Scott Mark is curious about what offline blog tools people use and mentions w.bloggar and Qumana, neither of which I’m familiar with. However, I’m working every day getting my blogging and development and general computing environment set up for maximum production of hot air, so I’m curious what tools you can’t do without.
Here’s my setup so far:
- MacBook Pro with external Samsung SyncMaster 20.4″ flat panel screen. Note: I haven’t had excessive heat or noise problems with my machine. Am I just insensitive to such things? My husband will tell you that I operate within a very narrow band of acceptable temperatures and audio volumes.
- WordPress with my domain hosted on GoDaddy—I’m getting set to make the switch from Blogger in a few weeks.
- Obviously, the stuff that goes with WordPress—MySQL, PHP, Mac’s web server (turn on Apache with a checkbox—how cool is that?)—all configured for a local testbed on my MacBook.
- Plugins for WordPress—which do I need? Perhaps Akismet spam blocking? What else? Something for Delicious links, in the sidebar and for an auto daily link list.
- Firefox with Performancing for quick blogging
- CyberDuck FTP—it was free, but should I be considering something different?
- emacs for text editing. What the heck is Aquamacs Emacs? I found it when searching for a good URL to link from “emacs” in this bullet point.
- MS Office. I was thinking I could get by without it, but now that I’ve volunteered to be my kids’ school’s parent association secretary, I think I’ll have to use it.
Here’s what I still need:
- A graphics program - perhaps I’ll check out the GIMP, gnu’s free program
- Perhaps a nice HTML/PHP editor. Not sure whether I want to use emacs for that. It’d be nice to have color-coded text.
- Maybe a vector drawing program. You can’t make a banner image with photos alone. Or maybe you can, but I don’t want to. I like Fireworks because it loads faster than PhotoShop and has nice vector drawing capabilities. I don’t know what Adobe’s commitment to it is though. And does it matter? I just need a decent fast-loading program.
- Wireless keyboard and mouse—thanks to everyone who offered suggestions for which makes/models have been successful for them. I’ll have to look at those comments again and then figure out what to buy.
What are your can’t-do-without blogging and general computing tools?
10 Comments
Vector graphics: I’ve tried building a number of gnu vector/svg tools within os x. I’ve ended up with Inkscape, in part because they offer a .dmg binary package in case I’m too lame to b.i.y.
Aquamacs is a Aqua Emacs version. You can do things like hit cmd-h or cmd-s and it will do what you expect. Also ^X^S works too (of course!). Highly recommended.
Tools I use and are either in my dock or I run fairly often:
- Mail.app - still a great Mac mail app.
- Adium - Best multi-protocol IM client.
- Entourage - I have to work within an Exchange world.
- Aperture - very cool, goes well with my 5D.
- Omnigraffle - great diagramming tool, and only on Mac - make windows users jealous!
Other power tools:
- BluePhoneElite - interfaces with my BT phone.
- XJournal - I post to LJ, this is sometimes how I do it.
- DEVONthink Pro - info note taker program.
I’m not a big blogger however - so the need to offline edit and later post is not important to me. I am also not a big writer muchly, so my use of devonthink is not very heavy.
Personally what I really want is a local non-PHP non-website non-MYSQL media-wiki markup tool. I want said tool to also be able to post to a media-wiki compatible/workable blogging tool. I think mediawiki has one of the best markups, and I want to be able to write that anywhere. Perhaps the tool should work like WP5.1 - with ‘reveal codes’ and real-time “preview”.
pono - aloha! how’s maui? Heh, I didn’t even think I’d have to build stuff myself! Duh. I’m going to check out Inkscape.
Ryan - what a load of great info. Thanks. I’m especially interested in a diagramming tool–I kind of forgot how much I used to depend on Visio, when I was heavily into software and web design. Hmm, a note taking program… that could come in handy. I’m kind of behind on the wiki thing; will have to do some research to figure out what you’re talking about but it’s on my queue. I’m taking over as secretary of our school’s parent association and one thing they’re hoping for is better sharing of information. Maybe a bulletin board or email list is the right thing but I’m going to check into wiki software too.
# WINtel
# Wordpress/Godaddy
# Plugins… 2.0.2 has pretty good antispammage without a plugin… Ultimate Tag Warrior wil keep me busy for a while
# WS FTP Pro
# BlogJet
# Photoshop
# Textpad
# SnagIt
# Firefox for tabbed browsing… not to into the extended feature set beyond that
# ever more GMail with chat
# I’ve learned to stay away from MS Office for web stuff because of all the horrible mark-up it imposes.
For the record, my first experiment with Qumana was a total blowout. The editor was okay, but I quickly realized I couldn’t edit source through the tool (or I’m totally dense). Not good IMHO. Next my Technorati tags got hosed up - maybe I’m a wimp, but that’s one of the reasons I even wanted to consider a tool - to make that easier.
But the big blowout was that when I published I somehow lost most of my post! It somehow published an earlier revision, so I ended up doing the whole thing through the Blogger editor. Yikes! Don’t know if I’ll try Qumana again.
Thinking I just need to stick with a basic editor, and keep things simple…
iTunes - sets the mood!
Photoshop Elements for graphics
HomeSite for CSS/HTML stuff
Lazy Sheep bookmarklet for quick (one-click) adding of sites to del.icio.us
And Firefox… obviously!
Re HTML editor, I can’t be without Notepad++. Free, open source, coloured syntax, tabbing. A great tool.
Hmm, need to take a look at Notepad++. I have used HomeSite in the past, like Gordon, and liked it, but I want something new.
Scott-that Qumana experience sounds pretty bad! I hate it when I lose what I’ve already written.
Nice post!
Some OS X apps I wouldn’t leave home without are:
Quicksilver (link)
Quicksilver has made me literally 10X more effective. Type in the first few letters of any application/url/folder/ anything, and you’re there. Give it a try!
Textmate (link)
The best text editor I’ve used yet on Mac. The only one that can even come close to rivaling it is SKEDIT. http://www.skti.org/skEdit.php
Transmit (link)
Without a question, the best FTP program I’ve used for Mac. I used CyberDuck too when I first got my Mac. Best 29.99 I’ve spent for my Mac yet.
Rename4Mac (link)
If you need to rename a lot of files, this is THE app. Very easy to use, kick’s Mac OS X’s automator’s butt.
Brad, thanks for all the great suggestions. I keep reading about Quicksilver but didn’t know what it did. All those apps look very useful… I’m not thrilled with Cyberduck and need something else and emacs is not what I want to stick with for editing. I’m sure someday I’ll need to rename a bunch of files. If my Unix commands don’t come back to me, I’ll look at Rename4Mac.