QumanaXP public beta launched

neville

For the past few weeks, I’ve been trying out the closed beta versions of QumanaXP, an offline blog editing tool that is available in versions for Windows and Mac platforms.

While I’ve not been using it for every post I’ve been writing to my blogs – I’ve been mixing and matching between ecto for Windows, my long-time offline editor, and RocketPost which I’m also trying out – QumanaXP is very impressive.

The latest beta 3.0.0-b1 reflects some serious development work over previous betas – they do listen to the testers – and shows a strong commitment by Qumana to produce a reliable tool for blogging that will stand up well against the competition.

One thing I’m very pleased (and relieved) to see is that a major issue with posting to TypePad blogs has been resolved with this latest beta. Until now, if you posted to your TypePad blog, any category you’d set in your post would not carry through to final publish. This for me was a complete show-stopper for QumanaXP. From my email conversations with the developers, it appeared that this was a TypePad issue, not a QumanaXP one. Either was, they’ve fixed it.

I also tried QumanaXP with my WordPress blog – works perfectly including with categories.

Today QumanaXP goes into public beta, meaning anyone can download the beta and take it for a spin. It will be formally launched at the Northern Voice 2006 community-based blogging and personal publishing conference taking place today and tomorrow in Vancouver, Canada.

But don’t wait – download the beta now! Try it for yourself. You might also want to take a look at the contest Qumana has launched as part of their incentivizing bloggers to use their tool 😉

I’ll be posting more detailed commentary about QumanaXP soon.

Powered by Qumana

10 thoughts on “QumanaXP public beta launched”

  3. Neville, thanks for your encouraging comments regarding our team’s work at putting out this new version (especially Ianiv’s and Arieanna’s focus and responsiveness).
    We do like to believe that we listen to users and strive to respond as effectively as possible to the issues and features they identify as desirable. And we will continue to do so … what will help is more people using and more people offering feedback of course. We want to make it the best (and most flexible) application available in this space.

  4. You’re welcome, Jon.
    QumanaXP really is very good. Couple of things to fix here and there (it is a beta, after all), but nothing show-stopping now from my point of view. I’ll continue with feedback to the team.

  5. I’m comparing QumanaXP to ecto in the Mac version. Ecto seems slicker, has integration for things like iTunes, iPhoto and Amazon. The Mac beta is very slow.

  6. That’s the wonder of choice, Dennis! If things like those you mention are important to you, then you’d choose the tool that offers them.
    With ecto, for instance (the Windows version I use), or BlogJet, I don’t use any of the music file integration options. RocketPost has loads of bells and whistles, too, yet I probably won’t use many of those either. But such things are important to some people.
    What I’m looking for is a robust and reliable tool that lets me to confidently manage my TypePad and WordPress blogs and enables me to write and edit content, add Technorati tags and images if I want, and publish that content with as few hassles as possible.
    QumanaXP beta (the Windows version I’m trying) fits that bill well. RocketPost does, too. One big difference between those two: RocketPost $99, QumanaXP $0.

  7. Good points, Neville. One thing we sort of chuckle at (with a bit of a grimace thrown in) is that if you search for *Qumana* on Technorati, you always get an ad for Rocketpost that says “Smarter than Qumana”, or “Faster than Qumana”.
    Bit cheesy, really …
    While we don’t like to make malignant comparisons with competitors as part of our advertising campaign, we have indeed discussed / toyed with creating an ad that says “Easier than Rocketpost – and $99 cheaper” 😉

  8. Just noticed you’ll be here in Vancouver in June at IABC. I assume that you’ll come in and visit us, maybe have a lunch or dinner with the Qumana team ?

  9. You’re absolutely right Neville – I’m merely pointing out the differences for those that are interested. At the level I use ecto – probably same or similar to you, it ‘feels’ more elegant and I can’t really figure out why. I tried ecto on Wintel and it didn’t do it for me whereas Qumana did. Performance remains an issue on the Mac platform…and that does require attention.

Comments are closed.