Best of Moonlight Blog 2008

As we move into 2009 I thought it might be fun to look back quickly on the year that was with a top 20 post of the most popular posts published on Moonlight Blog this year (according to page views on Google Analytics). I hope you enjoy this trip back through the year of 2008 at Moonlight Blog.

Youtube Unblocked in China - 7,803 views

SourceForge Blocked In China - 7,720 views

Top Ten Best Wordpress Plugins - 5,043 views

Top Ten Best PlayStation Games - 4,812 views

Top Ten Best PS2 Games - 2,822 views

Top Ten Best Firefox Extensions - 2,645 views

WordPress Mod Rewrite Make Subdirectory 404 Error - 2,431 views

Top Ten WordPress SEO Tips - 2,011 views

Google Translation Gadget - 1,899 views

GoDaddy Blocked in China - 1,434 views

WordPress Excerpt Seo Tips - 1,388 views

The Most Popular RSS Reader In China - 1,235 views

Install WordPress MU On IIS With Url Rewrite - 1,225 views

WordPress MU Optimization Script - 1,087 views

Micro-blogging: Chinese Twitter Clone Site - 999 views

SourceForge Unblocked in China - 909 views

Boycott China Product If You Really Love China - 898 views

YouTube Blocked in China Again - 841 views

Custom WordPress Database Error Page - 838 views

DB2ASP - Free Access Database to ASP Converter - 812 views

All in all it was a fairly busy but very satisfying year of blogging here at Moonlight Blog. Thanks to the many readers who have contributed either with guest posts, comments, emails and tip offs. I’m looking forward to yet another great year in 2009.

Wordpress 2.7 Released

Wordpress 2.7 has been officially released and is available for download. There are many new features added in 2.7 and the first thing you will notice is the re-designed user interface and Dashboard.

Version 2.7 should be a major upgrade into the WordPress software. Here are some of the changes that it brings:

• new interface to make it easier to perform the admin tasks


• customization options on the admin screens


• the ability to reply to comments from the dashboard


• embed support for comments threading


• drag and drop support on some sections

The most exciting stuff is the automatic upgrade. From now when new versions get released all you will have to do is one click, and the software will take care of the rest. I am sure this will make WordPress a much more secure software, too.

Pownce is Shutting Down

Microblogging service Pownce, is closing down on December 15. As of today, Pownce will no longer be accepting new users or new pro accounts. The Pownce team has joined SixApart.

Pownce have built an export tool so users can save the content. Users can find the export tool at Settings > Export. Please export content by December 15, 2008, as the site will not be accessible after this date.

Z-Blog URL Redirect Security Affected Spam Attacks

Z-Blog system contain a security issue that allows spam attack to Wikipedia by using url redirect.

The design of Z-Blog anti-spam encrypts the URL before redirect it. The name of the redirected file is c_urlredirect.asp. With the parameter of this page Z-Blog kann redirect to various pages. Sorrowfully the used encryption is very simple. One just need to put the odd characters together. With this methode blackhat SEO manipulates redirects from other Z-Blog websites to call its own website. Thus even if the original address is listed on the blacklist by Wikipedia, the manipulated redirect would still work and be used as spam.

The solution for this problem is not easy. The most simple way is to delete c_urlredirect.asp. But this method would also prevent the blogger himself make redirects.

Source . thanks for Wing translation

Is Blog Dead in China ?

In the past year, there is a continuing discussion in the Chinese blogosphere on whether blog culture is dying down. Moreover, recently bokee.com and blogchina.com, the two earliest BSPs founded by Fang dong-xing in China, are at business crisis. Fang is looking for investing to transform the websites into multi-media community platform.

What we see is: BSP and services related with blogs are slowly disappearing, blog has passed its golden days and walked into a dark future. The main reason is because the services around blogs cannot make a profit.

Why can't they make a profit? The content quality of blog is better than SNS, Twitter and Digg, their traffics are high. They should be able to get income from Ads. However, at present, blogger's income is too narrowed. Basically, they depends on Google AdSense. Which means their profit is affected by Google.

When Google entered the scene, it developed a huge number of blogging tools, such as google reader, feedburner, blogsearch, etc… which destroyed other BSPs dream for profit while google has a monopoly status in the market.

Blog is more open and individualized, its content quality is relative higher. SNS is more closed, especially towards search engine. It contrasts with blog's openness and affects information dissemination. A good article is very difficult to get disseminated via SNS. Now most of the SNS in China are coping the facebook, which is a dead end. The best SNS is Tencent's QQ, but you can't find any similarity between QQ and facebook. The funny thing is Tencent never claimed itself to be a SNS.

Thanks globalvoicesonline translation

Free Online Translation Tools

Google Translate - Google's free online language translation service instantly translate text and web pages. This translator supports: English, Arabic, Bulgarian, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hindi, Italian, Korean, Japanese, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Portuguese.

Windows Live Translator - Microsoft Windows Live Translator is a free online language translation service for text and web pages. This translator supports more than 25 translation languages.

Babelfish - Yahoo Babel Fish provides free online text and web page language translation tools. You can use this site to translate words, phrases, or entire web sites into 19 pairs of languages, including to and from English, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Spanish.

Systran - Systran is a leader in providing language translation software products and solutions for the desktop, enterprise and Internet. With Systran products or solutions you can instantly translate and understand foreign language content into 52 language pairs.

Disable Directory Listings in WordPress

By default when accessing any directory which does not contain an index file, a directory listing will be shown displaying a list of the files in that folder. Web servers can be configured to automatically display the listings of the contents of a web site's file directory if no index file (i.e. index.html or index.php) is present. This can expose files and information to visitors.

Simply adding a blank/ 0 byte text file named "index.html" will prevent this directory list from being displayed, however another way to disable directory listing is by adding the following line to the .htaccess file in your public_html folder of your web hosting account :

Options -Indexes

That’s it, with this line in place, folders which do not contain index files will no longer show the default directory list.

Top Ten Best Wordpress Plugins

WordPress is a simple to use blogging tool. The beauty of WordPress is that it can become so much more with the simple installation of plugins. With a few clicks, WordPress can become a full fledged Content Management System (CMS). Here is a rundown on the top 10 best plugins every blogger should have installed.

Here is a great list that I whipped together of some of the most useful and most popular Wordpress plugins which every blogger should have installed. Enjoy the list.

Akismet - Simply the best Spam protection you can get for handling comments on your blog. Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they are spam or not, also checks the trackbacks for spam.

WP Super Cache - An extremely efficient WordPress page caching system to make your site much faster and responsive. It works by caching Worpress pages and storing them in a static file for serving future requests.

WP-PostViews - Enables you to display how many times a post/page had been viewed. It will not count registered member views, but that can be changed easily.

WP-PageNavi - A WordPress Plugin that adds more advanced page navigation to WordPress. It does this by adding page number links to your different pages. Using this plugin your readers will be able to jump from the first to the last page and other pages of your blog very easily.

Simple Tags - A plugin does everything related with tagging. With this plugin you can generates a list of related posts based on the text of blog entry. The tags can be used to search your blog and are picked up by blog search engines like Technorati and can bring in new users.

All in One SEO Pack - Automatic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) out of the box for your wordpress blog, everything you need to get your site optimized for search engines.

Google XML Sitemaps - Simple tool for auto generating sitemaps every time you make an update to your site. This plugin is the best tool to tell Google how it should crawl your blog and where to find everything you want found.

Wordpress Thread Comment - This Plugin is an enhancement for Wordpress's comment function. It enables users to reply on a exist comment, and the discussion will be displayed threaded or nested.

FeedBurner Feedsmith - Forwards all feed traffic to Feedburner while creating a randomized feed for Feedburner to pull from.

Wordpress Database Backup - Automated or on-demand backup solution for your wordpress database. Don't leave home without it!

Top Ten WordPress SEO Tips

There is a lot of amazing SEO power built into WordPress. Unfortunately it does not all come by default, and you might not know what is best when it comes to templates and options. Follow these simple rules for search engine optimization and your blog will rank much higher in Search Engines.

1. Optimize WordPress Permalinks

The most search-engine friendly permalink MUST includes the post title (%postname%) in the link,having keywords in your URL is an absolute must, In your WP admin panel, click on the "Options" tab, then the "Permalinks" sub-tab, and choose the option just below the "Default" permalink option. My suggest permalink structure is /%year%/%monthnum%/%postname%/ or /%year%/%monthnum%/%postname%.html .

2. Optimize WordPress Post Titles

The post title is the most important part of the blog post for many reasons. From your reader's perspective, a descriptive and compelling title helps them decide if your post is worth reading or not. From an SEO perspective, think about the keywords or phrases people might type into a search box to find your post, and use those words or phrases in your post title.

3. Optimize WordPress Page Titles

According to most SEO experts, the page title tag is one of the most important tags on your page. In most WP themes, you'll find the page title tag in the Header Template, and the default version ususally looks very poor SEO. I suggest you to use a WordPress plugin so call "All in One SEO Pack" to fix that problem.

4. Optimize WordPress robots.txt

The robots.txt file is used to instruct search engine robots about what pages on your website should be crawled and consequently indexed. Most websites have files and folders that are not relevant for search engines (like images or admin files) therefore creating a robots.txt file can actually improve your website indexation. Here is an SEO optimized WordPress robots.txt file.

User-agent: *
Disallow: /wp-
Disallow: /feed/
Disallow: /comments/feed
Disallow: /trackback/

5. Use Google Sitemaps Plugin

Google Sitemaps is an easy way for you to submit all your URLs to the Google index and get detailed reports about the visibility of your pages on Google. WordPress user Arne Brachold has made the sitemap creation and submission process fairly simple with his Google Sitemap plugin. This plugin will create a sitemap for you and submit it to Google.

6. Use Wordpress Anti-SPAM Plugin

Akismet is the best automated spam killer that actually gets better as it learns from the whole community marking new spam comments as spam.

7. Use Related Posts

Amaury BALMER's Simple Tags plugin is a perfect tool to manage perfeclty your WP 2.3 tags, which can show related posts on your post and rss feed. Not only does it enhance your blog's usability, but it also helps create a dense link structure throughout your site, which makes it easier for the search engine spiders to find and index older blog posts.

8. Use Ping services

Use the Update service function, to inform tracking services that you have updated your weblog. By default, Wordpress pings rpc.pingomatic.com, which is good (if you don’t want to change this, you don’t have to).

9. Make your content searchable

Make sure your navigation bar is present on all pages of your blog. Your previous posts or atleast the popular ones should be linked to all pages so they get spidered easily.

10. Update your blog frequently

Update your blog frequently using all the rules mentioned above and your blog will surely get top rankings in a short time.

If you have further SEO tips for WordPress blogs, I’d love to hear about them in the comments.

Micro-blogging: Chinese Twitter Clone Site

Twitter is a social network micro-blogging services. The Twitter Clones (micro-blogging services) and it looks like one of the Chinese Twitters are gaining popularity quickly. Here is the most popular Twitter-clone sites in China what I known.

FanFou - FanFou is the biggest Twitter-like site in China. It seems FanFou copied almost everything of Twitter, you can use FanFou to update "what are you doing" in less than 140 characters, it supports updating and receiving notification via Gtalk, MSN, QQ, mobile phone and web, you can follow the updates of your friends, and turn on/off the notification of your friends. It already has a wordpress plugin, maxthon plug and other 3rd party add ons. It also has two Twittervision-like mashups that put Tweets on the 3D globe and a 2D map of China. Xing Wang is Founder and Chief Executive Officer of FanFou.

JiWai.de - JiWai.de is the first Chinese brother of twitter: an online service that enables user to broadcast short messages to your friends or "followers." It also lets you specify which JiWai.de users you want to follow so you can read their messages in one place. Just like twitter, Jiwai supports updating through sms and gtalk. Updating from mobile phones onto jiwai.de, however, compared with Twitter, saves considerable money for Chinese users who want to use twitter-like stuff. To meet the demand of more Chinese users, Jiwai.de also supports updating from some other IMs, including MSN, skype, and QQ. Zhuohuan Li is Founder and Chief Executive Officer of JiWai.de.

TaoTao - Tencent QQ is the most popular IM in China. While Tencent has realized the value of micro-blogging, they launched a stand-alone service called Taotao. Not like FanFou, TaoTao only support updating from QQ and Web. It have no widget support. Since Tencent has the most extensive im user base, and the characteristics of this kind of micro-blogging service also match with profile of QQ's users.

Other Micro-blogging Site in China:

zuosa - http://zuosa.com
ilaodao - http://ilaodao.cn
komoo - http://komoo.cn
byuu - http://byuu.com
wulog - http://wulog.com
fish - http://fish.sh
laigula - http://laigula.com

Best of Moonlight Blog 2007

As we move into 2008 I thought it might be fun to look back quickly on the year that was with a top 20 post of the most popular posts published on Moonlight Blog this year (according to page views on Google Analytics). I hope you enjoy this trip back through the year of 2007 at Moonlight Blog.

Wordpress Plugin: Chinese PinYin Slug - 2,467 views

Survival For Standalone Blogs - 1,682 views

China Internet Censorship Goes Crazy - 1,682 views

The Secret Of Internet Censorship In China - 1,461 views

FeedBurner Blocked By China - 1,276 views

FeedBurner Is Completely Blocked In China - 1,201 views

Google Answers Censorship In China - 1,082 views

About This Blog - 1,041 views

Baidu Hijacking Google, Yahoo, Microsoft In China - 1,019 views

Google Launches Chinese Blog Search - 1,014 views

YouTube Blocked In China - 986 views

WordPress MU AdSense Plugin - 944 views

WordPress Plugin: Post2Mail, Send Post to Email - 693 views

How To Visit Google BlogSpot In China - 670 views

WordPress Plugin: Yearly Blog Stats - 625 views

Wordpress Plugin: Keyword Filter - 615 views

WordPress Plugin: MySQL Server Crash Monitor - 552 views

YouTube, Have a Merry Halloween - 540 views

WordPress Plugin: WP-PostViews JavaScript Edition - 526 views

About - 520 views 

All in all it was a fairly busy but very satisfying year of blogging here at Moonlight Blog. Thanks to the many readers who have contributed either with guest posts, comments, emails and tip offs. I'm looking forward to yet another great year in 2008.

Google Launches Chinese Blog Search

Today, Google released a Chinese version of Google Blog Search, the URL is blogsearch.google.cn . The IP address of "Chinese Blog Search" is in Bei Jing. Now Chinese users can use Google blog search services in simplified Chinese language.

According to Google Chinese Blog, the Chinese version of Google Blog Search can track most of Chinese blog service providers,including Sina blog, Sohu blog, Tencent blog, 163.com blog, Baidu space, and other blog networks.

Meanwhile, Google blog search is also support most standalone blogs, such as WordPress, MovableType, Google Blogger blog.

The Chinese blog search is self-censoring, when I try to search "Tiananmen Square" in blogsearch.google.cn, I get no result. Google is not just translate BlogSearch's interface into Chinese language.

Survival For Standalone Blogs

This is my responded to Zousuper's discussion on standalone blog's  survival(Thanks for danwei's translation). Later Zousuper's blog is blocked by Chinese government, but Zousuper is not render submissive, he set up a new host and blogging again. Here is the post:

The necessary conditions for setting up a blog on a separate domain in China - whether or not it is illegal, whether or not it requires registration - is currently a hotly debated issue. From the look of current policy, it seems that all standalone websites that have interactive information have to be registered.

There are issues of location here. If the server is overseas, then theoretically speaking registration is not necessary, but there is no way to guarantee that the server's IP will be accessible. Rose Luqiu's 1510 Blogs is a typical example. When a large proportion of visitors are from the mainland, then under normal circumstances a mainland server will be chosen. This is when we arrive the question of the blog's legality.

Here I'll summarize the steps and conditions for legally setting up a blog on a standalone domain; this should be basically the same in all major cities across the country.

Website registration is not a simple question. MII registration is just a basic registration, suitable for non-forum websites that do not have interactive information. If you think that MII registration will solve everything, then you are very wrong. Of course, you could close the comments section to your blog and voluntarily choose not to disseminate "harmful information"; in that case the MII registration would be enough. If your website allows leaving messages and exchanging information, and its traffic is low, you may be able to simply get by. In general, for normal small websites, MII registration is enough.

If your website traffic is relatively large, particularly if it is highly interactive, like a forum or a blog, then you'll face the appearance of so-called "harmful information." Normally, when you discover "harmful information," someone will be tasked with notifying the webmaster to delete it; it becomes a problem when it occurs frequently.

Strictly speaking, individuals are not permitted to provide BBS services on the Internet (interactive online services in which users provide information for release, including message boards, electronic whiteboards, e-forums, online chat services, and guestbooks) without formally registering or passing review by state communication administrators. To providing interactive forum and guestbook services, you must set up "technological measures for network security," in addition to registering with the PSB's Internet Supervision Center. This means a system for review, control, and deletion of information, as well as associated "computer security personnel."

Usually, registering with the PSB Internet Supervision Center is pretty complicated and drawn-out. The registration is vastly different from MII's: it is very strict. If your website supports BBS, forums, guestbook, or chat services, then you must provide the following materials:

1. A copy of the computer security personnel certificate;


2. Registered Internet user network security form;


3. Providers of Internet services for news, publishing, education, health, pharmaceuticals, and medical equipment must be approved by the appropriate government agencies in accordance with laws and regulations, and must present the government approval documents at the time of registration.

The computer security personnel certificate is typically obtained by paying 660 yuan to be trained and tested. That means that if you want to write a blog, you must first pass the "security worker" exam. The registration form basically requires writing out your name, ID#, home address, mobile phone number, and place of work, so that if there are any problems you can be arrested on the spot. If you do not provide this information, then your registration may not pass.

After you've registered, you then face the work of looking out for and cleaning up "harmful information" - this is the responsibility of the "computer security personnel." Because the appearance of "harmful information" on a forum or blog is ultimately the responsibility of the webmaster, the PSB will carry out punishment against the webmaster according to the volume of "harmful information" that is circulated. Here you'll run into the issue of standards for punishment. Current punishment standards takes into account the number of registered users, the quantity of circulating information, the hit count, and illegal revenue; so long as one area exceeds the standard then you're determined to be in "extremely serious circumstances." An article clicked by one person is completely different from the same article clicked by 10,000 people; are you able to guarantee 24-hour review for your personal blog or forum? If you cannot, then hiding your webpage counters and your pageview numbers may cut down on some unwanted trouble. At the same time, you should keep your website income a secret; there is nothing good and a whole lot bad about making your website's income public. Under normal circumstances, this is a standard for determining punishment. The greater your website's income, the more serious the problem, and the worse off you will be.

Hence, if you have a forum or a guestbook system, you've got a hidden time bomb. "Harmful information" will cause a lot of trouble for the webmaster when it surfaces. So if you have a forum, it's best to put it on a separate domain name and move it to an overseas server unless you can guarantee you'll be online 24 hours a day to prevent every single bit of "harmful information" from being published. Otherwise you're giving them an angle to get you.. So high-risk systems like forums should be moved out. The same goes for guestbooks and comments to blog posts. If you cannot cut off comment functions, then you must implement keyword filters to turn every sensitive word into ××. Doing this will save you a bit of unnecessary trouble.

In short, there is currently no clear idea about the system for registering blogs, but for most blogs that have a fair number of comments and discussion, it's no good to simply register with MII; you have to go to the local PSB's website to register for it to have any effect. And you must maintain a good relationship with the local PSB. Whatever they want, you give it to them; don't antagonize them, and don't dispute matters of theory with them. Don't say anything when it's not your turn - it won't work, anyway.

Sources:William Long: The way for standalone blogs to survive  (Chinese)

About This Blog

Moonlight Blog is a Chinese news website and Internet news blog founded by William Long. The website's primary focus is social media news, but also covers news and developments in mobile, entertainment, online video, business, web development, technology and gadgets. Moonlight Blog was launched by William Long from his home in Guangdong, China in January 2005.

Moonlight Blog English Version is my first blog in English, which is set up using WordPress, in this blog, I'll translate some of my Chinese blog into English, also, I'll report the information about Chinese blogosphere, Chinese GreatFireWall, China society and people. Help you meet a real China.

Top 10 Free Desktop Blog Editors for Windows

Although many users have gotten used to updating their blogs directly on the web, desktop blog editors have certain advantages, and it would be a shame not to try them out. We’ve gathered 10 free desktop blog editors for Windows; some are plugins, while others are full-featured standalone applications.

Windows Live Writer

Windows Live Writer comes from Microsoft and you will have that familiar feeling of working with an Office application while using this desktop blog editor.

When it comes to features, Live Writer is the most complete desktop blog editor of the lot. It has everything that you would like to see in a blog editor – multiple blog accounts, compatibility with multiple blog platforms, rich text formatting, draft saving, post categorization, picture and tag insertion, spell checking, pinging search engines automatically, and synchronizing draft changes on the editor with the blog.

What takes Windows Live Writer a step ahead are features such as inserting maps and videos. Its web preview page scores ahead of the rest since you can see your draft just like the way it will appear in your blog online, complete with design, color, and format.

After its last upgrade, you can now use Windows Live Writer to upload images straight to Picasa for your Blogger blog. Furthermore, Writer is now available in 28 additional languages besides English, which is likely to increase the number of its international language users. One small irritation about Windows Live Writer is that it could be still a little buggy, even after the upgrade.

ScribeFire

ScribeFire is a popular Firefox addon and a blog editor that you can use to post to your blog directly from your Firefox browser. After installing ScribeFire, you will see a tiny notepad like icon on your Firefox Status Bar. Clicking on it will open the ScribeFire blog editor on the browser’s active page. This editor will take up half of the screen space. If you right-click the ScribeFire icon, you can choose to open the editor in a new tab or in a separate window.ScribeFire is pretty convenient in a way that you don’t need to install a heavy program and you can open the editor on your browser in a jiffy. It has a rich text formatting feature, HTML page editing, and a live preview option for your posts before publishing them. Image uploads are possible on FTP accounts. You can categorize your posts, insert Technorati tags, and access your del.icio.us page from the ScribeFire page. You can access your last 10 posts and save unpublished drafts as notes, but you cannot insert tables like in Live Writer.

You can have multiple blog accounts with ScribeFire. It is compatible with multiple blog programs like WordPress, Blogger, Typepad, Drupal, Textpattern, MetaWeblog, etc. Finally, there is a support forum in case you want to ask any of the other ScribeFire users for advice.

Qumana

Qumana has one feature that other blog editors don’t have – it has its advertising network, Q ads, integrated into the blog editor. So when you write a post on the editor, you can insert an ad on the blog editor itself. You can define the type of ad that will show up by specifying ad keywords. However, the irony is that Q ads don’t seem to have many ads to display. One ad that was coming up on every post, irrespective of any keyword I type, was about Qumana itself.

This aside, Qumana has all the requirements of a good blog editor – rick text formatting, multiple blog accounts, insert tags and categories, download recent posts, video insert, etc. The editor is light and I didn’t experience any hang-ups.

Another things that sets Qumana apart is the DropPad – a small clipboard-like utility where you can drag and drop text, links, and images. You can double click on the DropPad to open the blog editor with all your items inserted already.

w.Bloggar

w.Bloggar comes in English, French, German, Portuguese, Spanish versions. It supports a number of blog platforms including Blogger, Movable Type,Typepad, Drupal, WordPress, Live Journal, and others. It can ping your posts to Weblogs, blo.gs, Technorati, and Ping-o-matic.

Configuring w.Bloggar for your blog, particularly Blogger blogs, can be a bit of a pain, especially if you are not very tech savvy. However you can get certain workarounds written by w.Bloggar users on the w.Bloggar homepage.

w.Bloggar comes with a number of formatting options, supports multiple blog accounts, has spell check and categories features, and many more. You can set up your FTP to upload files and pictures. The editor comes in the HTML mode and you get to see all the code in your post itself. This might be a bit confusing for new bloggers, but there is a preview mode that should help.

The best part of w.Bloggar is the speed with which it publishes posts – it’s lightning fast.

Zoundry

Zoundry provides an easy set up for your blog accounts. You need to provide your blog url and let Zoundry’s auto-discovery feature find your blog platform and API settings. You can download up to 500 of your blog’s previous entries onto your computer and this can serve as your local blog backup.

The editor has a WYSIWYG and a HTML interface. You will find plenty of options in the formatting toolbar. Setting post categories and tags for Technorati are supported. There is a also a spell checker and a language translator as well.

You can use Zoundry to add affiliate links on your posts and earn commissions whenever someone buys through your links.

Zoundy has a browser toolbar for Firefox and IE that has a ‘Blog This’ feature, and links through which you can share product recommendations on your email or social networking pages. You can also earn shopping rebates using the toolbar.

Thingamablog

Thingamablog is an open source blog editor and a feed reader combined into one cool desktop application. It runs independently of any blog host and you can use it for posting to your FTP or SFTP blogs. Thingamablog also provides a set of some blog templates as well if you want to create a new blog.

Configuring your Thingamablog for the first time might be a bit taxing if you are a newbie. However if you head off to the Thingamablog site, then there is a good tutorial available.

Thingamablog’s post editor has all the basic formatting options complete with a spell checker. You can see your posts in WYSIWYG or HTML source view. Images can be uploaded from the computer or you can link to an image online. You can set up multiple blog accounts, import entries from RSS feeds, and organize your entries by category.

Thingamablog requires Java Virtual Machine to be installed on your computer.

Flock

Flock has an easy to use blog editor that works with blogging platforms like Blogger, Blogsome, Livejournal, Typepad, WordPress, Xanga, and other self hosted platforms. You can configure multiple blog accounts on it.

You can use Flock’s web clipboard to collect snippets while surfing the web, add pictures from your Flickr or Photobucket accounts or upload a picture from the computer. Flock also has a Quick Uploader that you can use to upload files on the web.

Flock’s editor however has a few formatting feature and you are limited to a few font families and font sizes. There are no ‘Insert table’ or ‘Strikethrough’ buttons. Although you can tag your posts, you cannot categorize them.

Final verdict: you might want to use Flock for quick posts, but the advanced blogger who needs a feature-rich editor might find Flock a bit lacking.

Blog Desk

Blog Desk comes in English, German, and Spanish versions and supports multiple blog platforms. However it seems strange that they do not have Blogger on its list of supported blog platforms, which means that those using Blogger have to configure their blogs manually. Blog Desk has some pretty cool features such as the Image Wizard that lets you insert pictures on your blog and edit them as well, dictionaries in 14 languages, frequently used phrases, and a notebook. There is support for Technorati tags, a pinger, and a spell checker too.

If you are using Blog Desk on Vista, you might have to download the dhtmled.ocx file from the Microsoft download page. Details are given at the Blog Desk FAQ page.

Post2Blog

Post2Blog is very light and there are some good features on offer as well. The formatting bar is rich with options and you can insert smileys, strike texts, and add music. There are options to add ads from Amazon in your posts. Other features like Technorati tags or pinging are there as well. Post2Blog also provides good integration with RSS readers like RSS Bandit and Sharp Reader. You can upload images along with your posts on Flicker, Imageshack, or a chosen FTP site. You can download your recent posts and create PDFs of them if you wish.

Post2blog has Firefox and IE addons and a MS Word toolbar as well so that you can post directly from these places. You can export Post2blog files and settings to any portable device as well. One feature I couldn’t find was inserting post categories.

Post2Blog is compatible with multiple blog platforms including Blogger, WordPress, Typepad, MovableType, LiveJournal, and Blogware.

Bleezer

Bleezer supports multiple blog platforms like Blogger, Movable Type, WordPress, Drupal, etc. and works on Widnows, Mac, and Linux systems. This WYSIWYG tool has the basic formatting options, spell checker, support for Technorati and Del.icio.us tags, post categories, and ping service. You can upload pictures using its ‘Upload File’ feature and by setting up your FTP site.

Bleezer is a no-frills blog editor whose biggest upside is its lightness; you won’t even feel it’s running, which makes it ideal for users with older computers. (via)

Top 50 Great Widgets For Your Blog

Widgets are a handy, easy and simple way to add some flare to your blog. Whether you’d like to display the number of currently online visitors to your site or simply the weather report for Los Angeles, you can do it with widgets. We’ve assembled a list of 50 useful or simply cool widgets for your pleasure. And remember, the first rule of widgetizing your blog is – don’t overdo it!

MyBlogLog’s Recent Readers – this widget can easily be called a hit amongst blog owners; its popularity even managed to convince Yahoo into buying MyBlogLog. The widget lets you see the avatars of recent visitors to your blog, provided they’re also members of MyBlogLog.

Mashable – get the latest social networking news from this very site.

Flickr Flash Photo Stream Badge – display images from your Flickr profile with a handy Flash photo stream.

Preview Anywhere – see a live preview of outgoing links in a small popup which activates on mouseover. Some find this annoying, while others might find it useful.

Twitter Badge – if your life is so interesting that everyone must know what you’re up to all the time, then a Twitter badge is the ideal counterpart to your blog. It’ll proudly displays your recent tweets.

Digg News – display the latest Digg links on your blog. Themeable and fully customizable.

FEEDJIT – real time traffic data directly in your blog’s sidebar.

LineBuzz – inline comments for your blog. Very handy for blogs with frequent lively discussions.

Flixn – display a stream directly from your webcam, so your blog visitors can always see what you’re up to.

3Jam – lets your visitors send messages to your mobile phone, without them knowing your phone number.

Jaxtr – with Jaxtr, your visitors can actually call you to your mobile phone; again, your number stays private.

LinkedInABox – show off your LinkedIn profile. Perfect for personal blogs.

Box Widget – enable visitors to use box.net’s online storage directly on your web site.

Price of gas – displaying gas prices on your blog might seem unnecessary to some, but it’s cool if you have a traffic/travel related blog.

iBegin Weather Widget – Display weather information in your sidebar. Just like with Price of Gas, works great with travel-related blogs.

ClockLink – display time in various time zones with these nifty Flash clocks.

Film Loops – display the latest loops from your FilmLoops account.

Daily Painters – display paintings from famous painters on your blog.

WhoLinked – show your visitors which sites have recently linked to your web site. Works with all major blog platforms.

Criteo AutoRoll – displays links to blogs similar to your blog.

Bitty Browser – embed a cute, fully functional mini web browser to your blog.

Leafletter – create a mini website and embed it into your blog.

WikiSeek – search Wikipedia with this simple widget.

FeedCount – show off the number of visitors to your blog with this handy little button.

Technorati Link Count – display the number of links your website has from one of the biggest blog authorities – Technorati.

MyPageRank – another good way to show how “big” your blog is is to show off your Google PageRank.

CheckPageRank – in addition to showing your PageRank, this widget also shows your Alexa ranking.

BlinkxIt – embed a link to related videos directly into your website.

Skype button – display your Skype online/offline status on your blog.

RockYou Horoscope – not something I would personally use, but some people are into horoscope. Hell, most people are into horoscope. Anyway, this widget shows horoscope (doh!) and does it in a nicely designed colorful box.

del.icio.us Tagometer – display how many times have del.icio.us users saved your page.

del.icio.us Linkrolls – this badge shows your latest bookmarks from del.icio.us.

Timelines – need to create a timeline? Seek no further. This widget makes it really easy.

PollDaddy – PollDaddy lets you create beautiful polls in no time, and display them at your blog.

Vizu – another poll-making widget, compatible with all major blog platforms.

AnswerTips – display definitions from Answers.com for various terms on your blog. The definitions are shown in bubbles which are activated on doubleclick.

AnswerBoxes – give your visitors a chance to enter a term themselves, and get a definition from Answers.com

Now Playing – if you got to share your current playlist contents with the world, Sigamp will do the trick. Works with most popular music players, including Foobar, Winamp, iTunes and others.

BuzzBoost – display headlines from your RSS feed on any website.

LibraryThing – show off the latest books you’ve been reading.

Plaxo Address Book – let your most faithful visitors access their address books direclty from your site.

AuctionAds – a widget that displays auctioned items on eBay, and gives you a percentage of the price paid when sometimes buys an item.

aStore – similar to AuctionAds, only for Amazon. Create a mini-store on your site and receive profit when someone buys an item through your store.

Plazes – show your current location on a Plazes map.

Stockalicious – track your portfolio with this widget, and share it with others. Let everyone know how much money you’ve lost.

Yahoo! For Good – create a charity badge and ask for donations for a worthy cause.

Giftspace – your friends never know what to buy you for birthday? Let them know what you really want with this nifty widget.

MixMap – see where are the visitors to your MySpace profile from on a map.

Google Map Widget – display a searchable Google Map on your website.

Google Video Search – add a video search form and selected videos to your web site.

Odeo player – display an Odeo player for and podcast right there in your sidebar. (via)