manticore.ca

So far the majority of my blog entries have been done with the wordpress iPhone app. Since they are simple text entries with no multi-media content as of yet, the app is perfect for my needs.

The ability to create blog posts from where ever I am has allowed me to reclaim time and post in the nook and crannies of my day, and home time is for what I want to do.

The App supports multiple blogs and allows you to upload pictures, which is extremly handy when doing iPhone app reviews. Simply hold down the power button, hit the d pad and watch the screen blink. Add the picture via the photo library or shoot a live shot.

Most peope that I have talked to, do not advocate posting a live entry, prefering instead to write the content and then save to local file, and format their blog at home or work in a more conventional way, me I hit publish and go.

As I wrote in a post several months ago, the app now supports landscape mode for text entry, comments can be viewed and marked as spam or approved as needed. Regarding comments, my site is set up to moderate comments, the blizzard of spam that comes through, notably the kind that have ??????? In the body of the comment makes this nessecary if you do not have the askimet widget activated (strong suggestion, for those that don’t)

I may go to an unmoderated format soon, as the spam has litterally dried up, but it’s not a major issue at the monent.

If the wordpress app has any flaws, it’s saving a post as private. This happened to me several days ago and other than blaming myself, I don’t know what went wrong, or more litterally where the post went.

I have 2.7.1 rev, with admin privilges and it’s gone. Anyone wishing to post as private, I would heavily suggest that you save it to draft and then classifiy it on the fullsite rather than upload it through the app.

The app is useful and has been updated several times, plus it’s free. If your just a casual blogger or wish to create content for future blogs the app can be very useful.

On the downsides, it can throw you some curveballs regarding the private posting.

8/10

I downloaded this app several weeks ago and while I have not actually used it yet, it has kept me occupied with what it can do.

Quite simply it takes every movie thats out or coming out and presents it in a nicely formatted way. Movie title, brief blurb and rating, art work and a hook to tie it into YouTube if a trailor is available.

As well it also lists which movies are coming out on DVD or blu-ray, with the same information the new release movies advertise.

Take all that, then add in the closest theaters that the new movies are playing in, plus show times. For those wanting any sort of outside rating system, the app uses among other good folks, rotten tomatos.

I’m not one to require someone elses opinion to see a movie, so it’s up the user to see if that’s helpful or not. While the app also supports netflix, alas Canada does not. Someone else will have to chime in on how useful it is.

This app gets a 10/10, stable, focused on what it does and it’s free.

Without much fanfare this week I deleted that loved/hated app technews. In the end it was not all that hard a choice, it had gone from freezing and crashing , to not even loading headlines.

For a while I was flirting with Ms G, googles news reader and for the most part, I can’t really say anything bad about it. Search tentacle sex tech, and I am pretty sure that google would have an rss feed to view.

Then one day, I really don’t recall when actually, but a new app came to my attention. This seemed to be almost a step up from technews, as they share a common name, itechnews.

Where the original technews would display the top stories, itech would separate them into the top headlines and then further by the tech genre. Cellphones have their own folder for example, so your not getting telco tech mixed up with Linux tech and the like.

Not that I have no complaints with the app, oh no. It’s just that they are minor in nature. It was supposed to be able to read offline, I can see touch users downloading headlines using wifi at home, but looking for a signal when you get beyond the blurb, as it opens the stories in an internal browser.

That’s probably my biggest peeve, in that the browser will load the whole page including the advertisements. Now this being the real world and people gotta put food on the table, ads are a nessesary evil, but they bog down the load times.

Any other cellphone, would have this set up as a cron job, and let me choose when the device updates. Not being able to run background tasks in the iphone scotchs this idea, and it feels like I am down loading usenet articles on a 14.4 modem again.

So I have been using it for about a week now and while it’s crashed a couple of times, it’s been no worse than any other app. Jumping from story to story has finally sated the info junkie in me and I would give this app a seven out of ten.