If you’ve been blogging for any length of time, you’ve probably experimented with some external blogging clients.  I’ve tried a number of them over the years, yet always seem to go right back to WordPress’ admin when I want to post.

But for the next little while, I’m going to experiment once again and give the various blogging clients a try. After all, they do have a lot going for them… from spell checking, browser integration, and the ability to blog to multiple accounts without opening a new browser window.

Today I installed Deepest Sender, a blogging client for Firefox.

Deepest Sender installs like any Firefox plug-in. Its effortless and comfortable for anyone who has ever added plug-ins to their Firefox installations before. This also means that updates will happen effortlessly, as Firefox will prompt you when new updates are available.

Once you’ve installed Deepest Sender and restarted Firefox, you’ll need to set up some accounts in Deepest Sender. To begin, start the editor by either using the Deepest Sender menu item from the Tools menu,  or typing CTRL+\ on your keyboard.

You’ll be prompted through a very easy new account wizard to set up your first Blog. Deepest Sender will work with LiveJournal, Blogger and WordPress blogs, and should be adaptable to any other platform that uses the metaWeblog API.

Once you’ve set up your blog, you can log in and make a test post. You”ll notice that unlike many other blog editing tools, this one doesn’t leave unasked for links at the end of your posts. Yay!

From the main editor window, you can see your post in either WYSIWYG format, which is “Normal”, in Source mode, which will show you all your tags, and in Preview mode, which will show you, hopefully, what your finished post will truly look like, title and all.

You can choose  which category you want to place your post in from the drop down box at the upper right.

Adding posts to your blog is very straightforward. Simply type away, adding links and text styles with the built-in editor, then post.

Deepest Sender does not yet have a way to upload an image from the editor to your blog. It only accepts the image URL when you choose the image icon from the toolbar,  so if you want to use an image in your post, you’ll need to make sure it’s already online somewhere.

My only other complaint is that Deepest Sender does not include a way to add tags to your posts. I rely heavily on tags, and adding relevant tags to posts has greatly increased my search engine rankings for many keywords, so I am loathe to give them up.

In summary:

Pros:

• Fast and easy install and upgrades
• Offline editing ability
• Access to all your blogs from one place
• Nice WYSIWYG editor
• No extra advertising or links added to your posts
• Free!

Cons:

• No image upload function
• No place to enter tags

Also on my wishlist would be a way to post-date posts, but that’s not a deciding factor for me.

Overall, Deepest Sender is a very nice tool, but I’m not sure it’ll work for me at this point since I almost always use my own images (uploaded via the WordPress image uploader) in my blog posts, and I always use the Tags fields that WordPress and Blogger provide.

I’ll keep the plugin installed, though, and check it out each time there’s an upgrade, since I’m sure it’ll be changing for the better with each new version.

As the end of August approaches I suddenly realized I’ve been terribly negligent about this blog for the entire month. But bringing myself to blog while the weather is still warm and the days are still long seemed to be just a little short of impossible.

But before the month is up, I want to point you to a few products.

First, The Wealthy Blogger has posted that he’s raising the price of his very cool Google Subscribed Links Toolkit for WordPress in a few days in order to start his affiliate program. If you want to grab it at $14.99, do it now!

Secondly, if you haven’t yet seen Market Samurai, you ought to give the trial a run. It is a very, very nice piece of market and niche analysis software for the price.

Neither product is linked here with an affiliate link. They get the nod on their own merits.

In most people’s lives, there inevitably come telephone conversations which require massive amounts of time, but do not require your full attention. These can come in the form of calls from your mother-in-law, calls from a recently-dumped friend, or conference calls with clients about subjects merely on the periphery of your task.

While one option is to grin and bear it and sit passively through the call, if you mute the speakers on your computer you can effectively multitask during the call without sounding too distracted when you are called upon to speak.

Remember, muting the speakers on your computer is a very, very good idea. There are still far too many sites that blare music upon arrival, and the new pay per play advertising that’s sounding off in various circles would not make a good impression on your mother-in-law or your clients.

So here’s a list of things that will let you educate and entertain yourself without reading so much you’ll lose track of what your phone call is about:

1) Drop Entrecards. This option requires the least amount of brain power, so is ideal if you actually need to participate in the telephone conversation aside from the occasional “uh huh” and “okay”.

2) Check your stats for interesting keyword phrases. It can be of great benefit to find out what people are searching for when they find your site. Much of it can help you target your content… especially if your existing content doesn’t quite answer the question people were searching for answers to. If you’re a blogger, this is a fantastic way to come up with ideas for new posts.

It can also be amusing. You’ll inevitably find some incredibly weird search queries leading to your site like, “how do you get a pencil eraser out of your ear?”

3) Scan Clickbank or Paydotcom for new products related to your niche. It’s easy to think that you’ve seen all the products related to your niche already, but new products appear all the time. Some are great products from not-so-great marketers, so those products with amazing potential might not appear on your radar any other way.

Bookmark anything that looks interesting for further perusal… don’t spend too much time reading, since you’ll completely lose the conversation you’re supposed to be listening to if you do. Just figure out what the product is and make an impulse judgement whether you can sell it or not.

4) Play with some keyword suggestion tools. You can have loads of fun plugging in keywords at the various free keyword suggestion tools. Not only can they give you some new content ideas, but sites like spyfu can let you see what your competition is doing differently than you.

5) Use online tools to analyze your Website. You can learn a lot about how users and search engines see, rank and use your website by playing with tools like Website Grader which will grade your website on SEO, incoming links, social popularity and other factors, and give you suggestions on how to improve; SEO Analyzer which analyzes the actual code of your site and offers some suggestions on how to improve it for optimal SEO; BrowserShots will help you see your site in different browsers and resolutions; and the insanely cool CrazyEgg will let you see a heatmap of your design, finding out parts of your site are drawing your visitor’s attention.

While any tasks that require your full concentration are not at all recommended during a telephone call, having some of the above in your toolbox can keep those calls from being a complete waste of your time while still allowing you to interact when necessary.

Today Entrecard announced a partnership with SezWho , a universal profile service for the social web designed to engage communities and enable content discovery.

SezWho allows you to set up a profile, and have your comments across blogs using SezWho aggregated. So if you offer an erudite comment on blog A, people who read it can click your profile and see posts from your own blog as well as your comments elsewhere in the blogosphere.

In combination with Entrecard, not only do you get the advantage of a ‘carry along’ profile, but you can earn EC credits for your posts too.

However, we wouldn’t want people running around and writing “nice post” on every blog they see, trying to game the system and earn credits. So the community will be responsible for rating comments, and rating them truthfully. Depending on how well your comments get rated, and who rates them, your comments will earn you a sliding reward ranging from 1 to 10 credits. If your comments get rated poorly, especially by a blog’s owner, you won’t earn a thing.

This rather brilliant move should help to significantly offset the Bounce Rate problem that Entrecard has had.

I’ve just installed the SezWho plugin, and will be watching my Google Analytics carefully to see if it does improve my bounce rate, which went from ~30% before Entrecard to ~75% after.

I’m giving away 100 Entrecard Credits to the first 50 EC users who send me a secret code….

All you have to do is click this link to subscribe to my Google Links, then do a Google.com search for
Hello Mindsurfer to see the code and instructions.