How Qumana Changes Blogging Work Habits
Topic: Blog Editor

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.

Tags: Qumana, easy blogging, content assemblu, personal publishing, blog advertising

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Qumana's new & hot image interface
Topic: Tips & Tricks

Have you ever been frustrated by how annoying it is to get images onto your blog? You have to download the image, go to the right tab in your blog, upload it, then stick it in your post. Ick. And if you want it wrapped in any way, you've got your hands full. Way too hard.

Qumana changes all that, starting today.

1. Drag an image straight from a website or your desktop into the DropPad or the editor window
2. Qumana prompts you to upload it with the window below and a preview
3. Choose how you want it to look
4. Click "Upload & Insert"

How easy is that?

The hot new feature of the Qumana image dialogue is the Wrapping Style. This is the first tab you see, called the Basic tab, and here you can instantly decide how you want the image in your post.

Maybe you don't want a wrap, or maybe you want the image to be at the left with the text wraping around and to the right. Just choose your option and if that's it, click Upload & Insert.

Now, if you want to change more things in your image, go to the Advanced tab. Here you can change the size, add alternate text, or any other style elements.

You can insert any image to your post by dragging it to the editor, to the DropPad (double click to open), or by clicking the image button next to the link button on the editor window.

We hope you find the new image dialogue as fun and easy as we do!

Tags: qumana, blog tools, blogging, blog editor, images, photos, pictures

Qumana is font crazy
Topic: Tips & Tricks

Thanks to popular demand, Qumana now lets you change your font and font size.

How to use the font features:

1. Select the text you want to change
2. Use the pull-down menu to change the font and font size

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.

Tags: qumana, blogs, blogging, fonts, blog design, formatting, blog tools, blog editor

New Qumana beta release: easier than ever
Topic: Blog Editor

A new Lycos-Qumana beta (version 3.0.0-b4) is available to download. This new Lycos-Qumana is a step up from our last release - we have been working to squash bugs, add a couple of features, and make Lycos-Qumana easier to use than ever.

We are, of course, extremely excited about this new release. It has been an exciting few months of plans and partnerships, and now we have something to give back to Qumana bloggers to make their lives easier.

One of the biggest advances we made is in the image dialogue. After banging heads for a while trying to figure out how to make it simple and fast, we borrowed some ideas and concepts from familiar word processing and email, and here is what you get:

Everything you used to see (title, size, etc.) is now hidden in the "Advanced" tab, and the "Basic" tab has the biggest time saver in pictures I've seen: Wrapping Style. This means you can click one button and your picture will wrap with your text, giving you tons of creative power without all the fuss.

The next big feature is Advanced Posting - letting you pick the day and time your post will publish. So, if you go on vacation, you can set posts to go up when you're away.

Of course, this means you can also post to the past, if you had news that you wanted date-specific.

This is not all we've done. Check out below for a full list of the changes in the new Qumana release:

New features:

• Post date can be set to any time (advanced posting) for blog platforms that support it
• Font list & font size
• Strikethrough
• New image dialogue with quick wrap options
• YouTube support ('embed' tag)
• Publish button changes to "Update Post" after first published
• Post status displayed as footer ("Draft", or "Last posted time")

Updates:

• Insert link dialogue now contains "http://"
• Q Ads dialogue reworded
• DropPad state (open/closed) is remembered
• 'ESC' key closes windows
• Dialogues can now be closed with "x" close button
• Double click tray icon in PC opens New Post
• Add Blog wizard will open each session if no blog is configured

We have fixed some other bugs, which take too long to explain in detail, but will thankfully make the user experience better.

Thanks for the continued feedback and go check it out!

What's Next?

We have received many requests for features over the last couple of months. Rest assured, we have an aggressive development plan for our next release, mostly focusing on features as well as other fixes. Let's just say we're excited about making it easy for people to publish multimedia rich posts, and to make money from them of course.

We're not going to set down a date, but it will be sooner rather than later ;)

Tags: lycos-smana, qumana, blogs, blogging, blog tools, blog editor, offline editor, easy blogging

Stack your ads!
Topic: Make Money - Q Ads

Hey, have you ever thought of stacking your Qumana ads? You know, make a little box of them.

Most likely, you have not. But, you should.

Why stack your ads?

• give more options to your readers
• make your ads stand out
• it's an easy way to make the 'bottom of post' ad section more appealing to readers - it's simply more content

The reality is that most of you put your ads at the end of your posts. To be truthful, that's not the best spot. The upper right corner is. But, rather than changing your habits, we want to suggest just making that end-of-post area more appealing.

How do you stack ads?

1. Click 'Insert Ad'
2. Insert a keyword (only one)
3. Insert the ad
4. Repeat with a different keyword (to get a different ad)

Are we gonna make this easier for you in the future? If you like it, you want it, and it works for you - you betcha!

Tags: qumana, q ads, advertising, earn money, blogvertising, blog ads

See, here is my demo (I also centred the ads, see how nice that looks?)

Home Pages And Blogs As Portals ?
Topic: General stuff

Arguably, many seasoned bloggers' blog sites are already portals, and sometimes are even used by readers as such. And almost certainly the major subject-area blogs are portals.

Here's an excerpt from a recent Globe and Mail tech review:

That leaves about a half-dozen Ajax-powered portals (Ajax being the technology that makes them fast and interactive), including Netvibes, Protopages, Pageflakes and Zoozio. Oh yes -- and there are a couple of little players named Google (with its google/ig) and Microsoft (with live.com).

Both Netvibes and Pageflakes have recently gotten venture-capital financing, so someone must see a future in the homepage frontier.

Richard MacManus of Read/WriteWeb is one of those. In a recent post, he says that what now appear to be just cool interactive homepages could become the portals of the Web 2.0 future, with all kinds of widgets and tools built in.

In a sense, they could become a virtual desktop -- the tool you use to gather all the bits and pieces of your online life together, all of them interacting and updating automatically.

I think Richard might be right. I'm a big fan of Netvibes.com, in part because it is fast -- a lot faster than Google's ig -- and because it is flexible, with dozens of different modules (such as Flickr, del.icio.us and Digg modules) and features including the ability to add new tabs, click once and mark all items in a feed read, and so on.

Google's effort, much like its other tools such as Google Reader, verges on the lame. It seems slow and clunky, you only get three columns (Netvibes.com has four) and you can't add new tabs. Admittedly, those kinds of things aren't exactly a powerful barrier to entry.

Tags: flows of information, effectiveness, modular, Web 2.0

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Qumana Chicklets
Topic: Blog Editor

We finally have them! Chicklets! Here are a huge assortment of chicklets, buttons & whatnots you can put into your sidebars to show your support for Qumana.

Simply right-click, save, then upload to your server and put on your blog. Or you can drag it into your post if you want too! Don't forget to add a link to the chicklet as well.

We'll be adding these to our website too. Thanks to everyone who kept asking for these - it's great to have your support!

Personally, my faves are these ones:

I am a bit of a coffee addict, so the last two are quite fitting. Actually, come to think of it, there are several coffee addicts here at Qumana. I wonder if mass blogging + coffee are a common mix?

The Flow of Information Goes On And On ...
Topic: General stuff

I often find myself wondering what will be next .. and then next .. and then next .. in the endless stream of applications that help us manipulate, manage and sometimes mangle the process of writing and publishing to the Web.

At Qumana we have been conscious for a long time that every individual has her or his own working style (have you ever watched over your friend's, or your sister's, or your dad's shoulder whilst they are doing something on the computer, or on the web ? I'll bet you're just like me, and everyone else I have ever seen ... you just instinctively want to reach out ands steer, because they aren't doing it the way you do) ... ;-)

The Web is now a major part of hundreds of millions of peoples' lives. Personal publishing of some form or another, whether it's called blogging or something else, won't be going away any time soon.

On the Web, info flows in to your conscious awareness all the time .. continuously. Whether it's via an RSS aggregator, or through some search activity, or just by browsing and link-hopping. You're always watching, reading .. using your cognitive capabilities and style to *interact* with the flows of information passing in front of your eyes.

Ours (and many other peoples') quest is to design, make and offer applications that give you maximum time for reading and thinking whilst you are at the center of this continuous flow of information. Ideally, we would get most operations - most anything you want to do, other than typing itself - down to one click, but it's not likely that we'll get every operation down to that level of simplicity. But many, if not most will be.

In the blogging / personal; publishing environment, we want to make publishing all sorts of other digital content (think podcasts, self-created mp3's, photo slide shows, video clips) as easy as publishing text, links and images are now. We want to make Qumana, and Qumana integrated with Lektora as the Q Reader, formidably simple *information pivots* which will allow you, the personal publisher, read, think, write and express yourself as clearly and elegantly as possible ... whilst still offering you significant flexibility, versatility and power to address the wide range of individual's personal publishing habits.

We want to help you become more effective in the ongoing, never-ending, flow of information. We will welcome any and all feedback that helps make this quest a reality, for you and all your fellow personal publishers.

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Walkabout Podcast Apr 25 -- Lycos and Qumana blogging together
Topic: Blogging News

It's been a while coming and since we're in Boston, Waltham actually, meeting with Lycos Jen and I thought it would be a great time to do a little podcast talking about Lycos-Qumana partnership.

Enjoy!

Walkabout Podcast Apr 25 8.7 megs 13 mins.

Tags: Lycos, Qumana, podcast, walkabout podcast[

Style tip: blockquotes
Topic: Blog Editor

I am going to introduce you to something called a "blockquote". The use of this feature makes your blog look better - and it ensures that you don't tread on anyone's toes.

What is a blockquote?

The blockquote element is used to indicate the quotation a large section of text from another source. Using the default HTML styling of most web browsers, it will indent both margins both on the display and in printed form. Source: Wikipedia

So, that is the technical definition and I showed you it in use, as well.

A blockquote is basically some code that you use when you are quoting someone - a book, another blog, or anything else. It tells your readers that you did not write that section. They are just like using quote marks in essays.

Why would you use it?

1. It tells your readers you are quoting someone
2. It visually breaks up the page (see example below), which keeps your readers interested
3. It respects the author of the quote (also note I linked to the source)

Example:

This is me writing something and I've found someone who I think says a great thing. "This is the quote of that person talking about something interesting"

versus

This is me writing something and I've found someone who I think says a great thing.

This is the quote of that person talking about something interesting

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Notice how that just draws your eye down the page?

How to use a blockquote

Using the Lycos-Qumana Blog Editor, you don't need to worry about coding the blockquote. All you have to do is highlight the text you want to indent and press this button in your toolbar:

Tags: lycos, qumana, blockquote