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A t the suggestion of Pidge (I wonder if he is the half-brother of Midge, the infamous Midge Ure of Ultravox and Live Aid fame? He’s probably ridgy-didge anyway…), I am testing out Zoundry, a new blog editor.
The list of what it claims it can do is impressive and so far I’ve used it to create two posts offline — this one and my post about Trevor Cook and PR ethics.
As to whether this editor will stand the test of time, one has to wait and see, but I was heartened to see that it installed quickly and simply, found this blog with no hassles and once I entered my username and password immediately started downloading my old posts so I could cross-reference them if necessary.
The layout is very reminiscent of typical web applications like Dreamweaver, et al. You instinctively understand what most of the buttons are for, and the developers have gone to the trouble of giving you handy ‘how to use this’ tips in their rollovers. So that, for example, if you place your mouse over the text box where you can enter tags, it tells you to enter a comma separated list of tag words. Handy.
One peeve is the damned nuisance of having to go online to access the help files. How can I do that if I am using it as an offline editor and need to know something — like how to add technorati tags to my post? It turns out that just adding the tags into the requisite text box does all you need — when the post is published it auto-includes those tags. But I had to go online to find that out — how hard would it be to include the help file (a single html web page, see below) in the program folder?
It also doesn’t convert two or three hyphens to an em-dash, and so I immediately miss BlogJet’s very handy ‘auto-correct’ feature, wherein I could type the letters ‘bcr’ and it would automatically replace them with a fully coded link to my blog, as an example. So I can’t even set it to turn three hypens into an em-dash automatically. No doubt ‘ordinary’ bloggers don’t use em-dashes, but I know that a subset of bloggers called ‘business communicators based in the Adelaide Hills’ does.
The user ‘manual’ (actually, one long toilet roll of a webpage, 37 A4 sheets) is quite comprehensive and with only a couple of grammatical mistakes (probably caused by tired eyes typing at 4am) I am impressed with the user-friendliness of it all.
The first impression I get is of a bunch of developers who are actually trying really hard to ‘get it right’. I have yet to test the image uploading capabilities of it, but the developers seem to have thought of many, if not all, eventualities — and more importantly go to the trouble of explaining in clear English why you are unable to do something.
There are lots of options available to you when you right mouse click, which also helps, plus a useful smattering of keyboard shortcuts. The developers really do seem to have gone a few extra yards to make their tool a useful one.
One little piece of coding I found on their support website really did tickle me — by adding a small bit of code into GreatNews, my aggregator of choice, I can ‘blog it’ any post I read, meaning I can automatically power up a fresh blog post in Zoundry from a text link on the bottom of each post in GreatNews, complete with link to the original post. I have yet to try this out, not being able to connect to the internet as I write this, and if it works will be very impressed. As I type, just hitting the ‘blog it’ link on a post opens up a new, empty tab in greatNews. So perhaps I need to find out a bit more about how to get this particular piece of jiggery-pokery to work.
A small bell of alarm rings in the back of mind because it is a free application. So how is the development funded? It seems that the developers want you to subscribe to their third-party referral system, for which they take a cut of your earnings and you get a potentially nifty blog editor for free.
I’ll road test that part of their offering this week and let you know how I get on. What concerns me is that such a ‘double-edged’ offering might put off potential users, who see a referral system attached and so instantly dismiss the blog editor as a low-value loss-value leader into a referral or multi-level marketing system. I don’t think it is, but it is certainly an impression that crossed my mind.
With the fiasco of the last fortnight still fresh in my mind, I am not likely to be forgiving if the software turns out, like other tools before it, to promise more than it delivers.
My biggest hope is still that Microsoft or some other mainstream development house buys one of these fledgling web2.0 startups and turns a good idea into a thoroughly robust one. It’s probably Zoundry’s hope, too…
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Hey Lee. Zoundry is ok, but I hate the interface! I did a quick review here.
Hi Lee,
We used to use TextPad (www.textpad.com) to edit our html pages. We just begun to use Zoundry to write our website html pages (non blog) and save them to CVS folder (our version control software). At some point we will migrate to a CMS such as Drupal for managing the site and userguide etc. Btw, fair comment on including the userguide with the app (though its not easy to keep it upto date - maybe make it available as a separate zip download). we still need to include infomation on managing mutliple blogs - a few more A4s 
I think you hit the mark re: posting the userguide at 4am
Some features you had mentioned such as auto-correct (auto-link) has been targeted for a 1.x point release - once inline (as you type) spell check has been integrated.
To use GreatNews (GN), you will need their build 366 or later. See their forum post:
http://www.curiostudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1174 (feature request)
http://www.curiostudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1247 (build 366)
Product review (affiliate links) insertions is currently open only to US residents (we currently have affiliate agreements with the merchants based out of the US. - non Down Under).
G’day Pidge,
I am impressed that you have entered into the discussion so willingly. I haven’t heard from the Qumana guys after criticising their stable and beta versions, nor ecto.
Like Dave, I considered BlogJet the best of the bunch (didn’t even worry about paying the money, as it was a small amount compared to RocketPost’s $99), but so far Zoundry has really taken me by surprise.
I am delighted with it! There are a few improvements that could be made (and you know about the gui already - make the buttons bigger for us old guys!
) and I’m not sure about the image handling — you seem to create a new image with a long number as a filename; can’t you just upload the base image, so that my blog’s images folder mirrors my hard drive?
Also, going into the html on my post about blog editors - http://leehopkins.net/2006/04/20/more-on-offline-editors/ - I notice that the ‘li’ tags have double ‘br’ tags, not ‘p’ tags. What I would love to see is a way of taking a whole list and applying ‘p’ and ‘/p’ tags automatically so that they are spaced out in a readable way — my worry with ‘br’ tags is that some browsers may not read them correctly and the end-user gets presented with a whole lot of squished up text again.
Is there a way of re-downloading posts — I ask this because if I have already downloaded my posts into Zoundry, then go to my blog editor online (part of the admin interface) and edit a post, how can I incorporate those changes into my Zoundry copy of the post?
Oh, one last thing…
Dave Briggs suggests a great editor would also allow WordPress users (like me and him) to edit our ‘pages’ as well as our blog entries. That would be dead handy.
I had a look at my version of GreatNews and its 364, so I ‘checked for update’ within GN and it told me I had the latest version. I’ll go to the GN site and see if they have a fix…
Cheers for all your input into the discussion, Pidge.
Lee - I actually rather like Zoundry’s image file handling. How did you set it up at the start? I chose to “Use blog’s file upload feature (xml-rpc)”. What this does is use the same file structure that WordPress itself uses when you upload images using the admin panel.
Because I had previously uploaded images using WordPress, it meant there was some consistency there, which was nice…
Yeah, Dave — just the xmlrpc stuff. Nothing fancy. That makes it very neat and simple, which I like. I just notice that when it is uploading an image it changes the filename to a long string of numbers…
BTW - have installed latest GN but still can’t get ‘blog it’ to work…
Lee, what error are you getting in GN?
Lee,
I use the GN settings described on our site:
http://www.zoundry.com/support.html#Q3.6
To anwser some of your questions:
1) UI - yes. Most likely a 2.0 version will have streamline/configurable UI, but a 1.x version will probably have an option to hide “unwanted features” (thinking most people do not need to all of the features - sort of a 80/20 rule) as well as a larger buttons. (our very early releases had the larger buttons - but took more realestate from the actual editing area - as we added more options in the toolbar).
2) Image handling wrt assigning new filenames and uploading a copy. Well, the idea was supposed to be you throw in all your media content into it (image, audio/video files) etc. and it used to “synchronize” with your ftp site e.g. upload new files and download files that are not found locally (i.e mirror of your ftp site images/files folder with in your local harddrive). Also, upload files only if you had not previously uploaded them (e.g. if you are editing a post). But was not very useful when it came to the real world use (i.e. user feedback). Right now for FTP, its partial mirroring .e.g upload images only if you had not uploaded it before). For 1.x, it will most likely remain same. For 2.0, it will redone to use the files/image from their original location. This means we need to monitor the references to it e.g. has image been modified since last update?; has it been deleted ‘accidently’? etc.
3) Re-downloading posts. I assume the use case scenario is, first you create an entry using an offline editor and post it. Then at a later time, you update it using the online interface. Now, you want the offline editor to have the ‘latest’ copy.
This one is a bit tricky mainly due to determing who (local hard drive or online copy) has the ‘most recent copy’. (especially if you had modified in both places). A simple way to determine this is to check the last modified time. However, not all blog servers return the exact time. Some servers (nearly all xml-rpc severs) return the ‘local time’ - which is not necessarily the same as your ‘local time’.
Blogger.com (and typepad) uses Atom API. We were able to Blogger/Typepad timestamps because atom api uses UTC time (GMT). But with xml-rpc support (wordpress etc), it is not possible to do this correctly. For 1.x, we can do is to prompt the user if they want to override the local changes with the online changes.
Finally, to anwser your question :), a work around is to delete you local copy of the post (make sure you do not delete from the server(s) ) and re-download the last N entries.
4) The double on the bulleted list you referred to would have been generated by the editor you used. It is not necessary since CSS style for the would/should determine the presentation (space wise). Zoundry also does not automatically enclose content of a list in a . (unless you typed in multiple paragraphs and then placed the cursor on each para and press the bullet list button).
5) As for editing WordPress ‘pages’ - well it is not possible due to lack of support on the wordpress xml-rpc side. (Drupal allows you to do this). Also, wordpress and most other server also do not return the post’s ‘draft’ status when you download the posts. (We have submitted some patches to WP - but did not get into their release). On Blogger.com, if you post as a draft using their online editor, that information is passed back to the offline editor via the atom api.
Ok, I think it looks like I have indirectly complained about the lack of development on the server side APIs
Hi Jack! File under ‘User is an idiot” error…
Hey Pidge, thanks again for the stack of info, very much appreciated (see my latest post - http://leehopkins.net/2006/04/26/using-greatnews-and-zoundry-together/)
Well, who’s up for a bit of ‘pushing’ the WP developers, then?? I’ll join in!
I also hadn’t thought (doh!) about using CSS to style the lists — thanks for pointing out the screamingly obvious!
Hi Lee, thanks for your reviews of our Blog Writer. As Zoundry’s business guy, I wanted to answer your question about our business model. You’re right that we make money through our affiliate service, where you can create affiliate links easily to a number of leading merchants, like Amazon, Buy.com, eBags, iTunes, Cooking.com, etc. We manage tracking, reporting, and payments for you, and in return we charge a transaction fee on your commissions. The key here is that there’s no upfront fee and many of our users wouldn’t otherwise bother to earn this money without the convenience of our one-stop shop service.
We started Zoundry with two goals - the first, was to make blog publishing easier - and I think we’re making great strides there with feedback from bloggers like yourself. The second goal was to enable people to get rewarded for recommending great products to their friends, family, and the general public. Our vision was to encourage “local experts”, like your friend who’s an expert on jazz, to share his recommendations on jazz CDs in a blog using our software and service. When you buy one of his recommended CDs by clicking through a Zoundry product link, then he gets rewarded for sharing his knowledge. He can keep it to cover his hosting costs and time, or he can donate it to charity if he’s concerned about conflict of interest.
I share your concern about a “double-edged” offering and I know there are a lot of multi-level scams out in the affiliate world. We’ve tried to make our model as transparent as possible. You sign up with us and we handle all the complexities of affiliate marketing for you. In return we take a cut of your commissions. And you keep more of your commissions as you earn more money.
We don’t require participation in our service in order to use our editor. Our Blog Writer is a free download with no strings attached. But we’re hoping that we’ve guessed correctly and there are enough people out there who do want to make some money for themselves or charity by sharing recommendations of products they use and enjoy.
We’ve made the bet that if we simplify affiliate marketing enough to bring in the mainstream - people who otherwise would not participate in the affiliate economy - then we’ll have a nice little business that could turn into a large business. And that will fund development of our free editor.
Lastly, as my colleague Pidge pointed out earlier, we started with online merchants in the U.S. only. If we can ramp up our business here in the States, then we would like to expand to merchants in other countries. The questions that I have are, what do online merchants in Australia and other countries around the world think about affiliate marketing? And how many merchants run affiliate programs - either by themselves or through networks like CJ?
G’day Lawrence,
Many thanks for the input — I have been involved with some affiliate schemes, and also MLM, so am aware of the potentials and pitfalls. My concern is for those who come to your site and potentially are ‘put off’ by the concept (which must be, thankfully, a smaller and smaller number each year).
As for Australian schemes, might I suggest Allan Gardyne as the local boy who is the recognised expert around the world on affiliate marketing - http://www.associateprograms.com/
He’d be the first stop I’d make if I were searching for affiliate information. Drop him a line…
Cheers and best of luck (and thanks for such a great blogging tool!)