Evaluating iBlog

I've been using iBlog for the last three weeks to publish The Atomic Age, and the time has come to evaluate it's effectiveness. The software is exceptionally easy to use, which is certainly a major plus, and it allows me to publish to a web space that I directly control, which is another. It also integrates very well with my .mac account.

There are a few drawbacks though.

First, the URL is cryptic -- why can't I specify a specific folder I want to publish to on .mac, rather than having the hard-to-remember folder name of "B854689283"? I'd much rather be able to publish to "homepage.mac.com/knewquist/atomicage/" or some such.

Second, there's no integrated support for comments. I realize that this would be difficult to implement natively on .mac, since the Apple service doesn't support server-side scripting, but still, I'd like to have some sort of solution for this. The iBlog site does mention a few alternatives that work with the software, I'm going to have to spend some more time researching them.

Third, although the program is well integrated into the "iLife Suite" (iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie) it is exceedingly slow when pulling up a photo library.

And finally, the program doesn't support syncing across multiple Macs. Fortunately, this is a temporary shortcoming; the developer responded to my question about this feature by saying it would be in iBlog 2.0. When that version will be available, I do not know.

Overall, I'm still liking iBlog, and I think I'll continue to use it, especially if I can get the comments thing figured out. I really would like this blog to be more interactive than Nuketown,which really remains more of a zine than a blog.