Blogging apps for iPhone

Ever since the iPhone first appeared, its potential as a mobile blogging tool was readily apparent. Bloggers on the go would be able to tap out short, informative posts from wherever they happened to be, maybe even using the phone's built-in camera to post mobile pictures as well.

Of course, there was just one roadblock to this paradise of phone-based blogging: the iPhone unveiled in 2007 didn't come with any software to support such a thing. That had to wait until Apple released its iPhone SDK and flung open the doors of its App Store to third parties. But now that those two things happened over the summer, bloggers-on-the-go have several choices for making sure that a weblog update is never more than a few taps away.

But which of those choices is the best option for the iPhone-toting blogging set? To find out, I downloaded three of the App Store's more popular options--TypePad, WordPress, and iBlogger--and put each one through their paces.

TypePad

The TypePad iPhone blogging app--also named TypePad--only works with TypePad blogs. If you are unfamiliar with TypePad, it's a product of Six Apart, the makers of the Movable Type blogging software. Think of TypePad as basically a paid, hosted version of Movable Type aimed at pro-bloggers who want to use Movable Type but aren't interested in hosting it themselves.

As soon as you launch TypePad on your iPhone and log into your TypePad account, you'll see three options: Create a Post, Take a Photo, and Add a Photo. (Note that the app only works with one TypePad account at a time, but you can post to all blogs and photo galleries that are associated with that account.) Tapping on Create a Post takes you to the post creation screen where you can add categories (existing categories are retrieved from your TypePad blog), add a photo (either an existing image from your Photo Library or one you shoot with the iPhone's camera), and write the text of the post. Text entry is pretty barebones: if you want to add a link, or format text you have to hand type in HTML code.

Take a Photo is a great option when you want to snap a quick pic with your iPhone's camera and post it to your blog. (Since the iPod touch doesn't feature a built-in camera, touch users won't be able to take advantage of this command.) Tapping that option takes you right into the camera app; take a picture and it's immediately inserted into TypePad's posting screen. Add a title and a category (if you want), and you're ready to post the picture right to your blog.

As of this writing, there appears to be a bug in which pictures inserted into posts are slightly cropped. This behavior isn't limited to TypePad, however; the same thing happened to me when I used iBlogger. (It did not happen with WordPress). Given that this bug exists in two completely different apps, I'm ready to lay the blame at the feet of the iPhone software, not the apps themselves. Still, that doesn't make the cropping any less annoying.

On the bright side, TypePad inserts pictures in such as way that they are displayed at the largest size that your blog settings allow. The pictures are nice and big on your blog, so everyone can appreciate that photo of what you had for lunch.

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