Using OpenOffice Writer as my Blogging Application

I don't know how many people are actually aware that you can actually use Microsoft Word as a blogging client, but apparently, you can also use OpenOffice as a weblog client when you use a little extension called Sun Weblog Publisher.

All you need to do is download the extension from Sun's website at : http://www.sun.com/software/staroffice/extensions.jsp#weblog

Then, once its on your hard drive, open it, agree to the liscence (after reading it of course) and install it. Then when you open OpenOffice Writer the next time, you'll see two new buttons as shown below:

Pretty cool huh? All this, for the price of 0 dollars – FREE!.

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How long does it take you to put up a post?

Over the past few months I've realized that I haven't really posted a lot on this blog. Now, my reason for not posting too often is that my posts take too much time from my busy schedule. Instead of putting up quick and useless posts, I’d rather take some time, think the post through and only then post. I must admit that coming up with ideas to post about something is really easy, but when I really sit down to post something, I get lost in some kind of a ‘mind maze’ where I come up with other ideas for related posts.. and then start developing on those ideas.. and eventually the original idea bites the dust.

On average I’ve noticed that coming up with the idea of the post takes the longest, or at least it feels like the longest (but I often brainstorm for many ideas at one time like in 2 hours I’ll come up with 90 new ideas to blog about). Once I have a good thing to post about in mind however, writing up the post is only a matter of about 30 - 40 minutes depending on the intricacy of the post. If the post has a lot of explaining to do, and a lot of screenshots it often takes longer. Often when I have to test out my tutorials (yes I always test out all my tutorials on this site to make sure they are accurate) it takes even longer in the region of around 1 – 1.30 hours.

Luckily though, with better tools like Windows Live Writer and Screenshot Captor, I’ve decreased my time to about 1 hour per post. but even that time is hard to find these days. Plus, I have a super long list of things to post already, so I’d rather just post about those thing. But nevertheless, I’m curious – How long does it take you to post a post….

I realize that most of the people reading this blog are here for the tips and tricks that I occasionally publish. But then again it says on my FeedBurner list that I have about 150 subscribers… so I’m curious as to how many people blog.

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Add a rating feature to your blog posts

Ever wonder what your blog readers think about your blog? May be they like your posts or may be they don't find it all too interesting. Most blogs have a comments feature, however due to the laziness factor in most readers on the internet today people seldom leave a comment if a post is great, beneficial or if the post needs improvement. In that case the only way to find out is to let your blog readers rate your post.

If your readers like your post, naturally the rating will be higher. If they don't then I guess you'll have to write about something else or blog about a different topic. Essentially, adding a 'post rating' option can help you improve the quality of your blog by leaps and bounds.

If you are lucky enough to have your own domain and use the Wordpress CMS system, you'll probably be aware of the post rating plug-ins for wordpress. However, if you use other content management systems such as blogger you'll need something more. The simplest, easiest and free solution that I know of so far is called outbrain ratings widget. It's a great free service that allows you to add the 'star post ratings' feature to pretty much all major blogging systems including Blogger, Typepad, Wordpress, Drupal and even FeedFlare (which is a service offered by FeedBurner).


You can even sign-up and even track the ratings for all your posts which is not available in any plug in I've seen so far.

Cool, huh? All you need to do is go to the outbrain website and click on the appropriate button and it'll let you know what you ought to do.

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Back up your blogger / blogspot posts and blog

Blogger gives you a great free blog hosting facility, but unfortunately if something were to happen their servers, all the your carefully composed posts will perish along with it. Along with that, when something is offered free you never know when they are going to stop giving it away for free, so its best to always back up your blog - no matter which blogging/CMS system you use!

Hopefully since blogger is now owned by Google they'll continue to provide this service for blogging enthusiasts like me who like to share their knowledge and ask people questions. So how exactly can you back-up your blogger posts to your computer or may be even Gmail account?

The answer is quite simple. You can either copy every single blog post and save in a text file or word file (as cumbersome as it may seem this might actually work if you're like many who use word or text files to initially compose the rough draft of a post) or use an application like the blogger backup utility from CodePlex.

Just download the zip file, extract all the files inside it, install the application and start backing up the contents of your blog regularly. You can even save all the comments in your blog and specify the posts you want to back up. It'll save all the posts to your hard drive in XML format and restoring every single post in your blog is as easy as clicking the restore posts button.

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Excellent Blogging Tips from the Doc

Cory Doctorow from boingboing shares some of his thoughts on how to blog better to Thomas Crampton in this extremely cool video for anyone who wants to get into blogging.



Here's what I got from the video. It's pretty much the last part of the video but I'd like to summarize anyway, so that may be I'll remember it better.

1. Have descriptive headlines and at the same time make them interesting (although it needs to be informative, I take it that it doesn't always have to be dull and would much rather prefer writing a headline that has Oomph. Like "The B@sturds of Sep 11" instead of "Sep 11" or simply "Basturds")
   
2. Simplify the reading process for the reader - state what the article is about in the first paragraph, so that the reader can skip it.
   
3. Every post should be only 1 page instead of a bazillion pages
4. Respect the reader, and don't bombard them with ads and extra other unnecessary info
5. Don't sell yourself and be honest

After listening to Cory, I feel as though I should remove the read more link on the homepage of the blog.

The main reason I have a read more link is so that the home page and the archive pages load up quick, and people (especially those with dial-up) can only read more if they are interested in the post. But I guess I might have to switch the template to display full posts on every page instead of just the excerpts if a lot of people start complaining.

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Why does Google AdSense show public service ads?

Ok, so its only been a week so far and I've already had some experience with the way adsense works. Oh, and did I mention, I've discovered several AdSense NO-NOs. Oh and I also figured out when and why google displays public service ads. I figured that Google will usually display public service ads in one of the following scenarios:

1. Your publisher ID is wrong or improper. Or perhaps you did not comply to the google TOS.
   
2. You tried to modify the adsense code and accidently screw it up.
3. Google can't find any ads to match the content in the page.
4. You did not put the code in the template, and put it in a post instead - The thing that you should keep in mind is always have the adsense in your TEMPLATE ONLY. Don't try and put any adsense code into your posts, because it will not work. Instead you'll just get a ugly ad like the one shown below. Why? because once you post the code through most CMS systems the code will not stay in different lines (the linebrakes between the code will be removed), therefore it wont work.
5. Google might have "flagged" your page? (see below for more stuff on why I think that might be the case)
   
6. There was a hardware malfunction that occured at Google HQ.

Recently, I also had a problem on this page, where google kept showing public service ads. I'm not sure if Google has some approving system where someone has to come and approve a "flagged page" or if it was a hardware malfunction that caused public service ads to be displayed, but I'm sure it was one or the other. I'm certain that there were at least some ads that matched with the content. They page appears fine now though. This is how the page used to look before when the public service ads were displayed and had some intentional mistakes in it(I'm sure you'd agree it looked ugly with all that empty space) :

I've also pointed out some "imperfections" in the page when it was published for the first time (of course, they have been corrected now.. I think..). Perhaps that was what caused the page to be "flagged". I'm not sure. I'll be performing a couple of other tests to find out what the cause for public service ads might be.

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Play MP3s or Podcasts through Embedded Player on your website

Ever wanted to make your own podcast? Or may be post some mp3s into your blog post on blogger or may be wordpress... Well as long as you have the music or video files, then its really simple to use embedded flash players to embed content such as MP3s, videos as well as podcasts in other formats in your blog posts.


There are a couple of options that you can use in order to put music on your blog or website. Firstly, if you have the server space then you might want to get your own player too, instead of using someone else's services. You can try something like the FLV players found on http://www.jeroenwijering.com or this http://www.macloo.com/examples/audio_player/ which is mostly for mp3s only.

If you realize that the server space isn't sufficient (which is bound to happen if a lot of people listen to your stuff) you might want to switch over to a service like odeo http://odeo.com/ where they'll host the files for you and you can still put it in your blogger post.

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Have to start blogging again!

Wow, I can't believe that people still read this blog. I guess Google is still playing an important role in it. It looks the "Firefox- Blinking Cursor Problem" is one of the most active posts around this blog. And when people say they love me (even if they don't know who I am) and are going to read my blog everyday, then.. well.. I have to start blogging again I guess.

I really don't get time to blog, mainly due to school and what not. But hey, I can seriously give it a try this time. I guess I also have to start being a regular at tech-recieps and syschat again. I'm pretty sure they miss me a lot. I really have to redesign this blog as well. I think that blogger should provide better blogger beta templates with better labeling ang all that. But I guess I'll have to work around that for now.

Oh and if any of you have any problems or anything like that (in terms of technology problems...) then feel free to drop me a mail and I'll see what I can do. These can be any sort tech of problems.. like vista problems or word problems and so on.

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