Blogging is an art a very few people really master. Besides, finding the perfect blogging workflow is very difficult nowadays, as we’ve got hundreds of apps designed and created with bloggers in mind.
I collected the apps I use most everyday in this post, hoping to give you an helpful glimpse of my blogging workflow.
Enjoy! 
Browser: Firefox and Safari
This is the first app you’ll need, a good browser. In my workflow, I use both Firefox and Safari. Firefox is my “reading sessions” and “find stuff” browser, while I use Safari for my blog’s dashboard and work-related links (apps, developers, wordpress stuff).
Anyway, both the browsers share similar settings:
- Vertical tabs (Tree Style on FF and SafariStand on Safari) and keyboardr.com as homepage;
- Bookmarks toolbar with folders;
- Xmarks cross sync;
- Delicious bookmarks with Delicious official FF addon and Delicious Safari
You know how much I love twitter: it’s my favourite social network and first source of informations about the things I like. Here’s how I tweet from my Mac:
Just to check the design of my profile, nothing more.
And here is, the king of Twitter clients. Developed by Atebits, Tweetie has got all the features a blogger would need: saved searches, trends, mentions, threaded conversations, retweets and a lovely UI. The best one I ever tried! (and trust me, I tried many clients)
Whether you got to tweet your newest article or share an interesting page you’ve found, there’s no better solution in my opinion than using a browser plugin.
Twit That! (Firefox, free) and Thurly (Safari, shareware) do pretty much the same thing, but Thurly has a gorgeous interface and smooth animations.
I reviewed it here.
Menubar Apps
I wasn’t a big fan of menubar apps until a while ago, when I discovered these little utilitied which are really making my workflow better.
Notify: as the name suggests, it notifies you if new mails arrive in your Gmail inbox;
Clipmenu: one of the best clipboard managers available for Mac, it supports history and snippets. Read my review here.
Little Snitch Network Monitor: the menubar extension of Little Snitch, it helps you in monitoring your outgoing internet connections.
News / Reading
This is simple. Besides the huge amount of links I find on Twitter, I also use RSS feeds to stay updated with blogs I follow.
NetNewsWire: now syncs with Google Reader, which is just perfect to me.
Read it Later: both on Firefox and Safari, I use RiL to save pages for later. A must have if you usually have a lot of interesting stuff to read. Read my review here. (iPhone version)
Writing
Here comes the real “blogging” part. Writing is a blogger’s first need!
Notes: Notational Velocity
I discovered Notation 2 weeks ago thanks to my friends Smoking Apples and I can’t live without it anymore. Press enter to create a new note than type. Moreover, you don’t have to save, the app will do it for you.
Whoa, this is keyboard power!
Text Editor: By now, I’m still stuck Wordpress editor, but I’m trying this app, Blogo, which seems good so far. I’ll let you know.
IM
Tweetie, Skype and iChat
Should I say more? 
Mail.app
For my IMAP account, Mail.app is just perfect. Not only it’s a native Mac app, it supports plugins as well.
I installed two plugins so far: GrowlMail (growl notifications on new mails) and Letterbox. This one is very cool, it changes Mail.app to a three-column view. In this way, I can read my messages without opening a new window.
An excellent time saver!
Mailplane for Gmail accounts:
I have a bunch of Gmail accounts and – as I love Gmail web interface – I decided to buy Mailplane. Mailplane is a great app which flawlessy brings the Gmail experience to your Mac desktop. I wrote a review back in May.
Other apps
Here’s a bunch of other apps I daily use.
Dropzone: an applications which performs a lot of actions with drag & drop.
FileShuttle: easy and blazing fast file sharing with your web server. Really, you can share a pic in 2 secs.
LittleSnapper: to collect, tag and export my screenshots to Flickr and emberapp.
Stacks with list view: yeah, you can achieve the list view following this tutorial.
Spotify: I love listening to music while working so..what’s better than Spotify?
So, these are the apps I use during my blogging workflow…
..What’s yours?
#1
That's what Yiao said 11 months ago:
A few i did not know. Thnx for the tips. Now i am going to look for the TwitThat and Thurly
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#2
That's what storiesofmac said 11 months ago:
Thank you Yiao! Sure, let me know what do you think
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#3
That's what Yiao said 11 months ago:
I just "customize" my firefox because of you haha. Great tip with the tabs. (I use ff not that long)
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#4
That's what Yiao said 11 months ago:
p.s. love the TwitThat add on
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#5
That's what storiesofmac said 11 months ago:
TwitThat! is simply perfect to tweet interesting pages. And Tree Style, I can’t imagine working without..way better than horizontal tabs!
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#6
That's what Vivian said 11 months ago:
Hey, ELVIS!
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#7
That's what Karen said 11 months ago:
A Safari tool called ScribeFire is a great blog editor.
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#8
That's what Trevor Hayward said 11 months ago:
Hey there, great post. My blogging workflow is very similar except for the editor. I’ve tried all the available blog editors, and am currently using MyBlogEdit (http://myownapp.com/applications/myblogedit/myblogedit.html). I have Wordpress powered blogs and this is the only desktop editor I’ve come across with proper support for custom fields, and has been the easiest to use so far. I strongly suggest checking it out, blogo, marsedit and many others have been frustrating in my experience.
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#9
That's what storiesofmac said 11 months ago:
@Karen thanks for the heads up, gonna check it out now!
@Trevor: cool, I’ll try together with Blogo
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#10
That's what Karn Broad said 11 months ago:
Interesting. Not being much of a blogger, I only use Safari, Mail and LittleSnapper daily of all the apps you mention. I blog using RapidWeaver (RapidBlog plugin) Tweet with Nambu (not into Tweetie), and very occasionally I use Skype to speak to clients a long way away. Don’t use RSS much, but I use Times when I do, and I might boot up Firefox once or twice a week on average (site testing).
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#11
That's what storiesofmac said 11 months ago:
@Karn: I never used RapiWeaver to blog, but I heard many people use it everyday. But anyway, I don’t think it supports Wordpress, so that’s the big problem.
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#12
That's what Andy Tuba said 10 months ago:
Hmm. For Gmail notifications, I’ve been using Google Notifier (free from Google) and Google+Growl for customized growl notifications about email and calendar. Let’s see how Notify stacks up against that pair.
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#13
That's what Andy Tuba said 10 months ago:
eta: Looks like Notify unfortunately doesn’t support Gmail through Google Apps. Back to Google Notifier.
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storiesofmac Reply:
October 25th, 2009
@Andy Tuba, Yeah, that’s true. But be sure to looking forward version 2.0 of Notify
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#14
That's what Tony said 10 months ago:
Vertical tabs is a sweet idea… If only firefox didn’t slow to a crawl with all those windows open. Still better than the default tabs – thanks for the tip.
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#16
That's what Trackback - Cheap Internation Call >> How to make cheap international call said 9 months ago:
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#17
That's what Toon Claes said 9 months ago:
I really like MarsEdit for blog editing.
http://www.red-sweater.com/marsedit/
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#18
That's what JD said 7 months ago:
I have heard good things about Blogo. Review would be great/ comparison against Marsedit.
Nice setup!
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