Major blog platforms WordPress, TypePad and Tumblr now have very capable iPhone applications, enabling bloggers to publish on the go, with many of the same features they enjoy when publishing from a desktop browser (Disclaimer: Automattic, maker of WordPress, is backed by True Ventures, a venture capital firm that is an investor in the parent company of this blog, Giga Omni Media. Om Malik, founder of Giga Omni Media, is also a venture partner at True). These applications are handy for everything from publishing a posting with a photo and pithy observation to correcting a comment or editing a page.

All of these applications are a free download from the iTunes App Store.

TypePad for iPhone. SixApart’s TypePad platform has long been a leader in mobile blogging almost since the inception of the hosted service. From TypePad for iPhone, you have the following options: “Create a Post,” “Take a Photo,” and “Add a Photo.” The application’s control panel lets you specify TypePad account information, New Post defaults, and even your Twitter login. Including a photo in a blog post is as simple as choosing “Take a Photo,” shooting the photo, and then creating a post and publishing it. Having the “Take a Photo” option available at the top level of the interface makes posting a photo to your TypePad blog simple and easy. The application has a clean user interface.

WordPress for iPhone 2. The recently released (and much-improved over the previous version) WordPress for iPhone 2 enables you to access comments, posts and pages on any WordPress blogs hosted on WordPress.com or on your own hosting domain. Some notable features in this release include a New Comments interface; passwords storage on the keychain; automatic saving and restoration of posts if the network connection is lost during publishing (especially useful for AT&T customers!); and persistence (when you load the app it automatically opens the last post you were working on). Adding a picture to a blog post is as easy as easy as tapping Photos when you are composing a new post and adding a photo from the library or taking a photo with the camera. WordPress for iPhone 2 is a clean and very usable application.

Tumblr. The microblogging service Tumblr is also available via an iPhone app. With the Tumblr iPhone app, you can post text, photo, quote, link, chat, or audio content Tumblr. The audio feature enables you to record audio and send it directly to your tumblelog. I rank myself as a light Tumblr user, but find this application to be very consistent with the web interface, which I find to be one of the application’s positives.

Do you publish blog posts using your iPhone? Share your experience below.

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Create a Microblog

Before you start, bear in mind that your microblog does count against your blog’s storage and bandwidth quotas. Creating a microblog with TypePad follows the same well-documented and usable process as you use to create a new blog. There’s a new Pico theme for microblogs, which comes in tan, dark blue, dark gray and white. (I expect that if this offering takes off, then SixApart will add more microblog themes beyond the Pico theme.) Here is an example of that theme in white:

Manage a Microblog
After creating my microblog, I was greeted by a nicely designed user interface:

When you create a microblog, your categories don’t propagate over from your existing TypePad blog, so you are going to have to create them for your new microblog. The rest of the features should already be familiar to you as a TypePad user.

You also have the option to publish your posts to Twitter, Facebook and FriendFeed via TypePad. Personally, while I try to keep Facebook for friends and Twitter for professional networking, I was happy to have the options to publish my blog posts to these two social networks, and the “post from anywhere” capabilities include support for email, iPhone, and the TypePad Blog It bookmarklet.

TypePad and Microblogging

TypePad has always been leader in blog publishing and management tools, and SixApart’s first steps into microblogging further builds on its platform. Well-managed blogs are a necessity for web workers who want to contribute to the real-time web. TypePad offers a set of tools that even non-web savvy users can use to create professionally designed blogs and microblogs. A well-done microblog can complement a web worker’s web presence and online brand. This new feature provides a low-maintenance option for web workers who want to use the same platform for all of their blogging efforts.

This latest TypePad feature release is well-executed and a natural fit for the app, and is further testimony to a growing yet versatile platform for blogging. I look forward to seeing future feature releases.

Have you tried microblogging with TypePad?

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I’ve been running my personal blog on TypePad since 1993 and the early adopter in me made me make the jump to trying out the new preview version as soon as I got the opportunity. Here are some of my first impressions about the impending update to this fee-based blog publishing platform.

TypePad Dashboard

The new TypePad dashboard is more expansive than the previous version. Significant changes include:

• Follow TypePad Members. This is a social networking feature that enables you to follow other TypePad members who are running blogs of interest to you.
• Comments. You can view full text of the recent comments left on your TypePad hosted blog.
• TypePad Blogs. You can access any of your TypePad blogs from this feature. You can also create a new TypePad blog from your dashboard.
• Question of the Day. This is a new TypePad feature to inspire blog writing. You can answer the question of the day as a post on your blog, view answers to questions of the day, and even submit your own questions. While this is a fun feature, if you are using your TypePad blog as a more professional blog than Question of the Day is going to prove detracting to your professional message.

There is also includes access to widgets you can add to your blog, and the option to subscribe to “Everything Typepad,” which provides updates to new TypePad features. I like the new user interface because it is better balanced and more usable than the old one.

Library
When I first made the jump from Blogger to TypePad, it was the media management tools in the library that drew me in. The  TypePad library provides access to the following:

• Photo Albums. You still have the option to host your photos on TypePad, but you are probably hosting your photos on PhotoBucket or Flickr anyway.
• TypeLists. TypeLists can include links including books, music, your other Web properties, or your Flickr account.
• File Manager. You can manage the files you upload to your TypePad blog from File Manager. While the TypePad interface has gone through some changes, the File Manager has stayed largely the same.

Final Thoughts on the TypePad Preview
A hosted blogging platform can be a good choice for your personal blog, because it takes a lot of worries off your plate and lets you focus on your core business. TypePad is a fine blogging platform, but this new version isn’t really bringing too much new to the table, except for interface tweaks.

Have you tried out the TypePad preview? What has been your experience?

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Image via Wikipedia (LibSyn)

Before I fell asleep last night, I started thinking about what I’m spending on Web applications. I take advantage of the free levels of apps whenever I can, however, in some cases, I have to give in and pay for the services.

Don’t get me wrong – I don’t have buyer’s remorse, but I do think I need to get a firm grasp of what Web apps or SaaS’s I have on autopay on my business credit card because it is getting to be too easy to charge these things.

Here is the list of Web apps I’ve been paying for and why I pay for them:

• Basecamp – $24/month – to keep track of communications and files with clients.
• FreshBooks – $24/month – to manage client invoicing.
• Typepad – $89.50/year for three blogs (about $7.45/month) – to develop three of my many blogs.
• Constant Contact – $15/month – to send out my occasional e-newsletter.
• Cafepress – $6.95/month – to sell Second Life swag.
• LibSyn- $5/month – to host my Cybergrrl Oh podcast about Second Life.
• SpinVox- $9.99/month – to convert my voicemail messages into texts and emails. (My service in the U.S. is actually through UReach.
• MeetUp – $72/6 months ($12/month) – to host several Meetup groups.

Total Fees – $104.39 per month or $1,252.68 per year

I began thinking that I should pay more attention to these payments. If the app is really valuable to my business, maybe I should consider paying for a year’s subscription in advance. Often, an annual subscription is discounted so I could save some money.

Then again, it might just be negligible. CafePress, for example, comes out to be $5/month for an annual subscription which would save me $23 for the year. Well, the theory sounded good when I was thinking about it. Still, if I were to subscribe to many more apps and sites, maybe the savings would become more significant.

Sites like Freshbooks and Basecamp don’t offer an annual fee. They use a pay-as-you-go model without committing you to a long term contract. Freshbooks does offer a lump sum payment where you can opt to pay for a number of months in advance but without any discount.

What are you paying on a monthly basis for Web apps and sites? Which ones and what do they do for you?

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Since then, I’ve still not incorporated Zemanta suggested items into this WWD blog but have used them more and more often on some of my other blogs, particularly my personal blogs where I have less stringent writers guidelines to follow and anything goes because they’re mine. Now Zemanta has added a few more features that have caught my attention.

Zemanta says their tools can help increase traffic to your blog because of:

1. better annotation of posts, links, images with actual crawlers for Google and Yahoo can rate the post higher and glean more context from your post; and

2. placement of links to related posts across blogosphere helps get more track back for the post which can also increase traffic.While Zemanta admits that their product is still geared more toward the personal blogger versus the professional blogger, they suggest more layout flexibility and augmented features that will be of interest to pro-bloggers are coming down the road.

Here are some of the new developments with Zemanta:

1. Zemanta is no longer just a Firefox plug-in but is also available through Internet Explorer.

2. Zemanta tools are now integrated with WordPress and Movable Type software eliminating the need for yet another browser extension for users of those blogging software products.

The new release also increases the number of images suggested from the grid of nine and adds a scroll bar to view more images while keeping the older images visible, provides more image context including a description and licensing information, and suggests more articles.

Another great little addition is links to Amazon. When you mention a book title in your blog post, Zemanta recognizes it as a book and suggests a link directly to that book on Amazon. Future iterations of the software will also allow you to personalize Zemanta with your Amazon affiliate account information so you get your due commission for directing your readers to the bookseller.

Other features of note include mapping and geotagging. Mention a place in your blog post and have the option to link directly to the location on Google maps or add a geotag, part of an experiment for adding embedded maps. Zemanta also is adding a Popular Page that shows you the most popular articles or blog posts that are being linked to by Zemanta members.

And I’ve saved the best for last. The new Reblogging feature. I love the concept of this feature. Basically, it helps readers of your blog to more easily quote parts of your blog and incorporate it into their blogs ensuring accuracy and links back. The Zemified button that appeared at the bottom of blog posts using Zemanta features will be renamed “Reblog” and when readers click on it, they’ll get a new window with the blog post text included as well as tools for them to add any portion of the blog post that they highlight directly to their blog. They also have the ability to add in their own text to comment on or give context to the quoted blog text.

Anyone using the Reblog feature should keep in mind copyright laws and fair use practices when selecting the amount of text to quote.

The folks at Zemanta hope to extend their relationship with Six Apart to fully integrate Zemanta features into their Web-based blogging tools. That will most likely be an announcement for another time.

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