I seldom finish a blog post in one session in front of the computer. My typical blogging day starts with reading news feeds to check on updates on topics that interest me. Sometimes I get a blog post idea while reading RSS feed items and I’d write a note in my personal wiki about the topic.
I’d then work on the post in the office, right before the newsroom goes into overdrive chasing page deadlines and after I’ve finished my pages and while waiting for pages assigned to me for line-reading. I’d then publish the post at home, after my early morning meal–that’s dinner for all you morning people.
Most of the time, however, I’m working on several projects that can generate several blog posts. These projects are experiments on content management systems, blogging, wikis and anything that might be of use in a newsroom environment, particularly that of a small community newspaper.
I keep my technical notes on these experiments and my to-do lists in various personal wikis, including a txt file in my K750i. But for blog post ideas, I may have found the best notes repository, for me, in Wridea. (Click on photo to view larger image)
Wridea is a free web service that helps you organize your ideas. It’s a great system to use as a container for notes of pending blog posts you are working on. I’ve been using it since early this week and I find that it really helps me organize my thoughts on blog posts I’m working on.
Wridea is an extensible service that you can even use as a simple project or task manager. It’s not in any way revolutionary as there are a lot of comparable free services online. Basecamp and Backpackit
(referral link) may even be better. But there’s just something about Wridea that makes it a great system to keep notes for my pending blog posts.
I really like its user interface and find that it helps me keep my notes for blog articles organized. If you write for or maintain several blogs like I do, you’d love the ability to group “ideas” into pages. I created one page for my blog (the page that’s active in the screenshot above) and another for blogs at the Sun.Star website.
Adding an idea for a blog post is easy. Just go to the page you want to add the blog post idea to and then click on Ideas then Add New Idea. Don’t worry if you mistakenly add the blog post idea to the wrong page, you can reassign ideas to different pages.
When the note loads, just click on the A New Idea title in the left sidebar and replace it with your blog post idea. Add notes below the title by clicking on the dummy text placed there: “This is a new idea waiting to be editted,” it really is waiting to be edited.
You can use Textile for formatting your notes, just click on Help to read how you can render bold text or include photos or links.
Max is a journalist and blogger based in Cebu. He has written and edited for such publications as The Freeman, The Independent Post, Today, Sun.Star Cebu, Cebu Daily News, Philstar Life, and Rappler.
He is also a mobile app and web developer and co-founded InnoPub Media with his wife Marlen.
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