The keys to a blog success

You all know how it is: you hear in the blogosphere about making money from blogging. Then you find and read thoroughly the major league: the Problogger.net and JohnChow.com; and then you make up your mind: "I'm going to do that too. If they can make it, so can I".

And then, you go and read Darren's list of newbies tips, and John's ebook. But you decide that you're not ready to pay for the blog yet - after all, you're just trying out, right? So, you sign on Blogger or Wordpress, just to save a $100, but you do register domain, because everyone agrees that it is the most important thing you should start with.

And then you start posting. At the beginning, you're on fire. Finding everything you can on the net, posting like a crazy. But, for some reason, stats do not go up. Then you say to yourself, "well, maybe no one really reads what I write", and you post less and less. And then, no one really reads your blog.

Such a state of things would probably describe most of new bloggers (and that would include myself as well). The idea of making money out of blog is very attractive, but many do not succeed at making enough for cup of coffee. Why is it so?

The main reason is that many newcomers start with the obsession over statistics and the idea of earning the same money that big shots do. They check visits every few hours, they check how much cents they've made out during those hours. They put many ads into the blog, and wait until money and readership would thrive. Big mistake!

So, here's the list of things required to make any blog successful:

1. Create an interesting content

That's it. Nothing more (at least at the beginning). Everything else is the result of this action number 1.

But there are more things that I'm doing for my blog:

1. Listen more to Darren from ProBlogger and John from John Chow. These guys apparently know what they're doing.
2. Less is more: that recent post on ProBlogger made by Skellie from AnyWired, is really a good one. I decided to post not more 4 technology-related posts a week, including posts regarding the process of building the blog itself. In addition, I removed some advertisers which didn't bring anything in a long while, and just made a bad impression for being there.
3. Stop caring about statistics. Don't check it every few minutes. Its a stressful action: you wait, it doesn't rise up, you panic, you loose motivation. Just stop doing it. In 10 minutes you checking for statistics, you could have an outline for a new post.

In a nutshell: if you want your blog to succeed, you have to build it. Blog is a content, not ads.

I only have to remember that myself :-)

zRaven in Linux review

Dear all
I've been contacted by the Zoundry, developers of Zoundry Writer and got notified that they've got zRaven into beta, so I might try it and run in Linux. Here's the quote:

Please note that Zoundry Blog Writer has finally be deprecated and replaced with a new version called Raven.

We're really striving to make it the best product we can, so we'd love it if anyone interested could give it a try and give us some feedback. Raven just went into public Beta testing this week.

We haven't tried getting Raven to work under Linux, so obviously your mileage may vary. However, I do think we have done a much better job with the UI this time around. :) Let us know what you think.

This is very cool to be contacted by them, so here we go. I've decided to play around with a new release. But I have to give the following notion: I've tryed zRaven before. When I performed a research about different blog editors for Linux, I've even tested some of them in Windows first, using VMWare image. And if I liked the program I would test it on Linux later. And that's how I got to run and test Zoundry Writer. And Raven was also one of them - I liked its interface and apparent simplicity.

So, first to my testing results: Raven runs and works in Linux under Wine. But there are some serious caveats, which I will go over now. To install Raven, you will need a pretty recent Wine installation. I did this in both 0.9.46 and 0.9.54 versions, but your mileage may vary. I think that it should work in most versions. The install is pretty straightforward: define your WINEPREFIX variable and run the installer.

The installer will run and Raven will be installed. But before you could run the program, some manual handling is required:

1. Install MSVCP71.dll. You can download it freely from the web. Just google it, unzip and copy to your SYSTEM and SYSTEM32 Wine folders.
   
2. Do the same with gdiplus.dll and shlwapi.dll files.
   
3. Now there's a need to hack around a little: run winecfg with the WINEPREFIX set to your WINE system folders. Go to a Libraries tab, and remove gdiplus and shlwapi from that list. This action is required to make Wine to use native Windows libraries, because its own do not implement all the necessary functions for GUI manipulations.
   

Now you should be able to run Raven. Just use "wine <path to Raven.exe>" command. Here are some shots for the proof that it works (here are the shots from Gentoo Linux, I've installed it also in Fedora but haven't tested yet):


So what does work? Mostly everything. Posting to multiple blogs, good editor, tags, offline editing, posting as drafts...

What doesn't work? At this moment, and I haven't resolved it yet - the right mouse click causes an exception and error. The program doesn't crash, I just can't use right click on the mouse and some toolbar buttons with multiple functions (like 'back' button in browsers). Which leads me to inability to use certain features (which at the moment I'm not even aware of).

Now, my impressions from using the program:
What I like: I like the interface. Its very slick and simple. It is convenient to write a post to a blog. I like that it supports major blogging platforms, and includes posting as draft and pinging different services.

What I don't like:
I don't really got the idea of separating tags, links and images and their representation in Raven. I'm just not yet comfortable with them, and plus that I cannot use the right click button on the mouse to learn other features, makes me uncomfortable.

I'm also not sure that opening a new window to edit the post is the best way to do the thing (I might have left it in the same main window and use tabbing feature).

I didn't like that only 32 out of my 146 posts were downloaded into Raven. I haven't found the setting which changes that and allows to download all the posts in blog.

What I really don't like or hate:
It's probably Wine's fault and not Raven's (well not all of it), but I have really bad problems with graphics and performance. I had similar problems with Zoundry Writer - which makes me believe that it has something to do with GUI framework used in Raven - and so it is originated within the program itself.

When I switch from the window of Raven to some other window and then back, it may take up to 5 seconds to redraw all the icons and window borders. The text typing is ok, but deleting and replacing it is PAINFULLY slow and makes the experience really unpleasant. Now the last but not least: XHTML formatting that Raven uses is the same as in all other blogging platforms. But Blogger is terrible in parsing this specific formatting, so some sort of tweaking will be needed after posting anyway.

So, did I like the Raven? Yes and no.
Yes because I like its interface better than Zoundry Writer. It's slicker and more beautiful and easier to navigate. Icons are more up to date. In short - it is better.
No, because I haven't been able to fully realize the application's potential due to problems both in Wine and the Raven itself. I don't really understand all the options in the program and I can't at the moment understand them because of technical issues.

So, what can I say about the program? I like it.
It can be ran in Linux. While it is still in beta, you may encounter some difficulties in using it, but it works and can be tested and played with.

What about me then? Am I going to use it? No.
At the moment, I've created working script, that takes a simple html (which is not really an html - just few markings such as 'title', 'italic' and 'bold' formatting) and posts it as draft on Blogger (If you decided to use the aforementioned script, and have problems - let me know, I'll try to help you out). I find it much more efficient, as I can create my posts anywhere in VI or Bluefish or OpenOffice Writer. I find it more useful because I work on the draft after all - and doing it my way takes less time and effort.

Now you can run the Zoundry Raven in Linux! Enjoy.

Have any questions? Feedback or suggestions? Ask them here!!

Freakonomics

Hi all

I got a great book as a new years present. It is a "Freakonomics" book by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. It's a marvelous piece of work. The book (I got to about a 1/4) is easily read and fascinating. I like the way it causes me to rethink my attitude and understanding of information; and even more so the sources I get information from.

Levitt is a brilliant economist. He's one of the youngest people to receive an honorary John Bates Clark Medal (which is a kind of a Nobel Price for young economists). He says that's he's not a much of a mathematician, so likes to employ economy tools on other aspects of life. At the top of his list is "crime". He likes asking questions which seem unrelated, such as "What do schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers have in common?".

Maybe reading this book will help me to develop understanding regarding incentives for Gentoo developers and community. Who knows?

So far, the book is very interesting and easy to read an comprehend. So far - very recommended :-)

December 2007 blog results

Hi all

As I said earlier, I'm building this blog and also explain how I do it. So, this time I'll provide a little information about what I have done until now and provide also a little statistics information.

So, I will start with statistics. Statistic data I provide here is for the month of December, 2007. The main achievement last month was definitely due to getting on the (almost) front page of Digg. I've posted an essay there and it got at the moment of writing this post 788 diggs (which led to 16K visits in December), which is surprising and nearly destroys an assumption I had before (and even started a poll here on this blog. It's at a top right, please vote!). The effect of all these diggs accounts to nearly 73.5% of visits to my blog (and, in fact, almost all the earnings) in December. The surprise is that the same digg effect influenced other referring sites:

1. digg.com 73.47%
2. Stumbleupon.com 7% (this is the surprise. I though Linux Today will be higher ranking refferal)
3. Linux Today 5.84%
4. Direct 5.64%
5. Lxer 1%
   

Now, the revenue statistics. I am signed up and using the following revenue streams:

• AdSense
• WidgetBucks
• Kontera
• Amazon.
• Smorty.
• I've also signed up to PayPerPost, SponsoredReviews and LinkWorth, and got approved in all. Just haven't seen any action there yet.

Here's the revenue gains for December:

1. AdSense: $16.98
2. WidgetBucks: $5.69
3. KonteraLinks: $3.64
4. PayPerPost posting their default available offer: $20
   

Total income December 2007: $46.31

Money spent during December:

1. Domain name registration for 2 years: $14.30

In total I have: $32.01 made out of blog.

Now, to the other stuff. I've been trying to develop different social networking presence, and used with more or less success the following tools/networks:

1. Entrecard
2. BlogRush
3. StumbleUpon
4. Digg
5. Technorati
6. Blog directories: Blog Catalog, GetBlogs, Top Blog Area, Top Blogs and Blog Top List. All of them seem to bring some traffic as well.
   

I've implemented FeedBurner feed which led to some additional visits and visibility of things on my feeds. Also, I rearranged a little bit the placement of ads, which together with FeedBurner scripts gices nice total placement. I'm still waiting on review sites to approve my reviews or bids on some.

In general, all of this is very nice, although much less than I would like to. So, these are the goals for the January:

1. The content: this is the most important. I have few ideas cooking, and now I'm sure of this: not the quantity really matters here, but the quality. So if I have the urge to spill some thinking, always post it as draft first, so I can let it calm down and then publish.
2. The traffic: that's the main issue after the content. The more traffic gets to my blog, the more it returns. I can't take Devember as the example of traffic numbers because the digg effect, which acts like a spike in the norm. I'd try to keep, say, 5% improvement month-over-month rate. That would count to: 2,977 (November rate) x 1.05 x 1.05 = 3292, so I set my goal for January to 3300 visits.
3. Make 10% on the account of November. Because I generally started doing all this in December, there's only $0.93 income in November. So, I'll make an impiric number of $30 as a target for January.
   

And here are the ways to reach those goals:

1. Research for content. The web is reach for ideas, reviews, and other. Just think and get it out.
2. Research for blog implementation ideas. Read Problogger and other A-Blog authors, test my own ideas all the time.
3. Plan ahead.
4. Post at least 4 "content" posts a week, and 2 "blog building" posts.
   

So, that is it. December is done and finished. January is to go.

Wish me luck and feedback is very welcome.

Expanding my blog - make the money by blogging

Hello all. In this post I will explain some step I make to make some cash with this blog.

After lots of reading on "making the money blogging" issue, I decided that I need the following things done:

1. Create a quality content that interests people.
2. Make sure to supply that content with high frequency
3. Make sure I have a my own domain.
4. Host the blog with Wordpress.
5. Create the social network around the blog
6. Monetize the appropriate

So, as the quality of the content is the most important and on-going thing, I just keep it at my best. Now, I've also started in different attempts to gain social networking going, and I will keep results posted here as they come.

For the domain name - I've registered one I use now. I don't use Wordpress hosting still, because I can't yet afford it, and I'm not yet convinced that I can just use my own money for that.

And, for the monetizing I currently use Google AdSense, WidgetBucks, Kontera and Amazon, and I don't have enough statistics yet, as I just started. Google Adsense is my oldest (for more than a year), so I might have some idea about how good it is.

And today I signed for Smorty. Smorty is an additional house that offers bloggers and advertisers to find each other. As they define themselves, you "get paid to blog, get paid for blogging, blog advertising, advertise on blogs, blog for money." You sign to a service and it shows you available opportunities you can take, to make a buck.

As in many other similar services, you trying to get as many visits as possible to your blog, and this makes your blog a more attractive place to advertisers. Then you get more and more opportunities, and as such - you make more money :-)

Great isn't it? So, I will enlist Smorty in my list of money makers for now, and until proven otherwise. More updates will follow.

Olive branch to all Free Operating systems users

Hello my dear readers,

A little statistics part first. WHAT A RUSH!!!! That's my response on what happened after I posted my opinion on Ubuntu and Linux. At the beginning there were few responses from Planet Larry where I'm syndicated, as I mostly use Gentoo. Then I submitted it to digg and Linux Today, and until the end of the day in my time zone, it got 424 diggs and more than 5000 visits, which was about a total on this blog until this day from the start. That feels great. Then it came ~5000 more visits the next day, and about 1500 visits the day after that. It have received ~100 comments on my blog, and about 200 on digg. So its cool.

There are few things that I wanted to share about this. The comments are generally split into 3 categories, and they are:

1. Yea, exactly!!! My favorite distro rules! And its better than Ubuntu!!!! Ubuntu sucks!!!!
2. Yea!!! Ubuntu rules!!! We're here to get you all!!!!
3. Who cares?

And, to my own surprise, I agree with those who are in group 3. Let me explain:

Group 1 says the following (well, almost. I added some cynicism myself): you're right!! I've been feeling this for the long time already, and it makes me angry that my favorite distribution doesn't get enough attention in the press. Those evil Ubuntu people has bought out all the media and independent journalists to write articles about Linux and use "Ubuntu" instead. I hate Ubuntu!!! I will never ever use it!

Group 2 says: well, of course!! Ubuntu is the best distribution evah, and hence all the smartest people in the world are using it. So, no wonder they use it as an example of Linux-de-facto when writing their articles, and demos and reviews. Yes, maybe they misuse some words sometime, but its not a bad thing...

Group 3 says: Who gives a damn? Let Linux (be it Ubuntu or whatever else) to get some market share in computing, worry about the semantics later. Does it matter that my dad would know Ubuntu and not "Linux"? No!!! Its better than not knowing any of them at all.

So, I would like to put things into perspective, because they seem a little out of it.

Group 1: Take it easy folks. No one is trying to overshadow other distributions. Ubuntu is one of the most known distributions, definitely one of the easiest to use and so it is no surprise people using it more and more. Just as most applications in mid-90s were automatically written for Windows 98 and NT4 (and some companies still choose Windows only, and say it's just "for now", but then "other" never comes), most reviews and how-tos are written for the largest audience - and in our case, specifically for Ubuntu Linux. But there's nothing wrong with that. Most of the installation procedures regarding system environments (such as Gnome/KDE, or some application in those) or devices are almost always distribution-agnostic, and aside the installation procedure which varies from distribution to distribution, they are almost the same. I configure Gnome in Gentoo the same way as it is done in the same version of Gnome in Debian, [K|X|Ed]Ubuntu, PCLinux, FreeBSD, Fedora Core, Mandriva, SLES and all the others.

Group 2: Yes, we know your distro is the best. Or sort of. But we didn't chose it to use (well, not yet at least). So what? The time may come when we do, and also you might want to use my favorite distro once. And you know what? I will help you the best I can. And will not patronize on you. I don't understand - why do we have to argue all the time which ones shwartz is larger? Let's just all work to the same goal - make the computer experience easier for everyone (and it means both me and my dad).

Group 3: I'm totally with you. I believe that spreading Ubuntu is an important thing (just as Red Hat, Gentoo, Debian, SLES and others), and it makes all the Linux-based operating systems to conquer the computers around the world. The more the better, and if it is done with Ubuntu - its fine by me.

To all:

1. I don't hate Ubuntu. I don't hate Ubuntu. I don't hate Ubuntu. I don't hate Ubuntu. I don't hate Ubuntu. I don't hate Ubuntu. I don't hate Ubuntu. I don't hate Ubuntu. I don't hate Ubuntu. I don't hate Ubuntu. I don't hate Ubuntu. I don't hate Ubuntu. Do I make myself clear enough?
   
2. I actually like Ubuntu. Not yet having used it too much, I like the spirit and the attempt to get where no one else (except maybe Red Hat and SLES) has ever succeeded before. I will probably definitely start using it soon, because any literate IT person should know well enough at least 3-4 top spread distributions.
   
3. I still use Gentoo on all my machines and very happy about it.
   
4. Just consider this (suggested by multitude of comments): if the choice for a new user is to use either Windows Vista or Ubuntu Linux, what would you suggest that user? Now Ubuntu Linux doesn't look that scary anymore, does it?
5. I'm not an Ubuntu fan person.
   

On that happy note, my last words:

1. I like all Linux-based operating systems (and not only Linux).
   
2. Just to further enforce the point, I like all BSD systems (Free-, Net-, Open-) as much as Linux (and even better). And I also like Unix systems (like IRIX and Solaris).
   
3. I like Ubuntu.
   
4. I like Gentoo.
   
5. I like that Linux and other free software is spreading.
6. I like Mac OS X.
   
7. I don't like Windows OS line.
   

:-)

Many thanks to everyone who commented wherever.

Peace out.

Technorati : Gentoo, Linux, Technology, Ubuntu

There's more to Linux than Ubuntu

Dear reader

I've told a million times by now, that I am a Linux person. I like the operating system, the tools, the applications, the works. I like the process. I like the community. I like the people. And all these positive feelings are not distribution-specific, or "KDE vs. Gnome" or "Is Amarok the best media player?" kind - its genuine people-to-people kind of a thing, and the love for the technology.

Recently I got to read more and more stories about Linux in general (at least that what it was insinuated by the name of the article) where term "Linux" is quite replaced by Ubuntu. The latest one was from the LifeHacker blog, which I follow frequently (I have it in my RSS reader) and respect greatly. But why Ubuntu is the Linux chosen all the time? I know that this is the most spread and used distribution (or maybe 2nd most), but there's still no reason for it to be a solely used in such an article. It really makes me sad that media uses term "Ubuntu" and that there are no mentions that almost all of the things described in those stories can be done on any other Linux distribution. There's even no mention that Ubuntu is the distribution.

I've told already before, I fear that if the trend goes on (and at the moment I don't see why would it stop), then the Ubuntification of Linux is unstoppable, just as Windows became a follow up to the "PC" term. There were days (and in many cases are still), when some tech support person would ask you: Do you use Mac or PC? (just like in Apple's commercials). You would say, "PC". "OK then, go to the Start menu....", "I don't have one", you would interrupt. "How so? In the left low corner of your screen...", "I use Linux...", you would interrupt again.

Silence. "Hm, well, I'm not sure we support that. Are you sure this is PC?"

I'm afraid, that Ubuntu can overshadow Linux. I know that technologically literate people will not confuse the two, but for general public, there will be no Linux - just Ubuntu. Just like Windows - do you family members know that there are versions of this thing?

I already said that it scares me. It scares me that I am in no power to change the state of affairs. It scares me because competition between distribution benefits them all, perfecting the tools, causing applications to be developed, economies and companies created, communities united. Without all this, Linux would stop being the "way of the l337", and the title "cool" and talent may move to other directions. So I hope it's not too late. I hope there's still time to differentiate. To explain to all that Linux is what matters, not the specific distribution, no matter how good and successful it may be. Hell, I may even use Ubuntu for different purposes, but I will use others as well (Gentoo for example, but also Fedora Core/CentOS and others), and remember the most important thing.

There's much more to Linux than just Ubuntu.

An Update: I spoke with my friend Alon, and I agree with him that although I'm said with aforementioned stuff, I am still very happy that Linux gets attention, even if its Ubuntu and without mentioning "Linux".

Make money by blogging

Dear reader,

I've been using computers since I was 9, and that makes a little more than 20 years in total. I've been internet junkie for as long as I got my first broadband connection 10 years ago. But what I've been unable to do is to earn any considerable amount of money doing so. That's why I decided to change this blog a little bit, which potentially should help me build an additional source of income.

I was reading so many blogs for the last year, where authors explain how they make money, that it seems so easy to do. It's not - when I try to do the same on my own blogs, it just provides me with pale $0.01 of income on a good day.

So I made a decision. I am going to read and research on every source I can find regarding what can I do with my blog. And this is what this blog will be about. I will build this blog with 2 types of content: a Linux and technology related as it has been until now (and especially my take on Linux/Technology and its effects on society and enterprise computing), but also with the explanations about creating it. I will post each step I will perform to making this blog a one with more income than 1 cent a day.

First step is already done - I moved this blog to a new domain (not Blogger), while still leaving it working on Blogger's platform. Feedburner feed was updated with a new domain, and other services are up to be so as well. The next step would be to make enough money to pay for hosting and then move to a hosting with Wordpress. At the moment I'm looking at Bluehost as the most favorable by Wordpress Hosting, but this definitely could change (hosting I'm aiming to is ~$7 a month, so I would need about $80 now).

So please wish me luck :-) (and buck).

Any comments, suggestions and feedback are welcome at any time.

New Domain name

Hi all

It is starting!! I have a new domain now, The Tech And Cents, which will be hosting my blog from now on.

Bought at GoDaddy

Next investment - hosting purchase. Need something cheap and stable :-)

Moving to Wordpress

Well, lads, its happening. As I'm really interested in blogging, and actually and possibly making something out of it, I've decided to move to a Wordpress world. It means, that my blog will probably change a lot in coming weeks, but I hope you'll love it at the end.

I will start with a question of course - did anyone successfully moved from Blogger to the own-hosted blog? How was it done? How all the data is preserved? Is it hard?

I would be very appreciative for any information.

Thanks a bunch.

Alex.

New projects

Hi all

As I recently became an unemployed, and until I find a job (please keep your fingers crossed for me), I have few ideas to work on.

As many readers could figure out already, I'm really interested about Linux and technology, and an effect of technology on society. So I've decided to build a new blog on this issue, and add some more sweets to it. The main idea is to have some research done on there.

I'll keep you updated on how it goes :-)

Technorati : blog

Linux Blogging Sucks no more

I want to apologize to you all.

I know I hurt some people with my post about how Linux blogging sucks. I apologize for that. At the time of writing that post, this was exactly how I felt, and all I could think of was letting things out. I was bitter that there's no good application for Linux that I could use for blogging in offline mode using the New Blogger platform.

But now its gone, I feel better and more objective (or even more subjective? You decide). I started to look around on what supports Blogger as a blogging platform, and then it had actually got me.

There are no good offline tools for posting on Blogger! At least I haven't found one. Even BlogJet (which is probably my favorite application now) does not support all the features.

Why is it so? Is it so hard to implement a simple feature? I'm sure the API is completely open, isn't it?

Fine, I thought, I would go the way of samurai open source, and create something of my own for a change. I would at least answer my own goals for how I would like this "blogging to Blogger" thing to work, then learn how to do it, and implement it.

And, in fact, that's exactly what I did. I started with Google API (because that's what Blogger is nowadays). I learned how to connect to Blogger. How to fetch blog titles, and posts. How to post as draft. All the stuff I needed. I downloaded a sample implementation written in Python, and though I don't know Python, it is pretty simple, and I have rewrote the whole thing to correspond to what I wanted.

So, now I was upgraded. I use Bluefish as my editor now. I added my own script into "external tools" menu, so I post now with 3 clicks of the mouse. Great! you might say, what is the problem then?

Well, until proven otherwise - Blogger.

I learned, that no matter how I try, no matter how clean an HTML code I post - it looks terrible in Blogger. And now I know why.

Blogger gets the content of the post (even in HTML) and parses it like it is written in its own webeditor. Which leads to lots of white spaces and brakes in text when shown as a post when uploaded in strict-HTML version.

To show you what I mean, here's an example: I went to a Wikipedia, took a definition of the word blog in English version. Here's an excerpt:

Other forms of journals kept online also existed. A notable example was game programmer John Carmack's widely read journal, published via the finger protocol. Some of the very earliest bloggers, like Steve Gibson of sCary's Quakeholio (now Shacknews) and Stephen Heaslip of Blue's News (still running since 1995 with online archives back to July 1996), evolved from the Quake scene and Carmack's .plan updates. Steve Gibson was hired to blog full-time by Ritual Entertainment on February 8, 1997 [7], possibly making him the first hired blogger.

Websites, including both corporate sites and personal homepages, had and still often have "What's New" or "News" sections, often on the index page and sorted by date. One example of a news based "weblog" is the Drudge Report founded by the self-styled maverick reporter Matt Drudge, though apparently Drudge dislikes this classification. Another is the Institute for Public Accuracy which began posting news releases featuring several news-pegged one-paragraph quotes several times a week beginning in 1998. One noteworthy early precursor to a blog was the tongue-in-cheek personal website that was frequently updated by Usenet legend Kibo.

Early weblogs were simply manually updated components of common websites. However, the evolution of tools to facilitate the production and maintenance of web articles posted in reverse chronological order made the publishing process feasible to a much larger, less technical, population. Ultimately, this resulted in the distinct class of online publishing that produces blogs we recognize today. For instance, the use of some sort of browser-based software is now a typical aspect of "blogging". Blogs can be hosted by dedicated blog hosting services, or they can be run using blog software, such as WordPress, Movable Type, blogger or LiveJournal, or on regular web hosting services.

Now, to post this as an entry, I used the following code:

It shows perfectly fine in the browser when I open the file. But to see the effect in Blogger, check this site. Do you see spaces in the latest post?

When I remove all the <> tags, then it shows fine, as you can see in the second post on the same site.

It all leads to the list of the following list of facts:

1. My script works, but the text I write should be just plain text. No HTML formatting. (that's even better and easier, right?)
2. I can't insert pictures, because then post gets screwed at formatting. I add pictures later in webeditor.
3. I can't yet post with labels using the script (I just haven't seen the API yet which would explain how to do it, so it is not yet implemented).
   

Which further leads me to the next thought: I would be probably leaving Blogger as soon as I get a good offer on webhosting with Wordpress; they may try and go fix their bugs while I'm searching. I then will write bad ass script which will move all the content off here to a new blog.

Note1: I am really angry on Blogger's "insert a picture" and "make it link" bugs:

• When inserting picture in the webeditor, it is always placed at the beginning of the post, and not where you meant to put it.
• When making a link out of some text, a link icon is got caught my the mouse and frequently got pasted instead of link.

Note2: I can post the script if anyone wants me to. It uses zenity, elementtree and Gdata API to get some info from the user, and at this point doesn't store any information locally.

Any suggestions? Feedback? Thanks a lot.

Related post: Linux Blogging Sucks

What is blog?

Amazing clip which explains what the blog is:

Zoundry Writer in Linux review

For a few days, I've been testing different blog editors and trying to find which one I would prefer to use. My requirements are simple at the moment. You can go over them in my previous post on the matter - BlogJet editor in Linux Review.

I've written 2 articles, in which I told that Linux Editors sucks (and that was my personal feeling after I tried more than 5 different editors and found all of them either not working or sucking big time on features), and also that I've decided to try running a Windows blog editors (yes!) using WINE and I have written another post on that.

So, I've found couple of editors that I succeeded to run in Linux. Here, I will talk about the second one, Zoundry. First, here's the screenshot of using this editor (click on the image to see in full size):

So, as you can see, I'm writing this post in Zoundry

So here's my good feelings about this editor:

• Setting accounts is very easy and very good.
  
• Writing is very easy. All the regular features work (Italic, Bold and Underscore) work as anticipated.
  
• Fetching my previous blog posts is very good and accurate
  
• Font usage is configurable and the default is very pleasant to my eyes.
• Easy switch between WYSIWYG and HTML modes
  
• Easy setup for pinging services after posting
  
• Easy publishing (with one button)
  
• Posting as draft and defining manually the time and date of the post!
  
• Tags with blogger and Technorati work!!
  
• Linking from the editor is very cool and one of the best features in it!!! It allows me to link to my previous posts by letting me choose from the list of posts. Linking to big list of predefined sites is very convenient:
  
• Inserting a merchant links is easy when you sign-up with Zoundry.

Now, the bad stuff

• Its final HTML code is very unclean. It introduces a lots of <p> tags, and Blogger parses them as white spaces.
  
• Interface is not so slick. I did use the editor in Windows XP as well, and it is still not that pretty, albeit functional.
  

Considering that a full version is a free software and it supports all the features I would like to have (except the GUI), here's the scores:

My rating (with 10 as best score):

• GUI and ease of use: 7
  
• Feature set (for my needs): 10
  
• Convenience (for my needs): 9
  

Total score (in my subjective opinion):

• for my needs (blogger): 9.5

So, would I use it? Absolutely :-)

At the moment, this is my editor of choice!

Any comments? Let me know :-)

Technorati : Gentoo, Linux, Microsoft, Wine, technology, windows

Related posts:

BlogJet in Linux Review
Running Zoundry and BlogJet under Wine
Linux Blogging Sucks

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BlogJet editor in Linux review

For a few days, I've been testing different blog editors and trying to find which one I would prefer to use. My requirements are simple at the moment:

• Being able to publish to a blog platform I use at the moment. That's being Blogger (with a New Blogger [Google] API)
• Being able to publish in draft first. I don't mind to "touch" an entry before publishing, and doing so from Blogger's own web-based editor helps to "preview" the entry how will it really look like.
  
• Adding tags to the post. Labels, categories, tags - I don't care how would you call this, I want it working if my platform supports them (and it does).
  
  • as a subset, pinging to Technorati and/or other services and including their links in the posts is welcome albeit unnecessary requirement.
    
• Convenient linking to other things. For example, suggesting to use what I have at the moment in the clipboard cache is convenient, as it allows me to copy something in the browser, and then directly paste it in the editor. I would also welcome convenient linking to my own posts.
  
• Local storing of the drafts. This is invaluable. I write something, I don't trust the program - I want to save it as either text, html or xml files (or combination of these).
  
• Nice pleasant GUI is very needed. After all, I can use a notepad (gedit, vi, emacs - choose your own), but I don't. I like to work with nice and simple interfaces.
  

I've written 2 articles, in which I told that Linux Editors sucks (and that was my personal feeling after I tried more than 5 different editors and found all of them either not working or sucking big time on features), and also that I've decided to try running a Windows blog editors (yes!) using WINE and I have written another post on that.

So, I've found couple of editors that I succeeded to run in Linux. Here, I will talk about the first one, BlogJet. First, here's the screenshot of using this editor (click on the image to see in full size; I'm using Black Vista theme):

So, as you can see, even that this is not native application in Linux, it looks very slick and nice, simple and gorgeous interface. My Kudos to the Coding Robots team on that! And I'm writing this post in BlogJet.

Writing is very easy. Just start typing - and that's it. All the regular features work (Italic, Bold and Underscore) work as anticipated. The editor setting were very simple - it recognized my blogging platform and correctly fetched my previous blog posts.

Font usage is configurable and the default is very pleasant to my eyes.

More cool features: easy switch between WYSIWYG and HTML modes, easy setup for pinging services after posting, easy publishing (with one button), and word counting (I like this one a lot!!!), and boy its final HTML code is so nice and clean !!!But now to the bad stuff:

1. Tagging (labels, categories, whatever) - it doesn't work with Blogger at the moment. Yes, it is known misfeature, but I find it weird that only one type of platform is supported for the moment (that would be Wordpress if I'm not mistaken).
   
2. Draft posting is not supported with Blogger. Sigh…
3. Although I can get my recent posts list, I don't have convenient option of linking to them. Say, I'd select something, right-click on it and choose "Link to previous post…" and then get a list and select the post I want to link to. That would be great.
   
4. Right-click context menu is weird - it seems like it was not implemented at all and all I see it system-wide menu. Not good.
   

Considering that a full version is a commercial software and it doesn't support many of the features I would like to have, I'd say I would not buy this product at the moment.

My rating (with 10 as best score):

• GUI and ease of use: 10
• Feature set (for my needs): 5
  
• Convenience (for my needs): 7
  

Total score (in my subjective opinion):

• for my needs (blogger): 6.5
  
• for Wordpress users: 8.5
  

So, would I use it? Maybe, I haven't decided yet.

In next post I will review running Zoundry blog editor on Linux.

Comments are welcome.

Technorati : Gentoo, Linux, Microsoft, Wine, technology, windows

Running Zoundry and BlogJet blog editors under Wine