I think I have just seen the future of iBlogging–and behold it looks glorious.
Called LiveJournal.app, this iPhone app was created mostly by Igrick (with some design help from Damper and Igor-Safonov) of CosySoftware, (note: link is not working as of this post) who comes from the frozen nation of Russia.
Although this app is specifically limited to LiveJournal, CosySoftware’s ingenius approach to blogging on the iPhone may force every other iBlogging app to copy their features (whether they choose to connect to LiveJournal or not).
The Good
What sets LiveJournal.app apart from the previous iPhone apps before them (whether they were created by individuals or corporations) is the formatting bar, which makes it ridiculously easy to customize ones post to their hearts content.
With just a few simple touches, users can hyperlink any word, sentence or phrase throughout their blog post, without having to manually type in the necessary slashes and carrots, making this user friendly for non-geeks (and a time save for those who speak geek).
Users can also easily format text as well, as the formatting bar gives you the ability to not only emphasize text with both bold and italics, but you can also strikethrough as well.
Another feature users may come to love is the ability to create expandable post summaries, a feature that I find to be quite useful for those “long winded” blogging posts (that people love to write but everyone hates to read).
As far as posting images goes, not only can you upload multiple images, but the LiveJournal.app gives users the ability to adjust the size of images posted to their blogs (in order to prevent your images from crowding out your blogs sidebar).
Last but not least LiveJournal.app allows users to publish the location of where they are blogging from, and (wisely) links that information to Google Maps instead of spitting out GPS coordinate numbers (a trend I am seeing being quikly adopted by iBlogging apps).
LiveJournal also supports tags/categories, and will save your post if you are interupted by a phone call.
The Bad
The only items I did not like about this app was the inability to view (and edit) previous entries, which seemed to be the missing jewel from this iPhone app.
Hopefully they will consider adding this feature in the future, as well as the ability to change the dates of post (or even future post items).
Conclusion
With the price being free this app should be affordable for everyone to try out for themselves. CosySoftware is already receiving praise on their corporate blog, and if you are a LiveJournal fanatic, then I would recommend you downloading this app (and skipping any other app that connects to LiveJournal–both free and premium).
