Since becoming an Associate Writer for PalmAddicts last December, mobile blogging has become a curiousity for me. Outside of PalmAddicts, I don't do any blogging. I have a website, but it was created as a gag, and I never update it (and I expect posting that link will increase the lifetime hit count many fold over what it was). So this Associate Writer gig has opened some new roads of mobile composition.Of course, I'm no noob to writing on the go. I've been doing mobile email since I got a Kyocera 7135 five or six years ago. And I composed about half of my first novel on my Treo 650. My tools of choice are Snappermail for email, Docs-to-Go for wordprocessing, and Natara Bonsai for managing my notes.
Bonsai is actually one of my must-have apps, and I can't imagine switching away from Palm as a result. Until there's an alternative with just as much power (and the ability to import Bonsai outlines), Palm's probably going to keep my loyalty. I actually use Bonsai for composing and managing all of my PalmAddicts posts. I keep notes and drafts on all my editorials, as well as archives of my posts and their associated permalinks. Bonsai makes it very quick and easy to keep a tremendous amount of data organized and available, and it syncs with my desktop as well.
It's not a perfect system, of course. Bonsai doesn't have a built in means of dropping in snippets of html, so I end up hand-coding all my html. Still, for composing posts, it's a pretty decent system.
The tricky parts of mobile blogging, however, come with images and posting. And my real initiation into mobile blogging (which Sammy makes look so easy) came this week. At the moment, I'm on vacation, with tons of time to spare, and no computer access outside of my Centro.
But before I get to the meat of the matter and start discussing blogging apps, let me familiarize you with PalmAddicts. PalmAddicts is a Typepad blog, which uses the Moveable Type API (that's important when choosing your blogging tools). And Sammy likes all of us AWs to place our posts in the appropriate category (that's displayed at the bottom of each post). As a result, PalmAddicts has literally dozens of categories. Take it from me, PalmAddicts is probably the ultimate torture test for a mobile blogging tool. Furthermore, Sammy uses Photobucket to host images for PalmAddicts, which adds another (small) wrinkle to the mix.
So you want an app for blogging from your Palm, here's the good and bad: there are a whole bunch of options. Yay! With the exception of MoTwit and CellSpin, which don't support Typepad/Movable Type, pretty much all the apps haven't been updated in 2-3 years. Sigh.
I did a bunch of searching around for apps, and one useful resource I stumbled on was this comparison of 4 mobile blogging apps. It's an old comparison, but it's still pretty relevant (also 'sigh'). I actually personally tested u*blog, Mo:Blog, HBlogger, Plogit, and Typepad Mobile.
My favorite of the bunch would have to be u*blog. It's relatively pretty, quite powerful, extremely intuitive and totally crashes my Centro. I don't know for certain where the problem lies, but I suspect much of it is related to categories. Amongst the great features included are category support and the ability to edit and delete posts on the server. It's also free, which is a big plus. If it worked, I'd have stopped right there.
If you're looking for something that 'just works,' I'd recommend Typepad Mobile. It's pretty. It's simple. It's a rebranded version of SplashBlog, and it's designed to work only with Typepad. It supports images (uploaded to Typepad, not Photobucket, but that's a minor point), and the categories work just fine, even with PalmAddicts. The trouble is, it eats HTML for breakfast (or lunch, or dinner). It also doesn't allow for downloading or editing existing posts. Quick text posts on the go, with or without an attached snapshot, no problem. Anything else, not so much.
Mo:Blog is the winner in terms of power. And when I think of powerful computer programs, I usually also think of terrible user interfaces. Linux commandline. That sort of thing. Sadly, Mo:Blog is really really not pretty. It does, however, offer quite a lot of HTML editing power, multiple blog support, signatures, and lots and lots of default options. This is especially handy when it comes to specifying that elusive category. There's even a beta build that lets you edit and delete posts from the server.
Of course, it isn't all roses here. It apparently only downloads about the first 32 categories. There's a slot where you can type in your category number (yay power-user interface; I had to view the page source of the Typepad web page to find the code for my category). Unfortunately, that feature didn't make the cut in the beta version, so I'm out of luck there.
HBlogger gets my whole-hearted seal of 'Stay the heck away!' This app is much less powerful than Mo:Blog, not much prettier, and less intuitive (ouch!). While it supports Moveable Type, that's about all it does with Moveable Type. It doesn't even have a subject line, let alone categories or other fiddlybits.
With all that said, I think my choice is Plogit. This is a simple, clear, open-source blogger that supports several formats (including Moveable Type). It let's you download, edit and delete posts from the server. And about the only thing missing is support for categories. But the darn thing works, which is saying something.
Of course, you aren't obligated to use an app at all. Typepad has two mobile versions of their website. One for mobile browsers and another for the iPhone. But given a choice in the matter, I'd rather do as little as necessary in Blazer. Still, if I upload my post with Plogit, I need to swing by and change the category using m.typepad.com. It's a good system. :-P
Photobucket's mobile counterpart is pretty limited, but uploading is easy. Just send an email with images attached to the 'secret email' associated with your Photobucket account. Handy tip: If you title your message with the name of a sub-album, that's where your images will go.
And I can't forget to mention the utility that let's me tie all my disparate bits together: CutPaste5. This extended clipboard gives you 32k to work with (as opposed to Palm's 1k). It's phenomenal and FREE.
So, that's my adventure in mobile blogging. Soon, you'll probably see a bunch of posts from the other AWs explaining how I've got a screw loose and make this whole thing way harder than it needs to be. I look forward to that, because that's why I read PalmAddicts every day. Where else will I learn the best uses for my mobile gadgets?