Just a swipe of the finger to add pictures and videos to your blog posts.
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We have submitted Blogsy 3.4.3 to Apple for approval.

May 18th, 2012 | Posted by Lance in Blogsy | Bugs | Error | Flickr | Update - (2 Comments)

Just a small update to fix a few rare case problems. Plus one feature we are very excited about.

Bugs

  1. Resolved Flickr uploading “failed” message when a users has a large number of photo sets. For those having this problem you will need to use a different app to upload your images until this update is in the App Store. Sorry for the inconvenience.
  2. Resolved the Blogger post fetching formatting loss problem. If a post was created with another app or on the Blogger site then loaded into Blogsy and saved locally, then the user tried to fetch the same post again from the site the post in Blogsy would lose formatting. Until this update is out you will need to first delete the local draft before fetching the online post again.
  3. Resolved WordPress media library crash when there are unidentifiable files in the library. We found that one user had migrated their site from Blogger to WordPress and in this process unidentifiable files were created in the WordPress media library. If you delete the unidentifiable files from your WordPress media library this problem will be solved for you and you don’t need to wait for this update to come out.

Feature

  1. If a blog sends back an error code Blogsy will display an error message. Now there will be an option in the error message to send us an email with the error code the blog is sending back. This will help us help users identify the problem with their blog quicker.
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Blogsy and Dropbox, Google Drive and SkyDrive

May 17th, 2012 | Posted by Lance in Blogsy | FAQ | Features - (2 Comments)

From day one of the release of Blogsy in the App Store we have gotten regular emails from users asking for Dropbox integration. So toward the end of last year we looked into adding it to Blogsy. Unfortunately the Dropbox API does not provide the public URL so we cannot build in the ability to drag and drop images from Dropbox. Even though they provide a URL for an image in a public folder and you can use this to embed an image in a blog post, they do not provide this same URL through the API. You can actually test this out on your own. You can open your Dropbox account in Blogsy’s built-in browser and drag an image into your blog post from the browser. It will look fine in your post in Blogsy but if you publish your post with this image and a visitor comes to your blog and they are not signed into their Dropbox account then they will just see a blank spot where the images should be.

With all the news recently about Google Drive, SkyDrive and cloud storage in general we decided to look into adding these services to Blogsy. But with frustration we found that none of them provide the public URL through the API. So, until one of these cloud services changes their API we are not able to add them to Blogsy.

There are a couple of ways to go about using your images on a cloud service within Blogsy.

1) Use the service’s app to save the image to your iPad library then in Blogsy you can upload that image to a different place (Blog’s media library, Picasa, Flickr) and use it in the blog post.

2) First copy the public URL for your image on one of these services. Next, drag in a random image into your blog post then double-tap on the image to get the Image Settings menu. In this menu replace the source image URL with the public URL you copied earlier. You will most likely also want to change the Link URL. Now the image will be in Dropbox and embedded in your post.

If you have found another workaround please share it with us.

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The Blogosphere – Where does Blogsy fit in?

May 11th, 2012 | Posted by Lance in Blogsy | Information - (0 Comments)

I came across a great article on Technorati about the blogosphere. The title is State of the Blogosphere 2011 and it is filled with a wealth of information. If you are a blogger in any shape or form it is definitely worth the read. It was for 2011 but it was done toward the end of 2011 so I think the information is still fresh and relevant.

One thing that they said in the article is that bloggers updated their blogs more frequently and spent more time blogging in 2011. That is great news because I remember reading not so long ago that with the advent of social sites like Facebook and Twitter blogging was dying. As mentioned in this article those have impacted the content of blogs but they have not killed or maimed blogging. I like to hear that because I think blogging plays a very important role on the web in sharing lengthy and detailed information.

Being the graph and data junkie that I am this article is probably the best I have read on the state of the blogosphere. There are just too many great graphs and charts to go into all of them so these are the ones that got me thinking. They made me wonder how Blogsy fits into the blogosphere.

From this graph it looks like Blogsy has most bloggers covered. The only ones on the list that Blogsy does not support is LiveJournal and SquareSpace.

 

I was hoping that they had a chart which asked if tablets or smartphones have impacted the frequency of publishing posts. But I guess they are more focused on whether or not they have changed the content of blog posts.

 

It’s great to see that people are using more images and videos due to the advent of tablets and smartphones. In our humble opinion, Blogsy makes it incredibly easy to use photos and videos in a blog post. And as several of our users have said on Twitter, it’s even easier to create a blog post with pictures and videos using Blogsy than on the blog’s admin panel using a PC/Mac.

 

We are looking forward to seeing Technorati’s blog post about the blogosphere next year.

 

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The Blogsy Guys Podcast – Romantic Opinions – Episode 9

May 10th, 2012 | Posted by Lance in Blogsy | Podcast - (0 Comments)

 

Topics

  1. Comments – We answer some comments people had about our last episode.
  2. Galaxy S III – The just released it. Do you want it?
  3. Better iPad editing – Wow, this is a very cool way to make editing on the iPad quicker and easier.

 

Apps

1) The Sims FreePlay – Peeing on the floor the doing some woohoo.
2) Pair – An app for the romantically inclined.
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Blogsy 3.4.2 is now in the App Store.

May 9th, 2012 | Posted by Lance in Blogsy | Bugs | Features | Flickr | Improve | Tumblr | User Requests - (0 Comments)

This is just a small bug fix update to address a few bugs users have reported. We also added a few minor feature in this update.

Bugs

  1. Resolved crashing when trying to access the WordPress media library if an image in the library does not have the title set correctly. We are not sure why an image does not have an image title set correctly but we have found one other app that uploads images without setting the title correctly.
  2. Resolved crashing when trying to access the WordPress media library if an image does not have the meta data. Blogsy needs the meta data to fetch the dimensions of the image.
  3. Resolved the “failed” problem of first image when trying to upload multiple images to Flickr.
  4. Resolved adding extra <p> tags if user swipes back and forth between the HTML and Rich Sides then publishes then opens the post again in Blogsy to edit then publishes it again. 
  5. Resolved the Google Image search failure if a foreign language user had changed the Safe search settings. (only foreign language problem)
  6. Corrected the attachment area not disappearing issue on Tumblr Photo type posts when using the dock button to switch to the HTML Side. This does not happen if you use the three finger swipe method to get to the HTML Side.
  7. Corrected the circle to the left of the date to show that a post has already been published when a user chooses the “Post & Keep Local Draft” option.
  8. Corrected the attachment area thumbnail image size issue (Retina display only)

Features

  1.  Added edit button to blog listing menu for users that don’t know the standard swipe to delete UI.
  2. Added “Delete All” option to blog listing so it’s easy to delete all blogs set up for that platform.
  3. Blogsy will now remember the page you were on if you do a Google search in the built-in browser then leave the browser and return.
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A Walk of a Lifetime!

May 5th, 2012 | Posted by Lance in Blogsy | Out in the Wild - (0 Comments)

One cool thing about us developing Blogsy is that we get to communicate with all these amazing bloggers. When we set out to develop Blogsy that never even crossed our minds. It’s kind of like our own little special Stumble Upon but even better because we get to communicate with the people behind the blogs. I’d be pretty selfish of us to keep these cool blogs a secret so I thought I’d share some of them. Yes, I have asked the bloggers if I could write about their blogs. And we’d love to hear about your blog too so leave a comment or send us an email and tell us all about your blog.

Nancy reached out to me with some questions about how Blogsy works. In our emails back and forth she said she was preparing for a 1000 mile walk. Yep, you read that right, her blog covers the Camino de Santiago walk from Le Puy, France to Muxia, Spain she and her husband are enjoying. They are now around 12 days into their walk and their blog covers all the cool things they see, people they meet and events that happen along the way. I think this is amazing and I have added it to my bucket list.

 

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What blogging platform do you use?

May 3rd, 2012 | Posted by Lance in Blogsy | Platforms - (4 Comments)

Because Blogsy is a blogging app our RSS feeds are filled with blogs that talk about blogging. One of these articles in my RSS feed caught my eye so I thought I would share it with you.

The title of the article is WordPress completely dominates top 100 blogs. I think it is obvious from the title that they are comparing what platforms are being used. But I have to admit that I misread the title, or just didn’t register the last part until I read the article, because I thought the article was covering the most commonly used blogging platforms in general. But in actuality they are just talking about the top 100 blogs on the internet. I think the needs of the top 100 blogs may be a little different than the needs of the casual blogger out there. So we have to focus on supporting both the power bloggers and the casual bloggers.

I was really surprised to see that Blogger only makes up 2%. According to our feedback from Blogsy users, the number of people using Blogger is a much higher percentage.

Platforms on this chart that Blogsy currently supports are WordPress (hosted & self-hosted), Movable Type, Drupal, Typepad, Blogger and Tumblr. Blogsy also supports Posterous, IBM Connections and Joomla (1.5) which are not found in the chart. And as for Gawker, BlogSmith, Scoop, and Didrot, we’re not familiar with these and no one has ever emailed asking for us to support them.

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Blogsy 3.4.1 can now be found in the App Store.

May 1st, 2012 | Posted by Lance in Blogsy | Bugs | Update - (2 Comments)

Very Important – now double-tap (tap two times quickly) to access the image, video and link menus. 

Due to user feedback and also a conflict in Blogsy we are changing from a single tap to a double-tap to get the Image, Video, and Link menus to pop up.

In this update we have fixed all the bugs we are aware of. So, if you find a bug please email us right away so we can get it figured out and fixed.

Here are the bug fixes in this update and some reasons behind the bugs.

1) In Blogsy 3.4 we improved the parser for Blogger. In prior versions we just had to use the standard <p> tag when publishing instead of the <br> tag which is the unique way Blogger works. This caused several problems for users. If you opened a blog post created in Blogsy in the Blogger dashboard to edit then all the <p> tag were converted to <br> tags and you’d lose your paragraph spacing. Also, if you opened a blog post in Blogsy which had been created in the Blogger dashboard you couldn’t drag images or videos between paragraphs. Our parser upgrade solved these problems but some other issues appeared due to this change, which we didn’t catch in our testing. These problems are related to using the formatting toolbar options in Blogsy and fetching a post from Blogger which does not have a paragraph wrapped in an HTML tag. We have fixed these problems and they are in this update.

2) In Blogsy 3.4 we added the ability for WordPress users to directly access their media library and to also add featured images. These features are only supported by newer versions of WordPress. So Blogsy requests the version number from the blog to determine if you can use this feature. Thanks to user feedback we have found that in rare cases the blog does not send back the version number and in that case Blogsy will fail or crash. This has been fixed and is in this update.

3) Flickr problem – We didn’t make any changes to the Flickr integration so we are unsure why these bugs appeared. 1) If you have multiple Flickr accounts set up and upload images the images will always go to the first Flickr account. 2) If your Flickr account is set to private then Blogsy will show that the upload has failed even though it has successfully uploaded. These issues have been fixed and are in this update.

4) Other minor bugs – WordPress MU issue, Post Info. menu setting issue, Image to envelope issue (Retina only), WP empty line breaks, Vimeo apostrophe in video title, Tumblr more tag.

Not bugs or not related to the Dragon update of Blogsy (Blogsy 3.4)

1) I am putting this in red because it is a very important change users need to be aware of. Double-tap – Due to user feedback and also a conflict in Blogsy we are changing from a single tap to a double tap to get the Image, Video, and Link menus to pop up.

2) Photo Library Crash – In very rare cases Blogsy will crash if you tap on the Photo Library dock icon. This is caused by a bug in iOS5 and Apple is aware of it and they have told developers that they have engineers working on it. We have added an exception case to try to work around this bug. Because we cannot reproduce this bug we cannot test to see if this will fix it or not. After updating to 3.4.1, if you get this crash please email us.

3) \n for WordPress – If you publish to WordPress then Blogsy removes the \n code because it causes formatting issues. Now, if you choose to publish from the HTML Side we will not remove the \n. This allows people that want to use Markdown to type and publish from the HTML Side. This takes a plugin on your blog to do – I will do a blog post about how to do it once this update comes out.

4) Korean app name changed from 블록지 to Blogsy and other minor language translation fixes.

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The Blogsy Guys Podcast – Bitch and Moan (Episode 8)

April 30th, 2012 | Posted by Lance in Blogsy | Fun | Podcast - (0 Comments)

In this episode we get pretty opinionated.

 

 

Topics

  1. App Store Pricing – our thoughts on the price of apps and its effect on the future of the app world.
  2. iPhone 5s’ screen size – our thoughts on it and our thoughts on a small iPad

 Apps

1. Storify – The UI looks a lot like Blogsy. Does that annoy us?

 

 

 

2. Figure – Easy and fun rhythm.

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We finally got a New iPad

April 27th, 2012 | Posted by Lance in Blogsy | Fomola - (4 Comments)

They finally started selling the New iPad here in Korea so we were able to get one.

Sean had to wait in line for about 2 and a half hours. That is pretty amazing here in Korea because this is Samsung country and Apple doesn’t have the same kind of cult following.

It was so cool to finally get to see Blogsy in full Retina glory. We had to develop and add Retina support to Blogsy without ever getting to see it on a Retina display so we couldn’t really grasp how it would look. We are pretty happy with the results. But we did find an issue with dragging in photos to an envelope for uploading – we fixed that Retina display issue.

In the first picture you can see the line of people waiting to get the New iPad. If you look closely you will see “Willy’s” as the name of the place. There are no “Apple Stores” in Korea. All Apple products or sold through resellers here. There are several different resellers. They try to make them look similar to a true Apple Store and they do a pretty good job but it just feels different for some reason.

In the second picture you can see the three iPads we test Blogsy on – iPad1, iPad2 and the New iPad.

 

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