Bloggers, there are lots of things you’ve to keep an eye on, and most of the time, you’ll need the help of different programs for different needs. Sure, there are more web tools for the job, but nothing can get to give you the convenience and speed that desktop applications offer. So, here goes a list of over 30 handpicked application, that can possibly increase a blogger’s productivity.
Desktop Blogging Clients
Post to your blog straigth from the desktop.
Windows Live Writer - One of the best. Plugins can be added to increase its power. Check out our review here.
w.bloggar (Windows only) - Available as a full and portable version (can run from USB thumbdrive).
AIRPress (Windows, Mac) - Adobe AIR based blog editor for WordPress blogs. AIRPress requires Adobe AIR beta 2 to work. If it’s not installed already, it will be auto installed with AIRPress.
Thingamablog (Window, Mac, Linux)
Qumana (Windows, Mac)
BlogDesk (Windows) - Optimized for WordPress, MovableType, Drupal, Serendipity and ExpressionEngine.
Statistics Tools
Monitor websites traffic and other stats.
Google Analytics (AIR) - Check detailed traffic stats from the desktop. Works both on Mac and Windows PCs. Google Analytics account required.
Snoop (Mac, Win) - Track website visitors in real time staight from the desktop. Stats provided by reinvigorate.net
SERPs Finder (Win) - Find where your page lists for a particular keyword on Google, Live and Yahoo! Search.
Screen Capturing Tools
Snippy (Windows) - System Tray Tool for screen capturing. Mark out the region of the screen that you want to copy — and Snipp it.
Clip2Net (Windows) - Take screenshots, add notes and arrows, and save them online.
WebShot (Windows) - One more screesnhot grabber, free version is quite limited, but still does the job.
Camstudio (Windows) - Capture screen activity (vide+audio) and save it in AVI or SWF format.
Windows Media Encoder - Capture audio and video content and encode video captures to WMV format.
SnagIt 7 (Windows) - Powerful screenshot capture and editing tool. Normally it costs $29 but version 7 is available for free. Unfortunately, the promotion period is over.
Image Editing Programs
GIMP (Win, Linux) - Free Photoshop alternative. Also see Gimpshop which even looks like Photopshop.
Paint.NET (Win) - Another open source software tool for your image editing needs.
IrfanView (Win) - Worth a mention here, it’s an image viewer with a few editing capabilities.
FTP Programs
Filezilla (Win, Mac, Linux) - Open Source FTP Client. Read MakeUseOf review here.
FireFTP (Win, Mac, Linux) - FTP extension for your Firefox browser.
Keyword Research
Good Keywords (Win) - Excellent too for finding suitable keywords for your article titles. MakeUseOf review: Get Your Keywords Right.
Microblogging Tools
Pwytter (Win, Mac, Linux) - Cross-platofrm Twitter client.
Twitbin - Firefox Extension for Twittering
OutTwit - Twitter client for Outlook. If you’re interested check out more Outlook addons here.
Pownce Client - Official Pownce clients for Mac and Windows. [What is Pownce ?]
Task Management
Rainlendar (Win) - One of the best desktop calendar apps for Windows.
Essential PIM (Win) - A free personal information manager.
Offline HTML editors
First Page (Win) - Two paned windows HTML editor.
KomPozer (Win, Mac, Linux) - Extremely easy to use and ideal for non-technical users.
Miscellaneous
WordPress Comment Moderation Notifier - Get notifications when there are comments that need to be moderated.
That’s about it. Do you have a must-see program that’s not on the above list? Let us know in comments.
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Filed Under: Cool Software Apps ¦ Lists of tools
Tags: analytics, blogging client, blogging tools, calendar, ftp client, html, image tools, keywords, microblogging, screen capture, screencast, seo, WYSIWYG editor
You forgot to mention Adobe’s Bee, which is in many ways more polished than AIRPress:
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/air/samples/
Thanks for the add! We’ll update the post soon with that tool.
Hi, I thought I would add another screen capture application - Screen shot captor (http://www.donationcoder.com/Software/Mouser/screenshotcaptor/index.html). I use it and find it remarkable full featured. It is free but the author asks for a donation which entitles you to a life time license to it and many other pieces of software on that site.
what about scribefire?
http://www.scribefire.com/
I didn’t bother to include Firefox Extensions, but ScribeFire is a nice tool nonetheless.
For an FTP program, I actually use SmartFTP, because I couldn’t stand FileZilla. SmartFTP lets me edit a file from the server and then upload when I’m done (must-have feature). I don’t remember if FileZilla has that feature or not, but SmartFTP is another good one.
http://www.smartftp.com
My bad.. I missed this program…. I’ve heard of it before.
Will add it as well
Thanks for the heads-up.
good stuff and I am gaining some great information.
Is GimpShop stable now? I downloaded it and tried to use it a couple of years ago, but it kept crashing on me. I have just been using Gimp since then and I’m quite happy with it.
Well, nobody can say that it’s cent percent stable, but sure OSS is getting better by the day.
非常好的文章，对我使用blogger和wordpress中有很大的帮助作用~~~
thanks my friend,
a lot of info here
You forgot about a good backup tool. I’ve already lost my work once and I learned my lesson. I use SiteVault Backup
Oh! That’s an important thing that every serious blogger should consider.
Thanks for informing us about that very useful service.
Snagit offer is no longer available.
Uh Oh! If that’s the case, I’ll update the post. This article was drafted sometime ago so missed it.
Great post, and great tools not just for bloggers but for all around web geeks.
I’d love to see see Drupal related tools.
- Udi
As a Mac blogger I would also recommend ImageWell, Cyberduck and maybe Flock.
—
Chris Christensen
Amateur Traveler podcast - http://AmateurTraveler.com
Tripinator - Travel 2.0 - http://tripinator.com
Nice one Shankar. Take a look at Photoscape and Alleycode HTML Editor. Two good freewares too.
SnagIT offer has expired….!!
Thanks
Thanks for the share. Windows Live Writer is my favorite one.