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?

Tags: Qumana, Vista, Live Writer

Aha !  The payoff for hours spent trawling Technorati and Feedster so as to respond to questions or complaints about Qumana.

There have been reports of problems getting Qumana to post appropriately to the new beta pf Blogger (performancing For firefox, too).

Here's a hack, complete with screen shots, that shows how to address the problem. Thanks, bothack !

It's ridiculously easy.

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.

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Jon posted already about the new version, but I thought I'd also do a little podcast about it too (18 mins, 12 meg MP3).  Intro music is by Derek Miller outro by Sarah Harmer.

Enjoy!

Tags: Qumana, Qumana 3.0b5, Qumana podcast, podcast

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 and overall 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, and the colour!

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 …

Download the most recent version of Qumana V.3.0.0-b5   here.

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Buzz words suck.  Sorry, but it's true.  We use buzz words to convey a deeper meaning that would take a paragraph to fully explain.  Then the word becomes something else and takes on a life of it's own.  Web 2.0 has got to be one the the favourite love-hate words out there right now.  I use it sparingly, but sometimes its needed to convey something complex.  Unfortunately I think the word Web 2.0 has jumped the shark.  Why?  Because I was watching a Nissan commercial recently and the slogan became shift_2.0.  Ugh.  Then I knew we'd had it.

So given this atmosphere caught Jeremy's post with the appealing title "My definition of Web 2.0".  Given that I think Jeremy is a pretty sharp guy, I thought a read was in order.  Jeremy doesn't disappoint (well me, anyway).  Here's how he ends the post (the sentence before the definition I agree with as well):

I wish I could redefine Web 2.0. Screw the social stuff. Screw the AJAX. Screw grassroots marketing.

Web 2.0 should be “profitable online businesses”.

Yeah.  Web 1.0 (not that we were thinking like that in the 90s) was about great ideas that, well, sometimes were a little ahead of their time.  Now, it's about business.  Real business, real money, doable ideas.

Sounds about right to me.

Tags: Web 2.0, Jeremy Wright

From Loïc Le Meur (via Robert and Steve) comes the handy-dandy Web 2.0 logo generator.  The result of typing in "Qumana" is there on the left.  Not bad, but I like our real one better.

Tags: Qumana, Web 2.0, Web 2.0 logo

How often can you count a two-time Olympic medallist as one of your friends?  Scott Goldblatt is a friend of mine and a fellow b5 blogger on the swim blog Timed Finals.  Scott is also visiting our fair Province covering the PanPac international swim meet in Victoria for b5 and Speedo.

Qumana is pleased to be the sponsoring/official blog editor for Scott at the PanPacs.  Scott is live blogging the events (watch out for the water and the laptop Scott!) and just posted his first podcast (hosted on Speedo's site).  Give a listen, because Scott has a great "radio voice" and for his first podcast, I think he rocked it.  Give a listen.

Scott has this to say about Qumana:

"Qumana has allowed me to blog "on the fly" here in Victoria at the Pan Pacs. The ability to save my thoughts offline within a single editor and blog live on the pool deck has been indispensable. Qumana allows me to write, edit, and publish the results and news as quickly as it happens."

I'm hoping to get over to Victoria to hang with Scott a bit this weekend.  Have fun Scott!

Tags: PanPacs, Timed Finals, Qumana, Scott Goldblatt, swimming

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,

So, which would you choose?

Fred Fabro, our fearless leader and CEO, was quoted in the Seattle PI (also repeated on Newsfactor) about Live Writer:

"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."

Tags: Qumana, blog editor, Live Writer, offline editor

What's that conventional wisdom ?  Things  have to become so simple even your grandpa can use them ?

Well, it's coming.  Watch this video ... and oh, by the way, posting this video only took about three clicks ... your grandma could do it.

Tags: YouTube, geezer blogging, ease of use, qumana, multimedia publishing

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... 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.

Via The Hollywood Reporter

FIM links to Google in ad pact
By Chris Marlowe

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.

Well ... using Qumana and Q-Ads  you can already advertise on MySpace ... you can inject ads served up by Q-Ads directly into posts you can then publish to your MySpace page.

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 with Posts Wherever You Go

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

Tags: MySpace, Google, AdSense, Qumana, Q-Ads

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At ZDNet, an interesting exploration of the issues of the kinds of value created by some of the leading Web 2.0 applications / web services.

Read the whole article here.

YouTube, Digg, Wikipedia: Can Web 2.0 play hardball?
Posted by Donna Bogatin @ 12:50 pm


Tim O'Reilly says, in his 2005 treatise “What is Web 2.0?”:

The architecture of the Internet, and the World Wide Web, as well as of open source software projects like Linux, Apache, and Perl, is such that users pursuing their own 'selfish' interests build collective value as an automatic byproduct.

Web 2.0 users, and others in the Web 2.0 community, seem to be pursuing their own “selfish” interests more and more.

The end product sought, however, aims for individual value, or corporate value, rather than for "collective value."

Tags: Web 2.0, Digg, YouTube, Wikipedia, social software

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Via the Globe and Mail.

When was the last time YOU actually opened up and installed a CD of AOL trial software ?

I think this is a last-ditch effort to try to hang on to users who, as they get more web-savvy, ditch anything AOL.

AOL makes more services free in chase for ads
Associated Press


NEW YORK — Stepping up the chase for on-line advertising dollars, AOL will give away e-mail accounts and software now available only to its paying customers in a strategy shift likely to accelerate the decline in its core Internet access business.

The decision, announced Wednesday by AOL parent Time Warner Inc., removes the few remaining reasons for AOL subscribers to keep paying when they already have high-speed Internet access through a cable or phone company.

"We've listened to our customers, and many of them want to keep using these AOL products when they migrate to broadband — but not pay extra for them," said Jeff Bewkes, Time Warner's president and chief operating officer.

AOL will still offer its dial-up accounts at $26 (U.S.) a month for unlimited use, but the company no longer will aggressively market it. That's likely to mean the end of mailboxes stuffed with CDs of trial AOL software, as well as job cuts in marketing and customer service. There was no immediate word on how many layoffs will result.

Tags: AOL, broadband, ISP, Web2.0, network economics, online advertising

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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...

This is the final post: Primp your blog.

Tags: qumana, qumana in action, blogher