Wanna Spew your Knowledge on the World?
If you’ve been following my blog, you’ll notice that I’ve started writing up some tutorials in eHow. I did this for two reasons: creating how-to articles for the benefit of all and the potential to earn money off those articles for the use of my time. Don’t misunderstand – my primary reason for the articles was definitely to make life easier for the masses! I find that many people have the same problems and questions when it comes to technology. By creating these How-To articles, I give folks a place to start learning about technology on their own. I’m all about self-empowerment.
Did you ever stop and think that perhaps you have talents and knowledge that may be of benefit to the rest of us?! For instance, I’m great with computers but have no clue how to fix a toilet! Because of this thought, I wanted to let you all know about a new tutorial site that is starting to gain some popularity: Info Barrel. I like this site in that it allows you to earn money (if you so desire) on the articles you create. It also gives you lots of flexibility in the types of articles you create (How-To, Reviews, etc).
While I’m well aware that not everyone wants to start a blog, I’m sure most of us have a nugget of knowledge that could be useful to the masses. Who knows, maybe the article that takes you 20 minutes to write will save someone a $200 bill from the plumber. Give Info Barrel a try – you may get hooked on it!
Categories: Home, Software Tags: Blogger, Business, Computers, E-Commerce, Internet, Productivity
Live Writer – A great freeware editor for blogs, who knew?
When I sat and started putting the details of this blog together, there was one thing of which I was resolute: I wanted one central place where I could create content for any and all the blogs I create. I started hunting for blog editors, but had a hard time finding a freeware editor that had a worthwhile feature set.
If you’ve only started looking into creating your own blog, I must tell you that most blogging platforms have editors built-in. These blog editors allow you to create, format, and publish your posts, but only on the blog in which they’re located. For instance, I could log into blogger and generate a post for the Midway to Midlife blog. Then suppose I want to edit a blog at Wordpress; I would have to log into Wordpress in order to access the editor in that website. Additionally, these “online” blog editors don’t work well when you want to use a laptop and draft posts while you’re disconnected from the Internet.
Enter Microsoft’s Live Writer. This clever freeware editor is like a glorified “WordPad” (or a stripped down “Frontpage”). When you install it, you are prompted to enter the location of your blog. As you can see, it has support for the typical Microsoft platforms (Live Spaces and Sharepoint) as well as Blogger, Typepad, and Wordpress. Once you’ve entered the information about your blog into Live Writer, it connects to your blog and downloads templates/etc in order to ensure it applies the correct formatting to the posts you’ll be creating.
Once Live Writer has made friends with your blog, you’re ready to rock and roll! The interface is fairly intuitive (the usual formatting options are present – bold, italics, underline, lists, hyperlinks, pictures, tables, and block quotes), and it’s easy to figure out where something may be hiding. There’s also a bar at the bottom which allows you to quickly set categories (tags) for your posts. You can start creating posts and save them as drafts until you’re ready to publish. Once you’re done and ready to publish, its as easy as hitting the “Publish” button and within seconds your new post is live on the Internet!
All I can say – if you’re a blogger (or may be in the near future) and researching your options for blog editors, it’s definitely worth your time to take a look at Live Writer. If you have any questions or would like a demonstration, Contact Me.
