If you’re both an iPhone user, and have a blog hosted or powered by WordPress, then you have something new to get excited about. WordPress for iPhone and iPod touch was released late yesterday on the iTunes App Store! I’m putting it through it’s paces by composing this post on my iPhone 3G.
While the app is very light on features, it has all the basic essentials for writing and submitting new posts, as well a editing existing ones. If your blog is hosted on wordpress.com, then you can even see a preview of your post in your site’s theme, however, those who host with an alternate hosting provider (or like me, on their own server) will see their post displayed with a generic theme. Hopefully a future version will offer the option to launch Safari to view a preview generated by your own server.
It even let’s you insert photos from the photo library or camera roll on your iDevice as well as taking photos with the built-in camera, right from within the app. Coupled with firmware 2.0’s ability to take screenshots, this could become an iPhone software reviewer’s dream come true.
So what are the limitations? The app only let’s you edit existing or write new posts. That’s it. There are no features for doing any other administration of your site for now, so we’ll still need to use mobile Safari for viewing/editing comments and performing other administrative tasks. Also, those of you who have become spoiled by the GUI editor or even the basic editing toolbar are going to have to brush up on your HTML and CSS, because all formatting has to be applied the old fashioned way.
Another shortfall, or what appears to be more of a bug, is that if your post includes a “more” tag to display only an excerpt on the main page, you won’t be able to edit any part of the post that comes after the more tag. It’s like the mobile WordPress app sees the more tag as the end of the article. There also doesn’t seem to be any support for optional excerpts. If like me, you like to only display an excerpt on your blog’s front page, this is going to be an issue. You can still use the app to write the post, but you’ll have to apply the excerpt manually via the web editing tools before you can publish your final post.
Probably the greatest limitation is one not in the app itself but in the iPhone OS: the lack of cut and paste. I’m not sure if my writing style is rare or not, but frequently when penning longer posts, I tend to move sentences and paragraphs around a lot during the editing process. There’s simply no way to do this short of deleting and re-typing… A LOT. Something I’m just not likely to do. I suspect this will make me a better writer, as I’ll be forced to think more carefully about what I want to write before I type it.
Where the lack of cut and paste really hurts though is with inserted photos. Since the app inserts photos at the end of your existing post text, you can’t move them around without writing down and retyping a lot of HTML code.
Again, you could get around this by planning your post ahead of time and inserting photos at the exact points in your post as you are typing it. If I decide I’d prefer to insert them earlier in the post, I’m SOL. Hopefully a future version of WordPress for iPhone/iPod touch will give you the option of inserting photos at any point in the post. But of course it would be better if Apple just got off their ass and gave us an elegant cut & paste solution already.
Limitations aside, I highly recommend WordPress for iPhone and iPod touch to anyone who has a blog powered by WordPress and would like the freedom of submitting or editing posts while on the go. Bloggers who use excerpts however may only find it useful for composing their post as they will still need to apply the finishing touches via the web interface.
July 22nd, 2008
WOOT! Rogers has just announced a special ‘limited time’ promotional 6GB data plan for anyone purchasing an iPhone 3G on any voice rate plan on a 3 year contract for only $30 extra per month! From the press release:
Effective July 11, and as a limited time promotional offer for customers
who activate by August 31 on a three year contract, a data-only offering of
6GB of data for $30 per month is being made available that can be added to any
in-market voice plan. For example, with 6GB of data, iPhone 3G users can visit
35,952 web pages, or send and receive 157,286 emails, or watch 6,292 minutes
of YouTube videos each and every month.(xx)
Fido has announced the same promotional offer. I’m sure some will complain that it’s still not unlimited, but I really defy anyone to realistically use more than 6GB of data on an iPhone in a month. This my friends is the plan that is going to move a LOT of iPhones. My only complaint is that it just got a lot harder to get your hands on an iPhone 3G this Friday.
Now the questions that’s nagging at the back of my mind is, is this an example of Rogers reacting to the will of the people and/or pressure from Apple Inc., or was this just the final step in a very well planned marketing/promotion plan? I mean, think about all the free publicity Rogers has gotten, and consider the fact that they have spent next to nothing to promote the release of this market-changing device. I’m beginning to think we’ve all fallen for a brilliant viral marketing campaign. If this is the case, hats off to Rogers, well played sir, very well played indeed! If not, then hats off anyway for showing that you do care what your customers think.
July 9th, 2008
Back at the end of April, I mentioned that Rogers had announced that they would be bringing the iPhone to Canada “later this year”. For those who maybe missed the news, “Later this year” means July 11. Yep, after just over a very long year of waiting, us Canadians will be able to walk into our local Rogers or Fido store and buy the new iPhone 3G!
Rogers, in what seems like a feeble attempt to instill suspense, is advertising that “Something really big is coming July 11th”, as though we’re all supposed to be in the dark about what that something is. Someone should ring up Ted Rogers and let him know that mystery teaser ads are much less effective if everyone already knows what it is. OK, ribbing aside, clicking “Learn more” brings you to the Rogers press release archive, and if you scroll down to June 9, you just might find this press release which confirms the mystery device is the iPhone 3G. Pricing is listed as $199 and $299 for the 8GB and 16GB models respectively, with a 3 year contract.
No plan pricing details are provided, so looks like we’ll have to wait a bit to find out how much they’re charging for data and if you have to sign a 3 year data contract in order to purchase the iPhone 3G at the discounted price.
Fido’s website on the other hand, is being ultra-original by announcing “Something really cool is coming July 11th”. See what they did there? They used the word “cool” in place of “big”, and suddenly they have a completely original advertising campaign. Somebody worked overtime to come up with that I’m sure. Clicking the ad on Fido’s website links to this press release which details the same handset prices as Rogers, but no additional details.
Now the question that I’m sure many of my readers really want to know: Once the iPhone officially comes to Canada, will owners of unlocked 1st gen iPhones be able to use their devices on Rogers or Fido without having to hack them anymore? In other words, will we be able to install the firmware 2.0 update, plug in our SIM card and activate our iPhones through iTunes or will we have to keep playing the firmware update hack game? I will be sure to update you all once I find out, but we probably won’t know for sure until shortly after July 11.
So, are you planning on buying the iPhone 3G once it comes out in Canada? If so, are you new to iPhone or will you be upgrading from a hacked iPhone? Let us know in the comments below.
June 16th, 2008