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)
Last month Google released a less complicated way of linking up your phone with one or more of your Blogger blogs as part of its Blogger in Draft program. It put the settings to post to a specific blog through your phone or e-mail next to each blog's title inside of the dashboard using small and simple icons. And as of today the change is now live to everyone.
The most important part of this seemingly minor update is that it takes two sets of settings that were previously tucked away and puts them front and center. Posting via SMS or MMS message can be set up in about 30 seconds if you have your phone handy, and you don't even have to leave the dashboard to do it. The same goes for creating a special e-mail address to post to each blog--something which was also, previously hidden away from non-savvy users.
While sending a post to Blogger through your phone is nothing new, Google clearly wants to make the process a little easier. Putting the icons and setup tools right there in front of you is a good start. The one big caveat that remains is that posting through SMS still only works in the US, so if you're a Blogger user from another country you're stuck having to use your phone's e-mail app--meaning you need a data plan.
There's also the continuing matter of a lack of an official, native Blogger application for mobile phones. WordPress and MovableType have had free mobile applications out for some time now--including some snazzy ones for the iPhone. These make it simple to work on and post entries locally, as well as edit and moderate posts while on the go. SMS and e-mail are nice, but at this point in the game a dedicated application would be a nice touch. Those with an iPhone and who are willing to part with $3 can have it with this app called BlogPress which also posts to WordPress, TypePad, Live Journal and others.
Here's the original demo on how to post from your phone from last October:
Up until today, only Windows Mobile 5 and 6 and BlackBerry users could take CellSpin's mobile blogging and media-sharing platform for, well, a spin. On Thursday the San Jose, Calif. company announced a big addition to the family: phones on the Symbian platform.
Adding Symbian cell phones, many of them high-end, brings CellSpin's free beta service to over 300 handsets and over 30 carriers worldwide.
CellSpinners can quickly share photos, video, text, and audio to Blogger, eBay, Facebook, YouTube, Picasa, LiveJournal, Flickr, and Windows Live Spaces, with more partnerships on the way. Of course, there are a few limitations brought on by the partner sites. YouTube only accepts video submissions, for example, and photos are the only media that can be uploaded to Flickr, Picasa, and Facebook. The blogging sites and eBay accept all four media types.
I'm a fan of having all the tools to blog in one simple editor, but if you're more the piece-work type (hence the LEGO reference) then check out Swift, a new blogging tool created by the folks at Proteus. Swift lets you design and maintain a blog built specifically for handheld devices. It's completely free to use, although it's subsidized by targeted advertising based on the content you're serving up on your site. Paid "pro" members who pay $10 can get rid of the advertising altogether.
Similar to Zinadoo, which we checked out back in September, Swift rallies around a two-part editor that lets you input data on one side, and see how it will look on your mobile phone (in real-time) on the right. You can edit the site's style sheet, as well as introducing custom headers and footers complete with your site's logo. When you're done, visitors can check out the site at a special .swiftmob.com URL you get to customize with each new site you make.
Unfortunately the actual blogging quotient isn't so hot. While it's relatively easy to drop in an RSS feed from another site and pull in all the text, links, and images, using the editor to write out a post requires creating element by element and reordering them on a long and narrow area of the page. It's not a show stopper, but it'll make you long for an all-in-one page editor like WordPress or Blogger when it comes to adding links and trying to manage your content in modules. For a new service, though, it's off to a good start.
Related: MoFuse vs. Zinadoo: Who makes a better mobile site?
Tweaking various page elements in Swift is pretty simple, blogging, however, is not. Seen here is Swift's dashboard where you can keep an eye on all things blog.
(Credit: CNET Networks)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
A little Web service called IMified caught my attention this morning. It is an ambitious service that lets you access several popular Web applications from your instant-messaging client. IMified is a messaging bot (like SmarterChild) that lets you manage your apps via text commands. In theory, it could also be used on any IM-equipped mobile phone to turn the phone into a remote control for your Web apps.
Signing up to the service requires no site registration or passwords. To begin, you just add the messaging bot to your buddy list and send it a message. Adding additional services (like Blogger, Basecamp and Wordpress) is done through a special section of the IMified home page. Besides these services, IMified doubles as its own productivity tool with notes, reminders, and to-do lists.
There are some interesting real world uses for IMified, particularly using collaborative apps like Google Spreadsheets. Here at Webware, we created a couple of Google Spreadsheets to share our ideas. Theoretically, IMified could be used to add items to our spreadsheets. IMified could also be used to live blog from your phone using a service that wasn't intended to do so, such as Backpack from 37Signals.
Adding services to IMified
(Credit: CNET Networks)Accounts are managed through a special section of IMified's Web site. There you can set up user names and passwords for each service. Compatible IMified sites are set up to work through the developer's API, so if your favorite service doesn't have one, it likely won't be added to IMifieds list.
Having a group of Web apps to access while on the go is an exciting idea. What piques my interest is whether or not the casual user can handle a text-based interface for multiple and visually rich apps. After thoroughly enjoying Google's mobile Gmail application, I'd like to see IMified evolve into a downloadable Java app for phones that could incorporate an easy-to-use graphical interface, yet combine the simplicity and the ease of use that IMified was designed to provide.
[Found on Museum of Modern Betas]
Burn baby burn.
(Credit: CNET Networks)Logging into Facebook to check up on my old college roommate yesterday, I noticed there was a giant message telling me to use Facebook Mobile. Technically, Facebook has had basic mobile features for quite some time (looking at your profile, reading messages), but my friends and I never bothered to use them, specifically because of their lack of support for my carrier T-Mobile. What is new is their mobile tab, which gives you live previews of what different parts of the site will look like on your device. There's also a Fire feature that lets you "set fire" to one of your friends. This won't send them into friend purgatory, rather it sends them a neat status message. It's the equivalent of poking them, and is another useless but amusing Facebook feature for saying hi to people you know in a peculiar way.
I have a few buddies who will get a kick out of the new mobile tab and the firing feature, and I'm sure most twentysomethings with smart phones and corporate data plans will be taking advantage of the mobile interface now that Facebook is actually advertising it. That is, at least until everyone and their brother gets an Apple iPhone in June.
Nokia N93i
(Credit: Nokia)
Nokia N93i with Vox
(Credit: Nokia)As fellow Webwarer Josh Lowensohn reported a couple of days ago, Nokia and Vox have teamed up to bring mobile blogging to a new level. The N93i comes preloaded with the blogging service, so you can use the phone's 3.2-megapixel camera to capture photos and video and instantly upload them to Vox to share with all your friends and family. It's a wonderful idea, but if you're anything like me, you're not going to bother if the process is too labor intensive or kludgey. Well, good news, folks: Nokia gave me a working demo of the two working together, and it really was a simple thing. The booth attendant shot a lovely video of me putting my hands over my face, saved it to the phone, and within a couple of clicks had the video uploaded via a Wi-Fi connection to a sample blog for all to see (yay!). For someone who doesn't even have the patience to wait for Web pages to load on her cell phone, I was pretty impressed.
Here are some more details about the smart phone (or, excuse me, the multimedia computer, as Nokia calls it) itself. It's largely similar to its predecessor, the N93, but it has a swanky new mirrored face and refined keypad. As mentioned above, it has a 3.2-megapixel camera that can record video at up to 30 frames per second and with DVD-like quality. There's photo-editing software onboard and video-out capabilities so that you can hook it up directly to your TV. The N93i also features the Symbian operating system for your work needs and a built-in music player and streaming media support. As with all the models in the Nokia N series, the catch is that no U.S. carrier has picked up the N93i, which means if you want to snag one of these puppies, you'll have to pony up a hefty $700 or so (ouch) to buy an unlocked version of the phone. The Nokia N93i is scheduled for release by the beginning of 2007.
(Credit:
CNET Networks)
Cell phone maker Nokia and blogging service Vox have come together to help people add content to their Vox blogs while away from their PCs. Using a new app for your Nokia phone, you're able to upload pictures and videos to your blog without using your phone's Web browser. You're also able to set the privacy levels on every piece of content you upload, keeping prying eyes off items you don't want public. The first Nokia phone to have Vox integration is the N93i, but if you have an N-series Nokia already you can download the settings from here. Nokia and Vox are also running a promotion where Vox users who sign up for the service get an additional 1GB of uploading space per month.
Vox seems to be one-upping competitors in this arena, offering mobile blogging based on hardware, not service (unlike the MySpace mobile app on Helio and Cingular). There's a video (with an overuse of the Ken Burns effect) that explains the new service here.
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