Tumblr has a well-deserved reputation as one of the easiest blogging services on the block. All you have to do to sign up for a Tumblr blog is enter an email address, password, and preferred URL (such as bradfordlinder.tumblr.com). That’s it. Once you sign up you can add content by clicking the Text, Photo, Quote, Link, Chat, Audio, or Video buttons to start sharing your observations with the world… or the 3 family members you’ve roped into looking at your Tumblr blog anyway.

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Tumblr also offers mobile apps for iPhone and BlackBerry, allowing you to share your thoughts (and media) on the go. Now the company has also rolled out an Android app which is almost as easy to use as the full version of Tumblr.

When you fire up the app and login to your account, you’re greeted with the same list of options you get when you visit the Tumblr web site — text, Photo, and so on. When you click the Photo button, you can either snap a picture with your phone’s camera or upload an image stored on your device.

The audio and video buttons work pretty much the same way. One strange quirk is that you have to tap the “record” button before you see a pop up asking if you want to record new audio or video or upload existing media.

From the home screen you can also click the Dashboard button to see the latest updates on your Tumblr blog, as well as draft posts.

Tumblr for Android is available as a free download from the Android Market. It supports Android 2.1 and up.

via Gizmodo

The folks at LiveJournal have launched a new app that lets you post entries, read updates from your friends pages, and access personal messages from an iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.

LieJournal is part blogging service and part internet forum/community. Like Blogger, WordPress, Posterous, and other online blogging services, LiveJournal provides users with a place to create a personal blog where they can share their thoughts with the world. But you can also follow friends and join communities, allowing you to see updates that others have posted on their own blogs or in community forums.

The new iOS app has a built-in text editor for writing posts, uploading pictures, formatting text, or even including polls. There’s also a tab to see updates from your friends, and another to read messages.

The only problem I’ve found is that when you click on the Journal tab to view your own site, the LiveJournal app shows you how many comments there are on each post… but it won’t let you read them without opening the web browser.

LiveJournal 0.60 for iOS is available as a free download from the App Store. The app is based on LiveJournal.app, which was originally created by CosySoftware before it was purchased by LiveJournal.

via The Blog Herald

Automattic has just launched an updated version of the company’s WordPress app for Android, and it’s all sorts of awesome. As far as I’m concerned, the most important change is support for a new WYSIWYG text editor, which allows you to create and edit blog posts without entering HTML code every time you want to underline or italicize text, or add a link.

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It’s also much easier to add photos or videos by adding them from your gallery or shooting new ones with your phone’s camera.

But the new visual editor is just the tip of the iceberg. WordPress 1.3 for Android also lets bloggers view your WordPress Stats on a mobile device. That includes page views, referrers, search terms, and other information.

Finally, there’s also a new bulk comment editor, which lets you select a group of comments to approve, unapprove, delete, or mark as spam with just a few clicks.

Up until now the only times I ever used the WordPress app on my phone were when I needed to make a quick and important correction on a blog post on the go. With the new features in the latest version, I might actually consider using WordPress 1.3 for Android to write articles from scratch when I’m on the road.

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