Busy and need to blog on the run? That’s not a problem if you have an iPhone. In fact, just to prove a point (and in keeping with the philosophy of this site to test everything before doing a review), I’m blogging from my iPhone right now. Of course, I had to spend several weeks testing other things on my new phone first, like half-a-dozen racing games and a couple first person shooters (I never claimed to be a mature geek).
WordPress makes it pretty easy by having their own free app in the app store. Sync your blogs to the app (an easy enough task), and suddenly you can do everything from writing new posts and pages, complete with pictures, to moderating comments. Of course, thumb typing isn’t optimal, but you can get remarkably decent at it if you practice. Among the problems with the WordPress app are a general instability, which encourages me to save my work compulsively, and the lack of a spell checker, thus giving you plenty of artistic license…uh, lisence…uh, licence…ah, who cares…to spell with the left side of your brain,
In fact, attempting to find a reasonable facsimile of a word processor with spell check included is a rather daunting task. Finally I settled on something called ZenTap, which not only includes a spell checke but also a very intuitive system for letting you pick words from a list as you type, which speeds you up when typing longer words. It also lets you place various punctuation marks between the keyboard and the reading screen, which also helps to speed you up.
Another app that is more fun than helpful for Internet entrepreneurs is made by GoDaddy. Like everything else made by GoDaddy, the thing the app does best is advertise GoDaddy and make them money. You can shop for, and manage your, domain names. Browsing for domain names is something of hobby of mine, so I find that fun. The only other useful thing you can do in the app would be the ability to check any of your GoDaddy email accounts.
Back to running your blog, naturally there some disadvantages to the WordPress iPhone interface. All the little formatting options are gone, hhu
Is running a website from your phone optimal? Of course not, but it actually isn’t all that bad, either. And in the business of trying to keep your site as updated and fresh as possible, being able to post from wherever you and your phone find yourselves is a good thing.
In fact, attempting to find a reasonable facsimile of a word processor with spell check included is a rather daunting task. Finally I settled on something called ZenTap, which not only includes q spell checker but also a very intuitive system for letting you pick words from a list as you type, which speeds you up when typing longer words. It also lets you place various punctuation marks between the keyboard and the reading screen, which also helps to speed you up.
Another app that is more fun than helpful for Internet entrepreneurs is made by GoDaddy. Like everything else made by GoDaddy, the thing the app does best is advertise GoDaddy and make them money. You can shop for, and manage your, domain names. Browsing for domain names is something of hobby of mine, so I find that fun. The only other useful thing you can do in the app would be the ability to check any of your GoDaddy email accounts.
Back to running your blog, naturally there some disadvantages to the WordPress iPhone interface. All the little formatting options are gone. You are
Is running a website from your phone optimal? Of course not, but it actually isn’t all that bad, either. And in the business of trying to keep your site as updated and fresh as possible, being able to post from wherever you and your phone find yourselves is a good thing.
Postscript and Recommendation: With the new iPhone OS, spell checking is a standard feature no matter where you are typing. Misspelled words are automatically underlined as you type, just as in a word processor, and by touching the word you are presented with a number of less creative spellings.
