This is my first, and maybe only, blog posting using the WordPress for iPhone app on my iPod Touch.

Considering that the preceding sentence just took me five minutes to tap-type out, I’m leaning toward “only”…

Actually it’s a pretty slick little app to have, just in case an on-the-go blogging emergency crops up. And as a free app, the price is right. It beats trying to publish via Safari; the WP backend isn’t really optimized for the small mobile-device screen.

The obvious drawback is the lack of cut-and-paste on the iTouch. My posts tend to be link-laden, and manually typing in permalinks isn’t feasible — from memory, yet! And using those “blog this” links ain’t my style. (I’m cheating on the links above — I’m actually sitting in front of my computer checking the URLs. I’m a geek, I know.)

One note: The app’s FAQ claims it requires WP 2.5.1 or higher, but I’m using it on 2.5 and it appears to be working fine.

And now that this rather short post took up the better part of an hour to craft, I’ll end this little iPod-blogging adventure. Keeping the capability in reserve, for now.

UPDATE: Based on the just-accomplished publishing of this post via the iTouch, here’s the resultant shortcomings of the WordPress for iPhone app, version 1.1 (I’ve switched over to full-sized computer keyboard to type out this part :

- Categories don’t seem to register upon publication, despite selecting them. When publication goes through, the post ends up Uncategorized. (I’ve since corrected that on this post, on the main computer).

- Timestamp doesn’t reset to actual posting time, instead keeping the time/date of the original drafting of the post. You can manually reset the time, but that’s an extra step; and I imagine that’d be a royal pain when it comes to live-blogging, a situation for which this portability is otherwise ideally suited.

- No way to include trackback URLs for referenced links.

Overall, not bad. It’ll do in a pinch, but not as a preferred substitute for the full-fledged WP backend.