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iOS 5

Blogging from the iPad (Again)

This post will test my ability to post something from the iPad using Google Chrome. So far, so good. I can open a draft in Chrome and the UI looks pretty much as it does on my Mac. Let’s see if I can include a picture. (Sound of gears grinding).

Well, posting from within Chrome, and including a picture, is a bit of a pain. Would it be so hard to have a way to insert pictures from the photo library on the iPad? And no, there’s no way to cut and paste, at least not that I’ve found. Not into a Chrome window at least.

I guess Apple doesn’t like that idea. They probably don’t want a “full” file system in iOS. That’s what Mac OS X and Macs are for.

Anyway, on to other methods like Blogsy. I’ve tried this tool before with some success. I haven’t tried the latest version yet, so here goes.

After getting all my info set up in Blogsy I was able to get a picture from the photo library on the iPad uploaded to this site and inserted into this post. It’s the dragon pic above. Scary, right?

So far, it looks like Blogsy is the winner. The UI is a bit confusing and has a bit of a learning curve, but once you get the hang of it, it’s pretty easy to use. Not as easy as using Chrome on Mac OS X, but it may just be good enough for my purposes.

That is, unless I’m in a hurry to post something. Then, we may have a problem as thre steps are a bit time consuming. This is especially so if you’re looking for an image online to use in a post. You need to find it, save it to the photo library and if editing or resizing is necessary, use yet another iOS app to do the resize and crop, then bring it back into Blogsy to upload to your site for the post.

The resize/crop app I’m using at the moment is iResize, which seems to do the job pretty well. I guess you could always resize an image once you get it uploaded to your site but that’s not really the best way to go about it. Plus, cropping is out of the question if you do that. So, an additional resize/crop app seems like a must.

So, for the moment, it looks like Blogsy is the winner. I’m going to look into some other apps and workflows to see if I can improve my time to post and ease of use. Still, for normal blogging this setup works pretty well.

 

Obligatory “Best of 2011” Post

Even though I try to stop myself, I’m still a slave to some conventions. One such convention is the “Best Of” lists that invariably crop up at the end of the year.

Of course, I bowed to convention and did one. It was published over at The Flickcast. However, because I like to help and I like you, I’ve included it below as well.

No need to thank me.

As is the usual practice almost anywhere were column inches or post counts matter, writers such as myself take to their keyboards and make lists. I am no exception and, with a great deal of difficulty and toil, have managed to cobble together a list of what I think are some of the best things of 2011.

I don’t really want to bore you with a lot of explanations as to why I picked what I did. Suffice it to say these picks are mine and mine alone. Also, they are not in any particular order, mostly because I find it hard to rank them that closely. Or, I was just too lazy.

Either way, here you go.

Movies

Drive
The Artist
Attack the Block
X-Men: First Class
Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol
The Descendants
Thunder Soul
13 Assassins
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2
Hugo

TV

Game of Thrones
Fringe
Community
Homeland
Breaking Bad
Justified
Sons of Anarchy
Archer
Happy Endings
Boardwalk Empire

Games, Gadgets, Software, iOS Apps, etc.

Apple iPhone 4S
Apple iPad 2
Apple iOS 5
Wordpress
Final Draft
iA Writer
Batman: Arkham City
Cal of Duty: Modern Warfare 3
Saints Row: The Third
Forza Motorsport 4

Comics

Detective Comics Batman (DC)
Justice League (DC)
Green Lantern (DC)
Irredeemable (BOOM! Studios)
Daredevil (Marvel)
Criminal: Last of the Innocents (Icon / Marvel)