Check out the official site for the WordPress iPhone App, which was announced on July 10th, and expected to be available in the App store any day now.

We at vunitemedia have a lot of sites on WordPress, and are iPhone users; so we are really looking forward to a potentially neat iPhone App.

… the first Open Source app that lets you write posts, upload photos, and edit your WordPress blog directly from your iPhone or iPod Touch. With support for both WordPress.com and self-hosted WordPress (2.5.1 or higher), users of all experience levels can get going in just seconds.

Steven Frank has a great post on why you should stop using FTP immediately. He should know, as he is one of the developers behind the widely praised Mac FTP client Transmit.

This is going to sound a little weird at first considering what I do for a living, but I want you to stop using FTP.

FTP is a 23 year old protocol. Although the basics of what it does still work, there are many aspects of it which have not kept up with modern computing environments.

Steven goes on to point out some of the alarming security implications of using FTP, and makes some great points about FTP being a dated technology that has lasted far past its prime.

Unless tunneled over a secure socket, FTP is 100% insecure. Your password, and the contents of all of your files are sent in the clear, free to be examined or captured by any network hop between you and your server.

FTP has served us well, but it’s time to move on. You wouldn’t use a 23 year old computer to do your work, so don’t use a protocol from the same vintage. Demand modern transfer protocols from your host.

It is our company policy to only use SFTP and SSH to connect to and manage our servers.  If your host does not provide secure access you should seriously consider switching ASAP.  If you need help getting your site(s) moved to secure hosting, or want to stop worring about hosting entirely, don’t hesitate to drop us a line! </shameless plug>

If you are on a Mac, you can do no better than Transmit for SFTP.  On the windows side we recommend WinSCP.

stevenf.com

ScribeFire is a wonderful add-on for Firefox that allows users to post to their blogs without the hassle of logging into the admin panel.  It currently supports 15 different blogging services, including WordPress, Drupal and LiveJournal.  ScribeFire launched in June of 2008 and has had a number of subsequent releases which have added additional functionality.  Once it is configured, ScribeFire allows you to quickly launch a ScribeFire window within Firefox where you can compose your post using advanced features like the ability to drag and drop formatted text into the post from the web. Read the rest of this entry »