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ShoZu: One iPhone App To Rule Them All? (Review)

ShoZu: One iPhone App To Rule Them All? (Review)

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).

The Good

One cool feature that made ShoZu stand out from the “iCrowd” was the fact that it saves your past entries, allowing you to publish the same exact post to a different blog on an entirely different platform.

Users can also post text and images together, with images posting in fairly good quality. You can either post an image in web quality (which is 640 x 400) or full quality (1600 x 1200), the latter being only available if you take a picture (instead of uploading from a previous photo album).

You can also geotag your posts as well (although I would not recommend that feature for ladies–especially in this day and age).

 

The Bad

While I was impressed with ShoZu overall, I did encounter a few issues while using this iPhone app–one of them which was a deal breaker (and deal breakers end up being deleted from my iPhone).

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The first was the size of the image posted. While the images themselves were uploaded to ShoZu’s servers in good quality, the image size on the blog post was surprisingly small.

I do not know whether or not ShoZu is trying to preserve bandwidth by reducing the image size on a blog post, but regardless of the reason bloggers may not appreciate the “puny” image postings on their weblogs.

The second item (which was a deal breaker for me) was a small bug within the app that kept the keyboard up long after I had submitted a post to my blog. The only way to get rid of this keyboard (which takes up half of the screen space) is by exiting ShoZu altogether.

Hopefully they will remember to add the “blue done button,” to close out the keyboard, as it would be sad to see a great app end on a sour note after begining with a very strong finish.

Conclusion

The ShoZu iPhone app is free, which in the day of rising energy prices is definately a good thing. If they are able to enlarge the size of the image displayed upon posts, as well as remove the ever so irritating “eternal keyboard” problem, I can easily see ShoZu competing with some of the major players–at least on the iPhone.

View Comments (4)
  • Hi Darnell,

    Thanks for posting up your review of ShoZu, love the title! All of our releases are based entirely on user feedback so we really enjoy hearing what everybody has to say, what they liked, and what they didn’t like.

    I’d like to address the concerns you had with ShoZu – a few things changed on September 12 with the release of firmware version 2.1. The first thing was actually a good thing, Apple now allow third party software to access full resolution images from the camera roll and other existing galleries, so now everything you upload with ShoZu can finally be full size. The second thing is a bit of a doozy and you certainly found it – the keyboard issue is a result of changes in firmware 2.1 and we’ve been working on that since it was released. We will be putting up a new version with fixes for this very very soon. We actually keep everyone up to speed on issues like this over on our Twitter feed if you’d like to follow us there http://www.twitter.com/shozu

    In regards to your other issue, most blogging sites allow third party software to create new text posts but not actually post images, so we get around this by hosting the images ourselves, making thumbnails, then embedding a clickable thumbnail version into your post. The thumbnail image size can really be anything we like and we’ve certainly been thinking about weather it is time to make them a little bigger. Reading your post prompted another discussion around the office and it now looks like we could be changing this sooner than later :-) Thanks for bringing it to our attention again.

    If there’s anything else you’d like to share, we always love hearing from our users! Feel free to get in touch directly.

    Best,
    Mark

    Consumer Experience, ShoZu
    [email protected]

  • I’m a big fan of Shozu for my S60 phone. As an entirely mobile blogger it’s been a lifesaver and replaced several applications (including Nokia’s own Share Online). Now I can update my Twitter account, change my Facebook status and upload my images to Ovi straight from my phone and only have to have one application running to do it all. It’s one of my first downloads whenever I give my phone it’s monthly reset to keep it fresh. Love it.

  • I tried Shozu however switched to Pixelpipe on my iPhone since they allowed for full resolution uploads and supported even more services. My wife is using their Android client and loves it! Bunch of software for the desktop as well as being free. Check them out at Pixelpipe.com.

  • the iphone…..really will stand tall over all mobile units. it has features that will benefit the human technology so powerful.It will have a great effect on our modern society.

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