Blogging From Your Phone With WordPress Apps

The above is what the screen on my BlackBerry Torch 9800’s WordPress app looks like. Pretty basic interface right?

What my way of doing thing with this basic app is that I will often start the post with a title and pictures and tags and then, usually on the subway, I will load up the post that doesn’t have words and fill in my thoughts.

That’s my tip for all you bloggers using the WordPress apps be it BlackBerry, Android, or iOS. The apps themselves aren’t great especially for embedding pictures and posting around them. The apps also do a bad job of setting up your title for SEO purposes and using the full version to do a quick setup makes things end up looking so much nicer.

TTC Buses In Head On Collision At Wilson Station [With Photos & Video By Me]

Today, I was sitting at work minding my own business when I saw a tweet from a local news agency:

“BREAKING: Several people have been injured in a head-on crash involving two TTC buses at Wilson Avenue and Wilson Heights Boulevard.”

Right afterward, as I mused whether or not to go check out the scene because it was 2 minutes from me my friend ReTweeted a tweet by a woman who is a “[news agency name removed] Senior Assignment Editor, overnight news anchor, sometimes reporter” (taken from her Twitter bio) that read:

“Anyone in #Toronto near Wilson & Wilson Heights? Crash involving two TTC buses. Looking for pics”

So I figured what the heck I would head over there and take some pictures with my trusty BlackBerry Torch 9800 and ideally they would be on the local news agency’s TV channel and almost definitely (so I thought) on their Twitter feed which would be really cool.

Below is the pictures I took today. They are from a set I posted on Flickr which, as you know, I have recently started using.

TTC Wilson Station Bus Crash, a set on Flickr.

The local news agency did indeed use one of my pictures in their story when the news was still fresh. Now, however, my picture is no longer there replaced by a video of Toronto Police Traffic Services Constable Hugh Smith and the scene.

I also got video of Toronto Police Traffic Services Constable Hugh Smith on hand

Help Me Win A BlackBerry PlayBook So I Can Blog Better On The Go!

OK, so here’s the deal. Research In Motion (aka RIM) the makers of BlackBerry smartphones released a tablet device onto the market this past week called the PlayBook. In celebration of the release of this device they had launch parties for the socialites and cool people but they also are running a series of contests via Twitter for regular shmoes like you and me!

The first of these contests was right in my neck of the woods, in Toronto, but somehow I completely missed out on it. #EpicFAIL by Dan, I know. The FIFTY winners of the contest got to go to a party with 3 friends held by RIM in their respective city and drink free booze, eat free appetizers and at the end of the night the 50 winners (not their guests unfortunately because I was one of those) got a FREE PlayBook! Ya, I was pretty annoyed I missed out on this contest especially when everyone told me how easy it had been to win and how little effort they put in to getting themselves retweeted and mentioned with the hashtag. In fact, my very writing of this blog post – if they are to be believed – is a waste of time and energy but hey I wanted to write it anyway!

Back to my point, the next three parties and contests/are being held for Washington DC, Chicago, and Atlanta. I really, really want a PlayBook because I totally see the use of having something that is bigger than my beloved BlackBerry Torch to view and edit media – and browse the full internet – but yet not as big as my Dell Studio 1558 laptop (which I also freaking love). Thankfully, I have a number of friends in Chicago, friends I haven’t seen in a long time and that I would really like to hang out with and visit and who’ll provide me with a warm bed (I hope, I should probably ask them). As well, Chicago is a totally drivable distance from Toronto – and it is within a reasonable driving distance: 8 hours and 59 minutes according to Google Maps. So I figure if I win I will take a road trip for the PlayBook, see some friends in Chicago and attend my second PlayBook launch party – the first being the Toronto one which the lovely Corina aka @corecorina invited me to join her as one of her +3.  Unless, of course, someone out there wants to pay for me to fly to Chicago and put me up in a hotel there – that’d be awesome but I don’t expect it to actually happen. I have driven to New York City a BUNCH of times and it is about the same amount of driving in hours so this shouldn’t be too bad. I have done the trip solo and with a group so I am not expecting any difficulties making this drive.

Tomorrow the contest enters its final day with ‘voting’ ending at 5pm Eastern Daylight Time (this part of the contest sort of confuses me, as Chicago is on CDT or Central Daylight Time an hour behind EDT which is Eastern Daylight Time). So, all I ask of you folks is if you’d be so kind (and have Twitter), please will you either retweet this tweet located here: https://twitter.com/#!/TheDanLevy/status/61070691994312704.

That tweet linked above reads: Plz RT & #help me win @BlackBerry I wanna go so bad to #PlayBookCHI I’ll #roadtrip 10hrs & cross international borders to attend! #TrueStory. 

-OR-

You can tweet anything you want as long as it includes 3 things:

1. My twitter name @TheDanLevy
2. BlackBerry’s twitter name @BlackBerry
3. The hashtag #PlayBookCHI

So if you can copy and paste the sequence below into Twitter and tweet it I will forever appreciate it!

#PlayBookCHI @TheDanLevy @BlackBerry

I grant you the above is completely nonsensical and I do not recommend tweeting that, I suggest adding SOME words to make it into a proper sentence but I think you get the gist.

Remember, if I win and I go to Chicago you guys get some (probably) amusing stories from the roadtrip and possibly more pictures like the one above and to the left! It also means I will be available to help everyone with their PlayBook questions and problems AND will be able to generate more content for this blog in general.

Going To Be Trying Out Android OS Soon – Forcing Myself To Use It To Really Get Acclimated – The Journey Begins Soon

As many of my readers know I am a BlackBerry user. I have used BlackBerry devices pretty much exclusively since my switch over from Nokia devices running Symbian in the middle of 2009.

Before my switch to BlackBerry I had a long term love affair with Symbian devices made by Nokia using the s60 (or Series 60) interface starting with my first one, the Nokia 3650 in 2003. Over the next 6 years I, in order of usage (as a primary phone for an extended period of time), used the:

• 3650
• 6670
• 6682
• N80
• N95-3.

That list doesn’t include all the other ones I played with for a few hours or days such as the: 

• 3250
• 6620
• N95-4
• Nokia E51
• Nokia E61
• Nokia E61i
• Nokia E62
• Nokia E71
• Nokia N-Gage QD.

Finally, I switched to BlackBerry after Nokia made it clear through a lack of communication with their customers in North America that they didn’t care about us and refused to issue regular updates and support like the rest of their markets received. That, coupled with the fact that it seemed like no new innovations were happening with Nokia devices, no major software providers were formatting their mobile software for s60, the terrible way Nokia’s s60 handled email, and the so-so web browsing experience (for the time) made me leave Nokia and get my first BlackBerry – the BlackBerry Bold 9000.

I have since used for an extended period of time the Bold 9000, the Bold 9700, and the Torch 9800, the last one which I won from RIM’s BlackBerryScene Twitter account and wrote about here and am pictured celebrating on the left.

I love my BlackBerry Torch, don’t get me wrong. There is no such thing as a perfect phone, in my opinion, and there never will be. No phone has it all and no phone can do the job for every consumer – and I would be surprised if this ever changed but smarter people with more knowledge on their respective subjects than I have on this subject have been proven very wrong when making big statements like that so I hesitate to do so.

Anyway, the point of this post is as a precursor to a journey I will be taking very soon into the world of Google’s mobile OS (operating system) ANDROID.

HOWEVER, do not take this as a sign that I am leaving what is referred to on Twitter as “Team BlackBerry” with the hashtag #TeamBlackBerry. In my capacity writing for a different blog, one that is a major Canadian cellular blog – I think a lot of you know which one but as far as I can recall I have never openly stated it on here so I won’t now either – my editor wants me to start reviewing Android devices so he wants me to get acquainted with the OS a lot better than I already am.