I'm just about to officially switch over to Tangelo as my blog software of choice ... i.e. pay for and register it. As some folks might be aware, I was a long time user of Radio Userland but I just did not have the patience to deal with its weirdness any more. Long time readers of rc will know that I've pondered dumping Radio in the past but going to something 'obvious' like Wordpress or Movable Type both involved getting an ISP package which included mysql, which would essentially double what I'm paying right now. Blogger is inaccessible at times too (I have a blog for my math students to review lessons), so I never even pondered that one. I had initially gone with Radio because it didn't require such and happily, Tangelo is in the same category. The problem with Radio was the perpetual problem of it all of a sudden deciding not to post. I had grown somewhat accustomed to this and had learned that it would eventually publish after two or three posts (it also caused my hard drive to spin wildly and noisily from time to time, apparently), but that fateful day a couple of weeks ago it stopped doing even that. I can't be positive, but this might have coincided with some nightly update that was automatically downloaded (although the software itself hasn't really been updated (in the sense of a new version) in close to two years). What was even more maddening was that the error messages in the events log changed every time you tried to upload again. Email to the support forum went unanswered (and it was clear that others were having the same problem, hence my thoughts that it must have been connected to some nightly update. So it was time to bid adieu to Radio.

I'm not sure how I came across Tangelo ... I certainly hadn't heard of it before two weeks ago and tech geek that I am, I do try to stay on top of these things. Whatever the case, I installed it, it worked. If you have a Radio blog there is a way to import your archives from Radio (I haven't done that ... they're still available if you search via Google, so it doesn't seem a necessary/productive use of my time). It's still in development (some minor quirks, but they're not obtrsive), but its author is very responsive in the support forum. Most important, though, it works as described. If you are looking for a reasonably-priced piece of blog software with a great future ahead of it, give Tangelo a look ...