Go from browser to blogger in no time! [ScribeFire, GToolbar]

by Ted Curran

Most people are wary of the idea of blogging because they think of it as another, separate activity they have to do on top of their other responsibilities. The term “blogger” has become an acceptable job title, like “journalist” or “pundit”. The beauty of blogging, however, is that it’s so easy you can do it as part of your everyday web travels.

I think of blogging as leaving a trail of breadcrumbs for others to find the very best of the web, with my voice as a guide. The trick, then, is to find a way to quickly and easily save your web travels in a way that’s easy for others to follow. For me, the answer is a couple of great plug-ins to my Firefox browser that let me quickly grab, comment, and post from right inside the browser window. Let’s look at a couple….

Post to your blog without ever leaving Firefox

ScribeFire, an extension of Firefox ®, can pop up right in front of the pages you’re browsing, allowing you to drag photos, video, and text right into a blog post, then comment and post. I love it because I can post to multiple blogs from this one window and it quickly and easily handles all the formatting for me.

Part of the Google Toolbar extension (for Firefox and IE) is a great little button called “Send this” which allows you to send anything you find in your web travels to your Blogger blog (or to your friends via email or text message).

Again, this makes it incredibly easy to make sure that those great
sites don’t get away, and that your audience can see them in an easy-to-read format.

Finally, the beauty of most major online blogging software is that you can post to your blog with a simple email address. Blogger, WordPress, Tumblr, (and probably all the rest) just give you an email address that you can send messages to and instantly post to your blog. This makes it easy to post from your cell phone or your Inbox.

I hope these tools help you start to think of blogging as an easy way to share your personal taste with an audience of people who are interested in the same things you are.