I have been hearing more about Scribefire lately, which is a Firefox addon which allows me (or anyone else, for that matter) to blog with a small pane open on my screen while surfing or reading. It can be found at http://scribefire.com, and the download took a few seconds and required a restart of Firefox. I decided to give it a test run today.
This post is actually being composed in Scribefire.
So far, I am impressed.
It asked me to input my blog URL, then it needed my login info, of course. The menu is pretty extensive, resembling WordPress, and the blogging pane itself can be resized. I could also opt to open this program in a new tab or a new window, rather than the pane idea.
In the description on the site, it states, “you can drag and drop formatted text from pages you are browsing, take notes, and post to your blog”. I tried to bring in some formatted text with that last sentence as a test, and it worked well, but it didn’t retain its formatting (rather, it just became the same as the font that I am using here). It would be easy for me to add a YouTube video, and the picture insertion is intuitive as well, although there’s an odd second menu for aligning photos once you have them inserted into the post. I love the fact that there is an option on the dropdown menu to “find an image on Flickr”, although it doesn’t specify that it’s only pulling from the Creative Commons-licensed area, so I would be hesitant to use those images without verifying this first.
The Notes function was originally developed for Engadget, which is among the most-read blogs around. It makes sense that they would use this feature a lot, although I’m not sure that I will as an average user.
I think I may integrate this into my toolbox, since it enables me to just press F8 on my keyboard and start writing a post, rather than logging in to my Wordpress dashboard. Scribefire also allows me the ability to share any page I’m viewing on Facebook, StumbleUpon, Digg, and more. Twitter is conspicuously absent, and this seems like a logical addition to the next version.
Part of the hook here is Scribefire’s simplicity, and the ability to easily cut and paste information from sites and posts on the fly. I am sold on the simple part. The only potential drawback that I can see is if someone else gains access to your machine, they could gain access to your blog very easily with one keystroke, but this seems like an unlikely scenario.
Thanks for reading!
