Moblog
p. So, you probably noticed that I posted my first mobile blog entries yesterday and this morning, and wondered what was going on. Well, I was prompted to embark on this adventure—further freeing myself from the tyranny of cables—for the following reasons:
- I got a “Treo 600(Handspring Treo 600)”:http://handspring.com/products/communicators/treo600_overview.jhtml;jsessionid=WP2V4ATWWKPM5QFIAE1CFFGAVAATKIV0 Palm-based phone a week or so ago (a long story which I intend to tell in the next few days, as well as reviewing this brilliant bit of kit)
- Via a discussion thread in the comments of an entry on [“Dan Gillmor’s blog”:http://weblog.siliconvalley.com/column/dangillmor/archives/001543.shtml#001543], I found a service called “Mfop2(Which apparently stands for Moblogging For Other People Too)”:http://new.bastish.net/cgi-bin/mfop2/index.cgi?rm=about which lets you upload entries via email, once you have registered your details. If you attach a picture to the email—the Treo has a typically poor, but nevertheless serviceable camera built in—then that gets uploaded too
p. I don’t know how often I’ll actually blog on the move, but it is quite fun, and using Mfop2 was much easier than writing a custom script[1]. Even with a keyboard on the Treo, typing long articles isn’t easy. And it may not always be obvious in the end product, but I do like to put a fair bit of time and thought into what I write, which isn’t really compatible with blogging on a handheld. Still, it’s nice to have an alternative for when I’m feeling spontaneous.
fn1. Once I had hit my forehead in frustration after realising that the new entry was not showing on the index page because I hadn’t included the new MoBlogging category in the template.
This is one of my offices - the much nicer one. The ceiling is ridiculously high, but the windows are lovely. The photo was taken at the end of a long, hard day.