Tag Archives: Typepad

Mobile Blogging

October 14, 2010 8:19 am , Leave a Comment , Denise Barrett

I’ve talked a lot about the Posterous blog platform where you post your articles by email, but you may already be able to do that with your current blog platform. Blogger, TypePad and WordPress.com offer email posting once you set up a special mailbox for your blogs. Like Posterous, the subject line in the email becomes the post title and the body of the message is the body of the post. All services accept rich text messages with images although they might “adjust” the underlying HTML to suit their posting format.

You can find instructions for posting by mail at the WordPress and Blogger support sites. TypePad has a comprehensive help system but it is behind the user login so I cannot provide a direct link.

As phones – and now tablets – offer more capabilities in the form of apps, you’ll find all kinds of apps to support your blogging. WordPress has built apps for both iOS (iPhone/iPad) and Android devices that has most of the editing and organizing features you find in the online editor. They will also let you work in multiple WordPress blog sites [both hosted and self-managed]. The iPad version of this app is impressive and an easy adjustment from the online editing platform. These are all free apps.

TypePad offers an older mobile app for Palm OS, Windows Mobile 5 and Symbian Series 60 devices. They are free downloads from their site.

In the iOS market, you’ll find apps with blogging features. One good example is Mariner Software’s MacJournal – available for both iPhone [$4.99] and iPad [$5.99]. It posts to all the major blog sites. If you’re already a MacJournal fan using the desktop version, you’ll be right at home with the mobile versions.

If you’d like to browse the apps markets, you’ll find these sites useful:

Note that unlike the iOS market which is totally controlled by Apple, the Android market is wide open. You’ll find many sites in addition to the one listed above offering apps. There are many benefits to this, but also many concerns. Be very cautious when buying/downloading apps from unfamiliar sites. This is true for all desktop and mobile apps – not just Android.

Posted in: Blog Bytes , Tagged: Blogger, blogging, mobile, Posterous, Research on the Road, TypePad, WordPress

Announce your blog posts on Twitter

September 29, 2010 4:30 am , Leave a Comment , Denise Barrett

I’ve talked a lot lately about how Twitter is being used to create interesting reading experiences. The more I see, the more impressed I become and the more I want to insure my blog posts are available to those who are getting their news through Twitter.

TwitterFeed (@twfeed) is a free service which automatically publishes your content to Twitter and Facebook. It doesn’t matter which blog platform you’re using as long as you can generate an RSS feed. It’s easy to set up and provides some basic stats on usage.

Self-hosted WordPress users will find the WP to Twitter plugin very handy. It offers many customization options and even includes a custom field similar to the Excerpt box where you can create a custom message to announce each post.

Both the Posterous and Tumblr platforms include options for announcing each post on Twitter. TypePad blogs support announcing posts to Twitter, Facebook and LInkedIn.

Oh, and don’t forget services like Share This or addtoany which give your readers the opportunity to share your post on their favorite social networks – expanding your reach even more.

Taking advantage of Twitter to announce your articles will expand the reach of your blog. In addition to taking advantage of the many new news reading apps, you may also attract a new research cousin or two. It only takes a minute to set up and who knows what benefits will result . . .