So I came across IslandDogs article PC Magazine's Best Free Software of '09 where he talks about how Stardock's ObjectDock was the second best freeware. Congrats Stardock, Objectdock (free version) is the best program I have installed on my PC at this moment, look forward to the Plus version as soon as I am able to afford it. I decided to check out the PC Magazine article to see what other cool, and free, software was listed. I came across this program called Zoundry Raven v1.0.375, a blog editor that the PC Magazine article claims can rival Microsoft's Live Writer. I went ahead and decided to download Raven and give it a test drive my self considering I like Live Writer a lot but I tend to use ScribeFire more often because it's integrated into my FireFox browser.
The one thing that caught my attention about Raven (which is one thing I wish Live Writer could do) was that I am able to use it as a portable app. I currently own a 250GB Western Digital Passport portable drive which I installed PortableApps.com portable menu and a ton of portable apps with it. This is how I am able to use FireFox at work rather than IE. I was able to add Raven to the PortableApps menu very easily and set it up. The set up is pretty simple though, unlike ScribeFire which searched for the API address itself for Joeuser.com, I had to look for it to be able to post to my blog. Make sure to put the www.joeuser.com (if you use joeuser.com as you blog site) as oppose to your blogs name, in my case "charles.joeuser.com", in order to get the articles posted (not sure about other blog sites and this issue). So far it seems to work fine. This article you are reading was posted with Raven.
The first thing I noticed when I opened Raven was the interface looked a lot like Thunderbird. The accounts are set up in the same fashion, as if you were checking out your email account and it even downloads your previous articles into the program. Writing the article itself seems a lot like writing an email. . It even comes with a built in spell-checker, but don't expect it to check for spelling automatically, you gotta go the extra step to tel it to check for spelling errors.
Another feature I like about Raven (honestly am not sure if Live Writer or ScribeFire do this as well but never seen this feature there), you can as a storage account that you can link to your blogging account that will automatically upload the pictures to the storage account and link the picture as you post the article. In my case, I used my Picasa account on google and as you can see below, it worked great. I simply added the image to this article as I wrote it the same way I would insert an image into an email and when I published it, Raven automatically uploaded the image to my Picasa account and linked the image on my blog and posted it all together. Pretty neat feature, no need to upload the image first to a photo site and then paste the link into the article.
I am a Proud American but also a Proud Puerto Rican, I have learned to care more for my country of origin lately, even if many of my fellow Puerto Ricans like to bit the hand that feeds a lot of them.
So, after taking Zoundry for a test drive by posting a few test articles on to Joeuser.com with and without images, I conclude that Zoundry Raven is a decent rival to Live Writer with a simple interface similar to Thunderbird, an simple account setup, the ability to add a storage account to upload images instantly as you post the article as oppose to uploading the image first and best of all, it's portable. Also remember, when posting, you need to select the category where the article will be posted or you will get an error, this can be done under the "Configure" menu next to the "Blog" selection and "Title".
Try it out for yourself and tell us what you think? Also, as IslandDog said, don't forget to give ObjectDock a try as well.
www.zoundryraven.com
www.stardock.com