macJasp

Mobile Blogging with the iPhone

I'm planning to blog more and more through 2010 and if I'm to do that effectively then taking advantage of the iPhone is the way forward. I really like the idea of posting a quick thought or something I've found of interest while out and about and generally increasing my blog's overall content while I'm not near my Mac.

So for this very reason I've purchased and/or installed what is seen as the three best blogging Apps available from the App Store;

WordPress 2

Being a WordPress user WordPress 2 would seem the most sensible choice and the big plus over the other two is that It's completely free, it's pretty solid too, allows moderation of comments, something the other two Apps don't do but..and it's an annoying but, any photos you add to your post are appended to the bottom of the post, there is no choice to move it anywhere else. I have heard that the developers are looking into improving the photo feature which I do look forward to.

BlogPress

BlogPress is a generally nice App from coollittlethings and reasonably priced at £1.79 at the time of writing. It doesn't have comment moderation but it does allow you to format your post more effectively than the WordPress App. I really like the Geo-Tagging feature, where it creates a link within your post to Google Maps, showing your current location, most useful if your visiting somewhere of interest and want to append it to the post. However, and this may only be specific to certain blogs but the three options you have with photo alignment just doesn't work well with my own WordPress theme (Modern Clix). I'm particularly fussy in terms of making every post layout the same where possible (photo first, then content) and no matter where I align the photo using BlogPress it doesn't come out right on screen, it's a disappointment as I favour this App over the other two. I do like the ability to post to flickr and your videos to youtube – very nice and something the other two Apps can't do and i'd love to use this App on a regular basis if it wasn't for the odd formatting.

iBlogger

iBlogger is certainly the most expensive App at the time of writing, £5.99 when I purhased it, but this particular App comes highly rated. Written by Illuminex, the makers of the Ecto blogging software, It has very similar features to BlogPress, including Geo-tagging your posts, in fact there is very little to tell the two apart, except the fact iBlogger doesn't allow multiple photo uploads in a post and doesn't pull back post tags that you already have setup on your site (and occasionally crashes) but in terms of how it formats the post it certainly works the best out of all three for me (as seen in this post here that used the iBlogger App). As stated, it is more expensive but it seems to be in active development. It does some extremely weird formatting of text if you have posted a photo but amending the html after posting and then re-submitting seems to do the trick.

What to choose?

There isn't one perfect mobile blogging application for the iPhone as yet. They all generally work well but all have their flaws. Out of the three i've tried and tested there is one i'll be using over the other two due to the fact it's final format once posted works well with this site, so future mobile content to macjasp.com will likely be posted courtesy of iBlogger for iPhone.

Momento for iPhone

This is one of the most gorgeous and enjoyable iPhone Apps i've seen and purchased in a while. It's so simple in it's conception, take your favourite social networking sites (so far they have integration with Facebook, Twitter, Last.Fm and Flickr), let it download your feeds from those sites and display them to you in diary form.

From there you can add your own private diary moments, star rate your entry, tag people from your contact list and geo-tag an entry. It's a joy to use and i've found it really interesting going back through the previous years calendar within the application and reviewing it through my social feeds.

I've heard the developers are quite active on enhancing the application on a regular basis, i'd personally like to see integration with any RSS feed (like a blog) in a future update

Momento is available via iTunes for £1.79

New Years Eve with the iPhone

We felt like doing something different this New Year's Eve and the Newcastle Winter Carnival seemed a perfect way to spend the last afternoon and evening of 2009.

I had taken along my Nikon P6000, hoping to get some decent photographs of the whole event, including the fireworks display taking place after the procession, however after about 6 shots and using the flash on the camera, the battery was completely flat. Due to being used over the Christmas period i hadn't taken the precaution of charging the camera before leaving the house.

I didn't hold too much hope for having to resort back to the iPhone 3GS camera for night time shots but i'm pleasantly surprised with the results. 

For the photos taken last night on the iPhone, using Photoshop Mobile for some post processing I was able to increase the colour saturation (as in this shot to the left) to try and highlight the atmosphere and vibrancy of the carnival colours through a dark wintry city. 

I'm getting more and more confidence in using the iPhone camera on a more regular basis, particularly with the wealth of camera Apps and utilities available from the App Store and i'm getting quite excited to think that the next generation iPhone and it's rumoured 5MP camera may well be something to really look forward to, particularly if they manage get a Flash into the device too

My Flickr Photostream has a sample of shots taken from both the Nikon and iPhone for comparison from the event.

TrueHDR for iPhone

I've been playing with the TrueHDR App for the iPhone 3GS this lunchtime.

You take 2 photographs of the same subject, the first concentrating on the lighter aspects of the image in question and the second concentrating on the darker aspects.

It also works well on enhancing the colour on existing photographs.

Here, the first shot shows the image taken prior to being ran through the HDR processer and the second shows the photograph post-processed. Not a bad application at all with decent results and colour.

I just need to test it on more scenic shots using the merge option when I get outdoors next. It's available from iTunes http://bit.ly/639Wty for £1.19GBP

shrinkURL 1.1

I’ve submitted shrinkURL 1.1 to the App Store today with the (long overdue) support for the bit.ly and j.mp shortening services.

The new features will be available for configuration via the application settings page on the iPhone / iPod Touch (as seen in the screenshots to the left) If you have a bit.ly account then entering your username and API Key (found on the Account section of the bit.ly web service) will give you the option of storing any URLs created by shrinkURL to your bit.ly web history, a great feature provided by the service, and giving you some nice statistics on the links you’ve shortened.

Future enhancements I’m debating whether to continue with shrinkURL going forward due to other applications I'm wanting to get underway with, however shrinkURL has been if anything a good way to get myself a great understanding of Objective C and the iPhone platform and I've been touched with many nice comments and reviews of the application since it’s release.

If i was to continue I’d like to maybe incorporate bit.ly statistics into a history page along with the ability to select historically saved URLs for re-pasting to the clipboard or tweeting directly from shrinkURL but for now I'm likely to start on my next project. shrinkURL should be available from the App Store shortly