Saturday
24Oct2009
Shameless and plugging?
Saturday, October 24, 2009 at 11:45PM
I should start by saying that I am writing this entry on my iPod Touch on an application called iBlogger, which I spent a whopping $9.99 to own - with no free version for testing. That makes it a big leap of faith, of course, but blogging from the Touch, while traveling, is a lot like Birdhouse (the Twitter client) and I'm in love with it.
Write the article (this being the first) while offline, then upload when WiFi appears. That's a must for a vagabonder like me.
One criticism of iBlogger, which causes it to get only 3 stars in the iTunes App Store is that it doesn't support photo uploads. Yet, with the version I am using, it •does• support photo uploads.
That's a problem with the App Store and with podcast reviews (and something I have noticed about Amazon reviews as well) - people complain about an old version, then things change and the reviews don't go away.
I would love to see some kind of formula that takes into consideration: the number of posts, total days since first review and then drops a percentage of the oldest starred reviews, but keeps the text of the reviews.
That way, all the early complaints are still there, but do not count toward your application or podcast's overall star rating.
Surely I am not the first person to ask for this kind of rating formula?
While I am on the subject of travel, aside from the iPod Touch - which has been fantastic, even if the battery life is sometimes lacking - the other device I literally could not imagine living without is my Amazon Kindle.
The Kindle has every feature you could ever want in a device:
1. Long... and I mean multiple week long, even if I read every day... battery life.
If I turn WiFi off - which I do outside the US because Sprint doesn't exist - the battery just goes on and on and on.
2. A simple interface. People who have never used it are reading in a few minutes, with no instruction.
3. Thin and lightweight.
4. A super fast charge to full battery life.
5. Completely hackable! It's based on Linux and the source code is open. My Kindle now reads PDF files when I drag them into my /Documents folder.
The Kindle holds a shit ton of books, more than I will likely ever read on the device, and weighs less than one Lonely Planet Guidebook (which isn't available on the Kindle, for some stupid reason).
I want to do a whole podcast about this amazing Life Zero device. It's worth every inch of the praise it gets.
And, even more.
Write the article (this being the first) while offline, then upload when WiFi appears. That's a must for a vagabonder like me.
One criticism of iBlogger, which causes it to get only 3 stars in the iTunes App Store is that it doesn't support photo uploads. Yet, with the version I am using, it •does• support photo uploads.
That's a problem with the App Store and with podcast reviews (and something I have noticed about Amazon reviews as well) - people complain about an old version, then things change and the reviews don't go away.
I would love to see some kind of formula that takes into consideration: the number of posts, total days since first review and then drops a percentage of the oldest starred reviews, but keeps the text of the reviews.
That way, all the early complaints are still there, but do not count toward your application or podcast's overall star rating.
Surely I am not the first person to ask for this kind of rating formula?
While I am on the subject of travel, aside from the iPod Touch - which has been fantastic, even if the battery life is sometimes lacking - the other device I literally could not imagine living without is my Amazon Kindle.
The Kindle has every feature you could ever want in a device:
1. Long... and I mean multiple week long, even if I read every day... battery life.
If I turn WiFi off - which I do outside the US because Sprint doesn't exist - the battery just goes on and on and on.
2. A simple interface. People who have never used it are reading in a few minutes, with no instruction.
3. Thin and lightweight.
4. A super fast charge to full battery life.
5. Completely hackable! It's based on Linux and the source code is open. My Kindle now reads PDF files when I drag them into my /Documents folder.
The Kindle holds a shit ton of books, more than I will likely ever read on the device, and weighs less than one Lonely Planet Guidebook (which isn't available on the Kindle, for some stupid reason).
I want to do a whole podcast about this amazing Life Zero device. It's worth every inch of the praise it gets.
And, even more.
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