Qumana - Some Good Things To Say About A Very Good Product

A week or so ago, I decided I had enough with the built-in editor in Blogger. It does its job, I wont say it doesn't, but for some reason my Firefox and Blogger seem to have some problems. Especially if I navigate away from the Post screen while writing or editing or post (or in the template screen while changing the template) once I come back half the post is gone or the template is all corrupt. Additionally, I kind of like the idea of creating my post off line and then just uploading it. So for a bit I played with Google's Word-to-Blogger utility which is not bad, but then I discovered Qumana you can see this software and download it for free over at http://www.qumana.com/.

Of course being the techie snob I downloaded there 3.0 beta knowing full well and being forewarned on their site that it has bugs in it. But then again what piece of software does not have bugs? It took around 10 minutes to get used to, even though I was kind of disappointed at the Java implementation. However, Java does have its uses, and it seems to work for Qumana.

What is Qumana? Qumana is an editor which should work for most blog software. You edit off line, it saves and publishes for you, and takes care of all the headaches in the background. Oh did I forget? Qumana is FREE.

What's more if you do Technorati tags and insert them into your posts, Qumana makes that real easy as well to do. You type in the tags and Qumana will surround it with the relevant HTML "rel" tags. (suggestion would also be to be able to create the "bookmark" tag for Technorati as well.) If you use a blogging system with categories, Qumana does that as well. And you can turn off and on Trackbacks and add them as well,  and you an allow or choose not to allow comments for each post.

You can also easily get to the source code of your post and fiddle around there. Since I trust nothing, I do find myself hitting the source code quite often, but once you get the hang of their using the "span" commands etc. it is a piece of cake. They are trying to stay on top of the game as they wrote to me in their email, "Qumana is an XHTML Transitional editor"

Another really great implementation, is that you give Qumana your blog addresses and it retrieves all the posts and then you can edit them off line and republish if you so wish. And if you find yourself editing a post on line without Qumana then you just go to Qumana after you published and ask to "refresh posts" and voila your Qumana is now in total synch with your blog..

Another GREAT facility is that they have a menu for you to put in ping addresses, and they ping for you each time you post. Which means you do not have to post, go to Technorati, go to pingworld, go to FeedBlitz and on and on and on. Qumana does it for you.

Okay Qumana still has a ways to go. I do have a wish list for it. But when I wrote their tech support, I got an answer in less than 12 hours. Now that gets an A+ in my book especially for free software. These folks are trying hard and they get points for effort as well. Qumana, I assume, plans to make money from their Q-Ads (borrowing Google's context relevant ad placement idea I guess) but these ads also make YOU money as well - and they are an option. If you do not want any adverts showing up in your posts they won't. You have to physically plant them there in each post.

As to the wish list, well here is a partial one:

1. Coloring text - Ianiv Schweber their Lead Qumana developer, in the email assured me they were working on it. So the jury is out on that one until it comes in working.


2. Spell as you type - is too slow. I have to turn it off while I type then turn it on after I am done and let it find all my typos and spelling mistakes. It would also be great to have the ability to ADD to the dictionary (creating a file on your hard disk, so that words you know are okay, can be added to the dictionary.) This normative spelling function is sorely lacking from Qumana. Hey, I call my kids "bazoodis" - I need that word in the dictionary!


3. Q-Ads in order to be viable they must offer a way of saving a Palette so you can match your web site colors. Currently you can use the default pallet or change the colors. BUT you cannot save your own preferences and that means in every post you have to set the color palette of the advert to match your site again. There is no way I would go through that process for every post. So, until this is done Qumana Adverts are simply not viable for someone like me. Which is a shame. I like context sensitive adverts. But Google has spoiled us. Before adding to their advertising base they should fix this glaring problem pronto. Advertisers will only come on board if people are willing to place their adverts.


4. They need a bit more on their help screens. Qumana assumes that most people are techies. However, the product is specifically for the non-techie. I would like to see more detailed help.


5. Special Characters from a menu and not by myself remembering.

Now folks remember I am talking about 3.0 BETA, and these folks at Qumana are MOTIVATED and GOOD. You can if you wish, download the stable version of 2.xx. That is playing safe.

I give Qumana 3.0 Beta  3 Gold Stars for right now. Lets see if they get to the FIVE. I am fairly sure they will. Keep up the good work folks.

Tags: technology, blogging, web site creation, content, writing, books, Search Engines, SEO, site rank, page rank
Categories: technology, internet, Basics of Blogging Series
Qumana - Some Good Things To Say About A Very Good Product

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