If you are a blogger who is on-the-go and do not have access or time for blogging from a PC, this post is for you. I have provided links to some handy applications that will help you blog from your iPhone or BlackBerry. These tools are great for blogging from anywhere, especially since these handheld devices are becoming so popular.

iPhone:

• BlogPress – This application comes with a rich-text WYSIWYG editor, multiple image support, YouTube integration, landscape editing mode, and WordPress/Blogger support.
• Kyte – Enables you to record video and post it directly to the web with ease, and also will allow you to do the same with images as well. This application is a great for a photo or video blogger!
• RSSPush – If you receive your blog posts by RSS, this is a great application to organize your feeds by keyword categorization.

BlackBerry:

• BBMetaBlog – Great WYSIWYG application that allows HTML support to help modify your blog post’s appearance.
• WordPress junkie? This application is for you, especially since it has comment and Gravatar support.
• ShoZu – Keep up to date with your social media and blogging platforms with this handy notification tool.

Please feel free to leave any feedback regarding any of these apps, or if you have an app that you would like to share the benefits your blogging, please feel free to share it and I will add it to the list. I do hope these apps help you blog on-the-go.

a

There are many applications out there that help you update your social networking statuses all in one place (such as TweetDeck, etc.), but there are some disadvantages of updating your Twitter and Facebook simultaneously so that they mirror one another. I have provided these reasons below:

1. Relevance – When you update your status on both services, the events and people that you specify in your status may not be relevant and pertain to the users on one social network, but not to the other.
2. Twitter Jargon – When updating your status on Twitter, your friends on Facebook may not understand the different terms that are native to Twitter’s jargon, such as hash-tags (e.g. #blogging) and @ symbol user tagging.
3. Repetition – With people knowing that you update your status on both social networks, it may detract friends from visiting your account on either network. This is why it is key to have some variety in your statuses on both networks, even if you paraphrase one status differently than the other.

If you are an on-the-go type person, syncing both statuses to the mentioned social networks may be the only way to update your friends about your happenings; however, I am sure there are users out there that would agree with the above premises.

Happy Blogging!

a

In the blogopshere, there are many different platforms for blogging software, along with different places online to blog. One of these popular places to blog is Blogger.com — a free, easy to use, and flexible blogging site.

Many people think that with a free blogging service, you cannot make its design unique and outgoing enough as the paid blogging sites/platforms. For those that think that… it’s not true! You can make your free Blogger.com site look as professional and artistic as other blogs. With this in mind, I would like to bring your attention to a site called BloggerThemes.

This theme site’s categories include:

• Art
• Fashion
• For Kids
• Tech

…and many more!

The theme download files from BloggerThemes are completely free, and are easy to integrate onto your Blogger.com account.

Please feel free to leave any feedback regarding this theme site in our comment section. We would love to read how these themes have worked for you and your blog!

Happy Blogging!

a

As many of us know, Twitter is a great way to publicize blog posts. With this in mind, an efficient and convenient way to help spread word about your blog posts via this medium is by installing a service called TweetMeme. This is a site which acts like a social bookmarking niche for Twitter, but instead of the voting system, sites gain popularity by the method of retweeting.

TweetMeme is completely free, and can be added to your blog posts, so that you and/or other readers of your blog can retweet the subject and URL with just one click. With this service, you can see how many retweets the specific blog post has, along with other Twitter users that have retweeted it. As you can see, I have just added the service to this blog.

To install TweetMeme on your blog, I have provided a link to a quick tutorial from the W3CGallery Blog. WordPress users can add this as a plugin to their blog via the WordPress Plugin Directory and enabling it in the Plugins section of the admin panel.

This is a viral (and addictive) way of getting your blog (and blog posts) noticed on Twitter and the blogosphere!

Happy Blogging!

a

If you are active on the social networking microblogging site of Twitter, you may have noticed some #wordlesswednesday tags in your feed, along with links to the user’s blog. This is the start of the trend of Wordless Wednesday like the other very popular trend of #followfriday.

What is the point of Wordless Wednesday? Twitter users that are also bloggers take a content-rich picture and then post it on their blog, not specifying any description or caption, but leaving the picture to tell the story in substitute of the description. This new concept from bloggers gives the phrase of “a picture is worth a thousand words” a lot of emphasis.

Want to see examples of what other users are doing for #wordlesswednesday? Check out Twitter search. These search results are also a great way to get inspirational ideas for your blog’s participation in this growing trend.

Wordless Wednesday is a great way to help publicize your blog via Twitter, and also to gain comments from people regarding the picture that you have posted. Feel inspired? Go ahead and join in, and remember to include the hashtag of #wordlesswednesday in your tweet.

Happy Blogging!

a

All of us know that blogging is a great way to express how we feel about a certain issue; however, if you do go overboard, there can be repercussions that can happen due to the posts being so visible on the web. I have provided below two stories of repercussions that have happened to individuals because of this:

Nina Yoder:
Nina Yoder is a Nursing student at the University of Louisville. She maintains a blog on her MySpace account with content such as health and pop culture. Nina just recently published a blog post relating to some other people with relationship to a health study. After this blog post had been published, the university found out about this post and had expelled Yoder from the school.

The school’s reasoning for her expulsion was because it interfered and violated the University of Louisville’s honor code. With this premise, Yoder has arranged to take legal action against the school for her to resume her class work.

(Source: WLKY)

Amanda Bonnen:
The social network microblogging service of Twitter allows you to express what you are doing and/or how you feel about a certain topic in 140 characters or less. Back in May, Chicago resident Amanda Bonnen tweeted about her experience that she had with a local real estate firm.

Popularity of Bonnen’s Tweet grew and eventually was made aware to the real estate company that her complaining was referring to. Upon the real estate’s notification of the tweet, Bonnen had a law suit filed against her due to the nature of her tweet, along with her Twitter account removed.

Other iEntry Network site WebProNews asked local tweeters about their response this issue, and I have provided this video below:

More WebProNews Videos

(Source: WebProNews)

What are your takes on the Yoder and Bonnen stories? Who is in the wrong, and can blogging go too far?

a

This past weekend, the annual women’s conference for blogging called BlogHer was held in the windy city of Chicago, IL. This is a conference where women bloggers from around the globe meet once a year to interact with one another, listen to various keynote speakers, and to learn about new blogging techniques and strategies.

Some of the speakers that attended and lectured at this year’s conference were: A. L. Venable (from DimpleAndaSmirk.com), Alana Reynolds (from LetterB.com), Angela Tseng (from MommyBytes.com), Anne Collier (from NetFamilyNews.org), and many other talented presenters!

If you were unable to make this year’s BlogHer conference, next year’s event has already been organized. I have provided the details below if you are interested:

What: BlogHer ‘10
Where: The Hilton Hotel of New York, NY.
Price: Varies. Rates can be found on BlogHer’s EvenBrite Site.

If there are any bloggers here from the PureBlogging community who attended this year’s conference, please feel free to leave any feedback from how it went, how it was presented, and will you go back next year? Also, if there is anyone out there that has never been to a BlogHer conference and is interested for next year, please make yourself known.

Happy Blogging!

a

If you have not heard about it recently on Twitter, SquareSpace is a new trend with blogging technology.

Not too long ago, SquareSpace gained publicity by giving an away an iPhone for 30 days. Past this point, the site has continued to draw in bloggers and website creaters alike to this new technology.

SquareSpace is a fully hosted and managed WYSIWYG design environment for creating and developing a website. All of the arranging of the site’s design can be done just by clicks of your mouse–no coding, and no hiring any over-priced web designers. Some examples of some websites from this service can be found here.

What do you think about SquareSpace? If there is anyone out there currently using this as their blog platform, please feel free to leave your feedback.

a

Seeing one persons, or one organizations perspective on a subject all the time isn’t really a healthy way to get information.  This is when bias ideas form, and is unhealthy for a community.  This is something that we over look on blogs.  Most of the time, a blog is written by one person, and they are expressing their views and ideas.  Sometimes, it is a good thing to mix up the routine of your blog.  You can do this in multiple ways.

1. Guest Bloggers

Guest bloggers are really a good idea.  Having someone blogging an article a month or something similar can really benefit your blog.  The readers get diversity in views and even styles of writing.   Your guest blogger can come from many different sources.  Maybe a different friend each month, or user submitted stories to your blog.

2. Group Blogging

This is something that seems to be occurring in the professional world.  This is very similar to journalism, but is more personal.  Sites such as WebProNews and Mashable use a similar style.

3. Partnering with Another Blog

This is a combination of Group Blogging and Guest Bloggers, the concept is that you “trade” stories with another blog that has very similar content.  You create an article for them, and vise versa.  Not only does this add diversity to your blog, but it also allows your article to be viewed by people who may never have visited your own blog.

The diversity that these suggestions provide, could even draw in more viewer who wouldn’t have looked at your blog if you were the only writer on it.  It also helps your blog not grow stale to the readers, and expands the content.  Some of the suggestions even give you the benefit of taking a little time off, which is a personal gain.

a

While recently watching the show Diggnation, one of the hosts, Kevin Rose, stated that he has been thinking about redirecting his personal blog to his Twitter page.  At this point the other host on the show, Alex, told Kevin he didn’t think the idea was a good one.  Alex further explained that Kevin would loose money from the ads which his personal site contains.  The debate brought up a good debate, should you give up blogging for Tweeting?

There are some advantages that blogging has over tweeting.  As pointed out by Alex in the debate, there is ad revenue.  If your ad revenue is covering the price of your hosting and domain renewal, you aren’t really loosing any money, and any extra you are actually making a profit.  So in this case, blogging would be a benefit.  Another benefit of blogging is you are not limited by the length of your post.  The 140 character limit on Twitter, really limits what you can express in that amount of characters.  If your blog is like PureBlogging, most ideas can not be expressed in 140 characters.

On the other hand, Twitter does have it’s advantages.  With Twitter you don’t have overhead cost of hosting and domain renewal.  You also don’t have the responsibility to update your blogging software when ever it is updated.  This itself can be a huge benefit if updating your blogging software can be a headache.  You can express ideas that you can’t really create blog out of, is another advantage.

So as you see, blogging and tweeting has it’s advantages and disadvantages.  Each person should access what they think is best for them, but I encourage you to use both.  Use your Twitter account to tell people when you updated your blog, and to give more personal information to your followers, like what you think about the restaurant you just ate at.  Keep your blog to express more insightful information.  One person that has really done well combining the two is Infinity Ward’s (Developers of Call of Duty 4) community manager Robert Bowling aka FourZeroTwo.  His blog is used to keep Infinity Ward’s community up to date with the latest news, while his Twitter account will give small but more personal updates.

a