The iPhone is a powerful handheld computer. (Yes, it can also make a phone call but who does that anymore?) So the logical test for me was blogging with it. Here is my workflow …

My blog posts are nearly always accompanied by a photo, image, or graphic. The layout is mostly standard with the image on the right near the top and the text flowing around it.

My blog is running WordPress software. I’ve installed the Postie plugin which adds extensive “blog by email” support. I’ve configured WordPress’s “media” settings to create small, medium, and large thumbnails. I have configured Postie to use the medium sized thumbnail and to add the necessary markup to position the image and to link to the original.

What was left was to find a solution to “decorate” the images. On my desktop computer, I use Windows Live Writer. It has build-in features to add drop shadow, borders, etc. I also have GIMP for more extensive editing. On the iPhone I’ve installed a few different apps. The most technical of these is PerfectPhoto which gives me most of the color/light editing functions of GIMP. For taking pictures and handling some predefined edits, I like Camera+. (Before you ask, I did snag Camera+ before Apple pulled it from the app store – Google for the controversy.) The ColorSplash app is for that “colored b&w” effect and Photo Finish is for adding borders and edges (I don’t like the look of a plain photo for my blog). I wish Photo Finish supported native resolution but it always rescales to match its fixed frames. (It looks like a 1.0 release and the developer has moved on.) For blogging “on the go”, I can live with it.

To blog, I just compose an email. It’s a bit backwards actually. The iPhone does not let you add a photo to an email. Rather, you email a photo – from the camera roll – and add text to it.

This post is an example of the above process and tools. Oh. Before you send you email to get posted, make sure to delete your ‘sig’ at the bottom. There’s probably no need to post you contact info

For some, blogging is a cake walk; perhaps, even an obsession. For me it is work – work I enjoy, but work all the same. So, there are a number of topics I need to catch up on and cover … and for which I already have the pictures. I just need to write it all down and post. That is not that post, but here is a small “taste” of what is to come …

UPDATE: In a prior post I mentioned this blog uses WordPress with the WPTouch plugin for great mobile device support (iPhone & Touch, Blackberry, Android, etc.) and the WP-Hashcash anti-spam plugin.

Things were not as "plug-and-play" as I would like. Well, with the 1.9.7.7 update to WPTouch, life is much happier.

Now, if you simply turn off AJAX comments in WPTouch, everything plays well together. No code changes required !

Thanks BraveNewCode ! … look for a little something in your beer fund

I’ve become one of those "smoker bigots" – you know the kind … they quit smoking and *THEN* start preaching all the bad things that smoking does. My conversion was not that I was a smoker; it was the "mobile browser".

I am blogger and user of the web but until about 6 months ago I was mostly on my computer. I now read blogs, feeds, news, and more using my iPod and/or my Blackberry. I use if for Facebook, the weather, Twitter (a little), and most of my personal email. I realized my blog was not as friendly to these mobile devices as it could / should / and eventually would be.

So, I set about to add support for mobile devices and mobile users. It was easy for my blog since it uses WordPress and there is the WPTouch plug-in that makes it nearly automatic. It added support for the devcies I use most often and I even added support for the Androids of the world. (If you have a mobile device and it is not working with my blog, add a comment and I’ll do my best).

So, now I grumble whenever I hit a website that *does not* have special support for mobile devices. I realize I am being zealous but that has not stopped me from small internal unseen spurts of frustration. Oh well. I guess I could seek counseling.

Blogging, tweets, Facebook walls …. it can all be too much. For me it can all be too redundant. Like Ramírez said, "in the end, there can be only one".

I’ve been running a bit of a social experiment on myself over the past few weeks. anyone who reads this blog has noticed I have not been as prolific as I usually strive to be. It is partly because I’ve been in an experiment on Facebook. All that is wrapping up now. I have decided I can’t be master/mistress to two slaves …. wait, strike that and reverse it.

My preferred outlet is blogging. I like the longer for it promotes and I like the combining of words and pictures. However, blogging as more of a "broadcast" and Facebook allows me to listen to others. So, I have gathered so twine, bailing wire, and glue. I will blog for most of my content and "listen" and comment over on Facebook. I hope this keeps most of my efforts singular. time will tell.

… and for the record, I once again spent way too much time creating the artwork for this post.