39 Best Freeware Blog Desktop Publishing Utilities

As I mentioned in my previous post, many bloggers look forward on using stand-alone desktop applications to prepare their blog post before publishing them. WriteToMyBlog provides free web-based solution, but it has several drawbacks:

1. You need Internet connection when you work with the site.
   
2. You depend entirely on the site functionality and operation speed.
   
3. You have to provide your login data to get connected to your publishing platform, which many users do not feel comfortable to do.

Desktop Blog publishing utilities, while having their own problems, successfully bypass the noted limitations. You can work offline on your article generation and formatting, and publish it as soon as it is ready. That saves valuable online time and traffic, if your data plan is not unlimited.


In the Rating list, I am going to present today, I listed free software assisting bloggers in preparation, formatting, and submission the posts to their hosting sites with minimum amount of time and best outcomes. Presented utilities are to help those using free blogging platforms like Blogger and Wordpress, and those who prefer maintaining their Blog on the independent Web Site using server-based scripts.


I presented this list on this blog for the first time in January 2008, when there were just 14 utilities included. As of today, there are already 39 free computer programs, scripts, and plug-ins on the list. Feel free to review the collection, input your rating and experience, and even add some items that might be currently missing from consideration.


RateItAll List: http://www.rateitall.com/t-24825-blog-publishing-freeware.aspx


The programs with the highest rating are:

1. Windows Live Writer
   
2. BlogDesk
   
3. Qumana
   
4. W.bloggar
   
5. WordPress
   
6. Zoundry Blog Writer

Using Favicon for your Blog or Website (Part 1)

What is Favicon and how it can help you Blog?

A ‘favicon’ is the little graphic you sometimes see next to a website address in your browser. See example below:

When you have a site to your favorites folder, you will also notice the same little icon graphic displayed next to the bookmark. A favicon graphic can help make your web page stand out amongst all the over bookmarks fighting for attention…plus it also looks cool!

In this post we will discuss the opportunities on how to generate the Favicon, you would be able to use as your trademark later. The following post will present the opportunities of activating it in different blogging platforms (Blogger users should follow a different approach than WordPress users).

So, you would first need to have an icon which you would like to use, bearing the extension .ico format. If you search your hard disk, you might find some icons which are generic. I would suggest that you create one to represent your own unique identity. There is quite a number of free icon editor software which you can download from the net.

Before getting to the point of Favicon generation - conversion to the accepted format and size - you need to have a source image. Note that the image you plan to use should be royalty-free and not copyrighted (meaning, you cannot use Coca-Cola’s corporate logo as you favicon).

There are multiple utilities that will help you in the conversion process. Note that you can create icons in 2 sizes: 16x16 and 32x32. To satisfy the visibility in the bigger set of browsers, I would recommend using a 16x16 icon.

Freeware Favicon Creators

Imagicon is a graphics utility designed to convert multiple image files from BMP, JPG or PNG image formats into any of the following image formats (24-bit):

• Windows or OS/2 Bitmap (BMP)
• Independent JPEG Group (JPG)
• Portable Network Graphics (PNG)
• Windows Icon (ICO)

Software is absolutely free to download and use. Compatible with the following platforms: Windows 98/2000/ME/NT/XP/Vista.


Adsen FavIcon is a simple favion freeware creator that lets people make a fav icon for their website, which shows up in IE`s favorites. It can use either bmp or jpg files, and will convert them to ico format using the size and color quality you choose. Not only can you create fav icons, but it can also be used for creating icons for programs. Adsen FavIcon comes with notes on what settings to use for making fav icons and how to install them.

This software is freeware as well and supports most of the Windows OS platforms: Windows 95/98/2000/ME/NT/XP.

Png2ico - simple PNG to ICO converter with no graphic interface, easy to use. To create favicon.ico that contains your logo in the resolutions 16x16 and 32x32, you should use the following command line: png2ico favicon.ico logo16x16.png logo32x32.png.

Note that this is a console application without GUI. You may run it through console or Start/Run only. Double-clicking on the file will not execute it.

The software is freeware and supports the folloing platforms: Windows, Linux, Unix, GNU, etc.

Online Favicon Generators

If you do not wish to download any software, you may also try creating an icon online. Just enter the keywords “online icon generator” into your Google search bar, and you should be able to find several programs that you can try. These online software sites now make it incredibly easy for anyone to convert normal graphics into favicons. In most cases, you just browse to the file on your PC and click ‘generate icon’. After your favicon is created you can download it on your Hard Drive for future use.
Selected sites that can be used for online favicons and icons generation:

http://www.favicon.co.uk/
http://www.htmlkit.com/services/favicon/
http://www.favicongenerator.com/
http://www.freefavicon.com/
http://www.degraeve.com/favicon/
http://www.favicongenerator.org/
http://www.genfavicon.com/
http://freefavicons.org/

BlogDesk - free software for Blog writing and publishing

Sometimes, blog post preparation for publishing takes more time than post generation. It is not suppose to be like that. You should delegate as much responsibilities for the post publishing to your secretary (if you have one), or software.

BlogDesk is an offline software client that assists you in comfortable writing and easy publishing new posts to your blog.

Software Features:
* The main feature - it is totally free to use.

* Software is optimized for the following blogging platforms: WordPress, MovableType, Drupal, Serendipity, and ExpressionEngine.

* Insert images directly with WYSIWYG editor, edit them with built-in ImageWizard, and even create linked thumbnails.

* Easily insert and edit links. If you link to local files (such as MP3 or PDF), BlogDesk will automatically upload them to your blog file storage.

* For multi-language blogging, you got 14 Dictionaries to conduct spell checking.

* Interesting feature of Frequently Used Phrases saves time on typing of often used phrases, sentences, acronyms or complex formulations.

* Define and insert tags instead of retyping them with Tags-Generator.

* Publish you post simultaneously to multiple blogs with one click.

* Keep your ideas and notes for the future posts in the convenience of Notebook, where you are able to create multiple entries under multiple categories.

Download the software from authors’s Web Site: http://www.blogdesk.org/en/index.htm
P.S. The only thing, I do not like in this software - is that it does not support Blogger.

21 Free Utilities for AdSense Users

Most likely, I do not have to explain to you, what the AdSense program is. Entering this market, Google drastically changed the map. AdSense are Google contextual ads that any Web Site or Blog owner can place on his/her Blog, Search Engine, or Web Site. Google, in return, will share a portion of the revenues generated from these ads. The specific pay rate varies, depending on the keywords on the Web site used to generate the ads.

You can review a brief informative tour at the Google Web Site on the AdSense basics:

http://www.google.com/services/adsense_tour/index.html

If you do not have a Web Site, but you still want to enjoy the piece of the Google’s pie Google, there are multiple opportunities for you as well. Find the list of the Revenue sharing Web Sites, I have created on RateItAll:

http://www.rateitall.com/t-24229-revenue-sharing-web-sites.aspx

Your task mostly to submit content (posts, images, videos, etc.), and your host will do the rest, taking a small share of your AdSense income as reimbursement.

AdSense provides pretty good stats monitoring, giving you ability to track your visitors per artificial or URL channels and other parameters. However, some user pointed out on the certain deficiency of these statistics and inconvenience related to the need to log in to the site to check the trends. Also, there are occasional delays with the stats posting, which can misrepresent the visitors’ response trend for the high-traffic Blogs a Sites owners. To close the gap, several software packages were developed. I have prepared the list of the free applications on RateItAll, as usual, with brief description, rating, and links for download:

http://www.rateitall.com/t-24845-freeware-utilities-for-adsense.aspx

Enjoy the release!

14 Blog Desktop Editors - Freeware Reviews

Until recently, I was using Web-Based Editor to make post on my Blogs. But, as my activities became more frequent, and overall amount of the Projects increased, I started to look for the suitable desktop solution. It is easier to compile and format the post in convenience on your Hard Drive, and as it ready, just publish it. Appeared, that there is a descent choice of the free products, available on the market, to complete the task. I am still looking for the one that I will permanently use, but almost every product I tried, is more convenient that the Web-Based editing solution.

For your convenience, I have compiled a list of the 14 Blog Desktop Editors on RateItAll. As usual, only the free programs were considered. Also, I did not include the scripts, that require installation on the server.

Please, access the link:
http://www.rateitall.com/t-24825-blog-publishing-freeware.aspx

Lifehacker conducted a poll among bloggers to define the desktop blogging software used, and found out that almost 61% of the respondents still use online editor. The results of the poll are presented on the graph:

What about you?