TechnologyCrowd

As I stated in my last post, I am trying to use the Ubuntu OS more on my dual boot system, but I am not accustomed to a lot of the programs so usually end up reverting back to Windows when I can’t find something comparable.  As I am writing blogs in Ubuntu, I am really missing LiveWriter for the features and easy publishing.  In searching google for an alternative, it seems that I am not alone.  After installing WINE to see if I could use Windows LiveWriter with that, I discovered that it is not an option due to the framework.  I am not crazy about running a virtual box, which is one of the solutions I found.  If I need to run Windows, it is probably easier to just reboot in Vista and run it from there.

I tried a couple programs in my add programs folder, but Kblogger left me having to reformat everything in WLW so I have uninstalled it.  Blog Entry Poster appears to work, but is very basic and doesn’t allow many options for formatting and nothing for adding pictures.  BloGTK Weblog Client looks promising but when I try to open it nothing happens, maybe it will work after a reboot, but I wanted to write this now.

The best option I have found so far, which I am writing this post with is the ScribeFire plugin for Firefox.  It has all of the standard formatting options as well as features to add images, youtube videos, and related articles with Zemanta. The Zemanta tool is something that I was not familiar with, but seems like a really cool option for linking to similar posts as you can see below and is also available as a plugin for WLW.  Scribefire also has plenty of tools for promoting your blog through social networking that I will have to learn more about, but it appears that it will cut down on my manual submissions to Technorati, StumbleUpon, etc.  It also allows you to select categories and publish or publish as draft.

The preview option does not seem to function correctly with my Blog settings, but that was also an issue with WLW so I think it has more to do with my theme than the software.  I am still checking out all of the new features of ScribeFire and it is too soon to tell whether it will be able to fully replace Windows LiveWriter for all of my blogging, but it does seem like a reasonable option that I will continue to use and become more familiar with.  I think my next step is going to be adding ScribeFire to FireFox on my Vista OS.  Overall, I am pleased with the features and options offered and can’t wait to learn more about them.

If you have any other suggestions for blogging software in Linux or Vista post a comment, I would love to check out more options.