Plus Newsrack’s latest update does not fix the bug that won’t allow universal image download. Now I have to download per category which is a real drag.

The fix: I deleted Newsrack on the iPhone and synced it with the laptop. Refresh all feeds and all is good again.

I first went overseas to study in 1994. I had just discovered email using our archaic university system but since my folks did not have Internet access then, we faxed. It cost us $1 each fax but I cherished them all.

In 1996, I began my first job in IT. Communications technology was so different then. It was said that Internet technology progresses at an exponential rate of 3 (either that or I’d made it up then). We wrote code by hand, sat in a small office with a tight-knit group of colleagues (one of the best working experiences of my life), used traditional telephones for business calls (no teleconferences then), shared jokes via ICQ, and my mobile phone looked like a brick, not a pad.

Enter 1999 and I had finished my degree, went home, got a job in IT again, this time as an account exec (yup, the suited ones). ICQ was still the rage then and I was still awed that that we could simply talk to the person sitting right next to you via an instant messenger. Plus this time, it was company sanctioned!

In 2000, we communicated through Yahoo Messenger. Workplace boredom was relieved by the virtual presence of friends online. Bosses summoned us to their office via YM. I often wondered how much online babble he spied on. Being an MNC, we held teleconferences with some space age looking gadget that looked like a puffy X and worked till midnight to meet some crazed client’s deadlines. It was a tough time for us all.

The bust came and went. That last company didn’t survive. I wonder who inherited that crazy X teleconferencer.

Come 2003, my brother found me a job at the company he worked for. It was traditional, very unlike the IT companies I worked for. I loved the people there. They were the sweetest. They always buzzed me when yummy edibles arrived from their clients to share. No IMs there, we walked over to each other’s desks, or used the traditional phone. It was nice.

The following year I had the incredible fortune of working for one of the most awesome companies in the world. Nope, not Marvel (damn you for selling out to Disney! *waves fist*) or Blizzard. It is a very cool Finnish company based in Helsinki that opened an office here.

We had a small office, ate together, brainstormed together, held meetings with our overseas colleagues via a business voip service provider. Yes, they are smart – voip uses Internet technology. It is cheaper and has all the features a traditional phone system offers. Plus, the biggest plus, no expensive long distance charges! In this Internet age, there is really no excuse not to use it when running a small business or big.

By the time I return to work, I’ll bet we will be using our iPhone X to communicate.

Diptic has one of the best basic but useful wysiwyg in-app photo editing functions. Brightness, contrast, saturation, and the ability to do a mirror image and adjust the width and colour of the border.

Collage apps are rare. Great collage apps are even rarer. This is the only one you’ll ever need. A steal at $0.99.

I have trouble syncing and image download, although claimed otherwise does not appear to be automatic anymore. I had to go to each folder to download the images manually. And worst of all, it takes ages to view each post! Wait till they fix these bugs before updating.

If you have, delete Newsrack from your iPhone and resync from your computer. This is assuming you updated via iPhone and not from the computer.

The amazing things in this app:

1. Uploading images to own server
2. Tags to edit your text
3. Insertion of links
4. Insertion and control of images
5. Preview screen

Here are some problems I faced:

1. Images cannot be added to post offline

2. Local draft posts disappearing

When trying to save a post, occasionally it loses a post. I found this out the hard way when I synced it online and found my post had disappeared. Other times it hung and lost the post. Eventually I gave up and returned to Blogpress.

3. No Categories for WordPress users

This is an important update and I really should have waited till it was added but I was itching to try another blog app. So here I am waiting and typing and holding my phone still so Blogpress won’t lose my post again.

4. Synchronization at the start up slow

BlogBooster has the potential to be an amazing blog app. I daresay THE blog app but first the bugs have to be fixed and the app has to be actually usable.

For now it is back to Blogpress, which I am starting to appreciate a little more.

I’m currently using Blogpress ($2.99) which does the job but for:

1. The extra spacing (br br) it gives above an image. I need to manually remove the auomatically inserted break codes. The developer should add a HTML version too rather than only a wysiwyg version which sometimes can go horribly wrong.

2. When I edit a published page on the computer which was published by Blogpress, the images revert to left aligned and I have to manually center them again.

3. Can’t add categories and tags till logged in. Surely there must be a way to download the categories like WordPress does and refresh when connected.

4. If for some reason your screen flips upside down, all your text is lost. Learnt that the hard way today.

5. You can only upload images to one selected server, even if you have multiple blogs. Although technically you can keep changing the selection under Settings.

I had been using WordPress but it is worse. It won’t even load one of my other blogs and you can’t insert images wherever you want. You’ll have to publish first then edit the HTML to get your images to centre or cut and paste to wherever you want to locate them.

Forget about iBlogger which costs $9.99 and has the gall to add its own advertising (posted with iBlogger on iPhone) to your blog posts.

Update 22/7/10: I bought BlogBooster ($4.99) which looks promising with the ability to insert links and codes and upload images to your own server, but I am still waiting for them to add Categories for WordPress and fix the saving local drafts bug which cost me a post that disappeared when I closed the app. Here’s a review from the Blog Herald.

So there really isn’t anything better for now. Alternatively, type your blog post in Notepad and just copy and paste when you login using Safari or Opera.

Only when I closed all the apps that were running did the camera snap again.

I think we were fine without multitasking. Apple should add an option for us to choose not to multitask.

Here are more opinions that it sucks.

The shutter speed seems turbo charged and there is zoom! Well we can delete all those .99 cent camera apps we purchased now.

2. Video focus

You can now press to focus for videos now. No more blurry videos.

3. iBooks (or rather its potential)

The iBook store sucks. There are only Project Gutenberg books there. But the reading experience is divine.

4. Text Message Character Count

Now I solve the mystery of how I managed to send 700+ smses in a month after never exceeding 500 in ten years.

5. Folders!

Need I say more? The horrible cluttered mess can now be categorized. Perfect for neat freaks like me. Just press till they wiggle and pull one of top of another and they will be popped into a folder with a default name which you can then rename.

Worth the upgrade to iPhone OS 4? Absolutely. (How quickly I forget the nightmarish transit to get here…)