ecto for Windows 2: Release candidate number 1 is now available. As I mentioned recently, this new version has WYSIWYG editing and other improvements over the current version 1.8.8. Some rough edges remain, though, even in RC1. Still, I think version 2 when released should prove to be a tempting upgrade.

Qumana 3 for Windows and Mac: Now in beta 3, this free Java-based application gets better with each beta. I’ve been using the Windows version and it is good – good enough for Lycos to offer it as the Lycos-Qumana Desktop Blog Editor which Qumana announced last week.

If I had to make a choice I would use ecto for Windows. That’s because it’s a tool I’ve been using since 2004, I know it pretty well, I’m more or less comfortable with it (I have a love/hate relationship with it) and is the one I fall back to after trying everything else.

Which brings me to the opposite of good work with blog editors. That’s Rocketpost. Whatever you do, do not waste money on buying Rocketpost. The application and the developer’s non-existent support is so appalling that you will experience grief if you do.

But let’s conclude on a positive note. If you need a reliable tool for managing your blog posts, you do have some good choices. ecto (Windows and Mac) and Qumana (Windows/Mac) as I mentioned. Plus BlogJet (Windows, and which I also have and use now and again). There’s also BlogDesk, a free post editor for Windows.

There are others, too – if you Google “offline blog editors,” you’ll find more. So plenty of choice.

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Neville Hobson is the author of the popular NevilleHobson.com blog which focuses on business communication and technology.

Neville is currentlly the VP of New Marketing at Crayon. Visit Neville Hobson’s blog: NevilleHobson.com.

The Lycos-Qumana Desktop Blog Editor allows users to post entries to blogs on all major blog platforms, not just the Angelfire and Tripod blogs owned by Lycos. It has been made available as a free download for bloggers.

A visual approach to content editing lets users insert images, tags, and ads through various wizards. The blogger can set a keyword or keyphrase to use to help Qumana select from the contextual ads available through Q-Ads (formerly AdGenta) to place on the blog.

Lycos said in a statement that revenue from those ads would be shared with the bloggers. A Lycos spokesperson explained how the split works:

The companies noted several benefits to using the new desktop blog tool. One-click posting to all blogs available to a blogger means being able to quickly cross-publish that post; we wonder how many legitimate bloggers actually need to do this regularly.

Each post can be designated as allowing comments and/or trackbacks, and that will propagate out to the blog hosting sites.

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

In that post, I talked about ecto for Windows, BlogJet and Qumana as examples of popular editors for Windows (and for the Mac, in some cases) which enable you to write your blog posts offline, on your own computer.

I’m now looking closely at Anconia RocketPost, a suggestion from Netanel Jacobsson.

On just a first quick look after install, I am impressed with this tool. It’s the closest I’ve seen yet to a solution to what I believe is a yawning gap in the market for a robust and reliable blog editing application for Windows that’s easy to use yet with powerful features. A sort of Microsoft Word for blogs. Could this be the one?

RocketPost offers a 30-day free trial which I’m on. Then it’s $100 for the license for the professional version (there are three versions including a free one).

I’m writing this post with this app. Very easy and intuitive to use.More later once I’ve played a bit with RocketPost.

[Edit] Hmm. It didn’t publish without my going into TypePad directly and publishing it. The post was in the list of posts and shown as published, but it hadn’t been. I’ll hold judgment on the reason as I suspect it’s more to do with Typepad – the server response back to RocketPost from posting took a very long time (4+ minutes) and logging in to my account simply took ages.

Neville Hobson is the author of the popular NevilleHobson.com blog which focuses on business communication and technology.

Neville is currentlly the VP of New Marketing at Crayon. Visit Neville Hobson’s blog: NevilleHobson.com.

This part is more academic on how we developed our voices and how they have changed and matured.  Part 2 will offer some concrete tips on developing a voice.  Things you can do to make it easier to develop your own voice.  We start off discussing a question/comment from Robert on becoming a professional blogger within a niche area-in his case a religiously oriented blog. Then we move right into talking about blogging voice and how we got to where we are today.  There are a few tips scattered in there, don’t worry.
cpbp_no2_bloggingvoice.mp3 (13.3 MB, 14 min 35 sec)

Intro and outro music “Flying” by The Kitchen used with permission-so please visit their site!

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Tris Hussey is a professional blogger and blog consultant, the Chief Blogging Officer for Qumana Software, and Managing Director of Qumana Services. He can be reached at tris AT qumana DOT com or tris AT trishussey DOT com.
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Guest Writer Tris Hussey

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Darren Rowse is the founder of ProBlogger.net, a blog about the many ways of adding an income stream to blogs.

Darren owns and writes a variety of blogs including Digital Photography Blog and Camera Phone
Zone. He is also a co-founder of the Breaking News Blog Collective.