DISQUS

Paull Young · 3 years ago

Wow - that headline had me worried for a minute ;-)

I thought you might have started working 'blue' Lee.

Lee · 3 years ago

Never underestimate the power of a great headline, Paull. :-)

Dave · 3 years ago

Lee - pleased that my campaign idea has struck a chord with you. It's time these so-called offline blog editor developers actually gave us a tool that we actually want!

I have now designed the logo, which I am sure you will agree strikes exactly the right tone for the campaign. I mean, who wouldn't want a t-shirt with a professional design like that on it? Eh? Oh.

Am currently planning "The Million Bollock March" where all 500,000 of us (give or take the odd woman or eunuch) invade the offices of RocketPost, Qumana and Blogjet just as soon as we find out where they are.

Lee · 3 years ago

Hi Dave,

Probably would be good to create a logo a LEEEEETLE less descriptive, something more esoteric and tangental. Give it a go...

Neville Hobson · 3 years ago

Oh boy, Lee, what a fiasco! Agree wholeheartedly with you re RocketPost. Don't touch it with a barge pole. It's a huge scam. I'm actually surprised you got it working.

Interesting reading how you describe ecto for Windows. I've been using ecto since 2004 and have a true love/hate relationship with it. The hate in areas such as you describe. The love because it works. Well, I refer to release versions especially version 1.8.8. The betas really are for testing only. I'm testing ecto 2 RC3 at the moment. Very close to final. I think this will be the one that gets pretty close to many of the things you outlined in your earlier wishlist post. Not everything, but close (RocketPost could have been the wishlist everything). Qumana 3 is still beta and I've also experienced the disappearing post frustration (which I reported to Qumana). A big show-stopper, in my view. Not heard of that happening with release version 2, though. Not good.

So the market's still wide open for someone to offer a blog management and editing tool that works across different blog platforms and which fulfills most of the wishes. I wonder what we'll see in the final Microsoft Office 12 when it appears?

Dave · 3 years ago

I have tried again...

Lee · 3 years ago

Thanks for the input, Neville.

I had completely forgotten about Office12... Hmmmm - since Office 11 adds horrific non-compliant code to its html output I guess I didn't even bring it into the equation. But now that Microsoft is trying its hardest to be a 'friend' to the internet rather than a 'huge pest', it will be interesting to see how compliant the code from Office12 will be.

If they release blog-compatible software (which could be why they are delaying the release of O12 and Vista, to make sure it actually works), then they could wipe out all the minnows in one fell swoop (which would be a superb marketing achievement).

After all, they usurped Netscape through brilliant marketing strategy and tactics to bring Internet Explorer to the marketplace. They could easily take that learning and apply it to blog editing software.

Oh Neville.... methinks you have hit on a bit of a meme-fest with that one... Let me chew on it overnight (I'm currently 1.5 bottles into the restorative bubbly and it's 10 at night) and see what comes out of my BLOGJET blog editor in the morning...)

Ta, mate!

Lee · 3 years ago

And its interesting how NONE of the editor folks have joined the discussion, yet one must feel that their products have entered into Technorati ego searches by now...

Come on, developers -- tell us what you are up to. Why do your products so suck? Why do they not meet our desires? What are you doing about it? Why have we not heard from RocketPost for a while, inspite of the fact they had the very best editor for AGES???

Dave · 3 years ago

The notion of a blogging editor being part of Office 12 is an intriguing one. However, I haven't heard any rumours of it, and I doubt it would come close to what we have been outlining here. For example, would Microsoft really provide a tool that would interact with PHP and MySQL - two direct competitors to its own products? What would be more likely is that MS would produce there own blogging platform based on SQL Servier and .Net and make you use that.

I don't use Microsoft software on my home PC at all - other than Win XP and that might be going soon - but I do appreciate that an awful lot of companies and organisations do. Now, if blog posting and management was built into Outlook, along with a NewsGator style RSS reader plug-in, using a .Net blogging platform then that might be a setup that would be enough to convince the most sceptical of CEOs that blogging is a Good Thing.

Lee · 3 years ago

Absolutely, Dave. Bring .net into Outlook and auto rss feeds and blogging (i.e. input and output from the same tool) and you have a winner...

Tris Hussey · 3 years ago

Hi Lee, it's me again. We'll definitely work on getting the download requirements better documented and work on a better installer for the Java dedection.

For the DropPad (that's the square thing) you should be able to move it (I like the lower left corner myself) ... I will follow up with the developer about the moving problem (we'll probably need to contact you directly for that).

I like your suggestion of moving over v2 settings, I can't promise we'll have a solution, but we know that it's important and we would like to get something working.

We appreciate all your feedback. We really do. Love to know more about why you WP blog wasn't detected ... we try to auto-detect as many blogs as possible.

So ... one blog editor company has entered the fray. Let me have your comments and feedback.

Lee · 3 years ago

Hey (again) Tris -- really appreciate your comments. As you can probably tell from my latest few posts, Zoundry has taken the BetterComms Towers crew by surprise, partly because they meet many of the 'wish list' features (or have explained why they can't -- e.g. server-side issues with WordPress), and partly because they installed and found one of my blogs so easily. I have yet to try using it one more than one of my blogs (that's tomorrow's experiment, once I have reclaimed those lost hours of productivity).

I'm not trying to set up a 'contest' here between yourselves and Zoundry (and it's interesting that neither the ecto or RocketPost folks have entered the conversation), but I am genuinely interested in helping create a 'works first time, every time' tool that I can recommend to my business clients (who don't have a lot of time to spare and who mostly see the internet as a waste of time and productivity anyway).

Thanks again for being a great part of this conversation -- much appreciated.