I saw someone asked about free blogging tools and since I haven’t seen much mention of these, I thought I would write about a few that I use or am aware of.
Small tools that are found all over the web are the “blog this” buttons seen on Flickr and Facebook among others. You click the button and it opens a window with the picture or article you’ve indicated you want to blog about. It will ask you for your blog’s URL, your login and password and you add whatever you want to say about the picture or article and there you have it. A brand new shiny blog post.
I will confess to being a bit concerned about the security of using these tools as putting in my login and password information all over the net isn’t a comfortable thing for me, but everyone has different levels of security consciousness.
FireFox has a whole arsenal of blogging tools at your disposal. Beginning with Clipmarks which allows you to highlight articles or pictures, saves it to clipmarks.com for your later insertion into blog posts. I find this one invaluable for quoting from respected sites that I use as sources. It not only saves the text or images, but the link where they were found.
Another very useful tool is Scribe Fire (which I’m currently using to write this post). Download Scribe Fire and install it and then provide your blog’s URL and login information. A window opens up and you’re writing a blog post. Scribe Fire allows you to insert images from the web, your computer or Flickr, as well as videos from YouTube. There is a button on the left to monetize a post. You have to be signed up for Scribe Fire Quick ads, but that’s easy to do.
Another blog post editor tool that’s freely available is Windows Live Writer. I’ve used this tool quite a bit on my photo blog as I like the effects available in it for images. Although Live Writer gives your image names some odd looking and rather long tags, it’s proven to be a reliable tool that I can highly recommend. You set up Live Writer by telling it your blog URL and sign in credentials. It’s very easy to manage several blogs with Live Writer and another benefit is that it saves your posts to your hard drive, so making changes offline for later uploading is simple and effective. You also have a locally available document in case you ever need to re-publish a post you deleted accidentally.
Another FireFox plugin that’s available to use is Zemanta (it’s also available as a WordPress plugin). I love Zemanta as I don’t always have the perfect image to use with a particular post and Zemanta provides you with a gallery of images you can insert into your posts. That’s where the DNA dildo came from. It also provides you with links to mostly Wikipedia sites for keywords it finds in your post along with links to relevant articles on other blogs. I often use the links, and when I have time to preview some of those articles, will use those as well. By using them, you get a little SEO power going 
Now if Zemanta would only integrate with Live Writer and/or Scribe Fire, I would say we are ROCKIN’. ** UPDATE!!! Per Zemanta, they do (and I have downloaded it, so yes they do!) have a plugin for Live Writer! WOOT!! Now we can truly ROCK!
So, not a terribly long list of tools, but some powerful ones that with just a little use you might find saves you time and trouble down the road.
Do you currently use any tools for blogging?
Do you use any I’ve listed here? If so, what do you think of them?
Do you have any others you can suggest?
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![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=e84e8ed6-54b6-4b66-b635-cb9a00786822)
Wow, quite a list, you really did your homework on this one. Zemanta is new to me, I will go and investigate, thanks for the info. I find it very difficult to find ‘legal’ graphics for use in my posts. This might prove to be just what I am looking for.
Lyndi´s last blog post..I love your blog award
Hi,
I am Andraz from Zemanta. Thanks for nice words about our service.
Just want to correct you – Zemanta actually exists as a Live Writer plug-in too! Just go to our home page and get it.
So please do say we are ROCKIN’
bye
Andraz Tori, Zemanta
Andray Tori´s last blog post..Defrag 2008, William Duggan, Strategic intuition
another good information i could learn it here..:) i think i need more information on internet aside from graphics..im a bum on this..in all honesty m spoon feed. i only write and do the basic like pic but beyond to that its a no no how..heheh
fit4all´s last blog post..Too Tired to be Scared
@Lyndi — Oh I’m quite sure I’m far from listing all the tools available! I’m waiting to hear from some of the others about services they use and recommend.
@Andraz — thanks for the information! I guess I need to visit your site more often
Yes, now I can truly say, Zemanta + Windows Live Writer is truly ROCKIN!
@Glorie — get Live Writer then head over to Zemanta to get that tool and you will be blogging like an old pro.
Too technical for little ‘ol moi…
… absolutely *love* the cartoon though
Ken Armstrong´s last blog post..Quantum of So-So
Google users who have i-google home pages can grab the Blogger gadget and blog directly from their home page. If you have news services and other news or blog gadgets on your home page you can grab quotes directly move them across the page and drop them in your blog…very cool..but I miss being able to look at the whole post while I am blogging
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@Ken — aw c’mon now — you gotta be kidding, right?
@meredith — thanks! I ‘ll have to check that out. It sounds very cool.
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