However, I feel compelled to write this one just because using it encourages me to write about it.
I am writing my first post from my iPhone, so it is an appropriate time to make a mini review of the new Wordpress app for iPhone.

The Wordpress app is an application for writing posts to your Wordpress blog while on the go from your iPhone. It let’s you save your login name and password then you can get started editing or writing posts.

The good

The application was extremely easy to set up and configure. That was done in less than 1 minute after launching for the first time.

Composing a post was also very easy to get going with key fields just as you are used to in your regular wordpress interface.

Typing is as easy as using the iPhone keypad, which is easy for some, not so easy for others. For me it’s the fastest mobile input I have used.

Photos can be added directly from the phone by choosing from your photo library or taking a photo directly with the camera.

The bad

The first time I tested a post I saved a draft and tried previewing the post only to find that the system published a blank post live to my blog. Not exactly what was expected when previewing a draft.

Some of the things you can’t do include formating text with a WYSIWYG editor (although you can directly type HTML inthe post), anything involving special content in your blog and setting the position or size of your images.

Plugins that I miss include the Twitter one that auto-tweets when you publish and the Youtube widget. But both are not deal killers.

The other tricky thing with composing on the iPhone is the lack of copy-paste. This is not a limitation of the app but of the phone. It makes it pretty hard to link text in your post as many links are too long to type.

The conclusion

This is clearly going to be a great app for blogging live events… Expect to see a lot more live blogging of the next Stevenote than we already get. A quick release “take photo and blog it” workflow is going to be great for a lot of people.

You won’t stop using your regular wordpress interface but this will be a good one for getting those little posts out quickly on the run.

Now… Let’s see how this looks when I publish it.

(Note: this post was composed entirely on the iPhone app)
(Note2: the images seem to get dumped at the end of the post)

The documentary itself was released over the bit-torrent network as a free piece of work with the instruction to freely transfer the film to others. The League of Noble Peers actually went to the effort of copyrighting the film as the only legal way they could ensure that they could dictate that the film was free to share and transfer for anyone who wanted it.

[to watch the film, click the link on the left and choose the download your preferred format with your favorite bittorrent client : my fav for OSX is Transmission]

Content-wise the film does a good job of painting the picture of the way that digital media is shared and the reasons that people do it. It also does a very good job at pointing out how weak the position of the record labels and film producers is, even though the law is still largely supports them.

The main points made in the film is that the cost of redistributing digital content is virtually nothing, the technology exists already to make the content accessible to a large percentage of people (breaking down several economic and social barriers as it does so), and society feels it should be allowed to redistribute content freely. The combined strength of this wave seems to be leading to the inevitable change in the social acceptance of the practice and eventually the social structures that govern that, ie. the law.

The converse position is covered to some extend, although to be fair, this film doesn’t exactly have a balanced agenda. Media artist, Sebastian Lütgert, quoted Mark Getty (one of the largest intellectual property owners in the world) taking the anti sharing stance with “Intellectual property is the oil of the 21st century.” – meaning that basically the intellectual property owners will fight for their media just as countries have fought for oil. A strong and powerful analogy.

Making appearances in the film are quite a few well known names from the larger file sharing sites around the web. The eloquent discussion from representatives of piratebay.org and mininova.org was very interesting to see considering these powerhouses usually stay largely anonymous thumbing their noses at the establishment.

Overall a great film for getting informed about the arguments for file sharing and the free distribution of media and ideas.

I had a bit more to say about this in an earlier article about keeping control of your digital media.

 [ EXTRA : I forgot to mention some the great interviews with Vague Blur, who is a character to represent everyone in their anonymity, everyone and no-one ... check it out ]