If you use the ecto for Windows 2.0 blog editing software, note that version 2.1 beta was released yesterday.

The major new features in this beta are the addition of Amazon support – you can now search Amazon from within ecto to add item details to your post, and customise how the item looks in your post using the template feature, so useful if you have an Amazon Associates membership – and the Upload Preset now includes thumbnail settings.

The best new feature for many bloggers, though, may well be the addition of a simple yet essential editing enhancement – pasting copied text without the formatting. That’s a big one for me.

Many’s the time where I’ve copied some text from a web page or document and pasted it into a post I’m writing in ecto only to discover it’s carried over all the source formatting as well. So you end up using the intermediate step of Notepad or some other plain-text editor. A bit of a pain.

So, good to see this feature finally in ecto for Windows.

I’ve installed the beta and will be checking it out. If I encounter issues, I’ll be posting those in the ecto beta forum.