ScribeFire

This is a test post using ScribeFire from Firefox 3.0

ScribeFire is an extension for the Mozilla Firefox Web Browser that integrates with your browser to let you easily post to your blog. It allows you to drag and drop formatted text from pages you are browsing, take notes, and post to your blog directly using ScribeFire.

ScribeFire currently supports the following services:

• WordPress.com
• LiveJournal
• Windows Live Spaces
• Performancing
• Jeeran
• Tumblr
• MySpace
  
• b2Evolution
  
• Splinder
  

In addition to the hosted services mentioned above, ScribeFire also supports custom blogging platforms which are usually blogging software hosted on your own server.

The currently supported blogging platforms are:

• WordPress
  
• Movable Type
  
• Drupal
  
• Textpattern
  
• Roller
  
• Blogger
  
• MetaWeblog API (Any blogging software that implements this API)

As mentioned above, any blogging software or blogging platform that implements the MetaWeblog API is implicitly supported by ScribeFire.

It's certainly very simple to use and could be very useful for composing technology related blog posts where a lot of the information is gleaned off of the web.

Google Docs Gets PDF Support

You can now upload, preview and share PDFs in Google Docs. You can't edit them yet but you can copy text from them for use in other apps. Hardly a huge innovation but useful for sharing PDF documents with others.

Maybe it won't be long before we can edit PDFs on there or even just search through them.

Buzzword Gets Integrated Into Acrobat.com

Buzzword, Adobe's online word processor application, has evolved into part of their new Acrobat.com web service, which is still in beta development. It joins Adobe ConnectNow, their online meeting/sharing service, as well as a tool to create PDF files and the ability to store and share files. Basically, Acrobat.com is a set of online services such as file sharing and storage, PDF converter, online word processor and web conferencing that you can use to create and share documents, communicate in real time and hopefull simplify working with others.


For existing Buzzword users the only real change is the requirement to access the service using an Adobe account so you'll need to either use an exisiting Adobe account or create one. They'll even move any existing Buzzword documents over to the new account if you want as well. Adobe ConnectNow, if you've never heard of it before it used be called Adobe BRIO, is a Flash-based web-conferencing application that will allow you meet with others online, share ideas, screens and files and even collaborate on a shared whiteboard.


Another very useful addition is the Adobe AIR, runtime version of Acrobat.com, which provides an easy way of interacting with Acrobat.com to allow dragging and dropping files and folders from your local computer directly into your Acrobat.com account, and browsing, previewing, sharing or publishing files easily from your computer. The interface is exactly like the web browser version so there's no need to learn two applications and it can be minimized to a widget to save screen space.

Google Sites Open Doors To All

When Google bought Jotspot last year, I assumed they'd be using that technology to enhance their own web-site creation service Google Page Creator. But no, what emerged was a new product called Google Sites but access was restricted to Google Apps users. Bit of a bummer as that meant you had to be signed up to their paying service to get this.



However, they've relented and opened up Google Sites to all Google account holders. So, if you're looking for a service that lets you create and customize web pages with no knowledge of HTML, then it's definitely worth a look. Okay, there are loads of free, web design and hosting services out there already so why choose Google Sites? Well, it's aimed at groups or "teams" and not just individuals.

Your "team" can quickly gather a variety of information like videos, calendars, presentations, attachments, and text, etc. in one place and easily share it for viewing or editing and you can open it up to your entire organization or the world if you want to. It's kind of like a wiki but Google don't mention that word at all and I'm happy about that as I'm not really a fan of wikis. It's ideal for families, interest groups, project teams, clubs, play-groups or even small business intranets.

Sites is a bit more structured than a wiki and that will probably suit the less technical people they're aiming it at. As well as being able to customize the interface to suit the group theme, you can choose from a growing list of page types like web page, announcements, dashboard, list and file cabinet. You can also embed rich content like video, Google Docs documents, spreadsheets, presentations, Picasa photo slide shows and iGoogle gadgets into any page and you can upload file attachments. However, while Apps Premier users get 10GB of storage space, I can't see anywhere what the limits are for normal Google account holders. The wording or their blog says you can securely host your own website and add as many pages as you like for free but I suppose, now that it's open to the world, we'll soon find out what the limits are.

As stated, Google will host your content for free and your site gets published online, if you allow it, to sites.google.com/yoursitename but if you want to use your own domain name, then you need to upgrade to a Premier account. I'm pretty sure this is Google's answer to Microsoft SharePoint for the masses and closer to what Windows Live Spaces should have been so I think we'll see that service evolve along the same lines as well.