I’m testing out some Qumana stuff. Had some issues getting it to connect to Ensight, but the support guys (w00t @ Ianiv!) really helped me out.
I’ll be trying this over the next few days to see how I like it. I’d heard about Qumana from Tris back in January ish, but am only now really giving it a go. Largely that’s because I don’t really believe in using a client to publish to a blog (a client doesnt’ come with me wherever I go, the Wordpress interface does).
But, they’ve built something really great here, and the whole team there totally rocks, so the least I can do is try this out 
August 31st, 2005 at 3:32 pm
Jeremy, here’s a good thread on Jeff Clavier’s site re. offline blog editors, BlogJet and Qumana ( the latter more in the comments).
Then my post on why I was forced to give up using Qumana.
August 31st, 2005 at 3:35 pm
Zoli: Good to know. Hopefully that type of thing doesn’t happen to me. Qumana does offer some nice advantages over other tools, though. Advantages that might not be clear to someone who wasn’t doing what I’m about to launch…
August 31st, 2005 at 5:46 pm
I have tried the last version of Qumana after chatting with Tris around the Blog Business Summit, and yes they have made good progress. Not having the reload of previous posts was a no-go for me, and it is now available.
The last things I am missing are direct HTML access, and a more powerful management of embedded images. But it is getting close to par with BlogJet.
At the same time, Flock is developing some very neat stuff on the blog management side, and it might end up being my “long term” solution (long term as in, that’s what I will use for at least 3 months).
August 31st, 2005 at 5:51 pm
Yeah, that bug almost never happens as it did to Zoli. Tris has seen it once. None of the rest of us can reproduce it. It’s frustrating as heck from the programming standpoint since we don’t know what causes it, but it’s not a widespread thing. Anyway, for me anyway, I could not function without an editor. 15 blogs… just not possible. Plus, I really do tag everything, so it helps.
August 31st, 2005 at 9:03 pm
“Advantages that might not be clear to someone who wasn’t doing what I’m about to launch…”
Hmm… anything to do with drums?
Arieanna, I know the bug is rare, but the very reason to use an offline editor is the safety of knowing I won’t lose half an hour’s work due to momentarily server outage. Since you don’t know what causes it, how about just adding a setting for auto-backup every 5 minutes or so? Solves the problem no matter what the cause is:-)
September 1st, 2005 at 4:34 am
I had tried Qumana back in July, when I was blogging about a few editors I had found. It’s not bad, although I deeply disliked not being able to edit previous posts through it; this now being doable, it’s already a good thing. The other point that I was really miffed at was the dirty HTML code it’d generate. Dirty code is one of my pet peeves, I admit, and even if it doesn’t seem to affect page loading and presentation at first, the simple fact of knowing that it’s here irks me. Perhaps the latest release has also fixed that, I’m not sure, as I haven’t tested it yet.
In any case, it’s a fair product–I don’t see myself using it often, but it’s nice no matter what.
September 1st, 2005 at 10:36 am
Dirty code still there. Comes with the editor piece we use. We need to swap out the editor in a later release. #1 on my list, along with actually editing the HTML, which the current editor cannot support.
September 1st, 2005 at 2:03 pm
Thanks for all the great comments. Zoli … I haven’t had the problem you and I both experienced for a long time. Believe me making Q the best offline editor hands down is our priority. And I’ll concur with Arieanna … we’re working on getting a better HTML component, but as she noted we’re limited with what we have. We’d also like people to be able to view and edit the html. We’re also looking at a post properties tab letting you define all the extras (like BlogJet does). When? Well, I can’t say (the programmer would get on a ferry to throttle me), but you guys all know our track record for rolling out new features.
Jeremy, thanks for all your help, feedback, and for giving Q a try.
September 1st, 2005 at 2:04 pm
BTW Jeremy … did you know that Q can run from a Flash drive? Only 9 megs installed and self contained in it’s directoy.