Giveaway of the Day – What a Great Idea! And How I Found out about Post2Blog amongst Other Neat Things

(Previously, on elsua – The Knowledge Management Blog at ITtoolbox)

Tags: Giveaway of the Day, Software, Freeware, Open Source, Licensed Software, Productivity Tools, Metablogging, Post2Blog, Qumana, Performancing for FireFox, Performancing, w.bloggar, Flock, WordPress, Roller Rollerweblogger, ITtoolbox, Flickr

I am not really sure any longer where I actually got the link from, but I am surely glad I actually bumped into it in the last couple of weeks. I guess that plenty of other folks have already been working their way through it because, according to Technorati, it has been creating a massive buzz over the last few weeks already. So I am thinking that this may be something that most of you probably already know about. But just in case here we go.

As most people who know me would tell you, I have always been very much in favour of free software. Everything that is Open Source I am up for it. Thus when I ended up bumping into Giveaway of the Day I just had to check it out. It is a completely new, and different, approach towards everything that is not free software.

The way it works is every day, and for a limited period of time, you get a chance to try out fully a piece of software that in any other circumstance would have cost you some money. You can then download the software, install it and play around with it. That way, at a later time, you would have a much better, and informed, opinion as whether you would want to purchase future upgrades or not.

And that would be it! The rest is down to you to see how much more involved you would want to get with the folks over at Giveway of the Day, because at their Web site you can rate the software download, you can share your opinions about it (Whether you liked it or not) and you can even place a banner in your Web site showing that you are currently playing around with that tool. Pretty nifty !

I must say that every day I get to pop over and check out what they have got to offer. Well, I don’t pop over. I am just subscribed to the feed, but I have been observing how the community of folks has been forming around such initiative and it is actually quite impressive, to say the least. Very engaging and lots of candid feedback on each of the tools shared over there thus far. Worth while a look, indeed!

That is, how, for instance, I have been finding out and, of course, testing out, tools like the one that was shared a couple of days ago: Post2Blog. It is actually another offline weblogging tool, pretty much along the same line as Qumana, Performancing for FireFox, w.bloggar, or Flock’s weblogging component. Except that, for this one, you actually have got to pay for it.

Since I am always looking for ways to improve my own weblogging efforts I decided to actually give it a try and download it. I know that if I would have to pay for this piece of software I wouldn’t have probably done it, but now that I have been given the chance to test it out I guess it is of no harm to test it out and see if it would be worth while the money.

So I got it installed, setup and ready to go within minutes. Really good! Pretty much the same experience as with Qumana. It works really well with two of the main weblogging platforms that I get to use on a daily basis: WordPress and Roller Weblogger. I wish it would work as well with ITtoolbox, but apparently it doesn’t. Sigh. But the setup is actually quite nice and intuitive.

From there onwards you actually get to experience some really nifty features, like WYSIWYG editor capabilities, Flickr integration, integration as well with other tools like Word, RSS Bandit or Sharp Reader, built-in smileys, live spellchecking and a whole bunch of other capabilities you would be able to read about on its homepage. Impressive.

So the next thing is to actually go ahead and create a weblog post, which is what I am doing at the moment with this particular entry. I must say that the experience is not as easy as I thought it would be. It takes a little while to get used to the different menus and options and somehow some of the keyboard shortcuts do not seem to be responding very nicely. Go figure.

I can see how pro-bloggers would want to explore this particular tool and perhaps use it. I bet that after a few weblog entries it would be very easy to share content, but I must say that if I have to compare Post2Blog with my current default offline weblogging tool, Qumana, I am not totally convinced. Qumana still remains as my default offline weblogging software. Perhaps if the software would be made available for free I would think about it. But the way things are at the moment, 39$, is just a bit too much. At least, for me.

You see? That is one of the great things about Giveaway of the Day. The fact that they give you the chance to find some interesting licensed software out there, try it out for yourself and see if it would be relevant for your needs or not. And if yes, you can then proceed further with the purchase of future upgrades. And if not, at least, you have tried it out and can move on.

So, off to the next one!