Content
Blogging via the browser is a potentially powerful model. This post, for example, was entirely written and published using Flock, the content-oriented browser based on the Mozilla codebase.
Of course, the real value isn’t in using the browser as a stand-alone blog-post editor. If you’re online you may as well use your native blog editor. For instance, WordPress ships with an particularly capable editor, and it is hard to beat the blog software itself in terms of integration. (The client-side spell check sure is nice, though.)
No, the real value of integrating blog-publishing into the browser is to help foster “clip” blogging. I.e. making it easy to grab snippets from around the web and incorporate them into yourown content stream.
Many standalone services, from Google Notebook to eSnips to Net Snippets, etc., already offer clip blogging, but I suspect that mass adoption of the as-you-surf content collection model won’t take off until it is built in to the browser or the desktop itself.
And while I instinctively resist clients that are too rich and try to do too much, Flock is pretty damn good and it may just change my opinion about such things.
Speaking of editors, a perhaps more powerful blogging model would be to have exact replica of your site on your desktop/laptop/etc, and have it sync automatically whenever you are connected to the net. (This is the intended mode of operation for Houston; at least for the data backend.)
On a related note, when are people going to start supporting Atom Pub in addition to, or instead of, XML-RPC?
June 20th, 2006 at 9:05 am
One of the things I plan on building when I get some free time is an APP server for WordPress, something you can just put into your WP root directory next to xmlrpc.php. I’ve planned out most of it, but I just haven’t gotten around to writing the code yet…
June 20th, 2006 at 9:09 am
i tried out flock a while back, but i got hung up on not being able to access my tag library (previously categories in typepad, but now the ultimate tag warrior plugin in wordpress). have you heard anything more about them providing easy API -> API access for such advanced blogging features?
June 20th, 2006 at 9:15 am
Darren, that would be amazing. Someone certainly needs to step up to the plate at write Atom Pub support for WordPress. I don’t think it will be easy, but it is so worth doing.
I’ve heard getting patches into WP is difficult, though. Just watching the thread on developers trying to land Atom 1.0 support was painful.
June 20th, 2006 at 9:16 am
Sean, try the newly released beta. The one you must have tried before was a private-only build that was leaked. They never meant for it to hit the streets.
This one is solid however.
And as far as tags go, the Flock editor grabbed my list of categories and let me click and choose when posting. I couldn’t add a new one, but that may have been a shortcoming of XML-RPC, not flock.
June 20th, 2006 at 4:43 pm
hmm.. will do, thanks D
July 7th, 2006 at 4:08 pm
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July 11th, 2006 at 2:31 am
Nokia LifeBlog application can publish to any blog via Atom. I use it to post to my livejournal, works a treat, and is a great way to push phone camera pictures up to t’internet.