What is Azure?
Azure is a free blog client. It allows you to create and edit posts for your weblog. It runs on your phone, so you can can now blog from wherever your mobile phone can get usable signal reception.
Azure can also run on PDAs like Palms and Handsprings, or any other device with a Java J2ME runtime.
At the moment, Azure is very new software, so it has a few bugs. If you find any bugs that are not in the Known Problems section of the Release Notes, please let me know and I'll fix them as soon as I can.
Azure is written by Michael Gratton. Free free to have a laugh at my blog, Volition, which is updated in part using Azure. =)
Current features
- Supports Movable Type blogs
- Post to one or more blogs, on one or more servers
- Create new posts
- Edit and republish recent posts
- Save draft posts locally
- Edit new posts and drafts when you're not connected to the Internet
- Supports non-English-language blogs
Future enhancements
This is an incomplete list of what I want to add to Azure in the future.
- Customisable editor tags
- Upload media objects; pictures, etc.
- Delete published posts
- Support for other blog software; Blogger, etc
- Easier, WYSIWYG post editing
- Support Trackback pinging
Mailing list
Join the azure-announce mailing list to be informed by email when new Azure releases are ready.
Azure is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License. See below for more fine print.
What do I need to run it?
To use Azure, you need the following:
- A Java Java J2ME phone, PDA, or other device which supports CLDC/MIDP 1.0. Most phones which say they are "Java capable" or "Java enabled" will do.
- An Internet connection for that device. This could be using GPRS, G3, a modem or a LAN connection.
- A weblog which supports the Movable Type XML-RPC API.
Supported phones, PDAs and other devices
Below is a list of devices on which Azure has been tested or has been reported to work. If you have any success running Azure on your phone, please let me know so I can list it here
- Handspring: Treo 270, 300, 600, Visor Platinum
- Motorola: A925
- Motorola: MPX200 (using IBM's Java runtime for the Mitac Mio)
- Nokia: 3530, 3650, 6310i, 6600, 6610, 7250i, N-Gage
- Palm: Tungsten
- Samsung: A620/VGA1000
- Sony: Clie TJ37, T50
- Sony Ericsson: T610, P800
- The J2ME Wireless Toolkit emulator. Well, you have to expect that. =)
License information
Azure is licensed under the GNU General Public License. Azure uses a modified version of kXML-RPC, which in turn uses the kXML parser. These two products are licensed under the Enhydra Public License Version 1.1. See the respective Web pages for a copy of the license. The modified source code for kXML-RPC is included with the Azure source distribution, above.