Blogging whilst on the move with a laptop is good, but ever since the iPad launched I stopped wanting to take a laptop with me when I travel. I wont go in to details about why I prefer the iPad (I’ll go in to detail on another post), but to sumarise why it comes down to a few things. First, the iPad is small and light weight. Second, the battery lasts around 10 hours on a single charge and finally, my iPad has 3G which allows me to get online wherever I am (assuming a signal is available).
I purchased an iPad the day it launched in the UK in 2010 but found that for the last 19 months I had taken both a laptop and iPad while travelling. The reason for this is that I wanted access to WordPress. A WordPress app exists but it lacks in so many ways. Although I consumed information on the iPad and read various news items I always switched back to my laptop when I wanted or needed to work.I then came across an app called Blogsy and this changed the way I work… almost. Blogsy is a blogging app that allows you to connect to various blogs. My own config connects me to three self-hosted WordPress blogs which includes this one, my gadget blog and a technical support blog that I run.
What I like about Blogsy
- Blogsy has a number of formatting options in a toolbar located on the top of the screen. Here, you can style text, add bullet or numberd lists, create block quotes, add a more tag and change font colours. Swipe 3 fingers to the side and you can access the HTML editor to further tweak posts.
- Down the right side of the app there’s several icons for media. Starting at the top you have a slide-out Safari style browser allowing you to find content to link to and research around the web without having to jump to another app. You can also connect up to your photos and photo stream as well as your Flickr, Picassa and YouTube accounts. The sidebar easily allows you to get media content to drag in to the rich editor.
- Although past versions of Blogsy messed up formatting on complicated layouts, the latest version seems to have cracked it. Anything I create in Blogsy and upload looks absolutely correct when publishing to one of my blogs.
What I dislike about Blogsy
With the new version that launched a week or so ago, I’ve found that most dislikes are now irrelevant. Dislikes included crashing, HTML being messed up and some issues with images although each of these appear to have been resolved. There’s the occasional quirk to be found such as alignment of text occasionally gets messed up with formating images. The good news is that the Blogsy app is often updated and many bugs and updates are included in those updates.
Would I recommend it?
I certainly would recommend Blogsy. It costs £2.99 in the UK and allows full blogging on the move. Of course, Blogsy is a blogging app. If you use a lot of images in posts then you’ll also need to download an app that works well with images so that you can create/edit and save locally or on to a remote service so that Blogsy can work with them. If you have those tools and Blogsy then it turns your iPad in to a device that can be used well for blogging. Very highly recommended!