"Blog This" - Pretty Useful Browser Add-on for Google Chrome!

If you're a blogger who frequently writes blog posts to keep your readers happy and use the Google Chrome as your main web browser (I'm not a huge fan, but many just love it :D) then you'd love an add-on called "Blog This". This is actually created by the Google developers themselves and it only works with the Blogger platform only. 

For instance, say that while browsing a web site you came upon an interesting article and got 'inspired" by it and wanted to create a blog post of your own about it... then usually you have to open a new tab in your web browser and enter the Blogger official site and login... well it's a bit of a work ;-). 

But with the "Blog This" addon, once installed, it'll display/add a small blogger icon into your Google Chrome browser (as shown in below screenshot) and within the article that you read currently, just click on it and it'll open a small window which'll take you directly to blogger log-in page (if you aren't already logged in) and will take you to a simplified post editor window which lets you compose a decent post with...

*. Bold/italic text. 

*. Check for spellings. 

*. Change ForeColor. 

The post editor that comes with it...

*. Add block-quotes. 

*. Add links and switch between HTML or the Text post editing options. 

As you can see, say that you were reading about an article named "Ubuntu certified hardware", then "Blog This" will automatically insert that Title into the post as the default Title!. Again, if you want total control over your posts (image uploading capabilities, etc) then this simple post editor is not certainly enough yet you can then write a simple post/note and save it as a draft which you can use at later times to convert into an excellent post nonetheless :D. 

Visit this Blog This Chrome Store page to get it (it's free). 

How To Install Gwibber in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal?

Gwibber is another micro blogging client for your GNU/Linux desktop. It integrates few online social services to its cool looking GUI (written using the GTK toolkit) and lets you control your micro blogging activities with ease. They recently updated to the latest version 2.3 which brings numerous changes/enhances to the application when comparing with the previous releases.

Although it doesn't support a huge list of micro blogging/social networks but major ones such as Twitter and Faceboo, Identi.ca, Digg, FriendFeed etc RO Supported nonetheless.

Main features...

*. Easy to use GUI with built in toolbar and icons, etc.

*. Search easily + supports saved searches.

*. Doesn't consume much of your GNU/Linux Laptop/PC hardware either.

*. It supports the D-bus protocol (a protocol used for communicating within application in GNU/Linux) thus other application can easily integrate it as a plugin.

*. Check for you spelling mistakes while typing.

*. Uses HTML for themes... easily customizable as well.

*. With the recent 2.3 update, now it has a multicolumn interface which enables viewing multiple feeds with ease.

These are few of its features mention, it comes with a lot more actually. Few days ago, a new update (daily build) is available through their PPA channel, if you use Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal (10.10 and 10.04), then you can install Gwibber by entering the below command in your Terminal.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gwibber-daily/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install gwibber

ScribeFire - A Blogging "Client" Addon for Your Web Browser

If you have a blog or a web site then the usual tasks would be to open your Web browser and logging into your account then click on your "post editor" and then click on "create new posts", etc before you can do anything else :). Although once you get used to it, it's not a big deal anymore but if you'd like to simply install a web browser extension that takes your directly to your Blogging service which should speedup the process, etc, then ScribeFire is an excellent option.

Again, this is a browser extension... not a blogging client for your desktop. But when setup, ScribeFire can certainly makes it easy/speedup things a bit without a doubt.

Main features...

*. Very recently they updated to the version 1.7 which brings numerous bug fixes and Addbull monetization support for Bloggers.

*. Supports a lot of Blogging services such as - Blogger, Wordpress, LiveJournal, TypePad, Windows Live Spaces, Tumblr, etc (anything that supports the MetaWeblog or MovableType APIs).

*. Edit/Delete existing posts.

*. Create new posts.

*. Upload pictures.

*. Fully featured post editor (spell check, insert links, Bold/Italic texts, etc).

*. Supports major web browsers such as Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera.

Once installed, the setting up process is pretty simple as well. If you want to give it a try, then please visit this official ScribeFire website for more (including downloading links for various web browsers, etc).

What Happened To Blogger?

For the past two days (almost) blogger was taken into a "read only" mode. And to make things more confusing, the official Blogger developer said that they've temporarily removed posts and comments that were posted after May 11th 2011 (forgot the exact time) which also happened to this blog.

???

So, for the past almost two days I couldn't criticize anyone which was really boring as hell :P. Although the blogger team said that they've made backups of all those posts that were removed (temporarily) but since no one can guarantee about anything, I wanted to backup those "removed" posts.

Since I can't use blogger at that time, I tried to find them in the Google's cache, but it seems that they've even cleared those posts from their search-engine's cache as well. So, unless your site is being regularly crawled by Yahoo/Bing spiders then you'll have to wait till blogger team restore those posts.

You can use use Yahoo or Bing to search for your recent "missing" posts, just go into the preferred search engine and use the below phrase.

site:yoursite.com your keyword

Replace "yoursite.com" with your own site and "your keyword" with the phrase to find your missing posts (parts of their title, content, etc)

For me, there was two posts (especially a one post) that I took a lot of time to write about was also removed. I tried to find it in Yahoo and Bing but it was simply not there. And since G has removed it also, my options were limited. But luckily I just woke up and realized, that post is now published!. Still one post is missing.

Blogger Buzz has released an official note concerning the matter and if you're having the same troubles as me (you know, still few posts "missing"), then it seems that they're releasing those backup posts slowly. So if all your posts aren't released yet, then it's best to wait. I myself, learned a lesson!.

Make daily backups :(.

What caused this?

Well, Blogger team won't go into all the details right now, but it seems that, in the past two days, there have been numerous data loss-complaints and "anomalies" (directing users to the wrong blog address, etc). If you haven't made any backups, then now we are given the ability to write posts and log into the bloggor, I urge anyone to make a backup immediately.

Anyhow as the old saying goes, patience is a virtue, let's hang on to that, just for now ;).

The Redesigned Blogger Draft And Other Features May Arrive Pretty Soon!

Sometime ago official blogger team announced about the new features that we'll be having in 2011. Then very recently they also promised that after seeings the feedback they received at South by Southwest conference, the process of introducing these various new features will pickup more speed!.

Few of the things that we were promised of....

The proposed dashboard...

Post editor....

For some chosen bloggers (not sure how they "choose" but...) will have the privilege of "seeing" the redesigned Blogger draft layout and few other new options but for others (including me :P)... we'll also have the ability to get a sneak peek at the new draft within the upcoming days.

Anyhow, few minutes ago, as usual I was using the post editor in Blogger and while trying to upload an image, I noticed the image uploading window is changed!. Although blogger does change few of the look-n-feel of image uploading window from time to time, but the theme looks very similar to the "ones" that we were promised that are gonna come in 2011 (see below screenshot).

It's different right??...

Let's hope that they're gonna introduce some cool looking templates as well... something's gonna happen very soon it seems ;-), I'm already a bit nervous...