If there was one company determined to dominate the mobile blogosphere, it would have to be ShoZu. Connecting with almost 350 different mobile devices, ShoZu is enabling bloggers (regardless of their phone type) to post from their phone (and away from their computer).

But what sets ShoZu apart is not how many mobile platforms one can blog from, but rather how many blog platforms one can blog to.

ShoZu connects to not only the traditional platforms (such as Blogger, TypePad, WordPress, LiveJournal, and Windows Live Spaces) but also the unfamiliar (like Netlog, freewebs, Multiply and even Six Apart’s Vox.com).

While ShoZu has always had an iPhone app for users to test out since the birth of the app store, I decided to give it a second look after hearing about the numerous improvements regarding this iPhone app (with most of them being positive). read more

Despite providing powerful platforms for their users, both Blogger.com (owned by Google) and Six Apart seem to be rather slow when it comes to creating apps for the iPhone. 

While SixApart has provided an iPhone app for Typepad, they have yet to develop anything for MovableType, leaving the field wide open for third parties.

One company from China however is taking advantage of this opening, by creating a powerful iPhone app for not only the “big three” (Blogger, MovableType/Typepad, WordPress) but for MSN Live Spaces as well.

Called BlogPress (which was previously highlighted by Andy), this app was developed by CoolLittle Things, who ironically encountered some resistance (note: english translation over here) submitting their app to the iTunes store.

But with BlogPress costing a whopping 999 pennies (or about $10 USD), BlogSpot and MovableType fans may wonder whether purchasing this app is worth it.

So instead of spending potential gas money (or even lunch), you might want to check out the review below to see if this iPhone app is worth spending money on. read more

CellSpin has announced that its software will now support Apple’s iPhone, allowing users to capture audio, photos, and text, and publish to blogs on a number of popular platforms including Blogger, Live Journal, Live Spaces, and TypePad, as well as other popular sites such as MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Pownce, Picasa, Flickr, and eBay.

Various types of media are supported, including voice blogging, photo blogging, and standard text blogging.

A more dubious use, according to the press release, is the ability to “record candid audio conversations and embarrass friends” (they will kill you when they find out), as well as — more seriously — being able to securely send media to eBay auctions, set up podcasts, send voice meeting minutes to a blog, and take part in CellSpin’s community blogs (”clogs”).

CellSpin CEO and co-founder Bobby Gurvinder Singh said, “The iPhone is the mobile platform CellSpin was created for. This perfect blend of our elegant application and Apple’s sophisticated hardware produces a combination that is intuitive to the user, yet also a tour de force of technical capabilities. CellSpin is the coolest app for the hottest handset in the market today.”

CellSpin is already available for a variety of other mobile phone operating systems, including Symbian, Windows Mobile 5.0 and 6.0, Palm OS and BlackBerry.

CellSpin

There is a new official WordPress theme directory over at the wordpress.org site. Naturally, it is hosted under the “extend” tab, where we already go to find our plugins, so it is a natural addition. As of now, there are only 3 themes available, but since this is brand new, you can expect more to be submitted and added soon enough.
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Mofuse, a web service dedicated to creating mobile versions of blogs (including one for the iPhone), is discontinuing their pro accounts and is instead giving away all of their premium features to new (and “freebie” users) without charging them a dime.
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Matt Mullenweg made two product announcements at the Web 2.0 Expo this week:

The two things I announced at Web 2.0 Expo this morning (I don’t want to tell you how early I got up) were Possibly Related Posts and the Monotone theme.

Matt outlines more about possibly related posts over at the Wordpress Blog - it’s a plugin/feature that will likely use information from Sphere in order to associate “possibly related posts” with your own:

In a feature we’re calling possibly related posts we’ll now try to show posts related to yours a little section at the end. If we find any posts on your blog that are related, we’ll put those at the very top and in bold. Next we’ll show other posts from around WordPress.com, and finally we’ll check if there’s anything in the mainstream media.

On the theme front, the Monotone theme is a theme primarily for photography blogs (photoblogs) that will be available soon:

Monotone is a simple yet dynamic theme for photo-blogging. The layout is clean and non-intrusive, but the way it handles images makes each entry unique (and requires no intervention to do so).

Monotone takes the first image attached to a post and samples colors from it for use in the surrounding layout.

Interesting new additions to Wordpress.