I seem to have been very busy recently doing, well, a wide variety of things, mainly un-related to motorcycling. Sure, I have been travelling a little, but without a motorbike. I have been helping one of my sons move into a flat and helping another with his ideas for starting a bicycle business. I have been writing my book again and my third son has been helping me with creating the maps for that. My brother and his wife have been over to see us from Switzerland, so there have been some family get-togethers. I have recently booked two motorcycle trips for next year, one predictable and the other not (which will be the subject of a separate post).
Jackie and I were meant to go to Germany to meet up with some previous work colleagues, but that had to be cancelled due to a death in my family – an Aunt that I was quite close to.
I had put off looking at and dealing with a substantial amount of paperwork and I just had to tackle it. Boring, essential, but way too time-consuming for me.
All of these things has meant I have been neglecting my own and others’ blogs recently, but I intend to begin to put that right, starting now.
I would like to ask for some advice please. Does anyone out there reading this use an iPad for their blogging?
Due to no longer wanting to carry a laptop with me on my bike trips, I have recently succumbed to the delights (jury is still out on that one) of an iPad and I am testing how to use it for my blog posts when on the road. I can see how to do most of this, but I am struggling with one aspect and it is that I want some advice on. I use Blogger and I am not going to change from that – it works for me and I follow the adage ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. The trouble is when adding pictures to a blog post, you have to specify the location of the picture file on your computer and well, as far as I can see, you cannot do that on an iPad. So, I have looked at the other way of adding a photo to your post and that is by linking to a picture already on the web. I have never used this method, but it looks as if I will need to do so. I believe I will need to upload my photos first to something like Flickr and then link to them there.
Okay, here is the advice part....
Have I got it right about uploading to something like Flickr and then linking to the photo on there?
If I have, is Flickr the best system to use, or do my wise readers have a better solution? Any help will be greatly appreciated.
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23 comments:
Gary:
firstly, welcome back. I don't use an iPad as I would like to do video editing and perhaps photo editing whilst on the road. also there is the matter of transfering all those gigabits to my external hard drive. I'm not so sure that an iPad can do what I need it to do. The only person that I know that uses and Ipad for posting is Mr Conchscooter.
I'm not sure whether Flickr is the best or not. I have a dormant Flickr account as well as well as a dormant Photobucket account but I used webshots the most as I like the idea I can resize the photo to display on the blog. Photobucket only displays the full size you have uploaded so I only use it for panoramas.
I hope you get your iPad to work as I would like to get one if it does what I need it to do.
sorry to hear about your Aunt, hang in there
bob
Riding the Wet Coast
Gary, see if this article helps. It talks about using images from your iPad at least....
As for photos, I'm a confirmed user of SmugMug...yes you have to pay but you have unlimited space and multiple levels of membership to choose from. Plus it's owned and run by a rider.
Gary,
I don't use Blogger but I do post to squarespace from an iPad and iPhone. I do have to copy and paste the link from my photo service, I use photobucket but flickr works the same. You can check out my blog when you get bored at www.bkrnrd.squarespace.com
Gary, my condolences on your Aunt.
As to the IPAD, I know nothing of it, sorry. I recently tried out a MacBook Pro from work and it had a beautiful display and performance, but am back to my Windoze laptop. You'll definitely need to host your pics online and link to them if you just have the ipad. The transfer of the photos and such to the "cloud" though, I am unsure how the IPAD would facilitate that.
Hope you find the answers you want...
dom
Redleg's Rides
Colorado Motorcycle Travel Examiner
I use an iPad but not for blogging, I do use flickr and like it. I'll be interested in seeing what responses you get.
cant say personally. my tio (who lives and swears by apple...) loves his ipad but says its not good for writing/emailing/blogging so i havent made the switch. i have dormant photobucket and flickr accts, and find the webshots and smugmug info noted worth look into. im curious to hear how this goes for you!
sorry about your aunt gary.
My condolences on your Aunt. I hope the family was able to get together and celebrate her.
I don't have an iPad, so am not sure of the ease of use with imagery. I use Flickr for posting. But I can see the downside if you don't want to pay for an account. A free account will only hold 200 images. I know people have been successful with webshots and SmugMug, but I haven't used them.
Good luck with the IPAD thingy, I have the first one, and only read books onit! Still handy on the bike though, but havernt worked out how to blog with it. Let us know once you got it nailed, then i wont have to bother working it our for myself. Thnaks in advance, Rog.
My condolences to the loss in your family.
Welcome back to the blogger community and thanks for taking the time to visit and comment my patter.
I am looking forward to learning more about your upcoming two-wheeled trips.
Gary, I did not really figure out the best way yet to blog with the iPad using blogger, but one way that does at least work a little bit is an app called BlogPress. It is not perfect, but it works, and you can upload photos right from your iPad. Give it a try, maybe it works for you.
I would probably ratzer go with Picasa Web Albums and an App called Web Albums than with Flickr, or just wait a few days and use the new Apple Online services.
Roland (Sonja's Hubby)
I do use an iPad with Blogger but use Photobucket for the images. There is a separate Photobucket app to upload the pictures. I also tried the Blogger app which allows you to upload pictures after you've imported them into the photo library. The Blogger app works and allows you to compose offline then upload everything once you're back on the Internet.
But I generally just use Safari with the normal web interface after uploading the pictures to Photobucket. I haven't tried Flicker so no advice there.
I must admit that after getting a MacBook Air, I rarely use the iPad anymore since they weigh roughly the same and the MacBook has much more flexibility.
Gary:
Like most of the posters I have been looking at the iPad (or a variant) as a travel computer. And like most of them I have more questions than answers. But I think RichardM may be on to something. While significantly more expensive than an iPad, the MacBook Air is a really tempting alternative.
Great post - I always enjoy those that get some good discussion going.
Dear Gary:
Please accept my condolences on your recent loss. I sincerely hope the memories of your Aunt will help bridge the void of her passing...
The options provded by an iPad are forever increasing as these units get more and more sophisticated. However, I am more than willing to be slightly inconvenienced by draging around the much heavier and far more expensive MacBook Pro. When I want or need my stuff, I really want all of it.
Fondest regards,
Jack/reep
Twisted Roads
I too have an iPad and use it for commenting on blogs and reading them, but haven't tried to post or load pictures for a new post.
I did try to edit a post and it wouldn't let me type in to edit the error I'd found. I had to go tot the iMac for that. Was a pain in the buttocks.
@Trobairitz:
Hmmm, I use Safari on my iPad and phone to edit Blogger posts all the time. The initial discovery was two finger scrolling within the text box. Another option is that once the post is written, the Blogger or BlogPress app will synch the content making it easy to make changes. The challenge with any of these solutions is if you want to change the size of the pictures, move it to one side or another to put the text next to the picture or add a caption.
Gary,
May your aunt's memory be a blessing.
Good luck sorting all this out. It is making my head swim just reading about it.
Bob – Thanks for the welcome back. I totally agree with you about wanting to do video and photo editing on the road and it was exactly that reason that I didn’t get an iPad earlier. However, I learned (thanks to Brick) that you can now do full photo editing using an App called Photo Forge 2, which has all the editing options I need.
I also worried that transferring all those gigabits to an external hard drive might be a problem and I also learned about ‘Dropbox’ which allows you to save all you files while on the road to a simple web-based file storage system. So, instead of saving to an external drive, simply upload them and collect and save them onto your external drive later when you get home.
I realised that as I already had a Blogger account then I also had a Picasa account as well, so I tried that. You will see in a later post, I discovered I could upload my photos directly from the iPad into Blogger, without the use a 3rd party photo uploading site, so I dropped that idea.
Donna – Did you mean to include a link or something about an article...? I will take a look at Smug Mug.
BKRNRD – I have found a way to post from my iPad into Blogger, but it doesn’t work well. I took a look at your blog and it seems we have both been to many of the same places! I tried to work out how I can “Follow” your blog, but couldn’t see how to do that.
Charlie6 / Dom – I have managed to get a post done on the iPad. I managed to do that without hosting my pics online and just uploaded them to Blogger straight from my iPad. It wasn’t easy though – see my post on the subject!
Rhonda – Plenty of responses for you to read. I might still get a Flickr account, but for now, I seem to have managed to do a post from my iPad without needing it.
mq01 – I am not yet in love with my iPad, as we are still just friends and getting to know each other! I am not surprised that tio says it is not good for writing (no proper Word-type Apps included when you purchase it) and while Blogging is possible, it is not at all easy. E-mailing however is really easy. I too will be looking at the different photo uploading sites people have kindly mentioned.
BeemerGirl – Yes, the family did all get together and celebrate her life, thanks. I will be looking into each of the sites mentioned to see which one I like the best, but I did find a way of uploading my photos directly into Blogger, so maybe I won’t need a separate 3rd party photo site.
Raftnn – As you will have seen by now, I have worked out how to do it. I mainly bought an iPad for when I am on the road doing bike trips and so I was keen to find a solution to Blogging using the iPad. While I did find a solution, it was a bit messy, so I might wait until (if) an iPad App for Blogger is released.
Sonja – Thank you. I loved reading about your and Roland’s trip to many of the places I saw, such as Death Valley, Monument Valley, Bryce, the Grand Canyon – what a trip you are having! I will be doing a post soon about for forthcoming bike trips, so you will have to wait until then!
Roland – I too have struggled with finding a good way, but you will see from my latest post, that I did find how to post to Blogger from an iPad. It was not at all easy. I will take a longer look at BlogPress, but from the quick peek I just had, it does seem to support Blogger and it the video makes it look really simple to use. I will give it a try and do a post about how I got on with it. Thanks!
Richard – There is a lot of good information in your comment and what is really interesting is you seem to have had much better success than me when using Blogger on your iPad. I found the Blogger App really difficult to use and somewhat clumsy. I couldn’t move my pictures to where I wanted to in the post and composing was not at all easy. I now wonder if I was doing it right, or even if we were using the same app. I was using the main Blogger app for iPhone – you too?
When using Blogger via Safari, I couldn’t link to pictures in an online photo album and that feature was ghosted out. I was trying to link to Picasa, so I don’t know why it didn’t work, but a quick scan of the internet told me I wasn’t alone with this problem.
Good point about the MacBook Air.
Canajun – As much as I hate to admit it, I think Richard may have been right with his MacBook Air suggestion....
Jack – Thank you for your kind words. Yes, I agree with you that being slightly inconvenienced by taking a laptop is okay, except next year, I am going to ride my red custom bike to Portugal and having no panniers, rack or any other storage, I am going to have to strap a small bag to the handlebars and get everything I need for an almost two week trip in there. A laptop plus hefty power charger will just be too big! I am hoping the sophistication you talk of has advanced enough for me to be able to do what I need on the iPad by the time of that trip.
Trobairitz – I too had some trouble, but not as bad as you did. It really should be a simple matter to edit a previous post, but if you can’t then something is very wrong with the software!
Richard – It took me a while to discover how to do two-fingered scrolling, but once that was mastered things became a lot easier. I agree about sync’ing the content. I needed to do that after using the Blogger app and Blogger via Safari and was pleased to see they could both be used to work on the same post. I did work out how to change the size of the photos and move them to a different position, by using only html code, but that was a real pain!
Circle Blue – It was hurting my head too, especially when I actually tried to create the blog post from my iPad – Read my latest post about Blogging from an iPad and you will see what I mean!
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