Blogging from the BlackBerry
I've already written in detail about my BlackBerry and why I chose it over an iPhone, so I won't make anyone read that stuff again. That said, the one area that really, really makes me lament not having an iPhone is the third-party app market. Apple's App Store isn't perfect and has gone through some growing pains, but the interest in development for the iPhone was crazy nuts even before the SDK, now that it is official, a slew of the types of applications that I would want to use are available or being made available. For my purposes, comparing the types of innovative stuff being done on the iPhone with the crap available for BlackBerry makes me just sad.
Nothing has made me more sad than the total lack of a blogging application for the BlackBerry. Within two weeks of launching the App Store, both TypePad and WordPress. Meanwhile, I've spent like 4 and a half months trying to find a decent WordPress or other blogging app for BlackBerry, with no luck.
Thanks to the always wonderful Twitter, I was alerted to the fact that SixApart actually released a TypePad app for BlackBerry back in May. So close, yet so far (if it were 2003 and I were looking to migrate from LiveJournal to a hosted service, I would have probably gone to TypePad -- but it is 2008 and I want my own software installation -- I'm sticking with WordPress unless Expression Engine 2.0 blows me away or I decide to roll my own Django thing). Fortunately, I decided to try Google again for BlackBerry blogging apps. Although the BlackBerry market of good third-party software is woefully underdeveloped, I am excited to say I have discovered a workable MetaWeblog API solution.
The program is called BBMetaBlog and as best I can tell, it was developed as a blogging tool for the Lotus Note and Lotus Domino servers/platforms. As such, things like categories and tagging is all handled by a different application that is designed to run on Lotus Domino servers. However, because Domino/Notes uses the MetaWeblog API for its blogging engine, any XML-RPC capable platform, meaning WordPress, can take advantage.
Neato. There are a few caveats:
- Because this was developed to work with a pre-existing blog system, tags and categories don't work. I haven't messed around with it enough to find out if you create a default category if that will pass through or not. If it will, I might just make my default category "BlackBerry Mobile" or "Mobile Posts" to help keep things clean.
- While it appears as if you CAN edit past entries, those entries don't actually show up to be able to see them to edit.
Still, it's better than nothing.
To get this to work (and I'm running everything off of a BlackBerry 8320 running 4.2.2 (they haven't updated to 4.5 in the States yet, at least not at T-Mobile)), download the program using the OTA link above. Run the application and click on the "Configure" button. Enter in the username and password for you WordPress blog (or other MetaWeblog API blog software) and leave Location and Category at their defaults. On the line that says access URL, for WordPress users, enter in: http://www.yourblogdomain.com/xmlrpc.php -- other MetaWeblog API programs might have a slightly different syntax, so check with your software.
That's it.
Now you can create new posts and send them straight from your BlackBerry!
**Note about WordPress 2.6 and later**
If your first installation of WordPress was version 2.6 or later and you have never used a third-party blog client before, you need to enable Remote Blogging from the Settings --> Writing tab:
Just make sure you select XML-RPC.
If I knew anything about programming for BlackBerry, I'd try to take on this thing (since it is Open Source) and modify it to work better. Until then (or until a better option becomes available), this will suffice.
Originally published at www.ChristinaWarren.com. You can comment here or there.