not as stronge as word that provides abundant recorrect suggestions.