Kaalga is a Firefox extension which integrates a very useful feature into your Wordpress blog editor. It basically highlights some particular words or phrases while you are writing your posts and suggests some possible links. Actually Wordpress is not the only supported platform but it works well with Blogger, TypePad and LiveJournal too.
Usage is very easy: use the combination “shift + right click” (shif+ctrl+click on a Mac touchpad) when your mouse is over the underlined words and a window with some suggested links pops up. The image below shows how it looks like:
Behind the scenes Kalgaa uses a semantic analysis engine called OpenCalais and shows the relevant results through Yahoo search.
A similar feature is provided by Zemanta too, a great plugin I use to insert links, tags and images to my blog posts very easily. Unlike Zemanta, one of the cool features of Kaalga is that it lets you insert your domain as the preferred source for links, making it very easy to insert links to posts which belong to your blog. The popup window then shows you your domain’s links first (with a red “L” which stands for “local”) then other links on the web.
My opinion? A big thumb up for this extension, definitely a must-have for any blogger and it is what I was always looking for. The funny thing? I had to insert the link to Kaalga.commanually
Writing a blog post from a portable mobile device has always been challenging to me. There are many solutions, but one of the main problems I experienced is getting a user experience as close as you can to that you are used to by writing through a blogging tool on your computer.
I blogged from my Nokia N95 a couple of times, mainly to publish to my blog a photo together with a comment. The overall experience has not that great, mainly due to the small screen and to the lack of a keyboard.
Now, with the iPhone, the number of options bloggers have to write and publish a blog post while on the go has really increased. The purpose of this post today is putting together a couple of solutions which make blogging from your iPhone a very easy activity.
Wordpress
This is a must-have for any blogger who run a blog on Wordpress (like me). They just released version 1.1 and it looks like very well designed and providing a user experience very close to the web version (even if with less features). You can also embed photos on your blog post and upload them to your blog, whether you have a self-hosted Wordpress blog or hosted by Wordpress.com.
The following video, provided by Automattic (the company behind Wordpress), offers an overview of the main functionalities.
As soon as I get a 3G iPhone, this is definitely going to be one of the first apps I will install.
BlogPress
Blogpress is a multi-platform blogging software for the iPhone, a great choice if you run multiple blogs on different platforms.
Currently the following blogging services are supported: Blogger, Wordpress, Movable Type, TypePad and MSN Live Space. You can easily upload your photos to Picasa Web Albums or to a self hosted BlogPress Public Album.
An interesting feature is the ability to post the same content at the same time to multiple blogs. In the screenshot below the author is publishing a photo to Blogger as well as to MSN Live Space.
BlogIt by SixApart
Unlike the applications above, BlogIt is a web applications that you can use from your iPhone’s Safari browser. It’s much more than a blogging tool which works for TypePad, MovableType, Vox, Blogger and LiveJournal, but it also lets you update your status on various social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Jaiku, Tumblr, Friendfeed and Pownce.
SixApart also announced a native blogging application for TypePad available for free on the App Store already, but it doesn’t seem to be as much complete and full-featured as BlogIt. Even if web based, I would definitely choose BlogIt over the native one.
Tumble
If you are a Tumblr user this is the application for you. Tumble is a native iPhone application which lets you easily post photos and text to your Tumblr blog. You can download it from here.
LifeCast
LifeCast is an iPhone blogging application for Blogger and Tumblr. The focus of this application is to help users to create a timeline of their life and post it to their blog. Unfortunately not many blogging platforms are available and some options, like the ability to post photos, are available for Tumblr only.
Here is a list of feature this application provides:
Create multiple LifeCast timelines : one for work, one for home, another for a special event or maybe a vacation tour.
Optionally connect each LifeCast with a blog. You can have a different blog set up for each LifeCast.
Enter text entries with a title and body text
Take a photo, or choose one from your library, and give it a title
Fix the location of any text or photo entry. View the locations of past entries using the Maps application.
Post your entries to your blog* Choose which entries to post and which to keep to yourself.
I find some of them very innovative, even if traditional bloggers will find this app a little bit confusing (at least, this was the first impression I had by watching their screenshots, even if I have’t tried it yet).
VirtueSoft Blogwriter
BlogWriter is a very clean and usable blogging application which supports Wordpress blogs as well as MSN Live Spaces. It’s not a free app, but the $3.99 they ask for doesn’t seem to be that much even if I bet no bloggers who run a Wordpress blog would never choose this over the native WP app for iPhone. The good thing is that a RSS reader is included, so that you can read your favorite news from within this app.
Shozu is definitely the most complete application in this list. It’s much more than a blogging editor, it actually provides users with a powerful posting and sharing tool to various blogging and social networks as well as photo sharing services like Flickr.
I’ve been using Shozu for a while on my Nokia phones and I have to say it really rocks. I also used it to post photos on my blog some time ago and it worked really well. These premises lead me to think that the iPhone version is even better and surely more usable.
The video below shows you ShoZu in action on the iPhone. Really cool.
Shozu for the iphone can be downloaded from this link.
CellSpin
CellSpin is another application that is much more than a blogging editor only. With CellSpin you can easily post various types of content (text, audio, video or photos) to different sites, blogs as well as social networks or photo sharing services. The number of available sites is impressive. For each of them, all types of content are admitted, except for those specifically designed for photo sharing.
The iPhone and iPod touch are just a very small subset of supported devices, whose list is really impressive. One of the differences with the other softwares is that CellSpin is rather a service than an app only. After you sign up, you also have other options to post your contents, such as SMS, MMS and email. CellSpin was also awarded with the Top Mobile Application 2008. The video below, taken during DEMO 2008, shows CellSpin at work:
Conclusion
Even if many of the applications listed above are designed for specific blogging platforms and only a few of them give users a wide set of options, I have to say that they still don’t provide all the features you are used to find in many desktop applications like MarsEdit or Ecto. In addition, the latest version of the Wordpress web based posting tool provides you with so many great features that, together with some plugins like Zemanta, makes that user experience definitely unbeatable.
All that said, if you are a eager blogger and don’t want to miss the opportunity to post to your blog while you are on the go, these applications are for you (and your iPhone). I look forward to trying the Wordpress app on the iphone, as soon as I get a new one (I have a 1st gen version, but had to give it to my wife because my SIM is for 3G phones only…).
Do you know other apps not listed here? Please leave them in the comment section.
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