WordPress has rolled out a major update for its mobile blog editor for Android. WordPress 2.0 for Andorid adds a new Dashboard which makes it easy to create a new post or page, view existing posts or pages, view or moderate comments, add photos or videos, or view your stats from the home screen.

You can also tap an icon in the Quick Action Bar to access the same functions from any view in the app.

But the thing that’s most impressive about WordPress 2.0 is full support for rich text formatting and for Android tablets. Up until recently you could only create and edit blog posts in HTML view using the WordPress app for Android. Now you can change font characteristics, add links, quotation marks, or page breaks easily just by tapping a button.

You can also preview blog posts to see how they’ll look when they go live.

I did run into one problem while testing the app though. Every time I tried to add a link to a test post, the app force closed and I lost that post. It’s probably a good idea to save your work regularly when blogging from an Android device, at least until the kinks are worked out.

WordPress 2.0 for Android is available as a free download from the Android Market. The app supports Android 2.1 and up and works with blogs hosted at WordPress.com or self-hosted WordPress blogs.

In a baffling move, it wasn’t until February of this year that Google launched an official Blogger app for Android. Google has operated the Blogger platform and millions of Blogspot blogs for ages, and over the past few years a number of third party apps have popped up that allow users to post updates from their Google Android phones.

Now that there is an official app for Android though, it looks like the Blogger team has finally turned its attention toward other mobile platforms. Today Google released a Blogger app for iOS.

The new app lets iOS users compose blog posts, publish from their phone, or save drafts on the go. You can also add labels (which everyone else calls tags), upload pictures, or add your location to a blog post from the mobile app.

The free app is available in English, although you can compose posts in any language. It supports iOS 3.2 and up.

Popular blogging service WordPress has been offering mobile apps for writing posts, editing comments, and generally managing your blog for a few years. But the company’s iOS and Android apps have never been as easy to use as the web-based WordPress admin panel. Among other things, the mobile apps lack a WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) editor for simple things like italicizing text, creating bullet points, or uploading images. Today WordPress finally launched a mobile app which looks like the web-based editor.

The only catch? It’s for webOS. Now don’t get me wrong, webOS is an excellent mobile operating system with great support for multitasking. With the HP TouchPad which hits the streets today, it’s a good time for WordPress to launch the new mobile app which appears to be designed with the tablet in mind.

But webOS also happens to be a platform that a relatively small number of people actually use right now. It’s a bit surprising that WordPress didn’t focus its efforts on developing a full visual editor for more popular platforms such as iOS or Android first. Update: Although as David Frahm points out, a key difference between iOS, Android, and webOS is that HP’s mobile platform is based on web standards — something the folks at WordPress already know a lot about.

In addition to the visual editor, the WordPress app for webOS supports a Sliding Panel view which allows you to flip between different views. The app allows you to manage posts and comments and view your blog’s traffic stats. You can also receive notifications when new messages arrive.  Read the rest of this entry »

Tumblr has launched a major update to its iPhone app that allows users to update Tumblr blogs with photos, audio, video or text on the go. Tumblr 2.0 has a new user interface with improved views for editing, posting, and browsing posts. For instance you can now edit posts in landscape mode.

There’s also now support for reading and replying to messages from the iPhone app. You can also now sign up for Tumblr from your phone — no computer required.

The new app will also let you find followers from your iPhone’s address book.

Tumblr 2.0 is available as a free download from the App Store.

The developers behind the popular WordPress blogging platform have rolled out a major update to their iOS app. WordPress 2.8 for iOS adds a new “Quick Photo” icon on the home screen which lets you snap a photo and insert it into a blog post almost instantly, making it much easier to create short blog posts on the go.

The mobile app also adds support for WordPress Stats, letting you see daily, weekly, and monthly traffic levels as well as top posts, top referring sites, and what links readers have clicked on the most. You’ll need to install the WordPress.com Stats plugin or Jetpack plugin for WordPress for this to work.

The Stats feature has been available in the WordPress mobile app for Android for a while, but the iOS version is cleaner and easier to read. The Quick Photo option is also a WordPress exclusive.

The developers have also added support for 10 languages including Japanese, Spanish, French, and Hebrew.

That’s the good news. The bad news is you need to know a bit of HTML to do any complex formatting with the WordPress mobile app. There’s no rich-text formatting view for adding bullet points, bold or italicized fonts, or even hyperlinks. You can add a link by starting to type “http:” into the edit window to bring up a pop-up “Would you like help making a link?” menu. But I still wouldn’t want to write anything longer than a few dozen words using the WordPress mobile app for iOS.

On the other hand, the Android app does have rudimentary support for text style adjustments and links, and I’ve frequently used it to update existing posts from my phone when I’m not near a computer.

Automattic has rolled out a new WordPress app for Google Android which you can use to blog on the go. The app lets you create and edit posts, view and moderate comments, and make other minor edits without loading up the full blown WordPress site in a web browser. The latest version adds a few features that had been sorely missing from earlier builds.

First up is the ability to schedule a post from within the app. Previously you could publish a post or set it to pending or draft status, but there was no way to schedule a post that you wanted to publish in the future.

WordPress 1.4 for Android also adds the ability to tap any post title to share the URL with another Android app. Say you want to send an article you’ve written to your Twitter contacts. Just hit the post title, click the share button, and choose Twitter from the pop up list.

You can also password protect posts in the latest app.

I’m not ready to give up the web-based WordPress user interface just yet. While the WordPress mobile apps are getting better all the time, there’s still no rich-text editor, which means you have to manually enter HTML code to make some changes, although there are buttons below the post area which you can use to change font styles, add links, quotes, or media.

WordPress 1.4 for Android is available as a free download from the Android Market.

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Google develops the Android operating system. Google runs the Blogger service which lets anyone create and manage a blog. You’d think that the company would have released a mobile app for Blogger, oh, I don’t know… a few years ago. But nope. The company finally got around to launching a Blogger app today. Better late than never, I guess.

The new app is available as a free download from the Android Market. Setup is as simple as logging in with your Google account. If you have multiple blogs linked to your account, you can switch between sites from a drop-down menu.

Once you choose the blog, you’re greeted with a basic user interface for creating a new post. You can enter a title and text, upload photos from your Android gallery or other apps including any file browsers you have installed, or click a button to open your camera app and shoot a new photo to upload immediately.

Once installed, Blogger will also show up as a sharing option in other apps, allowing you to share photos from any app.

You can add your location to a post by tapping the location button and choosing from a list of nearby sites. Finally you can save a draft or publish your post.

And that’s about it. While you can create basic posts on the go using these tools, there’s no rich text editor for adding boldface, bullet points, or other formatting. There’s no way to upload or link to videos, and even hyperlinking appears to be absent.

There’s also no way to see or edit posts created using Blogger’s web interface. Only posts created on your phone show up — although you can edit and delete those posts. There’s also no way to moderate comments.

Overall, it’s great to see that Google has finally brought an official Blogger app to the Android Market. But it doesn’t hold a candle to mobile blogging apps from WordPress or other platforms yet.

A few months after launching an iOS app, the folks at blogging platform Posterous have added an Android app to the mix. There are already a couple of third party Posterous clients for Android, but this is the first official app for the platform.

Posterous is designed to make blogging about as easy as can be, and the Posterous Android app is pretty simple to use. If you don’t already have an account, Posterous will create one for you and create a web site when you write your first blog entry. If you already have an account, just sign in and you’ll be able to view or delete existing posts or create new posts from the app.

The Posterous app can manage multiple sites, and has a no-frills user interface letting you write headlines and posts, add photos or videos, and tag your posts.

One thing you can’t do from the app? Edit existing posts. You can delete or view them, but there doesn’t appear to be a way to go in and make changes. Maybe the Posterous app for Android is a little too no-frills at the moment.

Posterous for Android is available as a free download from the Android Market.

You can find a few more screenshots after the break.

via Android and Me

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