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Why do I blog so much more here compared with other blogs? Simple: It’s much more convenient as the WordPress mobile tools are superior.

Take the respective platform’s iPhone support as an example: All three blogging platforms offer iPhone apps. But only the WordPress app allows editing of published posts, comment moderation, and the creation or editing of static pages.

Typepad, only offers post creation as does the iPhone Livejournal app. I find that I often wish to amend or add to published posts. I’ve also discovered that on mobile phones it’s easier to hit ‘publish’ by mistake. Or, to be unsure if a post has published successfully due to the vagaries of mobile phone networks. In both situations, being able to edit published posts overcomes the issue. On any important blog I find that lack of ability to edit published posts unacceptable as it leads to error-ridden mobile blog posts staying live until I am back near a PC and able to fix them.

WordPress also has richer post creation options: It has full support for category selection and tags; draft posts can be stored online as well as locally. Storing a draft on the phone enables offline support, and allows the quick storage of posts with large photo attachments, that can be later published when there’s a fast 3G connection or WiFi available. Typepad only has limited local draft support and doesn’t work with the categories in my experience.

On other platforms, WordPress also seems better supported. I’ve found a competent, although unofficial, app for Android in wpToGo, but nothing good for the others.

WordPress:

Typepad:

Livejournal:

This is a big improvement. Thank you WordPress.

My old work blog at JupiterResearch is about to die. I’m wondering whether to publish the archive of old entries on this site? Or elsewhere? Or just let them pass away?

Thoughts?

Note – the new work blog is here on the Forrester website. It has some recent JupiterResearch entries from the last few months (only).

Back from two weeks on leave from the office. I had a pile of books I wanted to read, websites to build, blog posts to write. But family and friends filled the time almost completely. This is not a particular bad thing, but!

I’ve spent much of today musing about the trade-offs we make to save us time. I’m hosting this blog on wordpress.com rather than self-hosting. Why? I’m choosing to focus on writing rather than keeping the server patched and up to date. I’m ceding some control over look/feel for example, in return for time saving. Blog software and other content management tools do the same, why self-host WordPress rather than building the site from scratch in PHP, Rails or Drupal or whatever? It’s quicker.

Elsewhere, I’ve been using Mac OS more and more. Why? Because I spend less time patching it with software updates, fixing things that break, and it starts up, shuts down, and goes in and out of sleep fast. The downside is that there’s less software available for it and much less legal hardware I can run it on. Sure I could grab a MSI netbook and put OS X on it, but to my mind that defeats the point. If I want to spend time tinkering I may as well run Linux on my main machine.

This applies right across many areas. Why do people buy music on iTunes? It’s not cheap compared to retailed CDs now. The music is lower quality and most has DRM that restricts what devices can play it back. However, iTunes is quick and easy to use. It’s faster than visiting a shop or waiting for a CD to arrive from Amazon. People trade off sound quality and freedom for speed and save time.

Why do people write so much about other trade-offs — money/quality/size/weight/battery/features — but not time?

Just wrote this on the about page:

One last thing. I’m bored with long and woolly writing on many blogs. Print has hard limits. So should online writing. Therefore, I’m going to keep to a word count for posts: 300 words should be ample.

Now I’m writing, I can’t see any way in wordpress to check the number of words in a post. There isn’t in the movable type version I use at work either, or on livejournal. Can’t recall about blogger, vox etc. Will have to investigate the Mac, Windows and PC posting apps. No wonder so much blog writing is flabby.

As people may have noticed, my blogging here has become lighter since I re-joined twitter. I hope to change that over the next couple of weeks and write more here.
But, there is one great reason to join twitter and follow me there: Jupiter doesn’t have comments enabled on our weblogs (long story involving spam and other things).
However, we always like feedback, either direct to us via email, or if you prefer discussions in the open, and wish to comment on my posts please use twitter or your own weblog.
Reminder, I’m here on twitter:
http://twitter.com/ianfogg42

Decided to try twitter again. Follow me here.