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MObile weB LOGGING - how to post your thoughts, news
and images to the Internet in seconds from your Nokia Communicator (or S60
smartphone or Psion palmtop).
Blogging is a great way to both share your thoughts and
post your news to the Internet at large, perhaps to friends, family or even
complete strangers, without having the hassle of making up HTML pages and
messing around with FTP to upload them to a web site.
And now, in 2006, you can even post your photos and videos
as well (bandwidth permitting). But how much will it cost, how do you actually
get started, and what do you have to do to make a new post to your blog from
your Communicator (or S60 smartphone or connected palmtop)?
How much does it cost?
Absolutely nothing. It's true that there are paid-for
blogging hosts (e.g. TypePad), but it's
equally easy to use one of the free services, such as the Google-owned
Blogger.
For photo-focussed blogging (photo-blogging), perhaps use
the free UK service Moblog.co.uk.
How do I get started?
You'll need to use your desktop computer to set up your
free account with either of the two services above, setting the look and feel
of your blog. For Blogger, once set up, you'll need to go into your blog
'Settings | Email' and set up a 'Mail-to-Blogger' email address that can be
used to post your blog entries to. This will be of the form
yourname.yoursecretcode@blogger.com. For Moblog.co.uk, the address to email to
is simply mb-username-password@moblg.net.
Whichever service you go for (depending on whether you
mainly want to post text or images), set up the posting email address in your
Contacts, so that you don't have to remember it or type it each time you post
anything.
Making a new blog post
The huge, massive advantage of using blog hosts that
accept posts by email is that you can send them easily from your mobile device,
without having to struggle with Javascript-heavy posting web forms.
Blogger: Essentially, you pick the blog email
address from your Contacts as the recipient and then write an email as normal.
The subject of the email becomes the title of the blog post and the body text
forms the main part of the post.
Moblog.co.uk: Because photo blogging is driven by
the images you take, you'll usually start a new post from within Images on your
Communicator (Gallery, on S60 devices). Just pick the one you want and use
'Send via email', choosing the 'Recipient' from your Contacts store and filling
in the subject and body text as above.
(If bandwidth is a problem
and you want to keep your GPRS bill down, you could always resize or
crop the image. On the Communicator, use 'Save as', using lower JPG
compression, and then sending the new image instead. On S60 smartphones, use
the shareware PhotoFix
first, perhaps downsampling your megapixel image to a 640x480 pixel version
with higher compression and saving with a new filename, perfect for emailing in
to your photo-blog.)
The blog email can go off with your usual 'Send/retrieve
email' cycle, or you can send immediately by switching to your Outbox and using
'Send now'. Within a few minutes, your wit, wisdom and photographic artistry
will be up on the Internet for everyone to wonder at!
Examples
AAS's Ewan has a good
text blog. And I've started a
photo blog. |
