This Android App provides a fully functional blog interface for Michelle Malkin’s blog. It supports several ways of listing posts, a way to Star posts you like, post viewing, comment viewing, comment posting as well as new post notifications. A number of configuration options allow you to tweak text and image sizes as well as set the notification check frequency or completely disable them.

The primary benefit from the app is a much cleaner and very intuitive user interface (have you tried to read blogs for any length of time on any mobile browser?) that is themed for the site. It is also much more efficient since the app is not requesting fully rendered pages but instead requesting data via xmlrpc – so the response on the app is much faster than rendering and pulling an entire page. It also has to potential to reduce server load (theoretically – if enough people switch to using the app instead of the browser).

To give it a try, search for ‘Michelle Malkin’ in the android Marketplace. Alternatively, you can just scan the barcode shown above with your phone.

By the way, if you are running WordPress and are interested in an app like this for your site, feel free to contact me for a quote and timeframe.

I love tech and as access to faster and faster broadband has grown, we’ve seen the pace of innovation increase dramatically. I also love the opportunities this creates for small entrepreneurs like myself. That said, I have to say I agree 100% with George Ou in that government specified minimum broadband speeds is a bad thing.

Forcing businesses to comply with artificial benchmarks or mandated business plans eliminates the need (or ability) to make sound business decisions based on supply, demand and future planing. The end result is either government entitlements to keep businesses afloat or future bankruptcies. Sometimes it makes sense for a company to invest in a net loss market because it fits their long term plans, but lets allow them to make that decision. Unfilled market niches often become opportunities for smaller players or startups, but this kind of mandate permanently eliminate those opportunities. (They also discourage startups in an entire market segment since only the largest players are actually capable of meeting these kinds of mandates.)

I’m not impressed at all with the level of foresight those who legislate have – they seem completely unable to comprehend what effect (and side-effects) a piece of legislation will make on those affected.

The government that governs least, governs best.
Thomas Paine

I cannot agree enough.

(Hat-tip to John Henke)

…especially when you live in Colorado since there is just too much to do.  Work has been busy, blogrescue stuff has been busy plus throw in a few vacations and most weekends out and about and thus no blog posts.

The good news is I’m very close to releasing my first Android app which provides a direct interface to a high profile blog.  I’m hoping this is the first of many, now that I’ve got a mechanism to quickly get data from WordPress.  Just a bit more spit and polish and we can load it up on the Marketplace.