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.

WordPress 2.0 for Android becomes useful: adds dashboard, rich text editing is a post from: mobiputing

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.

Google finally launches Blogger app for iOS is a post from: mobiputing

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. 

WordPress finally launches a full-featured mobile blogging app — for webOS is a post from: mobiputing

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.

Tumblr for iPhone 2.0 now available is a post from: mobiputing

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.

WordPress 2.8 for iOS adds stats, quick photos, additional languages is a post from: mobiputing

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.

WordPress 1.4 for Android adds support for scheduling posts is a post from: mobiputing

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.

Google finally launches a Blogger app for Android is a post from: mobiputing

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

Posterous launched a blogging app for Android is a post from: mobiputing

Blogging platform WordPress has released a mobile app for Windows Phone 7, allowing users to create, edit, and manage blog posts on the go. The Windows Phone 7 app joins iOS, Android, BlackBerry, and Symbian.

The new WordPress app has most of the usual goodies, including the ability to create new posts using some rich-text editing tools including bold, italics, underlining, strikeout, quotations, and hyperlinks. You can also upload photos, moderate comments, and edit existing posts using the app. The app also supports the WordPress Stats plugin, allowing you to monitor your web site’s traffic, top posts, and other data.]

WordPress for Windows Phone 7 is available as a free download from the Windows Phone Marketplace, or you can visit windowsphone.wordpress.org.

You can check out a demo video after the break.

via The Blog Herald

WordPress app for Windows Phone 7 now available is a post from: mobiputing

Popular and dead-simple to use blogging platform Posterous has launched an app for posting updates to your blog from an iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad.

My first thought was… wait, Posterous didn’t already have an iPhone app? My second thought was that I should probably check it out… so I downloaded the app and was amazed at how simple it is to start writing posts or uploading photos or images to a blog. You don’t even need to sign up for an account first — although I recommend doing so, because if you already have an account you can login and all of your updates will instantly be viewable on the web at your preferred address.

If you choose to start writing before registering for a free account, you’ll have to create one later and then sign in in order to associate the posts you’ve written with your new site.

Posterous also lets you link your account to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LiveJournal, and dozens of other sources so that every time you publish a new post it can be linked to other sources. You’ll need to visit posterous.com/autopost in a web browser to set up your accounts, though. You can’t do it from the mobile app, which is really designed to make it easy to write and publish posts… and that’s about it.

Posterous for iOS is available as a free download from the App Store.

Posterous launches an official iPhone app is a post from: mobiputing

Disqus for Android

Disqus always allowed me to receive email notifications for new comments, and even to respond to comments via email — which means that I can do some of my work from a smartphone. On the other hand, when it comes time to delete comments or mark spam, things get a bit trickier, as the Disqus web site isn’t really well optimized for mobile.

The Disqus mobile apps, on the other hand, are designed specifically for devices with small screens. At the most basic level, you can sign into the Disqus app with your login credentials, select the blog you want to moderate and see a list of recent comments, color-coded by approval status. You can tap on any comment excerpt to see the complete comment and to mark it as spam, delete the comment, or approve it.You can also filter comments by status.

If you’re not using email notifications, or would rather simply manage all of your blog comments from the Disqus app, you can also enable notifications to receive alerts when new messages arrive.

Oh yeah, the Disqus Mobile app isn’t just for killing spam. You can also hit the menu button when viewing any comment to open additional options including “reply,” “open browser,” and “view context.” Overall though, I imagine the app will be more useful for people who run web sites than for folks who comment frequently on them.

You can find a few more screenshots from the Android app after the break.

Disqus launches mobile apps for moderating blog comments is a post from: mobiputing

As expected, WordPress has launched an updated iOS app with support for uploading videos from your iPhone of iPod touch, among other improvements.

WordPress 2.6 is available as a free download from the App Store, and supports WordPress 3.0 and WordPress 2.92 multisites. The most notable new feature is the new media library interface. Instead of simply uploading photos from your phone, you can now click the media tab to upload photos or videos.

I did notice that the photo upload feature was a bit quirky. I tried to take a snapshot of my screen, and WordPress converted the 960 x 640 pixel image into a squashed 640 x 480 pixel picture before uploading it, so it kind of looked awful on myblog.

One of the more exciting under the hood improvements is a new autosave feature. WordPress also says there have been a number of bug fixes.

Overall WordPress 2.6 is a nice step up from the previous WordPress app for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad, but it’s still missing a rich text editor. You still need to enter HTML code to add links, italicize words, or to enter pretty much anything other than plain text.

WordPress 2.6 for iOS adds video uploads, autosave is a post from: mobiputing

The WordPress mobile app for iOS is designed to make it easy to read and edit comments, write posts (using a somewhat clunky HTML-only interface), and upload photos from your phone to your blog. Soon you’ll also be able to upload video. The developers behind the WordPress iOS app have submitted a new version to the App Store which includes a number of improvements, but the biggest change is that the Photos tab has been replaced with a Media tab for uploading images and movies.

Blog Herald has the details, as well as some screenshots. The upshot is that the app will let you shoot a video with your phone and upload it to your WordPress site without using YouTube or some other intermediary service to host your videos.

On the other hand, the new version still lags behind the Android and BlackBerry apps in terms of text formatting. Both of those apps have buttons you can use to add hyperlinks, or to underline, bold, or italicize text. The iOS version does not.

Video uploads coming to WordPress iOS app soon is a post from: mobiputing

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

Tumblr launches Android app for mobile blogging is a post from: mobiputing

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

LiveJournal launches a new iPhone app for spilling your guts is a post from: mobiputing

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.

WordPress updates Android App with a WYSIWYG editor is a post from: mobiputing