Tag: WordPress

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Review: BlogPress for iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch [Updated]

If you are a blogger you are most likely using a blogging platform to host your blog. These blogging platforms will come with web based interfaces for users to compose blog posts. When these web based interfaces are accessed from a browser on the computer this works well, but may not be the case from mobile devices like the iPod Touch, iPhone or iPad. Of course there are exceptions, which I will discuss later.

It is hard to find an app that takes advantage of the capabilities of these mobile devices while supports the functionalities of the blogging platforms. There are two blogging platform specific apps for the iOS devices: WordPress and SquareSpace. The former is the first of its kind and its functionalities are fairly complete, but there are bugs that will sometimes cause the lost of blog posts. The latest version (2.6.3) is even worst, so this is not an app that I will recommend. On the other hand the offering from SquareSpace is very well designed. It has set the standards for all blogging apps in the iTunes App Store.

Then there are blogging apps that support multiple platforms, like BlogPress. It supports the following blogging platform/services: Continue reading “Review: BlogPress for iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch [Updated]”

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RSSCloud in Your WordPress Blog

If you have a blog you will agree that RSS is one of the most important piece of technology to help disseminate your blog content through out the Interweb.

Unfortunately this RSS (protocol) is a pull technology where subscriber to the feed must poll the source of the RSS feed for new content. Often this polling iteration is every 15 minutes or so. In the current realtime world of Twitter, FriendFeed and Facebook timelines, this method of requesting information seems old and out-dated. This is why one of the pioneer for RSS, Dave Winer, came up with rssCloud, a new element that was added to the RSS protocol in January 2001 as part of RSS 0.92 and later in RSS 2.0.

With rssCloud the newsfeed readers will no longer have to poll the source of the feed for content periodically. Instead as soon as new content is available from the source it is pushed (sent) to all subscribers of the feed. This lends to more timely conversation on the content and serves our realtime web much better.

Prior to Automattic’s adoption of rssCloud the only reader that recognize the <cloud> element was Winer’s River2 RSS reader, this created a chicken-and-egg problem where RSS reader developers were not eager to add the rssCloud feature to their reader and site owners did not bother with adding the element into their RSS feed.

WordPress.com supports for rssCloud had basically eliminated this stalemate, and gave the developers of RSS readers a potential of 7.5 million blogs with support for this feature. Now it will be up the the developers of RSS readers to make their move to get the momentum flowing.

Fortunately, Joseph Scott was kind enough to help with this drive, he released a WordPress plugin to help self-hosted WordPress blogs add the rssCloud support to their own feeds.

Also on the RSS reader front, the cool up and coming web service, LazyFeed is announcing support for rssCloud.

I suggest all WordPress blog owners; no matter self-hosted or one residing on WordPress.com, enable this features, so we can add to the excitement and trend of this realtime web evolution.

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WordCamp Arrives in Hong Kong

WordCamp HK 500x100

On April 5, 2009, WordCamp will arrive in Hong Kong for the first time. The event will be held at the Hong Kong Science & Technology Park.

WordCamp is a conference type of event that focuses squarely on everything WordPress. Everyone from casual end users all the way up to core developers show up to these events. At the Hong Kong event, there will be two speakers you will not want to miss, Matt Mullenweg and Hailin Wu, PhD.

Mullenweg is the founder of Automattic and foundering developer of WordPress, and Automattic is the company behind WordPress.com and Akismet.com, which Wu is a developer at.

If you develop WordPress themes and plugins, or simply use WordPress as a blogger, you will not want to miss this great opportunity to hear from the professionals inside WordPress about the platform’s future. While at the event you will also be able to network with fellow WordPress users in Hong Kong. Plus the event is currently FREE, so register now before you miss your chance.

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WordPress 2.6

A new version of WordPress has been released. It contains one of the features that I had been waiting for a long time; ever since I started using WordPress to drive my own blog. That is the feature of comparing revisions and be able to bring back previous versions. Similar feature can be found on Wikipedia.org.

Instead of pointing you to the blog post about WordPress 2.6 new features, the folks at WordPress have made a short video to highlight these new enhancements.