blogging

Almost any writer or content creator can benefit from using a minimal Markdown editor like Typora. It’s a simple app that you can configure in many different ways to suit the formatting you need for your document, whether you’re writing a book, building a website, crafting a business report or simply blogging or penning an essay for school.

This post is brought to you by Websitesetup.org.

They say we’ve all got a book in us. And while not all of us will write that whole book, the internet makes it exceedingly simple for anybody with something to say to self-publish. Start a blog and you can say as much or as little as you like, at whatever pace suits you.

Blogging obviously isn’t new, but it hasn’t gone away either. And the tools for creating your own platform of online expression have never been easier to get hold of and use.

Apple’s iOS 9 News app hasn’t even seen the light of day yet, but publishers are already heavily discontent with the email Apple sent out to them regarding its terms and conditions. The email essentially tells publishers what they’re agreeing to by opting in to the News app and assumes they agree unless they explicitly state otherwise.

Even if publishers don’t like the terms and conditions Apple lays out, Apple is basically forcing their hands unless they later specify that they don’t agree. In that case, of course, they also don’t get to be a part of the News app. The terms and conditions themselves don’t entirely appear to be causing the uproar, but rather the odd presumption that all the publishers are automatically willing to participate even in total silence.

Important new features have popped up in Tumblr’s iOS app, just a month and a half after the blog-platform powerhouse was snapped up by Yahoo.

Do you snap pictures for your blog using your iPhone, and then do the actual blog writing on your Mac? Or some other combination of devices? Then PUPS is for you. It’s a new iPhone app from the makers of crash-happy blogging app Blogsy, and it has one purpose – to upload pictures from your iDevice to your blog’s media library.

WordPress just released a new update for its iOS app that is sure to make WordPress bloggers happy. The new app features a overhauled UI that makes it easier and faster to blog from your iPhone than before.

The new update ditches the single pane view for a multi-pane view that users can swipe between to access different areas of the app (kind of like the Facebook and Rdio apps). WordPress also added a shortcut to the sidebar to make posting faster, there are also new translations for Russian, Danish, and Korean, improved Tumblr importing, and bug fixes.

Here are the full release notes:

Yahoo! has this morning announced that it has reached a deal to acquire popular blogging platform Tumblr for $1.1 billion. The company promises “not to screw it up,” and says that Tumblr will continue to operate as a separate business, with David Karp remaining CEO.

Poster, arguably the best WordPress blogging app for iOS, has received a major new update today, which adds a ton of new features and improvements. In addition to support for custom post types, version 2.0 brings the ability to edit a post’s excerpt and insert images anywhere you like, and the option to remove a post’s featured image. Check out the update notes below for the full list of changes and improvements.

With iOS 6 right around the corner, Google’s official YouTube app for iPhone couldn’t have come at a better time. It’s a great app — much better than Apple’s built-in YouTube app — and it’s headlining this week’s must-have apps roundup. It’s accompanied by Poster, a great new blogging app; Journal for Evernote, and Google Drive.

Poster is a brand-new iPad blogging app for posting to WordPress sites. It works with hosted WordPress.com sites, as well as with self-hosted WordPress sites like Cult of Mac.

It seems like just a few months ago the choices for blogging from the iPad were limited in both quantity and quality, with the best apps (like Blogsy) often heavily flawed, and the worst apps (the then-available WordPress App, for example) being unusable.

Now, we have an embarrassment of options. And ironically — for WordPress users at least — you can now post images into articles direct from mobile Safari (in iOS 6), meaning you mightn't even need an app after all.

Static publishing is the new, uh, CMS. Or something. What’s for certain is that there has been a recent surge in interest in blogging platforms which publish single, pre-rendered, static HTML pages instead of generating those pages on the fly from some kind of database. The latest of these uses the venerable VoodooPad to generate your pages instantly, ready for uploading to your web-server of choice.

I do all my work these days on an iPad. From organizing reviews through gathering story ideas to actually writing posts and features, and even photographing and editing gadgets for those reviews, it’s all — every last bit — done on Apple’s tablet. I just spent two weeks away from home using the iPad’s 3G connection to work, only opening up my MacBook to sync my FitBit.

And they still say the iPad is just for consumption.

One of the biggest problems with the iPad has been writing blog posts. You really did need a Mac to take care of the multiple browser windows and — most of all — the image uploading. Now, though, while there isn’t quite a wealth of options, there are certainly several credible methods to do this all from the iPad. So make a coffee, sit back and enjoy this how-to:

Kicking off this week’s must-have apps roundup is a brand new Twitter client called Slices, which claims to be the world’s first Twitter app that allows you to break your timeline into individual streams, follow live events, browse Twitter by category, and more. We also have a “magical” app called Cardiio that accurately monitors your heart rate simply by looking at your face; the best blogging app for iPad yet called Pages; and more.

Yesterday, if I had suffered a grievous accident involving some kind of heavy farm machinery, and my fingers were mangled to leave only a single, stubby nubbin where previously I had sported ten beautifully slender digits, I’d still have been able to count the entirety of half-decent iPad blogging apps on one hand.

Today, though, I’d have to start counting on my toes, as Black Pixel software, the company behind Apple award-winning app Versions, had launched Posts, and you might like to call it the Reeder of blog publishing.

Blogsy, the iPad blogging app, has been updated to version 4. In addition to working with a few new blogging services (Squarespace, Joomla and MetaWeblog), it adds a slew of new features. I have used Bloggsy in the past but found it had too many glitches and weird UI behaviors for me to actually work with it, so I had one question: Could I write this post in it without tearing my hair out?

Mariner Software just updated veteran writing/blogging app MacJournal to version 6, with a double helping of new features thrown in.

Yes WordPress, you’ve finally given the WP iOS app a bionic injection — an upgrade that’ll make it an order of magnitude more useful (certainly for bloggers like me, anyway). Finally, I have a whole row of commands to easily insert links, quote marks and the like. But why did it take so long?

MarsEdit is the best blogging tool for OS X, bar none. If you do blogging for money or just for the love of it, MarsEdit is a dream come true for you. It will save you lots of hassle and hours of time.

Tech bloggers are salivating over the possibility that the Verizon iPhone will create a “Perfect Media Storm” when it is released on February 10.

“These kinds of stories only come along every generation or so,” said one industry expert who insisted on anonymity for this article (and also insisted on ordering Lobster during our off-the-record lunch). “Really monumental tech events expand rapidly across the media landscape until almost every single headline is focused on that piece of news. It is a remarkable and terrifying occurrence, I’ve heard tell.”

Pundits are warning that the Verizon iPhone launch will attract noticeable attention from the Main Stream Media, including obligatory “lining up” segments on local newscasts, and a variety of daytime TV clips. Add to that scenario the brewing social media battles between Apple fan boys and iPhone haters and you have a tech news super cell that is capable of generating Apple headlines for weeks on end.

Even spammers will contribute to the upcoming media tsunami with their unending stream of boorish VeriPhone “opinion pieces” that are nothing more than keyword targeted word salad or repurposed content from legitimate sites. Angry AT&T users could also foment media attention as they publicly bash their aging network.

While no one can predict what the actual Verizon iPhone media storm will look like, expect it to pick up speed starting early next week.

Teaser articles with flashy headlines will appear first, hinting at the raging media storm that will soon follow. Then, as review units are tested, expect a sustained torrent of “under the hood” coverage from all areas of tech media.

Finally, on February 10, the event will make landfall with national news and cable networks cutting together segments comprised primarily of glamour shots of the new phone and happy Verizon customers getting their Apple devices.

What follows is a sampling of headlines sure to appear during the impending Verizon iPhone media storm. Prepare yourself and your loved ones for this type of journalism, as we will see much more of it in the days ahead.

Can You Hear Me Now? Comparing Dropped Call Data on Verizon and AT&T

OVERCLOCKED: Which iPhone Is Faster?

Top Ten Verizon iPhone Tips and Tricks

Which Network Really Has You Covered?

There’s an App for That – A Detailed look at how the app experience plays out on both networks.

Verizon iPhone Ships a “Billion Million” Units – Predictions of units sold in the coming months from tech press and analysts.

I’m returning My Verizon iPhone

Apple Stock: How High is Too High?

Why Android Is The Best Smartphone EVER!

This Guy’s Blog Post is WRONG!

No Way! That Other Blog Post is WRONG! – A protracted back and forth between two tech journalists to elicit links, coverage, and increased attention.

Where is the White iPhone?

How The Verizon iPhone is a Win for AT&T

I Told You So: How I Predicted All of This Over a Year Ago

iPhone, Therefore I Am

The iPhone as Fashion Statement

Why I Hate The Verizon iPhone

Why I’m Leaving AT&T

This Verizon iPhone Top Ten List Goes To Eleven

How the iPhone Reinvented Telephony

One iPhone to Rule Them All

“It almost never happens, but these giant media storms have occurred in the past,” said our source. “This new iPhone is something like the moon landing, really.”

If you use Posterous for posting stuff online, you might be interested in the new, free Posterous iOS app that’s popped up in the App Store today.

It’s got everything you’d expect to see in a mobile blogging tool. Namely: a big green POST button that’s everywhere in the app; no matter what else you’re looking at, you can always start a new post with one tap.