Ok .. so we've rearranged our priority list to move to the head of the list making Qumana 3.0 operate smoothly once again with the newest version of the Blogger platform.
None of us here use the Blogger platform.
Would any of you out there who used to use Qumana with Blogger (and hopefully still use it if you operate blogs on other platforms) mind giving us a hand by helping us zero in on what doesn't work, what Qumana does poorly, rudely, or not at all when attempting to publish to Blogger using it ?
Your help will be invaluable .. we want to modify / repair Qumana as quickly as possible.
... for bloggers not to download and try the new Q-Ads tool and service, other than a blogger exercising a complete ban on advertising.
There are many many bloggers who put up Google advertising on their blogs and then basically forget about it ... or if they are really serious about advertising on their blog will expend a lot of effort creating interesting content but just leave the delivery to Google without any means of controlling what they receive as advertising, since Google's algorithm's deliver what they are designed to deliver.
Using categorized keywords tailored to your audience(s) is an effective way to begin developing an advertising strategy and tactics for your blogging that allows you to control what advertising you choose to expose to your readers, and this ability to choose and control advertising has always been at the heart of Qumana's tools' ability to insert advertising with the selection of a keyword and a click.
2. Signing up for a Q-Ads account is free, and only takes 5 minutes
3. The Q-Ads revenue-sharing program is generous and fair.
4. There is a powerful and easy-to-use ad design function available in both the Q-Ads tool and the Qumana editor. We intend to add templates and other ad formats just as soon as humanly possible.
WE WILL BE ABLE TO CREATE AND DELIVER MORE INNOVATIONS SOONER IF WE GET MORE AND MORE USERS ... IN OTHER WORDS, HELP A FRIEND OR THREE TO DOWNLOAD AND TRY QUMANA AND THE Q-ADS TOOLS.
5. Once signed up, you don't HAVE to use advertising all the time, or in every blog post .. it's completely up to you as to how often you insert an advertisement.
6. If you download the Qumana editor, you can choose to advertise or not .. if you don't want to, just don't use the Insert Ad function. You still get to use a powerful, feature rich and versatile blog editor, whether you blog using a Mac or a PC.
Here's where I try something i have been wondering about for a while .. in principle it should be relatively easy to give users a default ad presentation setting that would result in an ad displaying in their blog post as follows ... probably an issue depending upon template chosen by user, but sometimes those things can be made adaptable.
But for now to make an ad look more clickable on a site using Qumana and Q-Ads, I would ...
1. Use shift__underscore to create a line across the window of the editor
2. Pull and place a Q-Ad
3. Center align the ad
4. Copy-and-paste the line from Step 1 below the ad
UPDATE: Trying out the addition of a second advertisment
We would like to announce and introduce the all new Q-Ads Tool (beta), an easy way for you to unlock the revenue potential of your website or blog.
Now you have two ways to insert Q-Ads:
1. Within the Qumana blog editor 2. With the Q-Ads Tool IE (5.5 and 6) Plug-in
Q-Ads is a unique way for you to embed ads anywhere you can place a picture – in your blog post, on your website, in your RSS feed. Because you choose the keywords for your post, you are in control of the ad your website visitors see – it is no longer bound to the content, but to your knowledge of your readers and what you are writing.
I find that desktop and online blog editors and publishers like Qumana and Performancing Fox are unable to automatically configure the all new Blogger Beta.
When you perform the same actions you did for your normal blogger blog in Qumana you get an error stating “unable to integrate Blogger API”
All you have to do is, go back a bit and in the manual setup change “http://www.blogger.com/api..” to “http://beta.blogger.com/api…”.
Yes! Introduce a beta instead of www and everything goes fine.
We've been very busy working on important bug fixes, enhanced stability and the addition of valuable new features designed to expand users' publishing capabilities andoverall ease of use.
More specifically, here's what we've addressed and accomplished over the last two months.
First, we recently completed Phase One of a formal usability study, which essentially told us everything you, the users , have been telling us since our beta launch in mid-February. It has been very useful to have all the bugs and improvements grouped together in one place, and organized such that we can either say ... "oh, good, that's been dealt with" or "thanks for that recommendation .. now we know for sure how and why (and where) to implement that", and so on.
Next ... we recently completed and made available versions of Qumana in French, Dutch and Spanish. With this release we will be adding a German version to the suite of Qumana blogging tools.
We’ve made major improvements in the stability of the editor, notably, Qumana no longer freezes when a user is moving an image around in the editor, and the quirkiness some users have experienced when dragging and dropping text onto the DropPad and thus into the editor has been fixed.
The rather annoying problem with blockquotes has also been fixed, too.
On the font front, you can now set not only the face (we list the common fonts all users will have), the size, andthecolour!
Finally, we have made it easier for the average user to add video clips and other web-based objects or services that use HTML snippets into their posts... whether it be a video, a podcast, an mp3 ... you get the drift. Look for the blue button between the Insert Link and Check Spelling buttons (represented by a closed brackets icon to denote HTML code).
We've also been reading a lot about Windows Live writer and thinking what it's appearance means for us.
We think it means two things. We'll be glad to hear your opinion, too.
First, it seems a clear signal that Microsoft is declaring that "blogging is NOT a fad" .. the release of MS Live Writer helps to raise awareness of the need and market for such applications. We believe this is good news for us .. and for Ecto, Blogjet, Zoundry, Performancing, w.bloggar, Marsedit and other similar applications. May the best amongst us find traction, niches and ways to prosper.
Second, it sharpens the issues about what adds value to blogging … what is it that reflects users' input, doesn't waste time, or valuable resources, and still delivers a -free product that offers use and value over and above the basics.
We’re proud of this new version of Qumana, which offers greater ease of use, stability and reliability and the ability to post video clips to a wide range of blog platforms with one or two clicks. Thanks to Ianiv Schweber and ou suppliers / colleagues in the development process …
... will by definition mean advertising on your MySpace space.
As everyone who doesn't already know will find out soon, Google and Fox Interactive Media (FIM) have struck a deal whereby Google take over the search and advertising functions for MySpace, which will no doubt focus on delivering advertising into and onto MySpace.
It has to be assumed that part of that deal will be the use of Google Ads in the same way that they are being used by bloggers in the blogosphere.
Fox Interactive Media entered a $900 million search and advertising deal with Google on Monday that will substantially help the News Corp. subsidiary recoup the cost of acquiring the MySpace and IGN Web properties.
Sources report that top News Corp. executives began shaping the agreement while at their annual retreat last week in Pebble Beach, Calif. On Monday afternoon, News Corp. president and chief operating officer Peter Chernin said the final agreement had been signed "less than six hours ago" after several days of concentrated negotiations.
"This deal is the next step in our evolution as a significant interactive player," FIM president Ross Levinsohn said. "Forming a strategic partnership with one of the most innovative companies in the world to expand our business together, monetize our platforms effectively and leverage our combined scale will provide substantial growth for our businesses."
The three-year agreement calls for Google to take over the provision of search and related functions across all FIM sites with the exception of Fox Sports, which is not included because of an outstanding contract with Microsoft's MSN. Many of these functions previously had been provided by Yahoo! Inc.
You just have to believe that MySpace will put Google advertising at the disposal of the millions of MySpace users who create and share whatever it is they share on MySpace.
Just ask Jeneane ... she punked Qumana and MySpace both, by figuring out how to use Qumana and Q-Ads "in reverse", as she described in her recent post Punking Qumana
Ads in MySpace? You can't do that! Yah well, it's my blog, and I don't know all the ins and outs, but I can put keyword ads in MySpace using Qumana in about 1.5 seconds.
Just type your post in Qumana, insert a Q-Ad by clicking the Insert Ad button, the insert your tags, and finally copy the text in Qumana's Source View into your MySpace blog.
Bingo--Your post is formatted, tagged, and even has an ad, all using one copy-and-paste from Qumana. NICE options to have.
Hey, she also mentioned a bunch of other ways she has found to make blogging so much easier using Qumana.
Now, if only MySpace would provide the blogging community with an API so that we wouldn't have to take that last step of copy-and-paste
Return to WYSIWYG ... check and adjust line spacing if desired ...
Add italics ... check Categories for this post.
Insert Q-Ads text advertising if desired ... place cursor where you want the ad, click on "Insert Ad", type a keyword (use the customizable banner designer to customize ad), then click OK.
I realize that you need power to run computers. Obviously, after your computer's battery runs out and you can't recharge it, it's hard to keep composing blog posts ...
When there are power outages or other related systems outages that affect the Web but you still have computer power for your individual machine, you can still compose blog posts with Qumana, and save them to be posted later.
George Ou reports that 100-degree weather coupled with widespread power outages have made for a miserable weekend in the Valley. George spent his afternoon assembling a gas generator to power his AC, refrigerator, DSL modem, wireless router and laptop...
Here's how I used to do things before I started using Qumana regularly:
I'd be browsing, and I'd be reading something which triggered a thought and then the desire to blog about it.
I'd leave the page, open my blog page, go to "Post New Entry", which would take me to the blog software's editor (which had taken me a while to learn).
Then, I'd put in a title, and maybe write a sentence or two. I usually quote an excerpt from what I have been reading, so I would have to go back to the web page I was on previously, highlight the excerpt, and then go back to the blog software editor .. where I would paste what I copied.
Then, I write some more to flesh out the post. And then, if I wanted to include some links, I'd have to start the round trips back and forth between the web pages where I would copy the links, then go back to the blog software editor and type in all the <a href> tags, and any WYSIWYG effects such as italics or bold, etc.
And THEN, on top of all that, I would have to preview and proof read, because I am not a hugely accurate typist.
AND THEN ... what if I wanted to include Technorati tags ? I still don't know how to include Technorati tags in a Blogware blog post using the Blogware editor.
Lots of work, demanded lots of concentration ...
Now, using Qumana ... here are my newly developed blogging work habits:
I'm browsing, and I read something which triggers a thought and the desire to create a blog post around the quote.
I highlight what I want to quote, drag and drop it onto the DropPad .. double-click on the DropPad, which opens the Qumana editor.
I add a title, I write some text to flesh out the post. I go back to the quoted page, or surf to another page (leaving the editor open), copy the URL of the links I want to include, go back to Qumana, use the Insert Link function to create the links (it's just pasting the URL into the dialog box).
There' still some back and forth, but it's much easier because the Qumana editor window is open just "over there" on the left.
There's spellchecking, so the final review is much easier (for me).
Tags ? Click on The Insert tags button, type in the Technorati tags you want to include, and click OK. That's it, that's all.
Adding images and video clips is easy .. and will get easier still in the future (it's one of the things we are working on).
If you're a blogger that wants to use advertising on her or his blog, that's easy too .. but just because it's a function available to you in Qumana doesn't mean you HAVE to use that functionality.
I'd never go back to the way I used to compose blog posts ... no way.
Arguably, many seasoned bloggers' blog sites are already portals, and sometimes are even used by readers as such. And almost certainly the major subject-area blogs are portals.
Here's an excerpt from a recent Globe and Mail tech review:
That leaves about a half-dozen Ajax-powered portals (Ajax being the technology that makes them fast and interactive), including Netvibes, Protopages, Pageflakes and Zoozio. Oh yes -- and there are a couple of little players named Google (with its google/ig) and Microsoft (with live.com).
Both Netvibes and Pageflakes have recently gotten venture-capital financing, so someone must see a future in the homepage frontier.
Richard MacManus of Read/WriteWeb is one of those. In a recent post, he says that what now appear to be just cool interactive homepages could become the portals of the Web 2.0 future, with all kinds of widgets and tools built in.
In a sense, they could become a virtual desktop -- the tool you use to gather all the bits and pieces of your online life together, all of them interacting and updating automatically.
I think Richard might be right. I'm a big fan of Netvibes.com, in part because it is fast -- a lot faster than Google's ig -- and because it is flexible, with dozens of different modules (such as Flickr, del.icio.us and Digg modules) and features including the ability to add new tabs, click once and mark all items in a feed read, and so on.
Google's effort, much like its other tools such as Google Reader, verges on the lame. It seems slow and clunky, you only get three columns (Netvibes.com has four) and you can't add new tabs. Admittedly, those kinds of things aren't exactly a powerful barrier to entry.
