Blogging made oh-so-simple

Blogging these days is not rocket science:  you sign up to a blogging platform, log in, write, and publish. But a new blogging platform launched in June this year makes the likes of Blogger, WordPress and Tumblr look complicated and time consuming.

It’s called Posterous , it works through your email and it’s dead easy.  No registration is necessary: all you have to do to start a blog is send an e-mail to [post at posterous dot com] and within a few minutes you’ll receive a validation e-mail with the URL of your new blog. Here’s mine.  

Multimedia
To start blogging, simply e-mail your post to [post @ posterous dot com].  You can send attachments –pictures, audio or documents -  which will be published on your blog.  It accepts pdf, mp3, jpg, gif, doc and png files.  Unfortunately, Posterous hasn’t made allowance for video attachments yet but if you include a YouTube url, it will immediately imbed the video into your post.   Each user gets 1GB of free space, and there are plans to develop premium features soon.

Furthermore, Posterous lets you publish your podcasts via e-mail onto your blog.  It plays using the site’s flash player or iTunes.

Just remember that you do have the option of registering your Posterous blog and posting directly from the Posterous site.  This way, you can edit your posts with the site’s rich text editor.  

Looks
Posterous is aesthetically pleasing.  It has a uniform theme,  but the clean, neat interface looks better than the usual Blogger and WordPress themes.  Posterous automatically rescales your images and if you attach multiple pictures, it automatically creates a photo gallery, giving your blog an organised and de-cluttered look.

Another plus is that it allows viewers to download a single photo or an entire gallery (in .zip file) in their original sizes.  If your content is copyrighted, you can alter your settings to turn off the download option.

Social Media
Posterous has also dipped a toe into social media by allowing users to autopost updates to Twitter and pictures to Flickr from their site. E-mail your .jpg files and posterous will automatically add them to your Flickr stream.

It also has a social networking capability: users can search for and follow other posterous bloggers, or track posts on particular topics.  The automatically created RSS Feed is also a definite plus.

Cross posting
A revolutionary feature of Posterous is that it allows you to post to existing blogs.  Currently, the service supports WordPress, Blogger, Xanga, Live Journal, Tumblr, TypePad and Movable Type.  Now there’s no need to log onto multiple blogs to post – simply set up your autopost, send one e-mail to Posterous, and your post will be published on your multiple blogs.

Mobile blogging
The biggest advantage of this minimalist blogging platform is that it makes mobile blogging much easier it currently is.  Posterous allows you to blog on the go by simply sending an sms to them.  This service is currently available in the US only, but if they manage to extend it globally, it’s sure to be a hit.

 

Killer App? 
There are numerous blogging platforms that have a larger, established presence on the web but the simplicity of Posterous is what sets it apart from the rest.  It’s just a few months old but it has awesome functionality and potential. Ofcourse, that its developers roll out new features all the time is a definite plus.

My verdict?  Posterous has the makings of the next killer app. When the e-lluminati start raving about it, just remember that you read it here first