Attention all bloggers! The nerd bunnies at Brainjuice have just released Blogo 1.1, the latest take on their Mac OS X blogging tool. Blogo 1.1 now includes support for Drupal and Twitter in addition to WordPress, Blogger, TypePad, typo, and MovableType.
The new Twitter support allows users to post tweets and direct messages from Blogo, and can even send a tweet whenever you post. Brainjuice has fixed some existing issues, as well as adding these new features:
Support for raw image formats
Integration with NetNewsWire and Safari
Use of Growl for all user notifications
New text formatting options (quotes, lists, aligned, justified)
Custom cropping of thumbnails independently of the full-size images
Daniel Jalkut posts that TUAW's favorite blogging app, MarsEdit, has hit version 2.1.3. Mainly a bug fix update, the biggest change is that drafts in WordPress and Blogger are now better handled -- their "draft" status is apparently better preserved.
Additionally, a few markup elements, specifically "#tags#" and "#askurl#" have been tweaked to work better, and there is also improved handling of URLs in localhost-based blogs.
Greetings, TUAW readers. England calling! It's great to be here, writing alongside a great team of Apple-loving bloggers. Eagle-eyed readers may notice that I'm joining from Download Squad just like fellow newcomer Lisa Hoover, and boy am I excited. Us Europeans, whilst lacking the iPhone, iTunes Video Store and the (relative) inexpense of Apple products, love our Apple kit just as much as the rest of the world, so you can imagine my reaction at being offered the chance of writing for the motley crew fine folks here at TUAW.
I look forward to seeing where the next year takes us - and playing a part in bringing you all the greatest things to do with your Apple gear!
Disclosure: I am a free-lance contractor with a company whose product has been covered on TUAW in the past. Readers should also be aware that there are impartiality clauses we agree to adhere to as part of our contracts on ANY Weblogs Inc property.
I had my own personal unboxing of the new 24" iMac (yes, it's every wonderful thing you've heard, and more) and sat down to migrate all the info from my old Mac. Just as I was thinking life couldn't get any better, I got an invitation to join the TUAW team. I fainted, but of course made sure to fall sideways so I didn't mar the Mac's beautiful, glossy screen. Now that I have regained consciousness and finished installing all the important apps (the triumvirate -- Firefox, Adium, and Skitch), I'm all set to start blogging.
If you get around the Weblogs, Inc. network at all, you may know me from Download Squad and DIY Life. I'm sure I'll have just as much fun here as I do there and, hey, maybe now I can justify getting that iPhone. All in the name of research, right?
Adriaan Tijsseling, developer of the Mac OS X version of the ecto blogging client, has been teasing us with sneak peeks and development details for some time now, but he's just posted another more revealing screenshot of ecto3, along with more details and a basic roadmap. Adriaan has touted ecto3 as a complete rewrite from v2, ushering in a new plug-in architecture that should make the app far more extensible.
Also on the notable changes list is the replacement of the rich text editor by Editable WebKit, a new, more WYSIWYG feature of the engine that is used to power Safari, many other browsers on Mac OS X and even HTML rendering in Apple Mail.
While Adriaan doesn't have any kind of ETA for a shipping version or even a beta just yet, it does sound like development is wrapping up well. Since support for different blogging platforms has moved to the plug-in format as well, he still has to build support for the latest Blogger (yes, it'll be in ecto3) and WordPress. As a final note, it's always nice to hear a developer using their own product, as Adriaan is using ecto3 "heavily" to try and catch as many bugs and problems as he can before unleashing it in one form or another on the masses.
Making good on his word after purchasing MarsEdit from Brent Simmons, Daniel Jalkut of Red Sweater Software has quickly taken up development of the blogging client. Today Daniel released MarsEdit 1.2, a minor update that brings some great features like Growl support (when publishing, refreshing or uploading images and files) and Picasa upload support for Blogger.com images, as well as support for blogging to Vox, the community-focused blogging system from Six Aparts, makers of Live Journal and TypePad.
For anyone who needs the power of Mac OS X while blogging, MarsEdit is a great great choice that offers a wealth of other features for a mere $24.95. A demo is of course also available from Red Sweater Software.
Hey TUAW, I'm Alex, the newest blogger around these parts.
The first Mac I ever handled was one of the later Performa models. It was a beige beast of a computer attached to an ABI Prism DNA Sequencer, and I remember thinking how odd it was that there was only one mouse button. This was at a time in my life when I still thought I could be a scientist.
That dream faded, but Macs stayed in my life. Oh, there was a time when I strayed, when I spent a few years wandering in the Wild West of Linux and impossible (for me) binary management, but then OS X came along and I couldn't stay away any longer.
These days I spend most of my days in balmy London writing about videogames at Kikizo, IGN, and AOL. Macs and OS X make the job that little more enjoyable. My nomadic lifestyle demands portability, which is probably why I'll be using wonderful 12" PowerBooks until I can't find another, or Apple decides to answer my, and many others', prayers and gives us a new (or even smaller) version.
Macs are beautiful. Macs are elegant. Macs embody the spirit of technological innovation and cultural progress we find so readily in this exciting period of human history. As we as a civilization explore and find new ways to interact with and manipulate information, we must have tools that allow us to stretch the boundaries of conventional thinking. Since its founding over 30 years ago, Apple has constantly been on the bleeding edge of design, technology, and communication. It is my passion for these things that drive my fascination and love of all things Apple. I want to share that passion with you, and as the newest TUAW team member, that exactly what I'll be doing from now on.
Now, enough with that pseudo-intellectual gobbledygook, time for me to introduce myself. I'm a Graphic Design student in Denver, CO, much like one of my fellow bloggers. Before coming to TUAW, I blogged for The Apple Blog and co-hosted the MacNN Podcast. I eek out my meager existence by fixing Macs and iPods at a local Mac repair shop, as well as the odd design or photography gig on the side. The tools of my trade are my faithful 15" PowerBook, my camera, and my sketchbook. All of which travel everywhere with me in one of my many messenger bags (it will soon be discovered that I'm a horrendous bag geek).
In any case, I'm greatly looking forward to writing for TUAW, and hope I'll be able to provide you all with some quality content.
David already mentioned this widget in his
round-up post of the new Google widgets, but I thought it deserved its own post in case you missed it.
Today's widget is a Dashboard widget that allows you to post to your Blogger blog. It's pretty
straightforward-enter your username and password and select your blog from the drop down menu (if you maintain more
than one blog, that is). Enter a title, create your post and either publish it or save it as a draft.
Marshall Kirkpatrick over at The Social Software
Weblog (a sister Weblogs, Inc. blog) noticed that Google has
produced some Dashboard widgets just for us Mac folks. The first is a
Blogger widget, allowing (you guessed it) quick and easy posting to Blogger. It even accepts standard shortcuts for
bolding and italicizing text - awesome. Next up is a Gmail widget, offering "your Gmail inbox at a glance." A
neat trick up this widget's sleeve (once you enable the widget's advanced options) is that you can filter messages by a
specific label. Last but not least is a Search History widget, which seems to be a small step up from the Google search
widget already included with Tiger in that it actually saves the terms you use to search. "Remember the page from last week? Now you will," is the tag line.
Looks like my wrath at Google for releasing a Word to Blogger plugin that was Windows only wasn't entirely their fault. Jason Shellen notes on his blog: "As Ev mentioned in his post, the biggest tradeoff is that this is Windows-only. As a Mac-fan I tried to find a good developer to do a Mac version and came up short. If you have any recommendations, I'm all ears."
It's nice to know that Mac-support was at least considered, but I'm holding on to my gripe. The "we couldn't find a Mac developer" translates into they didn't try hard enough. I mean, someone at Google couldn't find a Mac Developer. What's wrong with that picture?
Have you heard the really cool news? There's a new Blogger for Word toolbar that lets you post directly to your Blogger-brand blog via the world's most prevalent word processor: Microsoft Word. However, it's not Mac compatible.
I'm used to things not being Mac compatible, but this really irks me. Why? Because the Internet isn't a Windows world. It's not a Mac world. It's not a Unix or Linux world. The Internet is the great melting pot of Operating Systems. All computers want to work with the Internet and everyone on the Internet (interested in reaching the largest audience possible) wants to work with all computers.
Why then, do Internet companies, like Google, continue to release software and functionality that is tailor made for only one computing platform? If you are a huge Internet-based company who would seem to one day want to become the Internet OS (tm), then it *might* be in your best interest to ensure that everything that you release to interface with the Internet will work on the widest variety possible of computers. I'm tired of Google releasing Mac-compatability as an afterthought. I'm tired of there still not being a Picasa for Mac, and I'm very ticked off that this new cutting edge technology, this Blogger for Word, only works with old Word on old 2000 / XP. There's a much newer OS out here. Not Vista. Tiger. //rant off
Attention all bloggers! The nerd bunnies at Brainjuice have just released Blogo 1.1, the latest take on their Mac OS X blogging tool. Blogo 1.1 now includes support for Drupal and Twitter in addition to WordPress, Blogger, TypePad, typo, and MovableType.
Greetings, TUAW readers. England calling! It's great to be here, writing alongside a great team of Apple-loving bloggers. Eagle-eyed readers may notice that I'm joining from 
I had my own personal unboxing of the new 24" iMac (yes, it's every wonderful thing you've heard, and more) and sat down to migrate all the info from my old Mac. Just as I was thinking life couldn't get any better, I got an invitation to join the TUAW team. I fainted, but of course made sure to fall sideways so I didn't mar the Mac's beautiful, glossy screen. Now that I have regained consciousness and finished installing all the important apps (the triumvirate -- Firefox, Adium, and Skitch), I'm all set to start blogging. 
Hey TUAW, I'm Alex, the newest blogger around these parts.
Macs are beautiful. Macs are elegant. Macs embody the spirit of technological innovation and cultural progress we find so readily in this exciting period of human history. As we as a civilization explore and find new ways to interact with and manipulate information, we must have tools that allow us to stretch the boundaries of conventional thinking. Since its founding over 30 years ago, Apple has constantly been on the bleeding edge of design, technology, and communication. It is my passion for these things that drive my fascination and love of all things Apple. I want to share that passion with you, and as the newest TUAW team member, that exactly what I'll be doing from now on.
David 
Marshall Kirkpatrick over at The Social Software
Weblog (a sister Weblogs, Inc. blog) 
Looks like 
Have you heard the really cool news? There's a new 
