I’m a cloud junkie, and more importantly a Google cloud junkie. I avoid using desktop software like the plague. For email it’s Gmail, for Word Processing and Spreadsheets it’s Google Docs. I use Seesmic’s web app for Twitter. gReader, Pixlr, Cloud Canvas – anything I can shove through Chrome I do. And sometimes I loose features because of my insistence on the cloud, but normally the ability to have it in the cloud, accessible from any computer and backed up, is more important than what I’m missing. I work on two desktops at work, two laptops, an iPad and an iPhone at home, and more recently a desktop at home. (It seems the more computer literate the kids get, the more computers we need). I need and want everything, everywhere. To me – the only programs I’m cool with being an installed application are iTunes, Photoshop, Flash and Dreamweaver.
But I hate the default blog editors that are a part of the different platforms. I use Blogger, WordPress and Tumblr. I hate all of their efforts. I started playing with using Google Docs as a blog editor a while back. This was exactly what I wanted, then they took it away in the most recent release. So I’m back to the online editors. And I hate them.
I normally start a blog post as a Google doc, then maybe the first paragraph. I’ll then do a dotted line and brainstorm ideas at the bottom. Might just be a sentence, might be a whole paragraph. It’s essentially the idea pad for this post. As I write the blog, I’ll copy and past things up to the top, continue to write things I don’t want to forget in the bottom and keep doing this until I have it how I want. Then I go back and review any notes left at the bottom. If I need to add them I do – if not I delete them out (or copy them to another Doc if I think it’s something I may write about later).
Lately I have not been doing very much long form blogging. But I use that same technique for drafting long emails and documents. But now that I need to pick up my blogging for some new projects I’m taking on, I’m finding that not being able to do it that same way is pissing me off.
I tried creating just the text in Google Docs, then copy and paste it over to the online editor once complete, insert any needed graphics, and publish. But this is a pain which requires me to use a notepad to scrub the text of formatting, then most of the time edit the HTML to make sure breaks etc are where they should be. It’s to painful. It sucks.
I had heard about Windows Live Writer for a long time, but ignored it because it does not live the cloud. Which wtf does Microsoft mean with “Live”? Live to me should mean in the cloud not another piece of bloated software living on my computer. Hopefully this means it will at least Sync across computers. I have not looked into this yet. If nothing else I’m hoping I can use Drop Box somehow.
But – holy crap. This is an awesome blog editor. I have not hit publish yet, but I’m writing this blog post in it – and it’s everything I want in an editor. It drafts the posts as if they were on the site, in my fonts, colors, etc. The formatting tools are top notch.
Let’s test a picture:
So I dropped a screen shot in of Windows Live Writer and was able to resize it by dragging. All in all – this is exactly what I want – just in the cloud. So that’s kind of the one thing holding me back form just shutting up and going with it. I’m going to publish this and try to edit some old posts with this as well as add the other blogs I need to use this for and keep testing it out. I’ll update where I end up.
