Software

BlogJet 2.0

BlogJet was always my favourite blog editor when I used Windows regularly. I was pretty annoyed when version 2 was released not long ago, as by then I had made the transition to Ubuntu. I’ve so far failed to find anything even remotely as good in Linux, and have been blogging using the inbuilt WordPress editor and the Performancing for Firefox plugin since.

I still have Windows available on a dual boot, and on popping in today I downloaded the trial of BlogJet 2, and it’s great. It retains the simplicity of the original, but packs in loads of new features. I like it a lot.

I’ve also always liked FeedDemon as an RSS aggregator. Google Reader is the best online newsreader, but I still prefer FeedDemon overall.

So, for the tools I use most on my PC, I prefer the Windows variants by quite some distance. The advantages of Ubuntu are that is has never crashed on me, and is lightening fast.

So what do I do? I could reinstall Windows and see if it makes any difference speed-wise… but would going back to XP be a retrograde step?

Ubuntu packages

Still not online at home, which makes my installation of Ubuntu a week or so quite frustrating: there really isn’t much I can do with it. Still, Pipex will be providing me with 6mb/s broadband in a week or so, which is something to look forward to!

Was having a poke about on Ubuntu though last night. I browsed through the repository of applications I can download and install, and was surprised to see that the majority of them state that they are unavailable for my system. This includes standard apps like Gnumeric and Abiword.

Could this have anything to do with the fact that I wasn’t online at the time, or is there something I should know about being able to install packages on Ubuntu?

[tags]ubuntu[/tags]

FeedDemon Release Candidate 1

Nick Bradbury has announced the new release candidate of FeedDemon 2.1. It certainly feels more robust than the previous beta version.

One of the more noticable changes is that the little bank of button that let you do stuff with a post, like email it to a pal, or bookmark the post in del.icio.us, now appears at the bottom of the post in question. All of this means that when you have read a post you don’t need to scroll to the top again to perform an action on it. Nice one!

FeedDemon thoughts

Been using the FeedDemon 2.1 Beta3 for a while now. Here’s a couple of thoughts:

  • Each blog post has a link to post it to del.icio.us, it’s been there for a couple of versions now. But if I click a link to another post, or to expand a summary feed, the link disappears. Can we have a link on the main toolbar to send the current page to del.icio.us, or our blogs please?
  • If I clip a post in NewsGator for later viewing, can it be automatically sync’d to a News Bin in FD please?

 

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FeedDemon and Live Writer, etc

Following Neville’s advice, I’ve downloaded the new FeedDemon beta, despite the fact that I’ve recently moved away from it in favour of Google’s Reader, and will give it a go. Sounds like it integrates well with the new Windows Live Writer – Microsoft’s entry into the offline blog editor market. I’ve tried a few editors and will give Live Writer a go too. One feature I love already is the web preview, which shows how your post will look in your template. Excellent stuff.

Talking of templates, I’ve reverted back to my old hacked version of Contempt. I just think it’s more useful, and I miss my rotating headers…

I also downloaded IE7, which has finally been released. Remarkable that it is the first full revision of the browser since 2001. Anyway, as Scoble notes, it’s too slow to replace FireFox in anyone’s estimations, especially v2 of FF, which is considerably quicker than previous versions.

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