ScribeFire

Hit one key--F8, to be precise--and you can post to your blog from any page on the Web. I often see a page or site and think "I have to blog about this..." but then I end up forgetting about it. While, of course, it's a small matter to just go to one's blog and do it, the ease of popping up an editor with a single key press is very appealing. It makes it easier to copy relevant text and URLs, for example, as opposed to constantly flipping between one tab and another.

The editor for ScribeFire provides all that you would expect: Fonts, alignment, images, YouTube embedding, and so on. It allows you to open multiple editor windows, in tabbed format, which can be very handy for many purposes. Say you want to have a public version of your blog. ("I went to a party. It was fun.") and a private version for a few close friends. ("And here are some pictures of me doing things I don't want my entire office to see.") It's pretty easy to use the tabbed interface to do something like this. It's also a nice way to keep a blog entry "open" while you go from page to page collecting links or fragments of text--the blog editor stays open in the bottom half of the window while you change tabs.

It's free and it's useful. What more can be said?

Note: This link takes you to the vendor's site, where you can automatically install the file into your Firefox browser.

--Ian Harac