Blogging and Accidental Blogging with the Nexus 7

First of all, a confession in case you don’t already know, I am not the most high-tech person in the world, quite happily and deliberately so. I drive a thirteen-year-old Saturn where I have to roll the windows up and down manually and walk around the car to lock each door. My home phone is the kind with the receiver firmly tethered to the phone itself so I can’t wander around the house and lose it somewhere even if I tried. We don’t even have a microwave.

I suppose that’s why it took me so long to decide on getting a tablet. Is it worth the cost? Will it just mean more screen time, and is that healthy for me?

On the plus side, I could really use something portable for blogging and checking email on the go. I’ve started reading and reviewing more e-books which would be easier on an e-reader or tablet than a desk top computer.

Still, I hesitated, and of course filled that gap by looking online and asking friends. The iPad was larger than I wanted, and even the iPad Mini was more than I wanted to spend. Besides, I haven’t done much in Apple’s ecosystem, and this review from Laptop and many others made me think seriously about Google’s Nexus 7. A Twitter friend wrote Blogging with a Nexus 7 that made me want to try it for myself.

So armed with all my research, I tried a demo, asked the salesperson even more questions, and took another step in the high tech world. I’ve had my Nexus 7 for just three weeks now, and it’s great!

– since I was already set up with Gmail, setting up my Nexus 7 was a snap

– the speed, ease of use, screen resolution, responsiveness, and portability are all what I expected and just right for my purposes

–  I also bought a Nexus 7 case that protects it and allows me to re-charge the battery, use headphones, and take photos without having to take it out of the case, unlike the “universal” tablet cases I saw that aren’t quite the right fit and need to be removed to do some of these other things

– my main concern had been that I might miss a real keyboard for touch typing, but I quickly found other ways of writing:

• sometimes I hold it portrait-style and use the on-screen keyboard with my thumbs,
• or I hold it in one hand and write by swiping my index finger over the keyboard–the Nexus 7’s “predictive keyboard” seems to be set just right for me,
• and it’s even faster to use the voice option–just press the microphone icon, speak clearly, and the words appear on-screen!

For someone with larger hands, these options might not work as well—yesterday I bought a stylus to help with moving the cursor which is sometimes tricky even for me—and I’m still much faster touch typing on a regular keyboard. But for on-the-go email, note-taking, and blogging, a combination of these different methods work well for me.

I was a very happy Nexus 7 user, but then I downloaded the WordPress app to start blogging and hit my first snag. I honestly don’t know what happened, but somewhere between idly swipe typing “This is a new post” and checking out all the on-screen options, I must have accidentally touched the publish button, because my idle comment was suddenly out there in the world — ack! that wasn’t what I wanted! I removed the post and promptly uninstalled the app.

For the next couple of posts, I stuck with the regular browser version of WordPress—it’s workable even on the small screen, but in spite of my mis-adventure, the app was easier to use. I’d just have to be more careful. Ever the optimist, I re-installed the WordPress app and tried again.

The next couple of posts were fine, but those of you subscribing by email or rss feed know what happened next — ack! another post published accidentally! This time I know that I had saved a draft, and it was clearly marked “local draft.” I left the app to answer some email, and the next thing I knew, I had an email saying that my post had been published! I quickly returned to the list of posts, and sure enough what used to say “local draft” had been replaced by “published”!

So for those of you subscribing by email or rss feed—I’m sorry for the extra posts that definitely were not ready to go out to you.  For those of you following by Facebook, Twitter, or other ways, I’m hoping that you didn’t even see those random, prematurely published posts.

I haven’t uninstalled the WordPress app a second time—since on the Nexus 7, I really do prefer it over the full browser version — but I’ll try not to publish a post accidentally again. To guard against that, this post started in Evernote on my Nexus 7, then I switched to my computer and copied my Evernote draft to a new post in WordPress that I’m just finishing up now.

So I don’t see my Nexus 7 replacing my computer, but it’s easy to use, fast, light, great for travelling, and in spite of one or two misadventures it’s fun too!

Writing/Reflection Prompt: Have you ever accidentally published a post, and what did you do about it?

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