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Ever wish you could have some of the functionality of a program like Windows Live Writer on your Tilt?  Have a need or desire to blog on the road?  With moBlog, you have an option to do just that.  This freeware application, built on the Compact .Net Framework, supports blogging to Live Spaces, Blogger, and WordPress sites.  While lean on features, it has all of the basic functionality you need to blog on the run.  Check out more after the break.

Setting up your blog in moBlog is pretty simple.  The Profiles screen allows you to create or edit the settings for your blog.  You input the name of the Profile, the provider (Blogger, Live Spaces, or WordPress), username, password, author, and URL information.  Once you put this in, select Retrieve Blogs in order to log into your site.  Once it does, it will automatically pull down the blog name and populate it under the Blogs heading.

After getting set up, you can select your Profile and blog from the starting window, and this will open your editing area.

Here, you’ll see the three-tabbed interface, which is a great use of screen real estate.  The Header tab contains the attributes for your blog.  Your Categories are pulled down, and you enter the post’s title.  The Tags, at least for WordPress, do not work yet.  That field is read-only in the build that I tested.  Hopefully this will be supported in the future.

The second tab, the Body, is- shockingly- where you write the blog entry.  Although there is no WYSIWYG editing, you do have some light formatting options under the right softkey menu.  The Insert Image option is very useful, allowing you to upload a picture from your Tilt to your blog.  The only issue with this is that there are no formatting options for the picture.  So if your picture is 3 megapixels in size and you have not resized it already, your image is going to overspill over into your blog.  But it’s a great option nonetheless.

The Preview tab allows you to see your post  in all its HTML glory.

moBlog is also light on settings.  You can configure the application to go through a proxy and you can save drafts locally.

Overall, moBlog is fairly lightweight and won’t blow you away with features.  But for blogging on the road, you can’t go wrong.  The fact that it supports three popular blogging platforms (WordPress was what mattered to me) is impressive, and this application should appeal to a fairly large audience. 

The application is still in development.  Again, Tags support for WordPress would be fantastic, as well as resizing options for pictures.  moBlog will append a line of text at the end of your entry saying that the post was created through the application- a little bit of advertising for it, which I didn’t mind, but it is something to be aware of.  Hopefully there will be more formatting options down the road for the non-HTML savvy.  And support for some more blogging platforms (LiveJournal comes to mind) would not hurt.

But in all, moBlog is incredibly functional right now.  If you need a solution to blog from the road, either from an event or while on vacation (which is what I did), then there is not better option than moBlog.

Doug Smith (301 Posts) - Website | Twitter | Facebook