Five blogging apps I'm thankful for

We are a thankful bunch around TUAW today, in honor of Thanksgiving here in the states. Since I spend most of my waking hours blogging I thought I would give some praise to the five applications that make blogging a breeze on the Mac. This is not meant to be a 'Top Five blogging tools post,' if you're looking for something like that, check out Glenn Wolsey's post on ProBlogger (though I have some problems with his post that I won't go into at this moment).

Read on to get the skinny on the five blogging applications I am most thankful for this holiday season.

NetNewsWire: Without a doubt the application that gets the most use on my Macs is NetNewsWire. At the moment I am rocking 673 feeds and no other newsreader can handle them all in the manner that I like. I've tried NewsFire, Vienna, Safari RSS, and Bloglines. NetNewsWire takes whatever feed I throw at it and asks for me. It is organized well and thanks to the syncing via NewsGator all my feeds are the same across my multiple Macs.

Optimized FireFox: Blogging and browsing the web go hand and hand. If NetNewsWire is that most used app on my Mac then FireFox is a close second. But I don't use any old version of FireFox. No, no. I use the optimized recompile that Neil Lee puts together. Thanks, Neil!

MarsEdit: Another Ranchero app in this list?! Yep. MarsEdit is a simple, straightforward blogging client. You can upload pictures, assign categories and blog using a number of different HTML rendering options (including my favorite, Textile).

Ecto: What's this? Another blogging client? That's right, that's just how much I blog. If MarsEdit is a streamlined blogging tool than Ecto has everything and the kitchen sink (plus there is a Windows version). Ecto has a few nice touches like Amazon.com searching (so you can easily blog about anything they sell), iTunes integration, permalinks are available within the application itself (which I hope is a feature MarsEdit copies at some point).

TextMate: I don't want to continue the 'Text editor holy wars,' but TextMate works well for me. Bundles make TextMate a Swiss Army Knife of text editing. Projects let me keep a number of documents in on file, and the UI doesn't get in my way. I composed this very post in TextMate. What more do I need to say?

View Tags

Categories

Analysis / Opinion Software

We are a thankful bunch around TUAW today, in honor of Thanksgiving here in the states. Since I spend most of my waking hours blogging I...

Add a Comment

Sign in »

13 Comments

Filter by:

willb

Dan (#9): TextMate is extensible with user-created "bundles" that consist of commands, snippets (for automatic text generation), and language grammars (for syntax highlighting). TextMate includes a "blogging" bundle that will allow you to post to your blog directly from the editor. To the best of my knowledge, the other applications you list don't have this capability.

November 24 2006 at 10:52 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

michael

I agree - put me down as a vote against the "Click to Read More." I stop reading information sources when they do that. It's corny, and it reminds me of Gamespot or IGN or some such awful over-clicked site.

I too would much prefer ads in the feeds than to have to "click through." For what it's worth...

November 24 2006 at 6:16 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Glenn

As far as newsreaders on the Mac go, Shrook is well worth a look. Its free to use, or $2.50/mth to synchronize feeds across multiple Macs. Very fast & lightweight interface.

November 24 2006 at 5:25 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

kez

Slight typo with the link to NetNewsWire - it reads NetNewWire.

November 24 2006 at 5:27 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

dan

I composed this very post in TextMate. What more do I need to say?

Well, for one, why couldn't you have composed the same post in textmate, bbedit, omnioutliner. "What more do I need to say" is lazy writing and says absolutely nothing.

Same way with netnewswire. How does it handle everything newsfire can't? I have over 600 feeds also, and find the experience much more enjoyable than using netnewswire. Unlike you, I could give at least 10 reasons why. But then again, I didn't write this article.

November 24 2006 at 12:28 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Otterman

I am thankful TUAW!

Its the one webpage I don't mind having to visit if you really decide to switch to incomplete feeds. But if its a test to see if we're awake, please bring back the feed!

November 23 2006 at 11:42 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

evariste

Yes please, bring back full content. I don't care if your feed has ads, just let me read whole article in one piece.

November 23 2006 at 8:13 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

starwxrwx

Speaking of RSS - what's with the "click to read more" in the TUAW RSS feed now?

Bring back the full article in the RSS feed!

November 23 2006 at 7:31 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

For those of us who don't blog professionally, and are incredibly tight, are there any equivalents to ecto or Mars edit that are free? I like the idea of a desktop based editor, and the ecto trial is useful.

I'd certainly add another vote for Google Reader though, changed the way I read feeds. And also, if you use a web based blog editor, the new FF V2 has a very usefull spell checker.

November 23 2006 at 6:50 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Sim

"I've tried NewsFire, Vienna, Safari RSS, and Bloglines."
So you have to try NewsMac Pro from ThinkMac Software !!

http://www.thinkmac.co.uk/newsmacpro/

November 23 2006 at 6:12 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply