For the past few weeks, I’ve been trying out the closed beta versions of QumanaXP, an offline blog editing tool that is available in versions for Windows and Mac platforms.
While I’ve not been using it for every post I’ve been writing to my blogs – I’ve been mixing and matching between ecto for Windows, my long-time offline editor, and RocketPost which I’m also trying out – QumanaXP is very impressive.
The latest beta 3.0.0-b1 reflects some serious development work over previous betas – they do listen to the testers – and shows a strong commitment by Qumana to produce a reliable tool for blogging that will stand up well against the competition.
One thing I’m very pleased (and relieved) to see is that a major issue with posting to TypePad blogs has been resolved with this latest beta. Until now, if you posted to your TypePad blog, any category you’d set in your post would not carry through to final publish. This for me was a complete show-stopper for QumanaXP. From my email conversations with the developers, it appeared that this was a TypePad issue, not a QumanaXP one. Either was, they’ve fixed it.
I also tried QumanaXP with my WordPress blog – works perfectly including with categories.
Today QumanaXP goes into public beta, meaning anyone can download the beta and take it for a spin. It will be formally launched at the Northern Voice 2006 community-based blogging and personal publishing conference taking place today and tomorrow in Vancouver, Canada.
But don’t wait – download the beta now! Try it for yourself. You might also want to take a look at the contest Qumana has launched as part of their incentivizing bloggers to use their tool 😉
I’ll be posting more detailed commentary about QumanaXP soon.
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.
