Even though I'm using Qumana for this post, I do on occasion use Live Writer. It just depends on what I'm doing to testing. As you know, LW has a nifty plugin API. You also know that one of the things that makes Qumana special is Q-Ads. We've recently launched the Q-Ads Tool for IE and Firefox, now comes a brand new (like this morning) addition to the Qumana family—the Q-Ads plugin for Live Writer! This is so new that there isn't a page for it on the Qumana site. Because this is so new we'd like you to download it, try it, test it, and give us feedback. Qumana is a small team and we'd like to expand our testing pool to all of you.
GoogleTube, Yougle ... whatever you call it, it's been big news on the blogosphere. Heck it's been big news everywhere. Now the question is, you create a great video and post it on YouTube, what do you get out of it? Google now gets tons of eyeballs to look at (and click) ads. Hmm.
Here's a good case in point. This is my favourite YouTube video (okay I don't cruise YouTube much ... but I still love this one):
Now I know Chris (probably why I like it ... naw it's just funny). From the YouTube stats this vid has been viewed 403,789 times, received 1855 comments and has been favourited 2007 times. Wow, that's impressive. What does Chris get? A link to his blog. Now Chris is a smart cookie. He knows how to get the most out of Adsense, but still ...
Now here's an idea. Have a popular video and make sure you blog about it and then you put an ad in the post that you get money for. Kinda like this:
Hmm ... sounds like a good idea to me. How? Qumana lets you easily embed your video into your post (handy Insert HTML button let's you paste that embedding code), our Insert Ad button lets you put your ad in. Don't want to use an editor, that's cool ... we've got the Q-Ads Tool ... does the same thing as the Insert Ad button. Inserting the vid? Well ... I'll be a bit coy ... watch this space.
by
Tris Hussey
on September 26, 2006 01:51PM (PDT)
The Q-Ads Tool is the most exciting thing to come out of Qumana, well since Qumana. So much to tell, in fact, that I thought only a podcast would do it justice.
For this podcast I'm using the new podcasting service PodcastSpot from Mack and Dickson of Paramagnus. PodcastSpot has just launched as well and looks very cool. So without further ado ...
To get the Q-Ads Tool (which is an IE plugin or Firefox extension ... works with many blogging platforms including MySpace) ... visit the Qumana homepage
Here and I thought was sooo cool. I got the Qumana newsletter out to all the previous registered users of Qumana yesterday (like almost 10,000). Yeah, well, I kinda blew it. Okay first there are the typos. I swear I fixed them and saved the newsletter. Guess not. Arrggh #1. Then Fred tells me today that when he downloaded the "latest" version it didn't have the Insert HTML button in the right place. Uh oh. Yeah, I linked to the wrong file. Arrggh #2.
I guess we're all human. That or I need to drink more coffee (or less). Regardless, if you got the newsletter, go ahead and have a laugh at my expense. Done? Okay good. Now to get the latest version (Regular, French, Spanish, Dutch, or Lycos version in Mac or Windows) just head on over to our yon download directory and get the version you want. I've also fixed the website so it points to the right files too.
Jeez you'd think I walked under a ladder, had a black cat cross my path, and spilled salt yesterday. Sigh.
Many of you have e-mailed in and have been wondering why one day you woke up and all your Q-Ads (aka Adgenta) ads were gone from your Wordpress.com blogs. The simple answer is that the folks at Wordpress.com removed them. The reason why is also simple, when you start a WP.com blog you agree in the terms of service (TOS) that your blog is to be ad free. Q-Ads (and other services) are advertising services, therefore go against the TOS. We had a long grace period (a year, actually) with them, and I thank Matt and Toni for this, but the problem became one of some people abusing the blind eye they were turning and they were fielding a lot of support inquiries about it.
The folks at WP.com didn't really have a choice. The ads (and Q-Ads aren't not the only ones affected) were going against why they started WP.com and causing them headaches for them. I contacted Matt and Toni personally about this and they got right back to me and explained their decision and reasoning. Is the door completely closed? No. Here at Qumana we like WP a lot and use it for several other blogs. We have an open channel and discussion with them about ads on WP.com blogs.
If you have any more questions feel free to contact us.
Just got an e-mail from a user reporting that Qumana works just fine with Vista RC1. He also reported (chuckle) that he downloaded and tried (hee hee) Live Writer (chortle) and it didn't (gloat)!
So it appears (and we haven't done any testing ourselves, mind you) that Qumana will work just fine for you early adopters trying out Vista.
Can any other Vista testers out there confirm this?
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.
Well if it's okay for the guys as Performancing to write a review, it must be okay for me too. So Live Writer is out in the wild, I was pinged on Sunday when it came out and announced on Techcrunch. My first thought, of course, was "uh oh", I'm going to have to try this ASAP. So I did.
I'll first welcome the Live Writer folks into the blog editor family. It's a fun group and I think we're all after the same thing, a better experience for bloggers. So, what do I think. Pretty much that it's not a completed product. There are some nice features (like live-ish preview of the post as it would appear on your blog) and copy and paste image handling. But it reminds me a lot of Qumana v2. That was a great product and had a lot to offer but Qumana v3 b4 has even moved beyond that benchmark.
I think the greater question is, really, how many people are going to try and stick with Live Writer? Right now you can't easily tag your posts (Qumana can), it doesn't download your previous blog posts pre-Live Writer to open and edit (Qumana does), and the add a blog wizard could be a lot better (I think ours is pretty slick). Oh and Live Writer doesn't have a build-in way for your to make money from your blog (Qumana, check). Use a Mac? Live Writer isn't for you, but Qumana is. Don't like .NET? Sorry Live Writer requires it, but Qumana uses Java,
"The one thing that Microsoft brings is a lot more awareness to the fact that blog editors exist," said Fred Fabro, chief executive of Qumana Software Inc. in Vancouver, B.C., which makes the Qumana desktop blog-authoring program. "Of course, I'm not happy about having Microsoft as a competitor, either."
... 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
I was recently at BlogHer, an amazing conference for women bloggers (and some men too) in San Jose. The first day I blogged a lot of the technical sessions. Using Qumana of course. Here I am in action, jotting down notes in very complicated but beautiful bullet lists...
Unlike some other software companies, you aren't going to have to pay to download and try our beta. We love getting your feedback, why put limits on the number of people getting it?
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...
Tonight Technorati states it is tracking 49.4 million blogs, so I assume it will be towards the end of this coming week that the 50 million mark will be passed. Friday ? Next weekend ?
Certainly many of them will have been abandoned some time ago, or shortly after being created, and no doubt many are moribund or generally inactive ... but Technorati is still tracking them.
And it's interesting .. and useful for us ... to note that they are still being created at a rapid clip.
So, there have been at least 46 million new blogs created in just over 22 months by the time the 50 million mark is reached on Technorati. That's a heckuva growth rate.
You'd think that at least one or two million of the bloggers who have kept on blogging would want a simple, elegant, effective and free offline blogging tool ... like Qumana.
If for no other reason (though making blogging easier is a big benefit) than to avoid the frustration they seem to experience when whatever blog platform they are using experiences a service outage (which is at least as frustrating as the dropped call cell-phone experience that is now such a problem that the cell industry's advertising focuses on the issue).
I also wonder how many of the 50 million are from countries such as Spain, Argentina, Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Mexico, Central American countries, California ;-), France (and Quebec ... technically not a country, but ...), Holland and Germany. Bloggers who blog in those languages now have access to Qumana operational in their native language (German coming in a day or two). Good thing Qumana plays nice with Typepad ... they have a growing base of users in those European countries / languages.
Surely more than a handful will want to try it out.
For this podcast I'm using the new podcasting service PodcastSpot from Mack and Dickson of Paramagnus. PodcastSpot has just launched as well and looks very cool. So without further ado ...
