There are tons of places to see how much traffic you and your competition are receiving. From Alexa to Compete, these tools are numerous and plentiful. You could spend days sitting at your computer, analyzing your competitions’ traffic patterns.

But what about the number of RSS subscribers? Surely that’s a valid stat to compare with competition blogs and websites? But for years, there haven’t been any decent tools to do so. Anyone who was curious about subscribers would have to visit each blog manually and hope that the site displayed the number of subscribers as reported by FeedBurner.

Now, there’s a new tool called Feed Compare which is surprisingly similar (in function and ease of use) to Compete. Enter in a few feed addresses, click the compare button, and you’re all set to go. You get a full chart comparing the subscriber number for your site and your competition. Easy as that.

The service works well. It’s free. It’s flashy. It can track back to two years. The only real problem is that you can only track feeds that use FeedBurner. Luckily enough, any site that’s worth its weight in text is going to use FeedBurner anyway–so no big deal.

Via BlogPerfume.

I awoke this morning to a pleasant surprise. The much touted WordPress app for the iPhone arrived today. And it’s free. I love free stuff. Don’t you?

While I’m still waiting for it to sync with my iPod Touch, here’s a rundown of the features according to Jeff Chandler.

• Support for WP.com blogs and self-installed blogs version 2.5.1 and higher
• Embedded Safari for true previews of posts
• Full tag and category support
• Photo support for both camera pictures as well as library photos
• Support for multiple blogs
• Ability to password protect a post, save as a draft, or mark the post for later review
• Auto-recovery. This will recover posts which have been interrupted by phone calls

Sounds pretty spiffy, and I’ll definitely enjoy trying it out. I’m pretty sure that personal bloggers will have more use for this than anybody else. There aren’t any more excuses left for not being able to keep up with posting–even when you’re nowhere near a Wi-Fi connection.

Now if only I could type as fast on the virtual keyboard as I can on a traditional laptop or desktop keyboard.

If you have iTunes installed, you can pick the app up here. And yes, that link will open iTunes for you.

Do you have any plans for using the WordPress blogging app? What about another blogging app, like TypePad? Any thoughts on the usefulness of these blogging apps for the iPhone?

[Via the WordPress for iPhone Blog]

I recently found myself in a heated dispute with some of my buddies over which is better: the built-in web-based dashboard that comes stock with all blogging platforms, or an app built for “offline” blogging? I’m an advocate for all things web based. I mean, look, we’ve got internet connections that go the “speed of light” now, so why not use them. But some people just can’t get past sticking with a program for everything, so I figured I may as well check out a few of the offline options.

I’m currently working on several different blogs, with the possibility of more on the way. All use WordPress, which is a big plus, but the built in interfaces leave something to be desired. Mostly because I can’t post to all of my blogs from a single site. Big points off there. It takes about a minute to move back and forth between my blogs’ admin sites, so not much time is lost, but way more than if I were using blogging software instead.

However, there are a number of great points in favor of the online interface. Biggest amongst them is that I can actively check that my posts are actually getting posted. I’m here, at the site, making sure everything is working correctly. I also have access to all of my plugins and other backend features from the WordPress dashboard–something that most (if not all) offline blogging software lacks. Editing custom fields in most blogging programs is also impossible.

One point I hadn’t thought of which one of my friends brought up was that I could draft posts offline thanks to blogging programs. Well that’s all well and good, but why couldn’t I just draft a post in TextEdit or Notepad or another simple word processor? I have to be online to actually submit the post, so what good is offline composition doing for me?

Despite being adverse to blogging software from the get-go, I decided to give a few programs a try. I’m primarily a Mac user, so I checked out Blogo, Ecto, and MarsEdit to see what all of the fuss was about.

Without going into a detailed review of each program here (I’ll save that for later posts), I can safely say that I now know for sure that blogging software is not for me. I’m not a luddite by any means, but I just prefer the tried and true interface of a WordPress dashboard. Furthermore, I just can’t get past the price tag of each program. WordPress is free. These programs all run about $20 or more. And yes, I know there are free alternatives out there, but that’s another topic.

But enough about me, what about you, my readers? Are you using blogging software? Free or of the shareware variety? Any luck with them? Let me know in the comments.