Writing on the move

Recently I've seen a couple of new services popping up on Twitter which use a combination of markdown text files and Dropbox to create a blog. Since they we both free to sign up and I have a Dropbox account that I use religiously, I thought I'd give them a go to see how simple the process is and also feed a recent curiosity of writing on the iPhone. I signed up to sciptogr.am and went in search of an iPhone. Here is a quick run down of the apps I tried and why they didn't fit the bill.

Text Editor

My first choice was a rather hasty one. I didn't read the description properly so not long after I opened it, I realised I couldn't save files to Dropbox, only GoogleDocs. I also found a bug where the document doesn't scroll when typing so if your text falls behind the keyboard, you can't see what you're writing.

PlainText

My second choice looked promising. Nice clean interface with the ability to create files and sync to Dropbox. The one thing they don't mention in the app description is that all the files created within the app are .txt and cannot be changed. Adding .md to the end of a file name simply includes it. So if you wanted to save a file called test-file.md it would drop the .txt extension making it test-file.md.txt. Hmpf!

Nebulous

Finally, I arrived at Nebulous. It costs about £2.50 or something like that but if you're wanting something that gives you control over file names and save locations, this is worth a look. It has a great interface with a few theme options so you can write in an environment that's best for you. Perfect for mobile authoring using scriptogr.am.