Blogsy… $5 – Yes? or No?

Since I am a newbie – I'm always looking for ideas and such in other people's blogs. I have to admit, I am loving seeing all of the different rhymes and reasons for people to blog/vlog! It is so interesting. One of my most recent idea hunts led me to the “THE BEST blogging application for the iPad” – so says iAppsForTeachers.

After doing some research and reading other people's reviews I decided to go ahead and spend the $4.99 and give this app a try. Apparently you can link it to all of your social media sites and just swipe your pictures and videos right into your blog. So this is a test blog of sorts…just getting the feel of the app to see if it is worth the $5!

I can make things bold and italicized and even underline and strikethrough.

I can format from the left.

Or the right.

Or center my text.

In fact if I have enough blah blah to say I can even justify my text. And I typically do have enough to say. I like to talk. I am one of those literal Chatty Cathy's – although I just go by Cat – because Cathy is my Mama's name. Anyway… I suppose you get the idea. šŸ˜‰

  • I could do bullet points if I wanted
  • See. šŸ™‚
  1. Or I can number things
  2. if I
  3. wanted to.

I can put things in quote. Although it doesn't look any different to me here – maybe it will when I publish my post.

There is a button I can click to add a “more” link.

All kinds of formatting like:

Paragraph

Address
Preformatted

Heading 1

All the way to Heading 6

I can change the font family. There are several more to choose from than I expected. The only thing is with the formatting on my WordPress Blog – I'm not sure which of them will actually come through…suppose we'll see!:)

  • Andale Mono
  • Arial
  • Arial Black
  • Book Antiqua
  • Comic Sans MS
  • Courier New
  • Georgia (my fave I think)
  • Helvetica
  • Impact
  • Symbol (I expected crazy characters from this one.)
  • Tahoma
  • Terminal
  • Times New Roman
  • Trebuchet MS
  • Verdana
  • Wingdings (I expected crazy characters from this one, too.)

And the font size can go from 8 pt to 36 pt.

You can choose from several colorsyou know the basic color spectrum that you can choose from.

You can also highlight your background in different colors.

Now all of that is pretty standard although the controls are easy to control – way easier than trying to log in to WordPress on my iPad browser. But now for the real test. My media…

If it works I am going to “swipe” in a little video I took the other night via Instagram (which I must say I am super excited that I can now do little 15 minute videos on Instagram!). Anyway – I was showing my little man some lightning behind a cloud just before a little Texas rain. It was pretty because the lightening seemed to be behind just one set of clouds.

So… here we go:

Well…. after trial and error I found that you can't just leisurely swipe it on to your page and then put it where you want it – you have to swipe fast and drop it right where you want it. And from the looks of it – it doesn't look like a video. It just looks like a pic – but maybe once I publish it – it will be a workable video?…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Well pictures work I suppose: This is a pic of my little man. He just woke up (3am) and while Daddio and I are catching up on our DVR'd television shows (yes, at 3 am) and I am blogging (yeah we keep odd hours) he is watching a little Dora the Explorer (in Spanish) to lull him back to sleep.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And here is my attempt at pulling in one of my YouTube Videos: It doesn't appear to be a video either – only time will tell I suppose…

 

That about wraps it up. Now I am going to publish this and see what happens. I have a feeling a lot of the formatting of the text wont come through because of my theme settings.

Now I am going to head to the publish button and see if I can hit tags and such…

Please comment below if you have used this app and have any tips or if you haven't used it let me know what you think…is it worth the $5? I'll comment after I publish to let you know what I think. šŸ™‚

Happy Blogging!

 

11 thoughts on “Blogsy… $5 – Yes? or No?

  1. So here are my findings:
    – After I hit publish it gave me the option to “View” or “Dismiss”. I hit review and then went into panic mode – 80% of what I just typed did not appear on the preview. So I hopped on my desktop (where I am now). Whew! It all saved – I was about to be severely irritated!
    – I meant to link “iAppsForTeachers” back to their website. But I forgot to test out the link feature. There is no “link” button you have to double tap the word and then add link – according to Blogsy’s instructions – I didn’t try it.
    – The formatting seems to work with the exception of “italicize”.
    – The “bullet points” are in fact little arrows…not sure I like that – I like bold black dots – but at least the feature is there.
    – I like that it turned my smileys into….well smiley’s – you know what I mean.
    – I also am pleased the “quote” feature worked. šŸ™‚
    – As for the fonts – I had changed each item to its own font. Apparently my theme is over-riding that with a big “Ummm, no.”
    – Same with the font size. I literally made them a tiny 8 pt and a huge 36 pt. It did not come through that way.
    – Typo on my end – When I was talking about being excited about the new Instagram video feature – I said I could do 15 minute videos – I totally mean 15 seconds…oopsie!
    – As for the actual video – yeah not so much. You can only pull in pictures from Instagram. If you pull in a video it just posts the cover photo for the video. But apparently it is something they are working on.
    – The formatting isn’t exactly spot on. The words matching the video and pic were supposed to be to the left and right of them – but instead it is above and below them and it put in a lot of unnecessary spaces in the post. 😦
    – The YouTube video was functional!! šŸ™‚ So that gives me hope for future Instagram videos! šŸ™‚
    – I really want to log in here and edit the post so that everything is as I intended it to be – but that would defeat the whole purpose of review…. I guess I’ll leave it so ya’ll can see what it looks like.
    – Overall, I give it a 7 out of 10. It was functional and will give me the ability to do a quick blog post when I’m away from my desktop. Pretty excited about that. Although there are a few things I would prefer to a be a little smoother. And lets be honest folks…all the problems I had could definitely have been user error. šŸ˜‰

  2. Clicking on the instagram pic took me to instagram so I could view the video (but that’s how Twitter works, too). And, I think I had that same storm the other night. Thunder and lightening and little to no rain… just sprinkles! If there is that much action in the sky, I want the rain!
    Hope the app works for you and you have fun with it!

    • We love the rain here in Texas and the lightening is pretty when it’s far away. I’m just terrified of the tornadoes!

      Thanks! I hope the app does me well. šŸ™‚

  3. Wow, I loved your grasshopper video, too cute! I didn’t get the other video to work even when I was teleported to instagram’s site. The rest was pretty cool. Seems like a good $5 for when you aren’t at your desktop. Tornadoes terrify any rational person.

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