More Useful Apps…

How does a tech news blog in a developing country stay on top of current events? Here’s a list of all the applications that I use on a daily basis, why I use them, and how they improve my workflow as a blogger. For some applications I’ve listed a Linux and Windows alternative. A lot of these applications are used by bloggers all over the world, but I thought it’d be fun to show off some gadgetry. A while back I posted a similar post called “10 Applications for Bloggers in Developing Countries“, this is just a follow up with some new notes for applications I listed last time and a few desktop apps.

Ecto

Ecto has become the the lifeline for my blogging career. It’s a desktop application that works like a word processor, allowing my to write posts anywhere at anytime. When I’m online I can post remotely, without visiting my website by clicking a button like I would in an email application. This is great for times when the power is out, or when the internet is especially slow. It also supports attaching media like pictures, audio and video and it can be integrated with your Flickr account. If you have more than one blog to maintain regularly, Ecto will allow you to rapidly update them all in a matter of minutes.

Linux Alternative: , Windows Alternative:

Evernote

My personal notepad offline. This cool app has a great deal of utility: on and offline access to content, quick posting via a browser extension and quick archival of webpages. A number of people have begun using Evernote to take pictures of business cards, automatically parse the text and store the data online for retrieval later. For me it’s a great place to take notes, tag photos and brainstorm for my next big blog post. You can also forward notes to it via email and the iPhone App is pretty slick when I happen to have a connection.

Twhirl and Tweetdeck

Twitter is a great place for people to socially share links and news so naturally it’s become one of my leading ’sources’ for content. I have several Twitter accounts and all of them have several hundred followers. Twhirl allows me to view conversation streams at a glance and helps me reply to people quickly. Tweetdeck I often keep open for one specific reason: persistent search. TweetDeck will crawl the twitterverse for hash tags, names, dates or phrases if you tell it to, great when news is breaking and you don’t have time to manually visit http://search.twitter.com to look manually.

All platforms that support Adobe Air.

NetNewsWire

This app is my personal ‘news room’ if you will. I subscribe to well over three hundred feeds, aggregating them all by category. Some of the main features I find useful about NNW is that I can quickly search all content and it’s all automatically archived to my hard drive. So in six months when I’m looking for that one article I read that one time, I can just look back through months of archived blog posts and quickly find what I’m looking for. Oh, and most importantly all my feeds and recently aggregated content are also conveniently stored ‘on the cloud’ for convenience. I also like the fact that while I’m surfing the net, or writing, NetNewsWire automatically fetches new content as it’s published.

Firefox

A lot of bloggers prefer the ’social’ browser Flock, but I’m a fan of Firefox for it’s massive add-on library. I can make Firefox into the browser of my choice in only a few minutes by downloading different applications. Want to blog from your browser? Download Scribefire. Want content recommendations? Try BlogRovr. Want to manage your Facebook or Twitter profiles? You get the point…

All platforms.

Thunderbird

Thunderbird is far from the world’s best email application but I generally like it more than some of the other ones I’ve tried like Apple Mail and Entourage. It’s fairly stable and the search options are everything I need for digging up old messages. Also, for me organizing things on the fly is essential and luckily this app supports tagging, multiple folders, multiple account types (POP3 and IMAP at the same time).

All platforms.

Quicksilver

The more I program, the more I become a fan of the command line. It’s just as easy for me to type the name of something as it is to scroll around, find an Icon or document and click it…sometimes it’s even faster. Quicksilver is an application that allows you to launch things quickly simply by typing a few letters in the name of the application you want. I use a Mac which comes with the pre-installed app Spotlight, but I really do find Quicksilver faster.

Apple Preview/Flickr Uploadr

Although Ecto has some image resizing features, occasionally I need to do some quick optimization (contrast, color correction, tone shifting) before uploading to the web. This app makes it easy for anyone who doesn’t feel like firing up Photoshop. I especially like the space-bar quick preview that Apple added with Leopard.

Flickr Uploadr simply allows you to upload content to the website without actually visiting the site. I usually upload here and then I use Ecto’s Flickr features for embedding.

iStat Menus

I’ve had two hard drives fry in the past year. In order to curb system overload, I’ve installed iStat which allows me to monitor vital system processes like how fast my fan is rotating, what my connection speed is, how much memory I’m using and how full my hard drive is. If nothing else, at least I can sort of predict my next crash…at least that’s the theory behind my using it.

Linux Alternative: dkrellm, Windows Alternative: rmClock, Motherboard Monitor, Yahoo Monitor