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Blogging Offline: Internet Withdrawals

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One of the things I’ve been doing lately is writing offline. It feels weird to write blog posts, and not make them immediately available online. I keep looking at them, and editing them, using larger, more intelligent looking words, and moving things around. It is a horrible time sink and also really amusing to me as I come to the cafe and post a bunch of content that I’ve previously written.

Currently, I write, edit and organize my blog posts using Crimson Editor, a tool I also use for programming.

I know many people like to use other pieces of software specifically focused on blogging and blogging offline, but I find, probably due to my web development background, that organizing a post in a simple text editor is easier. I can’t organize categories and tags really, but I feel more comfortable keeping one application open for development, notes, and blog posts, rather than three.

I have been using NetNewsWire for keeping up with RSS feeds though, since I am only online at the cafe. I typically like using Bloglines the best, despite their issues, but hosted applications are only useful when you have Internet access.

I think that many people forget that while Internet is becoming more ubiquitous, it isn’t everywhere, all the time yet, and so offline options need to be considered as well. If you are developing an online application, it wouldn’t hurt to figure out a way (maybe through AIR) to give people an offline way of reading/interacting with their data until they get offline.

One of my favorite websites that takes advantage of offline/online issues is Gmail. Properly configured with Google Gears, I am able to delete e-mails, respond, tag, and more and once I connect to the cafe’s net access, it syncs up my changes, and a fair bit of e-mail work still gets completed without having to resort to applications like Outlook.

I have to admit though, working with a limited window of Internet access has been very stressful for me. I am used to being connected all the time, and have become dependent on the Internet. In the end though, I’ve always loved hearing what other people use though for blogging software, especially when offline. So what applications or services do you use to stay “connected”?

Stay Informed: Learn About RSS Feeds

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One of the smartest things a new blogger can do, other than writing their own content, is to keep track of what others are doing. This is especially true if you are running a news focused blog, or are trying to compete with another blogger. Many of you probably understand that there are RSS feeds, and that you can subscribe to them, but do you know how or why?

In talking to a client of mine, I was asked, “why do I want to subscribe, rather than just bookmark and check back in?”

The simple answer to this is: so new content gets pushed to you. If you don’t want to miss potentially important content, and want to receive it in a reasonably timely fashion, making sure to subscribe to various RSS feeds, is like buying into your own, personalized newspaper consisting of all your favorite blogs. This will allow you to be more efficient, and if you turn that time savings into writing time, you’ll produce more content.

If you are still bookmarking sites, and visiting them each day, or getting their content in your e-mail inbox. How does that help you? Why are you still doing that when we have RSS subscriptions now that are near instant in pushing content out to you, easy to manage, and powerful, when you dive deep into controlling them.

Currently, I use Bloglines as my RSS reader of choice. It is a hosted, web-based service that makes subscribing, managing subscriptions and reading my subscriptions from any computer connected to the Internet very easy. I know the more popular choice is Google Reader, another hosted service, but I’ve never been completely happy with their user interface (probably because I used Bloglines first and have become accustomed to how it works).

There are also hundreds of desktop clients that you can install on your computer, no matter the operating system you use, and thus allow you to download and read your content when not connected to the Internet, or notify you when you have new content to read in a more “attention grabbing” way than an online RSS reader can do.

If you are looking for more information on the best available options, LifeHacker did a roundup a while back with some great choices.

Start using an RSS reader, keep yourself organized and informed, and you might just be more productive on your blog, but don’t blame me if you start subscribing to everything under the sun, and it consumes your whole day. RSS subscription overload can be a common problem as well. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.