Blogging Like A Pro Series Parts 1-10:

1. Blogging Like A Pro: Introduction To 10-Part Crash Course
2. Science Of Writing Process: Getting Ready, Set Up Mood & Avoid Distractions
3. In Search For Ultimate Blogging Tools: Writing Simplified Now!
4. How To Find Article Ideas To Write About, Write Sticking Points
5. Do Your Research: How and where to find content
6. Blog Post Formatting, make it easy to read and scan, good examples
7. Power of headlines, Dummy’s guide to copywriting
8. Add Spice To Post – Get Feedback, Entertain Readers With New Approach
9. Taking Blogging To The Next Level: Guest Writers & Management & Scheduling, Proofreading
10. How To Find And Hire The Right People For Your Business
11. Set Up Your Blog & Make Use Of Fresh Tools To Save Time

Google Docs could be a great online alternative and you don’t have to worry about any loss of content because of its regular autosave feature, but if you want any more advanced features since Google Docs is merely a text editor, then you’ll want to consider other options. The major drawback besides a lack of customization is that you don’t have access to your documents if you don’t have an internet connection. If you want to share documents between several users however then Google Docs is great. See this intro video for more information about how to use it:

Before I start my review and share the experiences I’ve had with these editors. Keep in mind that I am a full-time blogger and looking for the most efficient blogging possible. I crop and create images on my own, if I need to do some code editing I do it manually, I enjoy fast writing and WYSIWYG possibilities to create a finished article as quickly as possible. The articles I write are usually quite long and in depth. If your blog is just going to be a place where you share pictures, quick updates about your life and things you find interesting online, your preferences might look much different than mine. However I tried to be as objective as possible and picked out a few blogging editors to feature here which I think are worth taking a look at. Enjoy!

Blogo (Mac)

Price: $25 ( has 21-day trial)

Easily publish text, images, videos, slideshows and more. With a simple, intuitive interface and support for WordPress, Blogger, Typepad, Typo, Drupal, Joomla, and Expression Engine, Blogo is the best way to maintain your blog and spread the word with Twitter, Ping.fm and other supported services.

I tried to blog through Blogo for a while, there are definitely some pros, but also several cons which made writing not as efficient. It’s easy and fast to set up and get going with, just add your blog address, login, password and you’re set. Recommended customization is image size, just head to the preferences and add max image width and height limit.

Image Editing and uploading – Blogo has a built-in image editor which let’s you crop and resize images so you save yourself the hassle of finding another image editor. If your needs are basic, then this editor will be more than enough.Uploading images is very easy, when you’re finished just click a button to upload images automatically to your server, which is a great time saver in comparison to always doing it manually through your blogs dashboard.

What I liked:

• Option to enter full screen mode to avoid distractions
• Easy image, video,audio and quote add an upload
• Live preview screen to see how post would look like published
• Handy web browser bookmarklet
• Intelligent microblogging – you can follow your friends, search on Twitter and share posts with Ping.fm
• Word and character count
• If you need to copy and use some text from other sites, there is a good option to Remove Formatting, handy.

What I disliked:

• Limited advanced customization options
• For me the screen size for body text was too small, but I had no resizing modification options
• Blogo assumed I needed my images aligned with text,which would be handy if I would used small images. Since I used pretty big images this auto feature created more problems for me than it was helpful, but maybe that’s just me
• I didn’t like the default CSS styling Blogo had, but there is no option to change font size, background color and line heights.

Summary

I liked the main window of the Blogo post editor, where all the main features are just a click away. The big downside was the tiny body text field and not being able to customize anything. For the people who want a smart desktop blog editor that does most of the hard work for you, Blogo is a good pick. However if you are picky and really want control over the entire blogging process maybe you need to look for something else.

MarsEdit (Mac)

Price: $39.95 (has 30 day trial)

MarsEdit is a really powerful and feature rich editor, which works with WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr, Squarespace, TypePad, Movable Type and dozens more through standard MetaWeblog and AtomPub interfaces. If you use iPhoto, Aperture, Lightroom or Flickr libraries, you’ll love MarsEdit, because you’ll be able to insert images into blog post with the click of a button!

If you use any coding editor, then you’ll also enjoy MarsEdit’s integration with BBEdit, SubEthaEdit, TextMate, TextWrangler, and any editor that supports that ODBEditor suite.

While writing a blog post I enjoyed it’s clean layout, though sometimes I missed having some of the one click features you get with a WYSIWYG editor. To keep things minimal and clean MarsEdit put all the formatting options in a dropdown menu. I think it depends on your taste – if you want a very clean interface and do not mind few extra clicks,you’ll enjoy MarsEdit.

Comparing with Blogo MarsEdit has some more text styling customization options – I could change the default font in Rich and HTML editor views and I was able to change background color in HTML view (strangely I couldn’t change the background in the rich editor view which I prefer using). But you can still use WriteRoom there (WriteRoom’s full screen writing environment gets your computer out of the way so that you can focus on your work. The result is a subtle clearing of the mind that helps you write better.)

I found this video showing how to use MarsEdit and some of its great features, check it out:

What I liked:

• Bookmarklet which allows you to blog whatever page you’ve surfed to in your browser—it sends the page to MarsEdit, which opens a new post window with the title, link, and any selected text.
• Clean interface
• Coding editor integration
• Integration with iPhoto, Aperture and Flickr
• Spelling and grammar check

What I disliked:

Really I found just one, but big, drawback for me. MarsEdit features are hidden, making article editing a little bit slower than I would want. For example Rich/HTML view switching can be done with a keyboard shortcut or two clicks Post->Edit Rich Text. While this may sound minor, if you’re not good with remembering or using keyboard shortcuts, the time that it takes you to click every time will slowly add up.

Summary

Well, minimalism lovers will love MarsEdit, because it’s extremely clean and still very powerful. If you’re focusing on images you’ll enjoy different software integration and if you’re an information junkie then the bookmarklet will be very handy for you.

However if you want to make your writing process as efficient as possible you’ll need to remember all the shortcuts MarsEdit has and spend some serious time learning how to use it in a more advanced way.

Ecto (Mac)

Price: $19.95

With ecto you can write and manage entries for your weblog(s). You can compose entries offline and use the extra features ecto offers, such as spellcheck, creating links, attachments, and much more. Ecto is a native Mac OS X application, and offers you a more powerful and easier to use editing interface than your blog’s built in control panel.

Ecto has been the most customizable of all, though it hasn’t got some of the newest, fancy features the other blog editors might have. Most of the features that Ecto doesn’t have aren’t missed, at least by me. I am looking for an editor which does it’s best to aid just the writing process and nothing else and that’s why I think Ecto is the best one for the job.

Watch this video I found on Youtube to learn more, the author is showing some of the best features in action.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYEXGe0z4N0

What I liked:

• Support for multiple blogs, able to easily switch and browse through them.
• Able to set custom tags for more personalized and native usage to editor
• Clean interface with all the main features right in front of you
• Able to set up fully custom CSS, font, background color to editor you use, if you’re a typography geek like I am, you’ll enjoy full control to customize whatever you like both for Rich and HTML view editors.

What I disliked:

• When I try to insert image in post I always got a popup window with a lot of image customization options. This started to bother me after a while since I don’t need to style the image. I wasn’t able to get rid of it with a “Remember my choice” checkbox somewhere, because there isn’t one.
• Slightly outdated design. While I don’t care a lot about design if there is great functionality, Blogo and MarsEdit had much better interface design than Ecto did. The design isn’t bad, but I would like to see a better one
• Seems to me Ecto hasn’t been updated for a while which might mean that support isn’t really available and you won’t be able to expect any future updates. Just a guess though, but I couldn’t find Ecto on AppStore and their support forum is full of spam.

Summary

There isn’t one ultimate blogging editor for everybody, I just hope after these reviews you’ll have a good insight what’s possible with each one, as for me, Ecto turned out to be the most suitable editor for now, it’s powerful, clean and efficient. In the near future I’d like to see other editors improving with greater customization tools and feature. Everybody has their own expectations and needs from a desktop blog editor and I am sure many of you will be satisfied with one of these picks!

Windows Blogging Editors

Blogjet

Price: $39.95 (has free trial)

The most advanced Windows blog editor and manager. Get the convenience and speed of a native application, and the ability to write posts offline.

When I was previously using Windows, Blogjet was my favorite blogging editor because of it’s clean interface and powerful features. It really has  what any advanced blogger would need. However it’s not free.

See Blogjet’s features in this video. The version that is available is an update of the one in the video. See official tutorial videos on CodingRobots Youtube page.

Some of Blogjet coolest features:

• Auto replace – If you are tired of writing the same thing over and over again, create an Auto Replace rule for it. For example, when you type Scoble, BlogJet can replace it with a link to Robert’s blog.
• Integration with Feed Readers – BlogJet integrates with FeedDemon, RSS Bandit, NewsGator and others for you to be able to blog about something in just a few clicks.
• Flickr and YouTube Support – Your photos on Flickr and videos on YouTube will complement your blog – and now it’s easy to insert them in your posts, as BlogJet supports these services natively.
• Modern Interface – The easy-to-use graphical user interface in BlogJet looks native on Vista and Windows 7. Maybe not a functional feature, but interface matters and in Blogjet you get a beautiful interface.

Windows Live Writer

Price: Free

Windows Live Writer makes it easy for anyone to write articles like a professional blogger. You can create beautiful blog posts, and see what they’ll look like online before you publish them to your blog. Plus, you can publish your posts to any of your favorite blog service providers.

This is the best alternative if you are looking for a free and quality editor, for me it still felt a little bit too feature rich and clumsy, but it’s still a very good choice and it will be easy to learn if you’re used to Windows Office products. I didn’t enjoy all the default fancy effects this editor has. You need to spend some time customizing things right from the beginning.

ScribeFire (Web Browser Extension)

Price: Free

Can be used both on Mac and PC since it’s a browser extension.

ScribeFire is an extension for the Mozilla Firefox Web browser, Google Chrome Web browser, Opera Web Browser, and Apple Safari Web browser that allows you to easily post to all of your blogs.

ScribeFire is a full-featured blog editor that integrates with your browser and lets you easily post to all of your blogs.

You can post to WordPress, Blogger, TypePad, Windows Live Spaces, Tumblr, Posterous, Xanga, LiveJournal, or any other blog that supports the MetaWeblog or MovableType APIs.
As for me, I didn’t find it too useful just because I only have one WordPress blog and  the ScribeFire environment is pretty similar to WP. I see great use for ScribeFire if you have several different blogs and you need one management system for all of them. This extension makes it easy to switch between these blogs and lets you to do everything in a single environment. For example if you have blogs on WordPress,Blogger and Tumblr it may become challenging to write in all of them and be familiar with each of their interfaces. ScribeFire solves this problem and is a good option if you enjoy a web browser type blogging editor. Ah, and did I mention they added support for Zemanta, a plugin for easily adding related links to an article too?

Check this video showing how to use ScribeFire effectively with Zemanta. For me the problem was that the results it returned weren’t always that relevant to the topic, because I needed good images and very similar articles from my own article base. While Zemanta does a good job, I just still prefer doing it manually so I can be assured of better quality. But hey, I am a huge geek, don’t listen to me.

Innovative writing tools and interesting solutions

While I was searching for different blogging clients I also found a lot of different applications and websites which were dedicated to the writing process. There were also curation/blogging tools that assist you greatly while you write, but let’s start one by one.

Qrait

A realtime curation platform designed to fulfill the needs of content curators and reduce information overload for the rest of us.

Well, Qrait isn’t out yet, but I like where it’s going, especially the content suggestion option. Basically I would use it for my drafting process mainly, letting me easily add videos, related tweets and any other information I would like to collect before I actually started writing. I see it as a management system, with it’s pros and cons. Maybe for you it would be handy just to share some content and be able to create it easily.

Curate.Us

Curate.Us allows you to make both visual clips and formatted quotes from web content that you can post on your blog or web site. Clips are screenshots that provide both back links and trackbacks to the original source. Quotes made with Curate.Us extract relevant passages from any web content, format them, and also provide both back links and trackbacks to the original source. Curate.Us also creates short links that are easy to tweet and email.

Go through it’s self-guided tour of features to learn more about this service:

Features I found interesting:

• Add “clip this story” button to your web site enabling your readers to easily clip and quote your work.
• Curate.Us analytics, you can track where your content is going and how much traffic is returned to your site.
• Curate.Us-enable Your Site – Once you have registered for an account on Curate.Us, you can easily Curate.Us-enable your site. Doing so gives your readers the ability to share your content across the web while giving you the ability to see how and where your content is used.
• You can clip quotes and screenshots with ease now!

Interesting service definitely!

Repost.Us

This service is created by the same people, who created Repost.Us.

Repost.Us is a frictionless instant syndication platform where any publisher’s content can be instantly syndicated to another publisher, blogger, or website with a few clicks and no prior business relationship—24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Repost.Us automates content syndication, opening up monetized content exchange to the entire web. Repost.Us guarantees the integrity and security of the story being syndicated. Repost.Us is also search-engine friendly. Because search engines only see content on the original publisher’s site, syndicated copies are seen by search engines crawlers as a link back to the original.

Repost.Us supports four monetization models, and publishers can mix and match to find the exact formula that’s best for them. Publishers can choose from two ad-supported models, paid fee syndication with tiered pricing, or free syndication to increase reach.

I am not sure if this new approach will go wide, but I think this is a legal way to farm content and it doesn’t violate with Google as well! See how it works page, to learn more.

SimpleNote

SimpleNote is an easy way to keep notes, lists, ideas, and more. I included it because of the importance of taking notes, jotting down ideas wherever you go and being able to sync them. There is a lot of third party software that allows you to use this application on iPhone, iPad &iPod touch, Mac OS X, Windows, Android, Palm OS and much more. Read all available options here.

Few of SimpleNote coolest features:

• Sharing and publishing – Keep a shared grocery list with your family or housemates. Or publish some notes from your class or meeting.
• Use a growing variety of extras – Simplenote is an open platform. People are building lots of cool things you can use to extend your experience.
• Instantly search your notes – Type whatever you’re looking for, and your list updates instantly. You’ll never misplace an important thought again.

OmmWriter ( PC and Mac)

Remember in the previous article where I wrote how to set the mood? Well, OmmWriter does a lot to help in this process, forget about everything and just write, even some audio is included! Look at their video for better insight:

OmmWriter Dana is a humble attempt to recapture what technology has snatched away from us today: our capacity to concentrate.

OmmWriter is a simple text processor that firmly believes in making writing a pleasure once again, vindicating the close relationship between writer and paper. The more intimate the relation, the smoother the flow of inspiration.

If you are a scriptwriter, blogger, journalist, copywriter, poet or just someone who enjoys writing, welcome back to concentrating.

ByWord ($4.99) Mac

If you’re Mac user however my favorite simple writing editor is ByWord with its beautiful default CSS styling, super sleek interface and handy full screen mode. It’s not free however, but for me it was worth the price.

ByWord will be handy if you’re writing a book or a lot of plain text, for bloggers who need to add a lot of links, images and video – you won’t be able to do any of this with ByWord. This software is kind of like what the iPad is to the Amazon Kindle in regards to books – you can read books on the iPad, but you’ll have a much better experience using the Kindle just because you’re not able to do anything…just read.

As for Byword – just write, no fancy options to distract you.

One more site to check out if you own a  Mac, iPad or iPhone is HogbaySoftware.

They have several great apps for the writing process and keeping you organized:

• PlainText – Dropbox text editing for iPad & iPhone
• TaskPaper – Simple to-do lists for Mac & iPhone.
• WriteRoom – Distraction free writing for Mac & iPhone.
• QuickCursor – Your text editor anywhere for Mac.
• SimpleText – Your text synced online for Mac, iPhone, & Web.

Writer For iPad ($0.99)

Have an iPad and want to enjoy a great writing experience? No problem, check this advanced software for Information Architects.

The key to good writing is not that magical glass of Bordeaux, the right kind of tobacco or that groovy background music. The key is focus. What you need to write well is a setting that allows you to fully concentrate on your text and nothing but your text. Many professional writers use SimpleText or Textedit because these are the only writing programs that are totally distraction free. But text editors are not perfect. That’s what Writer is for.

Conclusion

What about you? Which blogging editor do you prefer to use? Maybe you’re using a blogging editor I didn’t showcase here but you feel it’s better than the ones I included? I am open to any suggestions, though I really went through a lot of editors to save time for you and show the best players on the market!

What do you think about some of the simple blogging editors and some of the more innovative solutions showcased here?

Continue reading to find out what is this WordPress plugin (actually it works on all sites) about, what it does and why do you need it.

So What Exactly Is It?

Popup Domination is a powerful WordPress plugin for attracting email subscribers. It creates a lightbox based pop-up window which helps to increase opt-in email list conversion on your blog. Popup Domination installation comes together with 4 beautiful high converting themes, 15 different colour combinations and 8 button variations.

The good thing is that you don’t need any knowledge coding at all. Just like most of the WordPress plugins this one ain’t no exception and does all the work for you. Simply customize the settings and with a click of a button, your interactive plugin is ready.

Why Do I Need It?

If you want your online business to be successful, having a large audience is crucial. And as you may know, reaching and building trust to your audience isn’t an easy job. One of the best ways to do build it is to have a mailing list. This is where Popup Dominations comes handy. The principle is that you have to be able to give something to your readers, so they would be interested in sharing their email with you.

Here are some of the features you’ll find on Popup Domination 2.0:

• It will work on any website

Unlike 1.0 version, in this one there are included both a WordPress plugin and a brand new standalone version which means you can enable PopUp Domination on any website.

• 7 themes and 15 different color options

The standard Popup Domination installation comes with 7, yes 7 themes and 15 different color schemes. All of which are unique and fully customizable.

• Works with any mailing list provider

All you need to do is input the HTML generated and you are good to go.

• Works with any caching software

Developers had listened to feedback and worked hard with this feature.. Theres more themes, more options and more functionality. You can check out the video on their homepage for a complete run down of the new features.

• Page Selection

Within the WordPress plugin you can choose exactly which pages and posts you want PopUp Domination.

• Impression Counter

Only show PopUp Domination once you have receive a certain number of impressions from a particular user.

It’s really easy to set-up and customize. You can fully customize this plugin without leaving your WordPress admin panel. Templates, colors schemes and text fields are easily editable. If you’re more experienced user, you can access to CSS files and edit the plugin beyond recognition.

Summary

Briefly, I want to say that Popup Domination is a great and worthy plugin which will be appreciated by marketing veterans and rookies as well. Easy customization and user-friendly design makes it one of the best this kind of plugins in the game. It can be priceless investment to your online business. So whether you are an online marketing expert with years of experience or just a newcomer, Popup Domination is the must have a thing for your toolkit.

I have bought and tested Popup Domination myself, not using for 1stwebdesigner yet because still I think it’s a bit too proactive way for getting subscribers, but very effective one, I think it would be good to not receive this pop up once you’ve subscribed, but I don’t know if there is any chance to recognize already subscribed person. But for short time effective marketing definitely must have plugin in your toolbox.

If you want to get Popup Domination and learn more about it, you can do it by clicking here. It’s not a cheap plugin though, now it costs 77$, but true marketers will evaluate its functions and will do anything to increase their mailing list to eventually increase their own earnings.

If you have a bigger subscriber count, usually it also means better chance to actually sell something to them. The same is with website –  if you have a great website but no one knows about it, you don’t earn anything and don’t have any exposure. Do something about it and convert your loyal readers to even more loyal followers in your mailing list.

I hope this informative promotional article helped you to evaluate good plugin and email marketing at all! Take care!

Good software however can give you a lot of tips, ways to help code faster,find your typing mistakes without a pain. My research stopped with Aptana few years ago, which one is your pick?

1. Aptana Studio (Windows, Linux, Mac OS X) (FREE)

Aptana Studio is a complete web development environment that combines powerful authoring tools for HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, along with thousands of additional plugins created by the community.

Features of Aptana Studio:

• Unified Editing for Web Apps
• Ajax and JavaScript Libraries
• Ruby on Rails, Python and PHP
• Desktop Ajax
• Free, Open Source and Cross Platform

2. SlickEdit (Windows, Linux, Mac OS X) (FREE Trial; 299$)

SlickEdit is the multi-platform, multi-language code editor that gives programmers the ability to create, navigate, modify, build, and debug code faster and more accurately.

Features of SlickEdit:

• Display symbol details with List Members, function/method argument help, and formatted Javadoc/XMLdoc/Doxygen comments
• Analyze symbols and hierarchy with a rich set of tools including Symbols, Class, References, and Find Symbol tool windows
• Check in and check out from version control
• Diff files and directories
• Preview the definition for the symbol under the cursor automatically without lifting a finger. The Preview tool window shows the definition and formatted Javadoc/XMLdoc/Doxygen comments.
• Edit files up to 2 GB

3. jEdit (Windows, Linux, Mac OS X) (FREE)

jEdit is a mature programmer’s text editor with hundreds (counting the time developing plugins) of person-years of development behind it.

Features of jEdit:

• Built-in macro language
• Plugins can be downloaded and installed from within jEdit using the “plugin manager” feature.
• Auto indent, and syntax highlighting for more than 130 languages.
• Supports a large number of character encodings including UTF8 and Unicode.
• Folding for selectively hiding regions of text.
• Word wrap.
• Highly configurable and customizable.

4. IntelliJ IDEA (Windows, Linux, Mac OS X) (FREE; €86 to €516)

IntelliJ IDEA is a code-centric IDE focused on developer productivity. IntelliJ IDEA deeply understands your code and gives you a set of powerful tools without imposing any particular workflow or project structure. IntelliJ IDEA is your dream pair-programmer who knows its way around the codebase, makes great suggestions right when you need them, and is always ready to help you shape your code.

Features of IntelliJ IDEA:

• Advanced Code Editing
• Supported Languages
• Technologies & Frameworks
• Teamwork Facilitation
• Code Quality Features
• Integrated Environment
• Customization & Extensibility

5. Notepad++ (Windows) (FREE)

Notepad++ is a free source code editor and Notepad replacement that supports several languages. Running in the MS Windows environment, its use is governed by GPL License.

Features of Notepad++:

• Syntax Highlighting and Syntax Folding
• WYSIWYG
• User Defined Syntax Highlighting
• Auto-completion
• Multi-Document
• Multi-View
• Regular Expression Search/Replace supported
• Full Drag ‘N’ Drop supported
• Dynamic position of Views
• File Status Auto-detection
• Zoom in and zoom out
• Multi-Language environment supported
• Bookmark
• Brace and Indent guideline Highlighting
• Macro recording and playback

6. SCREEM (Linux) (FREE)

SCREEM is a web development environment. It’s purpose is to increase productivity when constructing a site, by providing quick access to commonly used features. While it is written for use with the GNOME desktop environment in mind it does not specifically require you to be running it, just have the libraries installed.

Features of SCREEM:

• Broken Link Checking
• CTags Support
• Cut / Paste
• CVS Support
• Document Structure Display
• DTD/Doctype Parsing
• Helper Applications
• Inline Tagging
• Intelliclose
• Link Fixing
• Page Previewing
• Page Templates
• Publishing
• Recent documents / Projects
• Search / Replace
• Select Context
• Spell Checking
• Syntax Highlighting
• Tag Trees
• Task management
• Wizards

7. EmEditor (Windows) (FREE Trial; €32.15)

EmEditor is a lightweight, but extensible, commercial text editor for Microsoft Windows. Although designed for Windows XP, the program is also certified for use with Windows Vista. Available editions of the program include the 32-bit edition and the 64-bit edition, and the program also includes a portability option to set up a removable drive, such as a USB drive, through an Import and Export Wizard. Feature-wise, the program includes unicode and large file support, a tabbed window design, and is extensible via plugins and scripts (macros), many of which have been written by the users.

Features of EmEditor:

• New Snippets Plug-in
• Brackets/Quotation Mark Auto-Complete
• Narrowing
• CSV, TSV and DSV
• Full Screen View
• Clipboard History
• Wildcard Support
• Workspace Including Undo Information
• New External Tools
• Pin to List
• Save in Protected Folder
• Supports Windows 7 Jump List
• New Buttons on Toolbar

8. Programmer’s Notepad (Windows) (FREE)

Programmer’s Notepad is an open-source text editor targeted at users who work with source code.

Features of Programmer’s Notepad:

• Bookmarks (both numbered and plain)
• Code Folding/Outlining
• Docking tool windows
• Excellent external tool support with user-configurable output matching
• Export to HTML (using CSS) and RTF
• File association manager
• In-file method/definition navigation (using Ctags)
• No limit on file size (although large files may take a while to load)
• Non fixed-width font support
• Projects and Project Groups with multi-level folders and file system mirroring
• Quick Search toolbar with links to Google and Google Groups
• Regular expression search and replace
• Support for unicode files
• Support for windows, unix and macintosh file formats
• Syntax highlighting for many languages through “schemes”.
• Tabbed MDI interface
• Text Clips
• Unlimited number of schemes supported, powerful syntax highlighting supporting both user-defined and built-in schemes
• User-defined schemes (XML)
• Word-wrapping

9. PSPad (Windows) (FREE)

PSPad editor is a freeware text editor and source editor intended for use by programmers.

Features of PSPad:

The universal freeware editor, useful for people who:

• Work with plain text
• Create web pages
• Want to use a good IDE for their compiler

10. HTML-Kit (Windows) (FREE)

HTML-Kit is an HTML editor for Microsoft Windows. The application is a full-featured HTML editor designed to edit, format, validate, preview and publish web pages in HTML, XHTML and XML -languages.

Features of HTML-Kit:

• Navigate tags and scripts
• Code Folding
• Batch Search and Replace
• Upload Options
• Incremental Search and Go-To
• File Versioning and Auto Backup
• HTML-Kit Shorthand
• Not Lost in Translation
• Remote Editing with Local Copy
• Dockable Plugins
• Paste Plus
• Native Unicode Support
• Multi-Page Templates
• Re-order Document Tabs

11. EditPlus (Windows) (FREE Trial; $35)

EditPlus is a text editor, HTML editor, PHP editor and Java editor for Windows. While it can serve as a good Notepad replacement, it also offers many powerful features for Web page authors and programmers.

Features of EditPlus:

• Multiple document interface
• Overlappable windows
• Tabbed document interface
• Window splitting
• Spell checking
• Regex-based find & replace
• Encoding conversion
• Newline conversion
• Syntax highlighting
• Multiple undo/redo
• Rectangular block selection
• Bracket matching
• Auto indentation
• Auto completion
• Code folding (Text folding)
• Compiler integration

12. Crimson Editor (Windows) (FREE)

Crimson Editor is a professional source code editor for Windows. This program is not only fast in loading time, but also small in size (so small that it can be copied in one floppy disk).

Features of Crimson Editor:

• Edit multiple documents
• Syntax highlighting
• Multi-level undo / redo
• Project management
• Directory tree view window
• Find & Replace
• Column mode editing
• Natural word wrapping
• Spell checker
• User tools and macros
• Edit remote files directly using built-in FTP client
• Print & Print preview

13. Coda (Mac OS X) (99$)

Coda is a $99 commercial web development application for Mac OS X, developed by Panic.

Features of Coda:

• Plug-ins
• Open quickly
• Smart Spelling
• Subversion
• Find across files

14. BBEdit (Mac OS X) (FREE Trial; From $49 to $125)

Whenever you need to work with text, whether you want to create or maintain a Web site, write a program or shell script, search log files and extract data, or write a few paragraphs (or pages, or books), BBEdit offers what you need to make accomplishing your task quicker and easier. BBEdit 9 adds over one hundred new features and over one hundred improvements over the previous version.

Features of BBEdit:

• Text Handling
• Web Development
• Programming
• File Handling
• Display
• Search
• UNIX & Admin

15. TextMate (Mac OS X) (FREE Trial; €48.75)

TextMate brings Apple’s approach to operating systems into the world of text editors. By bridging UNIX underpinnings and GUI, TextMate cherry-picks the best of both worlds to the benefit of expert scripters and novice users alike.

Features of TextMate:

• Ability to Search and Replace in a Project
• Auto-Indent for Common Actions Like Pasting Text
• Auto-Pairing of Brackets and Other Characters
• Clipboard History
• Column Selections and Column Typing
• Completion of Words from Current Document
• CSS-like Selectors to Pinpoint the Scope of Actions and Settings
• Declarative Language Grammars for Graceful Mixing and Hacking
• Dynamic Outline for Working With Multiple Files
• Expand Trigger Words to Code Blocks With Tab-able Placeholders
• File Tabs when Working With Projects
• Foldable Code Blocks
• Function Pop-up for Quick Overview and Navigation
• Plug-able Through Your Favorite Scripting Language
• Recordable Macros With No Programming Required
• Regular Expression Search and Replace (grep)
• Run Shell Commands from Within a Document
• Support for Darcs, Perforce, SVK, and Subversion
• Support for More Than 50 Languages
• Switch Between Files in Projects With a Minimum of Key Strokes
• Themable Syntax Highlight Colors
• Visual Bookmarks to Jump Between Places in a File
• Works As External Editor for (s)ftp Programs
• Works Together With Xcode and Can Build Xcode Projects

16. SubEthaEdit (Mac OS X) (FREE Trial; €29)

SubEthaEdit is a powerful and lean text editor. And it’s the only collaborative one that is a joy to use. By combining the ease of Bonjour with the world’s best text collaboration engine, it makes working together not only possible but even fun…

Features of SubEthaEdit:

SubEthaEdit includes various advanced features: A UNIX command line utility to enable complex and interactive pipe workflows with your terminal. Overhauled printing, including all bells and whistles, even with collaborative metadata. Exporting to HTML, again with metadata. Completely user customizable syntax highlighting through styles. Support for editing files as administrator. Improved AppleScript support to allow control of sharing features.

17. CSSEdit (Mac OS X) (FREE Trial; $39.95)

Design beautiful, innovative and fast-loading web sites… with a beautiful, innovative and fast app. CSSEdit’s intuitive approach to style sheets and powerful previewing features will make you deliver awesome standards-based sites in no time!

Features of CSSEdit:

With CSSEdit, you see changes to your style sheet applied in real-time. Without saving. Without uploading. Without hassle. For any Web App or HTML file. You can edit style sheets for absolutely any site, on- or offline. Thanks to our innovative Override technology, you can even apply your open style sheets to any site and see it change instantly! Styling a Web App used to be a cycle of type — upload — refresh. CSSEdit destroys this waste of time. Making your Web 2.0 App beautiful is now easy and productive.

18. Taco HTML Edit (Mac OS X) (FREE Trial; $24.95)

Taco HTML Edit is the premier HTML editor and PHP editor for the Mac. As an HTML editor, Taco HTML Edit empowers its users to rapidly create their own web sites. It is designed exclusively for Mac OS X and has many advanced features including spell checking, live browser previewing, PHP previewing, syntax checking, and much more.

Features of Taco HTML Edit:

• Component Library
• Code Coloring
• Preview
• Code Completion
• Syntax Checking
• Live Preview
• Code Clips

19. skEdit (Mac OS X) (FREE Trial; $34.95)

skEdit is a text editor for Mac OS X, aimed at web designers and programmers.

Features of skEdit:

• Tabbed interface
• Project based site management
• Code hinting and completion
• Code folding
• Code snippets
• Syntax highlighting
• File uploading and remote editing (using FTP, SFTP or WebDAV)
• HTML Tidy integration
• Search and replace with support for regular expressions

Which software for coding is your favorite? If you haven’t got one, now you certainly have some promising programs to choose from!

This article is created to explain everything about desktop blogging editors, main features, why and how you should use one. I will also share my own experiences, I’ve been blogging daily and I’ve tested a lot of tools, automating programs and blogging clients and I think I can objectively evaluate features.

I’ve been blogging for 1.5 years now and when I switched to desktop blogging editor, I never went back. There are several great, free editors, Firefox plugins allowing you to write articles more easier. When I started I used WordPress admin panel, I wrote everything in plain code writing all tags and urls myself – it wasn’t fast so I needed to figure something out.

Then I found Windows Live Writer and it seemed to be solution, but I got upload problems. There was several times when I uploaded images through Live Writer, but in the middle (let’s say 54/100 images) something went wrong with image, I needed to fix error, upload images from beginning and my server from those requests several times crashed. Also back then I didn’t know how to set different settings, so images wouldn’t have that drop shadow, resize image settings (it created one unnecessary thumb image for me). If you haven’t got huge posts with a lot of images Windows Live Writer is perfect solution, but I needed something different.

I figured out I need to upload images to server manually to reduce it’s overload. I used find/replace features to change image local address to direct online link. If you want to know how I do that, this blog post could help you – The Best And Fastest Way To Create Blog Post. I wrote there my experiences and my approach to write and manually create article. In that way I get very clean code using Blogdesk.

With Windows XP Blogdesk was perfect solution, but somehow with Windows Vista and Windows 7 it doesn’t work very good. I got mystic saving problems myself and I don’t really know what to suggest for my new guest authors. And yes,main reason I decided to write this article doing serious research in available desktop blogging editors is because I wanted to find new editor which could suit for me as well!

Let’s give it a try – shall we?

So.. What the heck is desktop blogging editors? Why You should use one?

As I mentioned above, when I started to blog I wrote my posts in WordPress Rich Text Editor, where you can get code/design view, upload images – at first it seems like a good way to go, but image uploading you need to do manually one by one and it takes a lot of time. And what you will do if you internet browser crashes in the middle of article and you forgot to save it? How you will write your post if you have no Internet connection?

Okay, then you could write your posts in word processors like Microsoft Word, Textpad and then just paste finished text into WordPress post section. But again we have problems with formatting and image uploading. However this simple approach will work just fine for short textual posts with few images and almost no formatting, but I am talking more about serious blogging and approach.

Desktop blogging tools and editors are independent texting WYSIWYG software you can connect with you blog and essentially it is very simple text/code editor created specifically for easier and automated blogging. Now you can format, write text, add images, effects in design view and if you need to edit some code manually or check how it looks – just switch to code view! And the best thing is, you don’t need Internet connection to write your posts, only when you want to publish it. Your posts are always in safety in blogging editor, accessable in any time!

Everybody loves lists, so I created one with main benefits why you should use desktop blogging editor:

1. Write Articles Offline – For example if you own laptop and travel, you don’t always have Internet connection. No problem! Write your post in blogging editor and you can publish it once you’ll get Internet connection just by hitting publish button. No more copy/paste and images will be uploaded automatically as well.
2. Spell Checking – This is basic, but good blogging editor has this feature and after writing your post, just run spell checking and rapidly correct all mistakes you’ve accidentaly made.
3. Multiple blogs – If you write for your own blog and you are guest writer on another, it is really painful to publish it and switch to another blog. With blogging client, you can change blog to publish with few clicks and without any worries.
4. Quick and easy editing – Switch from design to code section to easily change some code, fix small errors.
5. Automated Image Uploading – Usually blogging clients are connected directly with your blog and when you hit publish button, all images are uploaded from your computer to local server automatically. If you haven’t got many pictures, it’s great solution.
6. Easy Post Management – Rapidly fast browse through your previous drafts, published articles, edit them, save – in WordPress panel it would be many times slower process.
7. Browser Crash – Sometimes browser just crash and you loose some time and work, with blogging client it is almost impossible. Usually clients have enabled autosave each 3-4minutes, in that way preventing any work loss.
8. Feature Integration – Many clients support Flickr, Delicious, Youtube for automated image linking, video adding and more features.

Free Desktop Blogging Editors For Windows

From free desktop blogging editors I would recommend Windows Live writer, Blogdesk or w.bloggar. Every client offers different features, you should check out them all and then pick your favorite one, which suits you the best.

Windows Live Writer

Writer makes it easy to share your photos and videos on almost any blog service—Windows Live, WordPress, Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad, and many more.

It has many features, I will mention most important ones:

• Crop and tilt photos
• Insert multiple photos
• Additional spell checking languages
• Insert and publish video to YouTube
• Word count
• Twitter, Digg and Flickr Plug-ins
• Type-down filtering in the Open dialog

Check out Windows Live Writer Tweaks, Tips and Updates article from Lifehacker for deeper research.

Blogdesk

Blogging should be simple, but it gets complicated and time-consuming if you are serious about it. BlogDesk makes it easy to write, speeds up lavish processes and assists the author with smart features.

Feature list:

• WYSIWYG editor
• ImageWizard to easy insert images, create thumbnails
• Reduced view – switch to cleaner view with less distractions
• BlogWizards – easily configure blog
• Spell checker
• Tags-Generator
• Frequently Used Phrases – time-saver for often used phrases

Post2Blog

Post2Blog 3 is a FREEWARE handy blog editor with live spell-checking support for pro-bloggers.

Feature list:

• WYSIWYG editor with complete hot-keys support;
• Built-in “Live” spellchecking;
• Images are uploaded automatically;
• Compose new posts in MS Word and post them to your blog using Post2Blog toolbar for MS Word;
• Add Technorati, Del.icio.us, Buzzwords, 43 Things tags to your posts;
• Automatically send trackbacks, ping web-services to notify about updates in your blogs;
• Use built-in smiles for use in your blog;

Thingamablog

Thingamablog is a cross-platform, standalone blogging application that makes authoring and publishing your weblogs almost effortless. Unlike most blogging solutions, Thingamablog does NOT require a third-party blogging host, a cgi/php enabled web host, or a MySQL database. In fact, all you need to setup, and manage, a blog with Thingamablog is FTP, SFTP, or network access to a web server.

Feature list:

• Maintain multiple blogs
• Read news with an integrated feed reader
• Publish remotely to your blog via email
• Set up flexible archiving options
• Define your own custom template tags
• Set up flexible archiving options

w.bloggar

The w.bloggar is an application that acts as an interface between the user and one or more blog(s); in other words, it is a Post and Template editor, with several features and resources that the browser based blog editors do not offer.

Feature list:

• Import Text files
• Colorized HTML code
• Multiple accounts and blogs
• Spell Checking
• Multiple accounts and blogs
• Toolbar Icons Skin
• File and Image Upload
• Supports Windows XP

Zoundry Raven

The Zoundry Blog Writer™ is a rich WYSIWYG blogging editor that’s as easy to use as a word processor. With just a few clicks of a mouse instead of complex HTML coding, you can do things like drag and drop images, create block quotes, and format links to open in a new window.

Feature list:

• Tabbed true WYSIWYG Editing
• Improved content management
• Manage multiple media storage services
• Manage multiple blogs offline
• Raven2Go: Portable Application support
• WordPress 2.2+ Page & Tag support

Read more about Zoundry features here.

Qumana (PC&Mac)

You don’t need to know a thing about HTML code to make perfect posts. Write your posts at your own pace without having to be online.

Qumana is an easy-to-use desktop blog editor, enabling you to write, edit and post to one or more blogs. You can use Qumana even when you are offline. Save your blog posts to your hard drive and upload whenever you like. Great for bloggers on the move.

Qumana features:

• WYSIWYG editor, as easy as email
• Clean interface with easy-to-understand buttons
• Spell check with ‘as you type’ option
• Technorati tagging
• Source view option to edit HTML
• Save posts as drafts, or edit old posts, from the Blog Manager
• Easy image uploads and image alignment
• DropPad – gather links, text, and pictures by dragging them to a desktop pad
• Offline editing
• Multi-window editing
• Seamless posting and cross-posting
• Trackback & pinging

Commercial Desktop Blogging Editors For Windows

Blogjet

(Top 1 Commercial Pick)

A popular Windows blog client for your WordPress, TypePad, Blogger, Drupal, etc. blogs. Get convenience and speed of a native application, and the ability to write posts offline. BlogJet comes with English (US) and English (UK) dictionaries.

If you cannot decide, check out their huge feature list and video demo here. All recommendations and demos made this blogging client my top 1 choice. It’s not free, but at least I get many features, good support and regular updates. Such blog client is one of the most important tools in article creation, so I think 39.95$ is very good investment at least for me.

Several features:

• WYSIWYG Editor
• Post Management and Searching
• Word Counter and Blog Statistics
• 20 High-Quality Smileys
• Spell Checker
• Flickr and YouTube Support
• Auto Replace
• Modern Interface

Price: $39.95

RocketPost

RocketPost is smart blog software for power bloggers. It’s the only one with WYSIWYG editing, full local editing and full blog import. And it works just like email, so you already know how to use it.

Speed up your blogging with one-click Technorati, Flickr and Del.icio.us tags, built-in photo editing, instant photo albums, automatic linking to related posts, quote tracking, quick linking, drop caps, pull quotes and a running word count.

Not free software, but filled with many features, you might use daily to automate your article writing process greatly. Certainly a good pick as well.

Several features (read more):

• WYSIWYG editing
• Full local editing – See and edit all your posts in one place without having to download them every time
• Full blog import – Download all your existing posts and get started in less than 5 minutes
• Picture editing – Crop, resize and compress pictures right within your post
• Check spelling while you type
• Multiple-word AutoCorrect

Price: 29$

Other Solutions

ScribeFire Blog Editor For Firefox

ScribeFire is a full-featured blog editor that integrates with your browser and lets you easily post to your blog.

What’s your favorite desktop blogging client? And why?

Twitter has their own tools for displaying Twitter status on website, but they are pretty slow and not too varied or maybe you just need don’t know about such plugins, that’s why I chose to take research and create comprehensive list with Twitter related WordPress plugins and tools that will help you unite Twitter with your blog.

Twitter Tools

Twitter Tools is a plugin that creates a complete integration between your WordPress blog and your Twitter account.

Twitter Tools integrates with Twitter by giving you the following functionality:

• Archive your Twitter tweets (downloaded every 10 minutes)
• Create a blog post from each of your tweets
• Create a daily or weekly digest post of your tweets
• Create a tweet on Twitter whenever you post in your blog, with a link to the blog post
• Post a tweet from your sidebar
• Post a tweet from the WP Admin screens
• Pass your tweets along to another service (via API hook).

TwitterDash

TwitterDash is a WordPress plugin that adds your friends timeline from twitter into your dashboard.

Thread Twitter

Thread Twitter fetch your tweets and display them in thread style.

Elegant Twitter Widget

A WordPress widget that displays twitter updates in yummy valid semantic XHTML code. The code is heavily commented and the output is in template functions so everything is fully customizable.

Twitt-Twoo

Twitt-Twoo is a simple little plugin that will allow you to update your Twitter status right from your blog’s sidebar. AJAX takes cares of the hard work, and means that your page doens’t even have to reload, allowing for quick and easy status updates.

Twitter Retweet

Twitter ReTweet provides a function that displays a ReTweet link which gives visitors the ability to ReTweet the current post; supports custom URLs (perfect for Google Analytics Campaign Tracking

Tweet Tweet

Tweet Tweet is a plugin for WordPress that polls Twitter and archives your tweets and the tweets of those you follow so those insightful conversations you have at 1am are never lost.

Twitter Widget

Adds a sidebar widget to display Twitter updates (uses the Javascript Twitter ‘badge’)

Twitter Widget Pro

A widget that properly handles twitter feeds, including @username, #hashtag, and link parsing. It supports displaying profiles images, and even lets you control whether to display the time and date of a tweet or how log ago it happened (about 5 hours ago, etc). Requires PHP5.

Tweet Rooster

Add the code from this website and you can enable users to tweet directly from your website or blog.

WP-Twitip-ID Plugin

Add a twitter field to your comment form (easily).

Top Twitter Links by Twitturls

Widget that displays currently popular links that have been tweeted.

TwitterFountain

Have you ever wanted to see what was happening at that one event you could not go to? Did the plain text-backchannels somehow left you feeling disappointed?

Twitterfountain comes to your aid mashing up tweets and Flickr-images that share the same tags into a spectacular visual. Below is a sample, that you can copy and embed in your own site.

TweetSuite

The first version of TweetSuite, a Twitter-WordPress integration plugin that includes the following features:

• Server-side (no-JS or remote calls) TweetBacks
• ReTweet-This buttons for each TweetBack
• A digg-like Tweet-This Button
• Automatic Tweeting of new posts
• A Most-Tweeted Widget
• A Recently-Tweeted Widget
• My-Last-Tweets Widget
• A My-Favorited-Tweets Widget

TweetBacks

People are talking about your posts, and not only in the comments to your post. A lot of that conversation is happening on Twitter, and now, you can take that conversation right back to your blog! This plugin imports those tweets about your posts as comments. You can display them in between the other comments on your blog, or display them separately.

Tweet Stats

This plugin adds two widgets to your site: “Most Tweeted Posts” and “Recently Tweeted Posts”. It depends on the Tweetbacks plugin by Yoast, so make sure you have that plugin installed.

Twitter Remote (beta)

This widget shows which twitter users recently visited your blog or website.

Tweet This

Adds a “Tweet This Post” link to every post and page. Shortens URLs in advance through Th8.us, eating up only 19 of 140 characters. Also included: Plurk, Yahoo Buzz, Delicious, Digg, Ping.fm, Reddit, and StumbleUpon. Includes the post’s title after the link (can be customized). If your titles are really long, they get cut off at 136 characters with “…”. Customize under Settings > Tweet This. Includes your choice of six buttons.

ComenTwitter

Ultimately plugin’s goal is to give the commenter the option of sending their comment to twitter and allowing people to follow that blogs comments both in the blog and in twitter. The main reason for this is to generate a buzz and encourage commenting on peoples blogs. It will also improve the quality and value of people’s tweets revolving around blog posts.

TweetRoll

This widget shows your friends avatars on your blog/website and encourages more people to follow you. Colour customization and localization options available.

Twitme

This plugin allows you to automatically post your new posts on the twitter website. This is good because for example the iPod and iPhone for example have a large amount of twitter clients to pick from. Your blog posts will arrive to people while they are walking the streets.

Twitter Poster

The Twitter Poster is a plugin which allows wordpress publishers to automatically post their new posts to their Twitter account. The Twitter Poster will take the title of a new post and will subit it to the Twitter account specified in the options. It will also add the link back to the post, allowing your twitter followers to access the post details

Twitter Friends Widget

Twitter Friends is a WordPress plugin that displays your Twitter friends/ followers in your sidebar in the same way that they appear on your Twitter homepage.

Tweetable Twitter Plugin

Tweetable is a WordPress Plugin intended to help integrate Twitter into your blog. It can tweet your blog posts as they are published, shortening the URLs with either Tr.im or Is.gd and optionally including Google Analytics campaign tags. You can display your latest tweet(s) in your blog sidebar with a customizable widget, which can even display your follower count.

Twitter Feed

The application will display the latest tweet from all of the active accounts and then displays those latest tweets in date order. So the newest tweet across all of the accounts will always be shown first. It is also possible to switch between allowing/disallowing PM (Private Message) tweets to be included in the display.

Add Twitter RSS

Add Twitter RSS is a simple plugin that adds your Twitter RSS link to the header of your blog. It allows your readers to easily find your Twitter feed.

TwitterCounter

Allows you to integrate TwitterCounter.com badges on your blog. Additionally, you can add the Twitter Remote to your blog, which shows which twitter users recently visited your blog or website. Manually add where you would like to display the badge / remote or use the WordPress sidebar widgets instead.

@ Reply

This plugin allows you to add Twitter-like @reply links to comments. When clicked, those links insert the author name and a link to the comment you are replying to in the textarea.

Bird Feeder

Bird Feeder is a WordPress plug-in that simply tweets when you publish a post. It doesn’t do anything else, nor will it ever.

Twitter Updater

This plugin will let you automatically update your Twitter.com status with your most recent blog post. There are a few options to how the display will look when it updates.

TweetMeMe

At last I found this beautiful website which tracks the hottest links on Twitter, interesting analysis.

Other resources and further reading:

• Official WordPress Plugins – Twitter Search
• 15 Useful Twitter Hacks and Plug-Ins For WordPress
• 10 Twitter Hacks For Your WordPress Blog
• 20 Twitter Status Design Tutorials, Icons & WP Plugins
• Top Twitter WordPress Plugin Roundup
• 107 WordPress Twitter Plugins

]]> http://www.1stwebdesigner.com/wordpress/31-useful-twitter-plugins-for-wordpress-to-choose-from/feed/ 37 http://www.1stwebdesigner.com/design/30-most-valuable-digg-tools-you-should-use-daily/ http://www.1stwebdesigner.com/design/30-most-valuable-digg-tools-you-should-use-daily/#comments Tue, 16 Jun 2009 13:32:33 +0000 Dainis Graveris http://www.1stwebdesigner.com/?p=3633

Digg is one of the best and the biggest social network right now. If you know how to treat it, you can get amazing floods of traffic regularly. However using just their homepage and simple techniques always aren’t enough. Do you know what’s hot now, how many of your friends digg your stories, actual trends and many other analysis about Digg? These trends always continue to change so you need several tools to keep up. And this is place where this article comes handy – I carefully tested many tools and then selected the most usable ones I enjoyed and I hope this research will help you too. Also I am using Firefox, WordPress and Greasemonkey in regular basis, so on this list you will find a bunch of plugins and scripts too.

1.Digg Labs

The labs provide a broader (and deeper) view of Digg. A lot of stuff gets submitted to Digg every day, so good things can sometimes fly right past you. Labs projects look beneath the surface of the Digg community’s activities. Here you can find several tools to make browsing and digging more fun as well as analyze activities.

2. OriginalSignal

This site shows Digg RSS feed in much more handier way, you can also customize font size, view more headlines, change the order of weblogs or just grab RSS feed. Definitely spares unnecessary clicks.

3.Di66

Find out which are top words in titles, top words in descriptions, digg’s stats, top users, top sources. This website analyses statistics to let You understand who and what’s hot on Digg right now.

4.SocialBlade

Similar site like di66, but this one offer more detailed analysis, graphs and statistics allowing You to understand how many comments, diggs, friend diggs etc. are needed to hit digg front page. Analyze, what’s really happening on digg’s front page.

5.Digg Explorer v1.1

This is a tool for exploration of the 500 most popular recent stories from Digg. It uses small circles to represent items of interest which are fluidly positioned in various ways to emphasize patterns of interest. Version 1.1 adds a new graph of the top Users and also fixes a bug in the domain parsing logic.

6.Digg Top

DiggTop is an application for Windows and MacOSX that lets you view a blended list of your favourite Digg topic or keyword feeds. In addition to the full Digg submission information, it will also display a slideshow of images it can scrape from the linked article.

View video submissions from your favourite Digg video categories, and preview some videos right in the application. You can also set up keyword and Digg count filters that will notify you with a sound and icon when new stories match your criteria.

7.MiniDigg

A digg.com widget that allows you to view and track stories, track Your friend activity and the best of all is, this Adobe AIR application refreshes automatically, default refresh rate is 30sec, but You can change that.

8.Digg Alerter

This tools tracks your submitted stories informing with sound when story gets new digg, as well as comments and who dug your submission.

9.Feeddit

Feeddit is an improvement to the standard rss feed on Digg.com, it’s longer, fatter and more awesome. These new feeds are 100 stories long and has the actual link so you can skip past Digg and get directly to the story. This site lets you follow to digg front page even easier! Just subscribe and let the news come to you.

10.Neaveru Digg Comment Statistics

Fill in your Digg username right on their site to get statistics about your Digg commenting.

11.Digg Comment Viewer

Online application which lets you view all your Digg comments quickly and easily. It also can track your friend comments easily as well, several more options.

12.Digg Notify

Digg Notify is an application that pops up a small box in the bottom right hand side of your screen. It tells you when your story hits front page as well. The window never gains focus so it should not bother you. You can configure the minimum amount of diggs before the messages start coming. You can also configure the amount of stories it scans for. Once your story hits front page it will notify you of that and then ignore it so you don’t get swamped with messages. You also have the option of ignoring/unignoring certain stories.

13.Digg Friend Statistics

I just cannot explain how valuable this tool is. Must have – to let you evaluate some of your Digg friends or fans and some of them just remove.

Enter your Digg user name and this script will tell you which of your friends are digging your submissions – and which aren’t. DiggStatistics.com will analyze your Digg friends list and tell you which of your friends have dugg the last 10 of your digg submissions, and which of your friends have not. It will also tell you which users in the digg community other than your friends have dugg more than five of your submissions.

14.The Digg Oracle

This tool lets you find already long time ago dugg stories – useful if you use Digg as bookmarking tool.

Why not just go to Digg.com and search?

Digg no longer allows you to perform searches on your voting history. Many people use Digg as a bookmarking tool, and thus intend to reference back to specific articles. There may be thousands of stories on the same topic, not all will contain the same content as the story you are looking for.

15. DiggLicious

Digglicious.com is a mashup of three fantastic websites; digg.com, del.icio.us and reddit.com.This site combines information from these three sites to provide lists of items that are being dugg, items that are being bookmarked on del.icio.us, and items moving up the homepage of reddit.com. The main page uses AJAX to show activity for the sites.

16. DiggWatcher

This simple Flash app is designed to run in the background and monitor a Digg story of your choice. It will alert you with sound upon receiving new diggs, new comments, and becoming popular.

Firefox Extensions

—————————–

17. Smart Digg Button 1.01

The Smart Digg Button is simple Firefox extension which allows you to see whether or not the web page you are currently viewing has been submitted to Digg and lets you submit it if it hasn’t.

Unfortunately not yet compatible with latest Firefox version.

18. The Digg Toolbar

The Digg Toolbar for Firefox lets you Digg, submit content, and keep track of Digg even when you’re not on the Digg site itself. With a notification window built into the toolbar, you’ll never miss a popular story or when friends Digg, submit, or comment on stories.

I am pretty big fan about this extension, it’s similar like Smart Digg button, but this one offers more options. However if You don’t need them, I’ll suggest previous extension.

19. TADSEE

The Anti-Digg/Slashdot Effect Extension provides, in the right-click context menu, options to open the Coral/Google cache versions of a link in a new tab.

20. Socialphile

Socialphile Firefox Extension assists users with comfortable searching based on ranking of each search result at social news websites like Digg.com

21. Digg Sidebar

Shows the Digg stories in real time in the Firefox sidebar.

Greasemonkey scripts

—————————–

Download Greasemonkey Firefox plugin

22.Digg.com shorturl remover ( Greasemonkey script)

Digg.com direct url in front page – I enjoy this script, because usually I digg stories and if I want to bookmark them, I click through and get digg link. This scripts practically saves You one click through.

23.Digg Button Animation Enabler

Enables the animation when pressing the digg button on an article that includes one, so you can digg it and keep reading.

24.Google reader digg news

Adds a digg control to every news-item in google reader

25.Digg Rating Extender

A greasemonkey script (for Firefox) to show the digg ups and digg downs on digg stories. Here’s a picture of what it looks like:

26.Digg – Add mirrors

Adds links to rorr.im, Coral Cache, DuggBack and Archive.org wayback machine to every story. What separates this from the rest is that it’s better integrated with digg: it’s displayed beneath every digg-button.

WordPress Plugins

—————————–

27. Digg Digg

Integrate “Digg Button” , “Reddit Me Button” , “Dzone Button” and “Yahoo Buzz Button” Into WordPress Content. Setup screen provided to let user choose where user want to display Digg , Reddit , Dzone and Yahoo Buzz buttons. I am using this plugin on my very own site.

28. diggZ-Et – digg WordPress Plugin

diggZ-Et is a digg WordPress plugin that automatically displays a “digg” button for each post/page, with several admin settings so you can customize as you need.

29. WP Digg This

WP Digg This is a plugin that adds a Digg button, but with a twist. Instead of adding a Digg button to all your posts, WP Digg This plugin selectively adds the button only to posts you want.

30. Digg widget

Displays your past 10 dugg stories and make it a widget.

However feel free to add your foundings too, maybe I missed something?