Filed under: Blogging

Posterous, continuing its 15-ways-to-switch-in-15-days tirade, has today enabled its Blogger importer.

Posterous's vice president of marketing, while talking to Spanish tech blog Genbeta [translated], says that this importer in specific is one of the big ones: "This launch is very important to us because Blogger has been one of the most requested services by our users, especially outside the United States."

Investigating the 'Switch to Posterous' site, I can't actually see a Blogger link on the right yet -- but tacking 'blogger' onto the end of the URL worked! Posterous will no doubt update their navigation later today, though.

A few days ago, Posterous received death legal threats from TwitPic. I'm sure Google (which owns Blogger), being the blue whale of the blog sea, will be a whole lot more relaxed about it. But then again, looking at Posterous's huge more-than-700% year-on-year growth, perhaps Google shouldn't be too relaxed.

We first covered Glass back at SXSW, with a video interview. Glass is a very aesthetic and tight combo of website plus Firefox add-on; it allows you to place notes ("Post-it" style) over any website, and then share those notes in a Tumblr-like stream so that your friends can see them (and comment).

Glass is very social; you can send a note to your friends, and you have a "feed" that shows whatever you or your friends have commented on. The feed only shows the text of each note; you don't get a thumbnail of the website that you commented on. That's not very convenient, but they might fix it by the official release. Generally, the "beta" label is warranted, but not because it crashes; it's just that there are some rough spots, in terms of interface and usability, that still need some TLC.

Your feed feels like a micro-blog, but it's not. For one thing, it doesn't output an RSS feed. So, it's aimed at groups of users who all use the site together in order to share and comment about things they find on the Web.

As I've already said, one of Glass's strongest points is how good it looks. It's far from being the only "sticky-note" service, but Glass is definitely the nicest-looking one I've seen. That's why I decided to give you a screenshot tour of the beta, which you can see after the fold.

[UPDATE: We now have an invite code for everyone! Just type in DLSquad and you're good to go!]

If you're running several Wordpress blogs, your life just got a lot easier. Wordpress 3.0, codenamed "Thelonious," has finally arrived, and it supports multiple Wordpress blogs. You can manage them all from a central dashboard, too, with no logging out and back in. There's also a sexy new default theme called 2010, which is highly customizable and lets you post small "asides" in addition to regular long posts.

Wordpress 3.0 also features extremely convenient bulk updates of plug-ins and themes, so you don't have to do them one at a time. On the widget front, the coolest new feature is custom menus, so you can do your site navigation your way. Because Wordpress can occasionally be confusing, there's also help on every page now, to help you get a handle on all the new features.

There are honestly too many improvements to Wordpress to do them justice in one post, so I suggest you check out the very useful overview video below.

For some people and in some situations, using a regular RSS reader is not feasible. Sometimes you may want to, or have to, listen to your feeds, rather than read them.

BlogRadio is one possible free solution for such a use case. It's an AIR application, which purportedly uses a "natural voice". Excited, I downloaded it to marvel at what new text-to-speech technology they may have cooked up; I was disappointed to find extremely synthesized and mechanical voices, which are a far cry from the top of the line in current text-to-speech technology (pun definitely intended, and I hope it brightened up your day; I'm here all week). [I don't get it... -Ed]

What's good about the application is that it's free and cross-platform, and that it correctly parses RSS feeds (obviously, since this is all it does). So perhaps it is a better solution that using a generic screen reader with a regular feed reader, because it is context-aware and does not read any extraneous information off the blog, but just the content of the post you're currently reading.

It's not something I would use on a routine basis, but as I said, it may come in handy under certain circumstances. I just hope they do something about that text-to-speech engine ...

It's weird to get excited about a blogging platform adding pages you can customize using your browser (doesn't everyone have those?) but for Posterous, it's a bold new feature. The lightweight blogging service distinguished itself with a unique post-via-email interface that meant you didn't even have to sign up for an account to get started. That works great for impromptu short posts, but what if you want an elaborate static page for a bio or links to your other online points of contact?

Posterous' new Pages feature lets you do that with an editor that supports rich text, images and more. In fact, it's the same editor you already use to edit posts on Posterous. If you're using a standard Posterous theme, Pages should already be available to you. With a custom theme, you may have to do a little more work, but the instructions should be easy to follow.

[via TheNextWeb]

Screenpresso, my favorite free utility for taking screenshots, has just updated to version 1.1.

The most notable change in this version is that Screenpresso can now "clean" transparent title bars in screenshots; this means that even if you take a screenshot of a window in front of another window, it would still come out crispy-clean.

This was one of the major features which "Goliath" Snagit had over "David" Screenpresso in my extensive Snagit 10 review. In fact, you can see a comparison of two screenshots (clean vs. "regular") in the review itself.

Screenpresso 1.1 also boasts some added sharing features. While Twitter sharing is still present, it has been joined by E-Mail, Gmail, Flickr, Evernote, Facebook and FTP sharing. That's a pretty impressive array of options. I didn't test sharing too much, so If you're more social than I am let me know how these work for you in the comments. It would also be nice if I could "share" to a local folder, because I do put screenshots in my Dropbox every now and then. Alas, this option does not currently exist.

Screenpresso's free version is pretty close to perfect now. One annoyance that remains is that the program insists naming the screenshots folder "screenshots," even if you explicitly set a different path. It just goes ahead and sets up a "screenshots" folder under that path, which is obviously not what you want it to do when you specify a path manually. The good news is that the Screenpresso guys assure me this is being worked on.

I suppose, however, it's more fun for some people to rip into Microsoft and throw about words like trampled and hijacked than it is to acknowledge that MSE is simply working exactly the way Microsoft intends it to.

MicroPoll is a nice, free service for setting up single-question polls that you can easily embed on any website or blog.

You give them your email (that's the only scary part, but it's inevitable with a service like this -- and you can always use a disposable account), create your question, quickly set up the possible answers, and you're done. You then get a piece of JavaScript that you can put on any page to embed the survey and a short link that you can tweet or share on Facebook (if you still have a Facebook account, that is).

You get to see some interesting analytics for the replies to your poll. One amusing point (for me) is that the "location" map is US only; if you're voting from elsewhere on the planet, you're not on the map.

You can set some nice options for your poll as well. By default, multiple voting is allowed (strange, but true). However, you can make it so that every IP address is allowed to vote just once, and you can also log all of the IP addresses of the voters.

All in all, this tool seems like an odd mix of simple functionality and advanced features. The interface feels slightly uneven and rushed; they have loads of functionality, but it is exposed in ways that don't always make sense, and the default options are kind of wonky.

Still, if you have the time to configure it and need to present the world with a single-question poll, this can save you quite a bit of work.

Okay, so it turns out that Download Squad writers use the word "Facebook" more often than they use the word "an." At least that's what Copyc.at claims.

This cleverly-named site tries to provide advanced readability metrics for your Web page so that you can figure out whether or not you're making any sense. It claims to rate your content using several highbrow scales, such as Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease, Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level, Gunning-Fog Score, and some other scales with names that sound more like rare diseases or ways to tell humans apart from replicants.

I don't know ... I'm unconvinced. I find it hard to believe that we actually use "Facebook" more than we use "an," even if you just count the front page (because the tool rates a single page). While the readability metrics may be quite solid, I don't know how well the site handles complex modern layouts. For instance, does it place more importance on navigation elements or page content? Does it take into account that our page is subdivided into different posts? Also, when I use it to rate a single post, does it differentiate the comments from the post's contents?

Another interesting tidbit I garnered from the site is that the Average Grade for nytimes.com is 8.74, while theonion.com clocks in at 9.5. So, you have to be more intelligent to understand The Onion than The New York Times (which is actually kind of true).

The site's overall design is beyond minimalistic; it's sparse. I mean, it doesn't even have a logo, and the footer is full of "Coming Soon" links. I guess it's still a work in progress.

In summation, I would just like to say Facebook, Facebook, Facebook, Facebook, Facebook. Facebook!

I don't get it. A Web application for "writing in private?" What's the point? Penzu apparently received glowin praise from some of the best-known media outlets on the Web. PC Mag gave it the "Best Free Software of 2009" award. Am I the only one left wondering what the ...?

Penzu puts you in front of a neat little paper-like "page" that is lined and everything. You can then write your thoughts and add pictures, and you can keep it private or "share it if you want." Okay, so there is a sharing option; it doesn't seem to be an RSS feed or anything like that. You just get a public link, or you can email your entry to one or more recipients.

I still don't get it. I'm sorry ... I really tried. What exactly does this thing give me that Notepad doesn't? Portability? How many people work from so many computers every day that they can't just use Notepad + Dropbox?

Okay, maybe the ability to integrate pictures. Would I really want to integrate photos into a journal entry I'm writing for myself? Even if I would, Evernote can let me do it far more easily, and once again, it's perfectly portable and cloud synced.

So really, ... either I am way off my mark here, or Penzu is a Web service with absolutely no point and no added value, save for the charming "Web 2.0" graphics. What do you guys think?

So you want to quickly share a screenshot with someone. Take a screenshot, put it in your Dropbox Public folder, right-click the file, copy the public link, and paste it in the chat window ... lather, rinse, repeat. This gets tedious after a while.

Gyazo makes short work of this workflow, paring it down to one simple operation. You run Gyazo, take the screenshot, and you're done. A browser window will open showing your screenshot that is already on the Gyazo website and a link to the image is already in your clipboard. All that remains is to paste the link wherever you want to show it!

That is it. Gyazo is minimalism embodied; it's strictly a one-trick pony. The screenshot that you see above is all the UI you will see; it's just a browser window with the image that you took. There isn't even a "capture screenshot" button. Gyazo starts up in capture mode, and once you've made your snap, that is it. The image is uploaded and the browser opens with its URL. There are no confirmation dialogs at all. If you made a blunder, just capture another image.

Is there a simple built-in editor? Nope, not for Gyazo. This is as quick-and-dirty as it gets, and it's really quite elegant. I like it.

Just a couple of weeks ago, we gave out some beta invitations to Regator 2.0, the new and improved version of a very useful tool for searching and exploring blog content. Well, you must have been amazing beta testers, because Regator is open to the public today.

Regator's front page shows you the most-blogged stories of the moment, and you can get deeper analytics once you start searching. My favorite upgrade in the new version is the improved trends feature, which graphs the popularity of your search terms. It will even show you which stories caused the biggest spikes, and which blogs post about your topic most often. If you missed our invite giveaway before, now's your chance to check out Regator!

Let's start with the part you all want to hear: TechSmith is celebrating Snagit's tenth version, and so has graciously provided ten Snagit 10 license keys for us to give away to DLS readers! So if you want one, just leave a comment and you may have a chance to win.

You have until 11:59PM EST Thursday 13 May to enter the competition. Full terms and conditions follow.

• Open to legal US residents of the 50 United States and the District of Columbia and Canada (excluding Quebec) who are 18 and older.
• To enter, leave a comment below.
• The comment must be left by Thursday, May 13 at 11:59 PM Eastern Time.
• You may enter only once.
• Ten winners will be selected in a random drawing.
• Prize: Snagit 10 retail value of $49.95USD.
• Click Here for complete Official Rules.

Alright, and now, on to the detailed review. At the most basic level, a screenshot is a pretty simple thing; it's a picture of what's showing on your monitor. That sounds pretty straightforward, right? And indeed, I find that my current favorite, tiny, simple and free Screenpresso is more than enough for my own needs, and I use screenshots quite heavily.

So what does Snagit 10, weighing in at over 30MB and $49.95, have to offer, that the simpler and free alternatives don't?

In a nutshell, Snagit is insanely powerful, and accordingly, quite complex. It's got everything, kitchen sink included. Is such a wealth of options actually good for something as simple as creating screenshots? Join me after the jump for an exhaustive tour, and make up your own mind.

When writing a post without a specific screenshot, a blogger (such as myself) needs to come up with an appropriate image. That image must be licensed for use -- you can't just take any old image.

What I usually do is go to Flickr and search for Creative Commons licensed images, with a "commercial okay" provision. I then upload the image and tag it manually, because you still have to provide proper attribution and link up to the creator's page.

That's why I was so happy to find ImageCodr. This tool basically takes all the hassle out of this process and provides a solution that is just about perfect.

I used ImageCodr to link the image at the top of this post. If you examine it in some detail, you'll see all of the small details were taken care of. There's a clear CC logo (with the exact licensing terms for this specific image) and the name of the photographer with a link to their Flickr page. The image itself is linked to the image page, and correct alt text is used (which you can see if you hover over the image). Also, the CC logo links to the CreativeCommons.org website and the license explanation page. This is definitely more information than I could have packed into the image, and it took me exactly one click to get it done.

ImageCodr provides a quick Flickr search for CC-licensed images (which you can also do on Flickr itself and by using a Saved Search in Firefox), but it also provides a nice little bookmarklet that you can drag onto your browser toolbar. You just click it when you see an image that you want to use.

If only they fixed the code so that it middle-aligns properly, this could be a service that I would use on a regular basis. Still, it's a very handy tool.