Thoughts on teaching, technology, learning and life in an era of change.
 
Posterous is a brilliant blogging tool
July 29th, 2008

Posterous is a brilliant blogging tool. It is getting better each week. 

You post to your Posterous blog via email. That is possible with WordPress and Blogger, for example, yet Posterous make it so much easier. You simply send your email to post@posterous.com. There is no need for a complex email address. You can also post simultaneously or separately to your Twitter and Flickr account. You can post to all three at once via email.

Yet, more significant than that is the fact Posterous will set up a nice interactive image gallery with your post if you add the images as attachments and email them along with your post. The image gallery is elegant. It is so easy! See the Posterous blog post example below or for real here.

You can also send mp3 files as an attachment and it will set up a mp3 player, a link to the mp3 file. Podcasting made so easy! [Image below borrowed from Posterous faq page]

It will automatically convert urls included in the email as links. It will also automatically embed YouTube videos and similar services. All you need to do is include the relevant link in the email post to your blog. Other email attachments are added to blog posts as well with a  download link. Setting up an account is simple.

Then why am I not using it as yet? Well, I have no control over comments other than disallowing comments, allowing all comments or only allowing comments from registered Posterous users. I would love to be able to moderate comments. Other than that Posterous has a feature set I would love to see implemented in WordPress.

6 Responses to “Posterous is a brilliant blogging tool”

  1. Garry Tan (cofounder, posterous.com) Says:

    Hey John! Thanks so much for the great blog post covering us. We’re working hard to provide all of the features you need, but in a way that is simple and straightforward. Sachin and I talk a lot about what it takes to become the Apple of blogging.

    We’re just about to release automatic posting to a host of those blogging dinosaurs. We’ve been spending a bunch of time hanging out in wordpress and others, and what we’ve found is that there’s a lot that is confusing and poorly done in our competing tools. We’re excited about that because it means we have a huge opportunity to build blogging the right way.

    Thanks again for the mention, and see you on posterous.

    -Garry, cofounder, posterous.com

  2. acroamatic Says:

    Thanks for pointing out the alternate email addresses, John. Knew that I could cross post to Flickr and Twitter, but didn’t know you could control where through different email addresses. Posterous just keeps on rolling out the features.

  3. John Larkin Says:

    Thanks for the comments Garry and Kenneth.

    Garry, being an educator I would be happy to see comment moderation and also the ability to add multiple authors with someting as easy as uploading a tab delimited set of email addresses for example that also creates a set of randomly generated passwords that we could use for a class blog or blogs.

    Kenneth, thanks for the feedback. The tool is amazing.

    Cheers, John.

  4. (pre)posterous - email blogging « Independent Study Says:

    [...] (thanks to John Larkin for news of this) is a blog platform that allows you to post by email. In fact, you can establish [...]

  5. Patricia Donaghy Says:

    Hi John
    I love Posterous but agree with you 100% about the commenting. I think comment moderation is essential for an educational setting. So I have set no commenting for the moment!
    Patricia

  6. John Larkin Says:

    Thanks Patricia. Been working with Posterous this week with teachers. It is blowing them all away. The image galleries and the podcasting trick are just great!
    Cheers, John