Blogging with the iPad

As much as I love the iPad, blogging on it still leaves something to be desired. When the wordpress application worked, I used it to write the entries even though the interface wasn’t all that good. Putting a link was still a little cumbersome. But you know it worked. Sort of.and it was the only application out there at the time.

Then there were upgrades and that’s when it started crashing. It crashed in the middle of typing. It crashed while I was trying to post. It crashed when it was trying to connect to the site. It crashed whenever it felt like it.

It’s probably one of the reasons why I stopped blogging since I don’t really use the computer much these days outside of work. But I realize that I should, because sometimes, I do enjoy it.

So I tried wordpress again after the most recent update and it still crashed. They haven’t updated the UI either, so it was still a little bit clunky. A quick search through the internets, I discovered that people were using Blogpress and enjoying it. I really didnt want to spend any money on it, but it was on sale for $2.99, so I decided to try it.

This also brings me to my thoughts about the app store. There’s no way to test out a program or even get your money back when you discover that it won’t do what you want it to. It’s a racket, I tell you. How much money have iPod touch/iPhone/iPad users wasted testing out all these programs? I personally bought three diary/journal programs before I found one that I liked. And that was like $20 worth of programs!

But anyway, I like blogpress and I’m using it now to type this up. So far, no crashes. The only problem I’ve found and this is a problem for other bogging programs is that the plugins I use, namely the cross poster and the twitter updated don’t work if I post this way. I have to go into the wordpress interface, which is super duper slow and resave the post there in order for the plugins to work.

Blogpress can also post to twitter and facebook, but if you schedule a post for the future, it totally ignores that and posts an update to your feed. Totally doesn’t help your readers since they can’t access the post.

But, you know, blogging on the iPad has it’s disadvantages much like the iPad itself. But it the problems aren’t big enough for me to lug out the laptop.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Crossposted to Samantha Ling, Dreamwidth and Livejournal