between w.bloggar and blogdesk for wordpress blogging

What tool makes your life easier in blogville? mine has been Blogdesk. So far blogdesk has provided everything I am looking for in a blogging tool, except that there are no features to (1) add tags to posts, and (2) prompt for passwords, when I run the software. The tool has no feature for the user to choose if/if not to save/not save login passwords for the configured blogname. Its however lightweight and clean looking.

Even though this is my PC, I often feel: should it ever happen, that something else happens, that something else happens, that someone uses my PC(with and without my consent), decides to look around, runs my blogdesk install and makes a back-dated post somewhere I would never figure out,…..and sometime in future, I find out that someone/somepeople on his own blog refers to ‘that embarassing post’…..ill be like….what da???..which could make my online life quite embarassing.

If theres something called mobile-blogging, I would want to be one and my ideal tool: one that would allow me make a post to my weblog from any computer I sit at.

As much as I love freeware, let me introduce w.Bloggar.

I think w.bloggar is a great tool, although I’ve not fished around too much, but you can take a look at some features here: http://www.wbloggar.com

the following is a short tutorial: it took me sometime to figure out.
1.) click to download bloggar

I’m particularly impressed by the Portable version. What could be better than a blogging tool you could carry around on a Flash drive or a portable hard-disk?

2) after the download completes, double-click the file to run the application. If you have wordpress blog already, just add the account and then select ‘wordpress’ as the blog tool.

• check/tick if you want w.bloggar to notify one of the listed sites(select any site of your fancy) whenever you publish a new post.
• click next
• in the host box, type your wordpress host: ex: mynameis.wordpress.com
• in the path box: type: /xmlrpc.php

i love the option to save/not save password, especially if you use are blogging from a computer thats not yours

• leave Port 80 by default and leave UTF-8 selected
• click next
• type your username and password and click finish. Launching the tool:

anyway, here is exactly what I was looking for:

WBloggar has a lot of impressive features, but as much as they impressed me, I soon found out that its a labor to insert an image into a post. I have to upload the picture-file into my weblog first and then insert it from the weblog into the post - thanks to Jakes-tutorial. I’m like…what da!!! why do I have to go around the world just to insert a JPEG file. What is better than having an icon/button directly in WBloggar that allows one to insert a picture, and then after the composition everything in uploaded. Besides, what if I upload a picture into my weblog(according to wbloggar), then I decide I want to edit/change the picture, then I’ll have one extra file guzzling up some space in the weblog.

Anyway, I don’t have the time to go round the world just for the purpose of inserting a JPEG file(pics above) to make a post so I had to fire-up the ever faithful blogdesk just for this post.

However WBloggar has a lot of media features, which I haven’t tested and might not be testing.

A unique feature however is the Portable version of the tool. That could help my mobile-blogging life.

who is Ezekiel Izuogu

As far as technology is concerned, I never cease to wonder: what does Nigeria have that it can call ‘mine’.

The name Ezekiel Izuogu comes to mind as I remember an attempt by a Nigerian to design a car, I mean a car.

Dr Izuogu, an electrical-electronics engineer was a former lecturer in Communications and electronics engineering, Federal Polytechnic, Owerri, Nigeria. His major breakthrough in his engineering endeavor was the design and construction of the first ever locally made car: the Z-600.

First, the car was launched:

BBC News, Friday, April 17, 1998
*The all-African dream machine
It’s African, it’s new and it’s different. The latest - and the first - in the Z series, the Z-600, is the first ever all-African car, reports the BBC’s correspondent in Lagos, Hilary Andersson.

It was designed and made in Nigeria for the family market and has a top speed of 140km (86m) an hour.

Ninety per cent of its parts are locally produced - it has a doorbell for a horn. And if it ever goes into mass production it will cost just $2,000 (£1,195), making it the most affordable car in Africa - and probably the world.

Then everyone got interested in the idea: T’was majorly South Africa.

Business Day News, Wednesday, February 8, 2006
*S/Africa to acquire rights to produce Nigerian car

South Africa is set to acquire the rights from an automobile engineer to mass produce Nigeria’s first car, the Z600, in that country.

South African President Thabo Mbeki has instructed his deputy-president to finalise details of the agreement with the car manufacturer with a view to producing the vehicle in South Africa.

Ezekiel Izogu, managing director of Izogu Motors Limited managing director disclosed this in an exclusive interview with BUSINESSDAY.

Izogu said the car was first launched in Owerri in 1997 by then Chief of General Staff Oladipo Diya during the regime of former Head of State Sani Abacha.

Even Senegal was said to be interested. Then we heard ‘the technology was stolen’:

Vanguard News, Sunday, March 19, 2006
*Design history, moulds of Nigerian made car stolen

An indigenous motor manufacturing company, Izuogu Motors Limited, Naze Owerri, Imo State, has lost property valued at over one billion naira to burglary.

According to the chairman of the company, Dr. Ezekiel Izuogu, some armed men numbering about 12 broke into Izuogu Motors factory, Saturday, March 11, between 1.00 and 2.00 a.m. and carted away various machines and tools including a design history notebook of Z-600, the design file Z-MASS, containing the design history for mass production of Z-600 car, a proposed locally made car and the moulds for various parts of the car.

Izuogu, who has laboured for 18 years under very difficult circimstances to design and produce the stolen moulds, lamented that the moulds took 10 years to design and build.

source for the 3–quotes above:nigeriamasterweb

See what this article says about Doc Ezekiel’s work: Note the parts in bold.

Self-started innovation : a political & economic issueThe formula of hand-laid GRP bodyshell and simple steel chassis also appears tohave been followed by Dr Ezekiel Izuogu, who created Nigeria’s first indigenous car, theZ-600, in 1997. This is a 20 mpg family car using 90% locally made components, andintended to sell for around $2,000 (at 1998 prices), “making it making it the mostaffordable car in Africa—and probably the world” [18]; the factory was planned tomanufacture 30 cars per year. The self-developed 1.8 litre engine “could also be massproduced and put to other uses like agricultural mechanisation, standby electricitygenerator and tricycles”. Whilst this project has ultimately not yet come to fruition with interest from South Africa and Senegal being the latest twist, it has become something of a political symbol. Dr Izuogu’s house was stormed by an armed gang in 2003 and much of the speculation surrounding the vehicle is associated with lessening African reliance on western technology. Nigeria’s Chief of General Staff, Oladipo Diya, said at the Z-600’s launch that “Izuogu had demonstrated the spirit of self-reliance… the theory of technology transfer was a myth” and Izuogu has recently linked technology development to the movement for a pan-African language—“Technology determines whether a people will be rich or poor, strong, weak or influential at the UN or onlookers,borrowers or lenders… The moment a people can describe a technological feat andprocess using the mother tongue, technology becomes part and parcel of their culture”

Is this project dead or is it alive somewhere in the back-stage? Yes its true: Technology determines whether a people will be rich or poor, strong, weak or influential, and Nigeria is a prime example. I can hear someone say: ‘what about Oil’?. Then I’ll answer: where has it gotten us to, today? graft and corruption.

These questions beat my mind daily: 
 – why is the common Nigerian intellectual, business man, Engineering University graduate not interested in research and development?
 – why can’t we and our politicians see into the future, and do something that can last even after we are gone?
 – why do we have to rely on this and that country to come and assist us with the most basic of things.

The problem I see, is that the common man is interested in short term things that might bring immediate results and gratification. What about investing energy into something that is long-term but which would have a greater and wide-reaching impact?

Can this psychology be ever reversed?

 

Links:

• Nigeria: Izuogu Records Another Scientific Invention

• Tonami’s weblog(last update was June2007) talked about the naijacar project.

Tags: Ezekiel+Izuogu, Z-600, Nigerias+car