This is a gigantic secret, but iSource uses WordPress as a content manager. This means that we’ve got access to the WordPress web and iOS apps for blogging purposes, but seeing as the web app can’t handle media very well and the iOS apps are prone to crashing or simply not being able to paste […]
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Blogging Software: Marsedit + Blogsy

Dec 17th 2011 by

This is a gigantic secret, but iSource uses WordPress as a content manager. This means that we’ve got access to the WordPress web and iOS apps for blogging purposes, but seeing as the web app can’t handle media very well and the iOS apps are prone to crashing or simply not being able to paste text, it should come as no surprise that I want something better. Some of our staff haven’t quite found anything they like on the Mac end of things, so they use Windows Live Writer running in a virtual machine. WLW is free and quite good, but I don’t want to run an instance of Windows just to put a few posts up.

But instead of simply complaining about WordPress (which is actually usable when you get down to it), I thought I’d share two of the apps I’ve been using to post with instead. One runs on the Mac, and the other on the iPad.

Marsedit – $40

I’m not sure why I didn’t like Marsedit before – all I remember is that it had something to do with the “Read More” tags we used to use on Just Another iPhone Blog. When we made the change to become iSource last year we dropped those tags and now write all posts as one continuous piece.

Screen Shot 2011 12 17 at 4 40 59 PM

I’m currently a week or two into a one-month trial of Marsedit and I’m loving the software. In most cases it does exactly what I want it to do, but in a few fringe cases, it tends to do even more. Here are a few reasons I’m loving Marsedit over the WordPress admin panel:

  • drag-and-drop media upload
  • media uploads that actually center properly
  • easy tagging and categorization
  • saved local drafts
  • predictable treatment of text (WP sometimes makes certain text italicized or bigger or smaller, despite being formatted the same as everything else on the page)
  • really fast post previews

 

One feature I’m especially in love with here is the way that you can quickly and easily paste links into text. Just highlight the text you want to link, press Ctrl-Shift-A, and – Presto! – you’ve got yourself some hyperlinked text. No dialogue boxes, no extra steps.

Blogsy for iPad – $5

Now that I’ve got an iPad, I rarely blog from the iPhone. There was a dearth of good blogging apps for quite a while, but then Blogsy came out and it was pretty good. Then Blogsy received a number of patches and it got way, way better. It’s now easily the premiere blogging application on the iPad, and with good reason.

QuickShot 2011 12 17 at 16 42 17

There are rich text and HTML editors, plugins for Flickr, YouTube, and Safari for easily throwing links in. Pictures are easy and fun to upload, and Blogsy can even access your Photo Stream. The initially annoying horizontal swipe gesture to switch between Rich and HTML modes has been replaced by a three-finger swipe, which makes it nearly impossible to activate by accident.

I could go on and on, but Blogsy is absolutely my client of choice for mobile blogging. Not only is it incredibly capable, but it’s a lot of fun to use, too.

 

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