Re: [NTLK] nBlog: a viable mobile blogging option?

On Mon, 2008-12-29 at 21:39 +0100, Riccardo Mori wrote:
> Hi folks!
>
> On another forum a fellow member posted the following message. To try
> and help him, I told him I'd relay his message here. Any feedback is
> really appreciated. Thanks!
>
>
> * * * * * * BEGIN * * * * * *
>
> I'm in the market for a more portable blogging solution.
>
> For a few years now, I've been using my wireless-enabled Powerbooks (a
> 5300, 1400, and Lombard) or TRS-80 Model 100 & acoustic couplers to
> blog on the go, but as I'm "on the go" a lot more lately (and will be
> for the foreseeable future), I'm looking for something that's a little
> less ungainly - say, something that'll fit in my coat pocket.
>
> As I absolutely *abhor* cellphones and Blackberry-type devices, I
> figured a wifi-equipped PDA would be the way to go. Being a retro-
> minded guy, I almost immediately thought of the Newton, a little
> Google research introduced me to nBlog, which led me to this page (<http://myapplenewton.blogspot.com/2008/10/nblog.html
> >).
>
> Does anyone else here have any sort of experience using nBlog to
> update their blogs? Success or horror stories? I'd be looking to use
> it on a regular basis, but if it's going to be too much of a pain, I
> may just look into something else.

I have used nBlog to post to my Blogspot blog (see sig below, very
boring unless you are interested in restoring old cars). It works great.
One of the features I like best is its ability to update a post.

The way it works is that you write your blog text in a standard note.
When it's ready to post you click on an icon displayed at the bottom of
the screen. This assigns a magic number to that note which associates it
with that posting. If you decide to edit the blog text a subsequent
upload will replace the version on the server.

As an aside, last night I tried the blogging tool that comes with Gnome.
While it does a better job supporting fonts and links, it does not save
the text. Once a blog is posted the only way to change it is to logon to
the blog site and use the standard web-based editing tools. This is fine
for simple, write it and move on style blogging, but I am slow and need
to make revisions, so nBlog is better suited to my style. I also like
having the text of previous postings, which I keep in a special folder,
so that I can look back and review previous posts. Again, a matter of
style.

A few caveats about Blogger. When I started used nBlog my posts were
always "published" regardless of how I posted them. As you can tell, I
was never comfortable having a first version go live. Recently Blogger
added a security feature that requires you to enter the text displayed
as a squirrely looking graphic. Since nBlog does not do that, uploads
were treated as drafts. Not so bad for me except to release a finished
blog I had to visit my account with a web browser. I requested that this
be removed from my account, and after weeks of waiting it has been. So
once again, nBlog uploads go live immediately. The Blogger title field
is not supported. nBlog supplies a title in old school style. The text
is taken from the name of the note and formatted as a paragraph enclosed
in bold tags. It works, but its not quite right. File names are derived
from the opening text of the note and end up really long. Only a problem
mailing a link to a specific page, like this:

http://e9erust.blogspot.com/2008/03/its-not-full-of-holes-yesterday-i-made.html

The actual title of this port is "Its Not Full of Holes." Not all of my
posts suffer from this, so maybe I was doing something wrong or Blogger
fixed a bug.

Finally, it may make a difference which blog site your friend uses. I
would be willing to test a different site.

-- 
Gary Dunn, Honolulu
osp@aloha.com
http://openslate.net/
http://e9erust.blogspot.com/
Sent from Slate 1
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