.. . late at night, doing the customer responsiveness boogie, when it feels good to have put so much time and effort (such as two previous very-soft pre-beta launches that didn't go much of anywhere) by the whole team over the past three years into creating the possibility for this kind of short and sweet positive testimonial.

Via the blog Angela's Right To Free Speech - a place where I can spaeak my mind even if my voice shakes

Thanks, AnGeLa ;-)

I LOVE Qumana - Spring Break - Daylight Savings Time!

I know... I keep talking about Qumana. I can't help it you guys. I absolutely LOVE this blog editing program. It is so nice to be able to make a post to all of my blogs without having to go to each one separately. Especially when I have something to say on all of them!

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Today's Globe and Mail announces Quebecor's re-vamped media strategy.

Quebecor Inc. is shaking up the slumping Sun newspaper chain as some of its flagship dailies are increasingly being squeezed by the growth of free commuter papers, including its own publication, 24 Hours.

The Montreal-based media giant is embarking on an ambitious digital strategy aimed at breathing new life into its television, newspaper and Web operations, starting in Toronto where the company's biggest newspaper has seen its reader and circulation numbers eroding.

Quebecor chief executive officer Pierre Karl Péladeau said the model for newspapers needs to change if publications want to attract younger readers.

In a pair of moves Tuesday, the company announced plans to link its newspaper, Web and TV network in Toronto more closely than any other company has in Canada so far.

If successful, the strategy could be spread across the company's operations.

It's another example of newspapers and television stations coming to grips with the capabilities offered by the Web's digital hyperlinked infrastructure combined with the ease of personal publishing (which is spreading rapidly due to podcasting, videoblogging, and ways for people to browse and interact with information).

Pierre-Karl Peladeau, the CEO of Quebecor, has been in the news relatively frequently over the past several months, and is on record as having read the riot act to his executives and managers. His statement in this article underlines how seriously he is taking the *new media* landscape.

The strategy will also tap into blogs and other forms of user-generated content, Mr. Péladeau told a gathering of advertisers in Toronto, who were given their first glimpse of the direction he wants to take the entire company over the next few years.

“I think there is no other future for conventional media . . . than to migrate to this model,” Mr. Péladeau said after the presentation.

“Probably this was something that [media] convergence was all about a few years ago.”

The Globe and Mail article continues on, to speculate about Quebecor's possible reasons for this major overhaul, including declining readership, the need to reduce overall costs, and several other basic ways to atract new, and younger, readers.

We at Qumana are well aware of the usefulness of offering readers, and content providers, simple easy-to-use tools that help their readers / members / users publish, promote what they publish and extract value from the work required to create and distribute interesting and/or pertinent content.

The media game is indeed changing.

Qumana helps personal publishers gather, re-mix and create what is termed user-generated content. We believe that there are significant opportunities for us and others in this space to be of real and immediate value to all sorts of content providers who want to promote interactivity and the greater circulation of fresh information content.

That's what using information and constructing useful knowledge is all about.

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We recently came across this interesting reference to Qumana in an unflattering (we believe) and inaccurate (we believe) article on Digital-Lifestyles.Info titled "The Blog System That's Eating Blogs".

The article is variously about Blogger's blackout problem, spam blogging (splogs), blog automation and the inevitable noise that will occur due to thousands and millions of people using whatever tags they like to tag content they have published .. and Qumana's role in some or all of the above ?

And a spam blog is something that doesn't actually have any real content. It's just links to trackback pointers for everybody else. The trouble is, all the signs of a spam blog are caused by the ease with which they are built. You just have to create the blog (two clicks) and then set up a robot that scours the web for new posts, and links to the trackbacks.

So, the coincidence: just before he got black-listed, our navel gazer switched to a blog automator. The product is one of so many I can't make myself go there. It's called Qumana, and what it does (amongst other things) is allow you to create your blog quickly and easily, including advertising, even if you're offline. You'll get an idea of the scale of the problem if you look at Technorati's tag for Qumana.

Yes, in a fit of egotism, idiocy, the authors decided to write software that creates a tag for qumana for every blog page that is created on qumana. It doesn't matter whether the subject is carrots, cameras or carcases; the tag for Qumana will also be created. As a result, you'll have real trouble finding what the current discussion about Qumana is about; it's lost in the backgroud noise.

I am not easily aroused or stirred .. so I read the article three times to make sure I understood it as well as I could. I suppose that this is an article written by a tech *journalist* ... if so, he did very little checking out of his assumptions (in my opinion). This seems to be the equivalent of a flu that's going around, given the state of journalism in *mainstream* media these days. Time for another panel on blogger ethics, anyone ?

Anyway, I did get sufficiently exercised to reply to Guy Kewney ... mainly because we at Qumana belief in self-expression, empowerment and that blogging is a useful, important and sometimes impactful socio-technical phenomenon.

We did NOT design and launch a blog automator ... we designed and launched an authoring tool that makes it easy and straightforward to create and publish whatever kind of blog post .. one line, one paragraph or an essay containing links, pictures, sounds, etc. or in other words whatever kind of blog post blogger "X" wants to create.

Here's my email-delivered response to Guy (whom, again, I am assuming calls himself a tech *journalist*, which he may be, albeit one who fancies that he possesses a dry British wit (and perhaps an accompanying lack of attention to detail ?)):

Hello, Guy. My name is Jon Husband and I am one of the co-founders of Qumana (tho' luckily not the egotistical idiot (or is it idiotic egotist) who created the "Powered By Qumana" tag). We agree with you, by the way, that one of the results of that provides a reasonable amount (if not a lot) of irrelevant *noise* under the technorati tag *Qumana*. However, there was a specific purpose, which was to have some very basic way to develop a rudimentary sense of how much use of Qumana might occur.

One of the things you appear to have overlooked in your *article* is that it is extremely simple to disable the "Powered By Qumana" tag .. it is a simple matter of choosing a a Preference Setting (this may not be a fair statement, but given the general level of accurate reporting seemingly practiced by journalists the world over these days, I'll chance the accusation ;-). We suspect, but don't know for certain, that there are a reasonable number of Qumana users who do not use the "Powered By Qumana" tag.

A splog is a splog is a splog .. automated spam blogs .. Qumana is NOT a blog automator .. it is an easy-to-use blog editor / blog authoring tool. I know you expressly stated you were not saying that Qumana was causing the Blogger blackouts, but you are conflating, or close to it, two or three blogging issues / problems, and pulling us (Qumana) into a conversation that we don't believe we belong in .. and we don't like the possibilities of the power of allusion, which happens all too often as a result of article such as the one you have written.

No doubt you will disagree, but I say "not fair".

Making it easy to blog and worrying about whether there will be lots of noisy, almost-spam-like blogs is kinda like saying making it easy to drive a car will lead to lots of cars and drivers and traffic jams on the roads .. well, yeah. But it's the expression of nonsense by bloggers, not the tools, that makes some blog content almost spam-like.

I repeat .. Qumana is NOT a blog automator .. if anything, it's just good interface and functional design which makes it easy to create and post a comprehensive, hand-authored blog post.

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At Qumana, one of the things we built into the most recent Qumana XP architecture is the ability to easily develop other-language versions of the application, so that bloggers more at home in languages other than English could have a tool that will add depth and versatility to their blogging work.

We have not made it a priority to date because we did not want to over-promise and under-deliver, in the sense of not being able to provide effective technical / user support in those other languages for which a version of Qumana XP might exist.

Thus far, we have done the bulk of the work to be able to offer versions of Qumana in Spanish, Dutch, French and German .. and we are looking at what is required to Japanese and Chinese versions.

In the short to medium term we would like to make use of the spirit and dynamics of blogging to help us all .. users who might want the added versatility of a blogging application that works well in their native language, and Qumana which would appreciate the additional exposure and user base.

Accordingly, I am putting out this request to the blogosphere ... are there any bloggers who might like to be volunteer members of the Qumana support team, to help new users of Qumana for other-language versions in terms of offering basic how-to support, or to be the initial contact point for technical issues / problems, which they can then relay back to the core Qumana team ?

This is all about helping blogging and personal publishing spread more widely around the world. If you're inclined to be helpful with this mission in your country or for your language, please drop us a line, specifically to jon[at]qumana.com.

Additionally, if you would like to be able to use a version of Qumana in a language other than those I have mentioned above, please drop me a line ... the work required to translate Qumana XP's commands and text strings is not onerous at all. By helping in this way, it may be that you end up with a blogging and personal publishing editor that you really, really like.

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Due to popular demand (and give me more time pleas), we've pushed the contest submission deadline off until April 15.  So, take a break from doing your taxes (in the U.S. and Canada, that is), download Qumana, blog about your tax woes (or anything else that comes to mind), then do a post about the tools in your blogi-verse and maybe you'll be spending your tax refund on fruity drinks (surf) or hot cocoa (ski).

Oh and a little bird told me, okay it was our lead developer on v3 of Qumana, that there will be a new version of the beta coming soon.  I wouldn't say this is a "minor" update, lots of bug fixes under the hood, but the coolest features are yet to come.

Stay tuned!  And good luck!

Tags: Qumana, Qumana v3, Qumana beta, Ski or Surf Ultimate Vacation

The Qumana Contest is almost over - so don't forget to send in your post.

The winner of the Ski or Surf Ultimate Vacation will be chosen based on a blog post to be written about your “blogging landscape”:

Tell us, as creatively as you can, what makes your blogging experience easier, and perhaps even more profitable. Whether its your digital camera, a set of plugins, or your browsing pattern, tell us what makes you a productive blogger and you could WIN

When you’re done, simply send us your URLs (of your post and of the blogs that qualify you).

Some of you have already qualified and entered for the contest. Aaron just this morning sent in a very long qualifying post about his "blogging landscape", so you've got some good competition out there.

If you are a fast blogger, you still have time to qualify. Check all the details here. The contest will close on March 25th.

After all is done, the winner will be sent on vacation with a guest to Mexico or Whistler. What better incentive?

Qumana has been reviewed by the editors of PC Mag for their "Web 2.0 Addicts" series and has come out with flying colours!

The PC Mag review:

Quote removed as per instructions by the legal department of PC Mag. No portion, aside from the title, of the review may be used in any way, even if properly cited under fair use. That's a company that surely understands blogging!

Thanks for the honor of being a part of the list and for such a great review!

And don't forget, the same great Qumana is also for Mac!

Tags: pc mag, qumana, reviews, web 2.0

"Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity"
- Charles Mingus

This is the #1 goal of Qumana, one we'll always have to keep striving for. A never-ending process of addition, revision, and vision.

Via Dina Mehta

We want you. That is, if you can help us. :)

Qumana is hiring two developers right now, so drop us a line if you live in Vancouver and want to apply. Be sure to indicate which job you are applying for.

Senior Developer

Responsibilities:

• Create written specifications for application modules
• Create development plan
• Implement solution
• Prepare development and release testing plan

Requirements:

• 8+ years in C++/C# .Net Technology
• Good ability to formulate and optimize a SQL Query
• Experience in large-volume operations on the Internet
• Multi-processing and multi-threading synchronization experience
• Ability to calculate performance estimates and optimize a solution for execution speed.
• Solid knowledge of Internet Interface design and implementation (HTML/XML)
• BA/BS in computer science.

Intermediate-Senior Java Developer

Requirements:

• Experience creating cross-platform user interfaces using Swing.
• Experience using the Eclipse IDE.
• Experience using the Subversion version control system.
• Experience using Hibernate for object/relational mapping.
• Knowledge of blogging and the APIs used by blog platforms (Blogger, Metaweblog, Atom Publishing).
• Effective team skills.
• Ability to take direction and work with minimal supervision.

Noticed in one of the many emails flowing through my inbox ... BlogExplosion is being given a hand in preparing its sale by by Qumana friend Jeremy Wright:

As many of you know we have put BlogExplosion up for sale. We have new projects always on the go and felt that BE was at the point where new ownership can take the site to the next level. We have been building websites for 6 years now and it is time for us to find new challenges again.

We have contracted Jeremy Wright to help oversee the sale of BlogExplosion.

To date we have received around 20-25 inquiries now and have prepared a PDF for interested buyers with all of the facts involved with the sale of the site.

I imagine that it will take us a week or two to negotiate a deal here and we will be providing details as soon as they become available.

We leave BE as a growing and thriving site and are excited to see a new management team come in and make some great changes for our members. I think we feel like we have done everything with the site that we can and now it needs that new team to come in and make it that much better.

Things can only get better. Bigger marketing budgets, bigger development teams... Just means BE has that much more of a brighter future and will benefit all of our members in the long run.

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The Bloggies Winners 2006 have been announced as:

• Blogger: Best Web Application for Weblogs
• Loobylu: Best Australian or New Zealand Weblog
• Tokyo Girl: Best Asian Weblog
• Baghdad Burning: Best African or Middle Eastern Weblog
• My Boyfriend Is a Twat: Best European Weblog
• Girl With a One-Track Mind: Best British or Irish Weblog
• Cooking Diva: Best Latin American Weblog
• Photojunkie: Best Canadian Weblog
• (5 Awards) PostSecret: Best American Weblog ; Best Topical Weblog ; Best Community Weblog ; Best New Weblog ; Weblog of the Year
• (2 Awards) Joshuaink.com: Best Tagline of a Weblog: "More love than a bus full of hippies" ; Best-Designed Weblog
• The Movie Blog: Best Podcast of a Weblog
• FlickrBlog: Best Photography of a Weblog
• Make Blog: Best Craft Weblog
• Vegan Lunch Box: Best Food Weblog
• Go Fug Yourself: Best Entertainment Weblog ; Best Writing of a Weblog
• Wonkette: Best Weblog About Politics
• ProBlogger: Best Web Development Weblog
• Slashdot: Best Computers or Technology Weblog
• Queerty: Best GLBT Weblog
• It's Raining Noodles!: Best Teen Weblog
• Overheard in New York: Most Humorous Weblog
• (2 Awards) Boing Boing: Best Group Weblog ; Lifetime Achievement
• NeedCoffee.com: Best-Kept-Secret Weblog

Congratulations to all the winners! Although the list is skewed slightly to very large blogs, I always get a kick out of reading the country-specific winners and all the nominees - lots of great new blog finds in there!

Tags: bloggies, blog awards

Reminder, there are 12 more days to enter in the Qumana contest to WIN a trip to Whistler or Mexico - a trip for 2, at that!

If you use Qumana already, or have yet to start, now is the time:

• Download Qumana
• Post 20 times. Not hard to do in 12 days.
• Write us one easy post.
• And you're entered to WIN!

Enter Now

Tags: contest, win, vacation, skiing, surfing, mexico, whislter, blog contest, blogging, blog to win, qumana

.. especially for an old greying ex-OD and strategy consultant like me who has moved (long ago) mainly to the online world of interactivity and collaboration.

These days everybody seems to believe you have to get Michael Arrington to gush about your product in order to be ‘in.’ We even are seeing “Exclusive” slapped on his posts for things. Right. Web 2.0 this 2.0 that. Com’on, Michael, where’s the real scoops?

Rick Segal on WallWiki

As you can see, it is the unlimited version. Anyone can come by and update, change, move, items with no knowledge of computers! This is operating system independent, browser independent and, wait for it, WALL independent.

The company has received three term sheets and are in talks to be acquired by Google. This will be, of course, renamed GWall, all your notes belong to us, should that occur.

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Have you seen our new blog?

It's called the Qumana 'how to' blog. And it's the new front line for everything in the Q World.

Qumana 'how to' is all about making your blog kick ass: making it rock, making blogging easier, and making money from it all.

What you can expect:

• ‘how to’ use Qumana to make writing to one or more blogs easy as pie
• ‘how to’ use Lektora to manage your feeds and start some rocking posts
• ‘how to’ use our Ad Program to make money blogging
• ‘how to’ make your posts look great
• ‘how to’ tweak your template and design to keep readers, and get them clicking
• ‘how to’ mix ad programs to make the most money
• ‘how to’ write effectively, and interact in the blogosphere
• all the latest updates to our programs - fixes, new features, and new ways to use them

For industry news, breaking items, and analysis of the goings on in blogging, RSS and advertising, tune in here, our main Qumana blog. Tune in here for industry awareness, pop over there for great tips.

The blog has been up for a few weeks now and the archives are just rich with great tips! Ones I particularly like are: Ad Heat Spots, Setting up MSN Spaces, and Setting up Pinging.

Tags: qumana, how to, qumana how to, productivity, q

On the heels of the news that Microsoft has acquired OnFolio, here's another rumour (a strong one, according to Om Malik) that Google is in talks with Writely, an online word processing and publishing application.

This seems to me a clear indicator that all the 800-b. gorillas are showing us all HOW the Web will be interactive, two-way, read / write ...

Google, Writely In Talks?

So you all know that Google’s got designs for a G:Drive and doing an end run around Microsoft?

Now what if you can simply store and save data on that drive, but that’s not clearly as much fun. What if you could write a document in a browser, much like you write on Microsoft Word, but then save it directly to the G:Drive?

That would increase the utility of G:Drive tremendously. Maybe that explains why Google is rumored to be in talks with Writely, a browser-based document processing application, for a possible acqusition.

Update: The rest of Om's article points out some of the issues we talk about around our campfire ... issues we find interesting and pertinent to what users may want. And .. of course all of this will jkeep evolving as things get simpler, easier and more interoperable.

If this does indeed become Google’s approach, I believe that it’s very smart. It’s sort of an end-around into Microsoft’s bread and butter market.

Google may face some challenges though:

-The general population is still unaware of all things Web 2.0 and are conditioned to use Microsoft Office; if for no other reason than just habit.

-Microsoft Office documents are stored on local machines and not on Google’s servers.

Convincing the masses that their documents will be safe (especially with all that has been going on lately) may be quite challenging—-Even if it’s FREE!


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