Markdown + Blackberry + email = Mobile blogging heaven
A few days ago I took a few minutes to ready & learn Markdown.
What is Markdown? It was created by John Gruber who introduced it about 3 years ago:
Markdown is a text-to-HTML conversion tool for web writers. Markdown allows you to write using an easy-to-read, easy-to-write plain text format, then convert it to structurally valid XHTML (or HTML).Markdown is a text-to-HTML conversion tool for web writers. Markdown allows you to write using an easy-to-read, easy-to-write plain text format, then convert it to structurally valid XHTML (or HTML)
Thus, “Markdown” is two things: (1) a plain text formatting syntax; and (2) a software tool, written in Perl, that converts the plain text formatting to HTML. See the Syntax page for details pertaining to Markdown’s formatting syntax. You can try it out, right now, using the online Dingus..
Tumblr has supported Markdown for a long time. But I didn’t understand why I would want to use it.
Until now.
Now that I’m using the Blackberry Bold I can write long posts from my mobile device. That was something I couldn’t easily do on my iphone so i never did.
And with Markdown I can easily add links and do some very simple formatting. All from email.
Yesterday I wrote this post on my blackberry and published to Tumblr by email. Since I used Markdown I was able to add a few links too.
Sometimes it takes me a little longer to get things. But I’ll get there eventually :)
