Ingenious

I promised to share with you some of my favorite apps for Android, didn’t I?

First, because it’s one of those things everyone always asks, here’s how to take a screenshot with the HP Slate 7: Press both the power button and the down volume button simultaneously.

This,  of course, leads in nicely to two apps bloggers will surely appreciate: WordPress and TouchPal.

WordPress

I noticed, earlier this week, that WordPress had released a brand new version of their app. It was marked incompatible with the Slate 7, but if you know me at all, you know I didn’t take no for an answer. I contacted the developer, who quickly sent me a link to the apk housed on WordPress.org. The Slate 7 has no GPS,  but being able to geotag posts should not be a requirement just to use the app, and in fact, it isn’t.

I’m currently using it to write this post, as a matter of fact.

One thing I noticed right off is that there’s no way  I can find to apply styles,  such as headings. There are buttons for bold, italics, underscore, strikethrough, quote, link, and the More tag. I can select categories, type in tags, and set the publish status and time. I can even password protect my post. But I cannot see any way to add a heading.

Watch out, too – the default status Is Publish, meaning that unless you change that prior to saving a draft, your saved post will immediately go live, like this one just did.

You pretty much have access to the full dashboard, with a UI that’s optimized for touch:

TouchPal

I’ll bet you were wondering about all the blue squiggles in that first screenshot, weren’t you? Not only am I writing this entirely on the Slate 7, I’m using the TouchPal keyboard app. Instead of hunting and pecking my way through the letters, I can just slide my fingers from one to the next! Takes some getting used to, but it does speed things up and reduces wrist and finger strain.

In addition to that, there is a pretty good speech to text engine that allows you to dictate your post if you speak clearly and fairly quickly. You can even use simple punctuation, such as comma and period, by simply stating “comma” or “period.” I find I need to edit a lot more, but it’s still better, for long blocks of text, than typing with one finger!

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HollyJahangiri

Holly Jahangiri is the author of Trockle; A Puppy, Not a Guppy; Innocents & Demons; and A New Leaf for Lyle. You can find her books on Amazon at http://amazon.com/author/hollyjahangiri. For more information on her children's books, please visit http://jahangiri.us/books.

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