Qumana LE desktop blogging tool

Qumana LE from Qumana is a desktop blogging tool, i.e. an app that lets you post to and manage your blog from the desktop rather than with a web-based interface. Qumana seems to have the usual bases covered, including a WYSIWYG interface, drag-and-drop for text and images, support for most of the major blog platforms, and the ability to save drafts or publish with one click. They also toss in one novel feature, the ability to easily insert Technorati tags into posts, plus the puzzling "Use Qumana to rapidly create media rich emails." Qumana's own "Investor Blog" rounds up reviews in a post entitled "The reviews are in QumanaLE rocks," but in reality they're fairly sedate. The consensus seems to be that while Qumana is relatively easy to use, especially when it comes to set-up (a point which should not be understated), it may not really be ready to shed the ol' "beta" badge. As an XHTML weenie, the Weblog Tools Collection's review strikes me most: "Produces tag soup. Also, the client does not have access to previous posts and the category functionality is completely broken in Wordpress. Next."

I give the Qumana folks credit, though, for responding directly to the reviews on their own blog (though they've yet to address "tag soup"), which I take as encouraging evidence that the client will improve in alignment with users' needs.

Other desktop blogging tools worth checking out are BlogJet and ecto.

Tags: qumana+blogging+blog, QumanaBloggingBlog