Blogging on the move with iOS

Getting those words out of your head and onto the page when you are travelling is not that difficult these days when we have such good blogging tools to use on our iPads and iPhones. This post is a little bit incestuous in the fact that I am using the application Blogsy to create the blog post about blogging using the iPad. I am on a trip to Ireland, here to sort out my divorce which I should have done a long time ago but eventually got round to 12 years after getting separated. I do have access to good Internet while I am staying with my son. While I was travelling on the bus from my town to Barcelona airport I was using the Mobile Internet to create a blog post. Last time I came to Ireland I bought myself a Sim card from Ireland so that I could have mobile Internet here. This time it hasn’t really been necessary so I didn’t bother. I did get some free Wi-Fi while I was in Dublin airport which was very handy indeed.

Which applications to use for blocking with the iPad

Most times I prefer to use markdown for writing in a text editor and for that I will do quick and dirty writing in the draft application. What I can do then is to choose whether I am going to send that text in HTML format into Blogsy application. Then again I might choose to exported from Drafts, this is really easy to do because of the special connections that you get to export out of that application. If I want to have some text that I want to send to multiple places, such as I might want to send it to my journal, Day One and I might also want to send it to Google plus or Facebook. I could even start with a short piece of text which I could send to Twitter and then extended as much as required so that I can send it to all of these other places or even make a full blog post out of it that could be up to 1000 words.

Blogging with Blogsy iOS app.

What is really good with blogging from the bloody application is that I also can add pictures to my post really very easily. I can do this easier than if I am blogging using Byword. I can get access to pictures from my websites, from Flickr, Picasa and also from Instagram. Naturally, it is also possible for me to choose pictures that are in my photo library on my iOS device.

Blogsy has a rich text editor which I don’t always get to use as I will be bringing in the HTML ready to use. On the other hand, it is very handy to set the text just as you wanted and also to organise your photoson the page. You might want to have your pictures to be left justified, centred or right justified and to have the text flowing around in your pictures. It is very easy to do this using Blogsy. You have the options of setting the format of the text to be one of your headings such as a header two all have it as paragraph text. You can also choose the font family and font size. There are also the options are various types of list and whether you want to have bold italics or underlined. This is all done through a what you see is what you get type of editor.

Blogging with Byword

Blogging with the application Byword on the iPad is a much simpler affair, but it is workable and workable when you’re working mainly with text. You do have to work out how you’re going to get your pictures uploaded to your website. I found an application called PUPS. Or you could use application like Transmit to send the picture by FTP to your website. Transmit is not difficult to use once you have set it up. It is not quite as easy as using the image upload from within Blogsy.

Adding a video to your webpage

I wanted to embed a video and on the desktop computer I would get the embed code from the YouTube website. When I go to the same website from my iOS device I don’t get the option to get a bit of HTML code to embed into my blog post. I have just seen in the sidebar to the right of my anything area on the Blogsy application that there is a button for YouTube and I’m going to give that a try.

Well that was very easy indeed. I did have to first set up my YouTube account with Blogsy, then it was simply a case of dragging and dropping the video that I wanted from my uploads onto the blog post. The positioning of the video on the page works in the same way as if I was dropping an image onto there.

Easy does it – No problem to be blogging while mobile

Then you have two choices that I like to use when I am doing blogging. You can also use specific applications to specific blood and platforms. For instance you might want to use the Tumblr application if you want to block to Tumblr or if you want, use the WordPress application for blogging directly into WordPress.

I used Siri dictation to get the words out of my head and into the iPad. What I usually do is to dictate a couple of sentences or maybe even a whole paragraph and then go back and check to make sure that the spellings are all correct. It is always a good idea to proof read anything that you have dictated in using Siri. Siri does work extremely well and it is much faster to write while dictating. This is indeed a Good and Geeky workflow for being a blogger and writer.

Posted with Blogsy