Despite increasingly better software, blogging on phones is still a real pain compared with doing it on a regular computer. However, credit is due to WordPress, which has gone to great lengths to make the latest version of its iPhone app much better for users to both create and manage their blogs on a small screen (and without a keyboard).
Besides a new look, one of the biggest changes is that the app remembers exactly what you were doing between sessions, so that if you quit it, or get a phone call, it will take you right back to the page or menu you were looking at. This also keeps you from losing anything you hadn't saved if you're interrupted--even if you were in the middle of a writing a sentence when your phone rang. This should change the beginning of such a conversation from "I am so mad at you right now" to a simple "hello."
In addition to remembering what you were doing, the app does a much better job at letting you manage user comments. The approval screen itself looks almost identical, but the app now lets you quickly switch between the ones that have been approved and the ones that still need to be looked at. It also displays each users' Gravatar (user icon) next to their username and URL, which ends up taking up a little more space than it did in the previous iteration of the app but adds a sense of familiarity with its desktop sibling.
Other small changes include the app remembering which order you uploaded the photos in so that they display in that same order in your post. Although the app still hasn't been updated to include videos, which means 3GS owners will have to add whatever video they shot through WordPress' Web interface instead. The app also now stores passwords in a user's keychain, which means those credentials could be accessed by other applications you may want to give access to later on down the line--like, say an app that lets you post videos to a WordPress blog.
Oddly enough, the new WordPress app is completely different from the original, which still exists but will no longer be updated. The company attributes this to having switched between having an outside contractor make the first version, whereas this new one was built in-house.
The new look makes it simply to hop between comments, posts and pages. User Gravatars are now visible too.
(Credit: WordPress)
Note: Article updated on 4/15/08 to correctly note where posts default.
CellSpin is the easiest multimedia blogging platform for smartphones I've seen to date. Similar to Utterz and Trutap, CellSpin lets people post photos, videos, text, and audio clips to various online profiles--in CellSpin's case, Picasa Web photos, Flickr, LiveJournal, Blogger, eBay, YouTube, and Windows Live Spaces. Of course, you can't post text to YouTube or video to Facebook, but CellSpin keeps it clear in a convenient chart.
Posting is fairly simple from the downloadable app. You click one of four large icons corresponding to the type of media you'd like to post, and then begin composing. CallSpin launches the cell phone's camera, video camera, or audio recorder, but you can also import media from your device memory or storage card. In addition to uploading to one or more of the sites you've already selected online, each post is also recorded on your CellSpin account. Users can also create clogs (community blogs) or follow a clog that aligns to their interests.
(Credit:
CellSpin)
I mentioned that I thought CellSpin is currently the easiest to use, but perhaps what I really mean is that it's the most conventional. Utterz and Trutap also post to quality sites, with some overlap, but each effectively targets a different user set. Utterz is the most open setup, since it relies on users to e-mail or call in their media, something they can do from nearly every phone. However, there's no app client for generating a cohesive feel; all the software is on Utterz's server end. Like CellSpin, Trutap uploads media posts from an application interface, but it's not yet compatible with all U.S. carriers, so if you're on AT&T, Sprint, or T-Mobile, you're out of luck. (The service is in beta, however, so this could change in the near future.)
In rare instances, CellSpin suffers installation woes. On a T-Mobile BlackBerry, for instance, the carrier and device had failed to communicate. With a few manual changes to the TCP settings, all was dandy.
CellSpin is free, but ad-supported, with a current campaign focusing on social awareness. You can download CellSpin for BlackBerry, Symbian, and Windows Mobile phones or sign up online from your desktop or mobile browser.
Inspiration for a blog can come from anywhere--at any time--so you'd best be prepared. Lighter than your Wi-Fi-enabled laptop and more immediate than jotting journal notes is TypePad Mobile (for Symbian, Palm, and Windows Mobile,) a blog-updating app offered by TypePad for its paid subscribers.
Blogging about mobile blogging from a mobile phone.
(Credit: CNET Networks)I evaluated TypePad Mobile on a gleaming HTC Vox S710 (watch Bonnie Cha's video review) running Windows Mobile 6. The smart phone's nice slider QWERTY keyboard and motion-sensitive vertical-to-horizontal display made for favorable testing conditions.... Read more
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