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.
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.
... 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.
I suspect that it is just as straightforward as with YouTube and Kaneva.
Let's find out ... update: it is, yay!
With a minor squiggle - you don't see the frame for the Google Video clip in the WYSIWYG window of Qumana. We'll have to work on that .. but don't worry, the clip's html is there and does get published, so that the clip itself is published.
Of course, all sorts of bloggers who know how to play with html and embed video clips into their blog posts. But most newbies, and many of us more practiced amateurs, still don't like wrestling with image and video upload and the publishing function inside the major blog platform editors. Even if it isn't complicated any more, it still may seem complicated to many users, so they don't get into the habit.
And it can really be fun to publish video clips easily ... and often.
Qumana now makes it really really easy to publish video clips from YouTube or other similar services. It's not elegant (yet), but here's how ... now.
Update: I had a whole section here .. well, actually only three or four sentences ... describing the "How-To", but hadn't noticed Arieanna's earlier post. I've deleted mine
Thanks to popular demand, Qumana now lets you change your font and font size.
How to use the font features:
Select the text you want to change
Use the pull-down menu to change the font and fontsize
Defaults:
If you leave the font menu as either "Default Font" or "Default Size", your post will use the font choices you have selected in your blog template.
Fonts:
If you choose a specific font, like Arial or Time's New, it will display to all readers of your blog the same way.
If you choose the "serif", "sans-serif" or "cursive" font options, the font will be displayed based on browser preferences - so, with these, the font may appear differently to you than to your readers.
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Where is font color, you may ask? Well, it didn't quite make it in. We want it to be slick - you know, with a fancy color picker and stuff. We'll have it in the next release.
We hope you enjoy the new features! If you have not yet downloaded Qumana, go give it a try.
Anybody that will assiduously follow whatever and whomever Microsoft uses to replace Robert Scoble as an evangelist and *customer-listener* over the next year or so ... and develops metrics to chronicle whatever may happen ... will arguably have one of the most useful, and potentially most famous, case studies of the impact of effective externally-oriented blogging on the profile and perception of a high-profile technology company.
He's certainly done an awful lot for Microsoft in terms of positive relations with people and (potentially) customers.
Maybe Microsoft will make an offer to Dave Winer ? That would be interesting !
Many people have reported on Scoble's departure. The source I've used below is Mathew Ingram, to whom I offer thanks for his steady, balanced (imo), reliable and stimulating technology reporting.
According to Tom Foremski at SiliconValleyWatcher and Andy Plesser at Beet.tv, the guy who is arguably Microsoft’s most famous person — at least as far as the blogosphere is concerned — is leaving the company. Robert Scoble, also known as the Scobleizer, is reportedly heading to podtech.net to be its corporate evangelist. Tom says that Scoble wasn’t happy working at Mister Softee, in part because they weren’t interested in paying for all his travels to conferences.
[Snip ...]
Update:
Scoble has posted a confirmation of his move, and goes on to counter the rumours about concerns over his travel budget and lack of support from Microsoft — totally not true, he says. He also says they “moved heaven and earth” to keep him happy, but he decided to make the move anyway. “It’s a rapidly-evolving part of my life,” he says. “I just made this decision and it got out before I was completely ready to talk about it.”
BTW ... it's already pretty easy to incorporate YouTube clips into a Qumana-published post. Just take the embed-video html from any YouTube video, and past it into the Source View section of the Qumana post you are building, wherever you want the clip to appear.
Would it be useful to bloggers to make it easy to incorporate into Qumana video clips from web services such as YouTube, VideoEgg, Yahoo Video, etc. ?
As Jordan Nealy blows out four candles on her birthday cake in South Carolina, Irina Slutsky interviews a technology executive in Texas, and Helene Cardona recites a poem from a train platform in Los Angeles.
What's the common thread between these seemingly unrelated acts? They're all early April entries on three different video blogs, and together they illustrate the diversity emerging from the flourishing world of video blogging, which will take center stage this weekend in San Francisco at the (sold out) Vloggercon conference.
Google's AdSense works using a context-matching algorithm .. and, as Cringely notes in his article, Google's offering often tend towards an "almighty algorithm" mentality.
Google is secretive. This started as a deliberate marketing mystique, but endures today more as a really annoying company habit. Google folks don't understand why the rest of us have a problem with this, but then Google folks aren't like you and me. The result of this secrecy and Google's "almighty algorithm" mentality is that the company makes changes -- and mistakes -- without informing its customers or even doing all that much to correct the problems. It's all just beta code, after all. But the business part is real, as is the money that some people have lost because of Google's poor communication skills combined, frankly, with poor follow-through.
Qumana enables you, the publisher, to have closer control over what advertising is used by choosing the keywords you think relate best to the blog post in front of you and using those keywords to pull and place adverts .. and if you don't like the advert that is offered, you can delete it and try for another, or use another keyword. Your brain is effectively the algorithm ... while selecting and placing adverts is not quite as automated as Google AdSense, it is only a type-keyword-and-one-click operation.
As the inventory of advertising offered by Q-Ads improves, so too will your ability to develop an advertising strategy based on the content of your blog posts. Tris Hussey of the Qumana team coined a term for this .. we call it a post-centric advertising strategy.
If you ever have a desire to "own your content", or don't necessarily want to share every ounce of your publishing output with Google, you might want to give Q-Ads a try.
