Getting my various blogs rekindled, my thoughts naturally wandered into the area of being the most productive which meant both:

• Avoiding web interfaces to do blogging (slow and cumbersome)
• Looking at software to give me an edge

I've used a number in the past such as ecto and MarsEdit, though I found the majority of these were complex with many options outside the realm of 'quick, easy, sexy Mac interface and time saving widgets. Enter Blogo as the latest I'm testing out.

The interface is one that is rather simplistic - and that's a PLUS! A plus simply due to another powerful feature that is missing in every other blogging software out there - full screen, zero distraction mode. Once you use this mode, you'll want to stay there since there's no email pop-ups etc etc. You can also run your Mac per my previous article too :)

There's all the prerequisite markups such as underline, bold, italics, strikethrough, citation and bullets as well as easy to insert linking. And, if you like, you're able to edit the direct HTML as well - though, if it's quick blogging you're after, I didn't really see much need. Type, Preview and Post.

All mainstream blogging platforms are catered for which is fantastic - and these include Drupal, Joomla, Wordpress, Blogger, Typepad, Typo and Expression Engine. A nice touch is being able to spread the word of your new blog using Twitter and Ping.fm. The latter allowing you to push further into other Social Networks.

Not connected to the Internet and need to use some time in blog writing? No problem as you're able to save your stuff in offline mode too.

Being able to pull stuff off the Internet is a time saving advantage for any blogger and Blogo facilitates this simply through Browser Integration. Great for posting quotes, images from Flickr or videos from the likes of Blip.fm, Flickr, Picasa, Slide, YouTube, Dailymotion, Metacafe, and Vimeo pages.. Witness the magic.

The developers, Brainjuice, are releasing betas though do be careful as they do contain bugs which will be ironed out in due course.

Image editing could certainly be improved upon. Whilst you're able to crop and resize as well as convert to black and white as well as sepia, it would be extremely helpful to be able to add shadowing as well as button effects such as stroke, curving and glass. These latter areas saw me reverting to my old favourites, Skitch and Picturesque.

When setting up a Blog account, you have a few really innovative options which include the width of you blog's content area - setting this up allows images and videos to be automatically resized to fit neatly into your page. Having Lightbox installed inside your platform allows Blogo to reduce the image for content formatting and, once clicked on, a sexy Lightbox appears showing the full image. That's pretty neat, huh?

The cost is currently running at $US25 which in some people's minds is higher than comparable blogging software. This license includes 3 computers however.

Do you like Blogo or something else? Let me know in the comments.