Blog From Your Cellphone?

seldo writes "The BBC has an article up about blogging from your mobile phone. The idea is not really news, but the interesting part is the host of links to interesting new (free) software that lets you do it, including: Manywhere Moblogger (Java), WAPBlog (Perl), and KABLOG (J2ME mobile Java, runs on devices like Palms, the Treo and Blackberries). All three of these interface to also-free server side tech which you need to set up yourself (KABLOG interfaces to the popular MovableType server and compatibles). The article also mentions the proprietary foneblog service which seems very easy to use, but it is software intended to be run by cellphone companies for their users."

Good to see

[jade42 (608565)]

How many times does a blog-minded person lose something that was on their mind to time? Blogs re-tell life and a person cannot carry a pad of paper with them all the time to relate their feelings and observations. Most people already carry cell phones and this is a great natural extension.

Re:Good to see

[ajuin (617076)]

How many times does a blog-minded person lose something that was on their mind to time?

Oh yeah, that's always a great loss to humanity...

Seriously, weblogging is a form of vanity publishing. To each his own, but I can't understand why people seem to take it so seriously.

Re:Good to see

[arvindn (542080)]

Sorry, I've got to disagree. I'll give some concrete examples of how losing something on your mind may an Unfortunate Thing, even if you're Nobody In Particular.

• Remember Trent Lott's remarks on Thurmond? Consider a similar scenario. Mr Public Figure makes Incendiary Remarks, but Big Media misses it entirely. Now, whether or not the scandal ever sees the light of the day might depend entirely on J Random Blogger, who was in attendance at Public Figure's speech, is able to reproduce his exact comments, which in turn might depend on JRB's being able to Blog On The Spot.
• Your comment "weblogging is a form of vanity publishing" is very cynical, and also pretty representative of the /. view. Blogging is much more than that. For instance, one of the things blogging allows you to do is distributed cognition, in contrast to "group think" that happens here. For this to work, however, the activity must take place within the attention span of an individual. So the latencies typically involved in having to be near a computer in order to blog are unacceptable. Get the point?

Re:This is terrible

[Bastian (66383)]

The things that bloggers forget are probably often the kinds of things that weren only fleetingly interesting to begin with. The cool stuff will probably be remembered, or the blogger in question will write it on a napkin for blogging when he/she gets home.

With the advent of moblogging, I predict that the quality of blogs will go down as bloggers start saying random shit whenever something seems interesting for a moment. Blogs will become watered down by passing distractions, people will lose interest, and blogs will go the way of the narccicistic "this is me, this is 8,000 pictures of me, here are my favorite movies, blah blah blah" sites.

Hmm. . . maybe that's not so bad after all. I'm sure natural selection could use some help in the world of blogs.

Re:This is terrible

[phorm (591458)]

Except that after the initial novelty wears off, and most people using cellphones get tired of the hitting "2" thrice just to get a letter "C"... it will become somewhat less frequent, and used only in special occasion or when the blogger is extremely bored.

Re:This is terrible

[radish (98371)]

not used a mobile recently then?

Re:This is terrible

[Afrosheen (42464)]

He/she is probably American. Most of the cellphone companies suck here and the phones are probably models from 2 years ago. If you get a free phone when you sign up for service, chances are the phone sucks and is at least 1 generation behind.

Why do americans get the rat's ass of phones when Japan has realtime video phones?!

Re:This is terrible

[Nexx (75873)]

Because the typical American won't pay for phones, while the typical Japanese will pay upwards of $300-$400USD for a phone.

Mind you, the former are strapped to an annual contract, while the latter aren't, but that's just semantics.

Oh, and the reason why the Japanese are willing to pay that much for a mobile? Have you priced landlines in Japan lately? You must first *buy* the *right* to get a phone, which is at least double that of the mobile. It used to be that the rights purchase paid for, among other things, pulling the physical line to the place. Now, all it pays for is some technician activating a port from a remote console.

Freaking third-rate country.

Re:This is terrible

[King of the World (212739)]

With the advent of the web, I predict that the quality of Gopher will go down the hole as Netscrapers start saying random shit whenever something seems interesting for a moment. The scrapers will become watered down by passing distractions, people will lose interest, and the web will go the way of the narccicistic "this is me, this is 8,000 pictures of me, here are my favorite movies, blah blah blah" sites.

Hey, you're right!

Re:Good to see

[$$$$$exyGal (638164)]

Yes. Now I can type out my movie review before I even leave the theatre:

44 333 22 999 88 11 999 00 00 11 22 333 44 1 33 22 1 99 22 111 000 111 33 2 00 999 11 2 4 11 000 *

NOTE: the above represents the keypad strokes I have to do to type on my phone.

Add in another 20 lines of the above, and that should do it. It'd suck if I wanted to add an HREF to imdb.com ;-).

--sex [slashdot.org]

I was curious.

[tunah (530328)]

hfbyu.y++.bfh eb xb,*,ea+y.ag,*

Re:Good to see

[plumby (179557)]

You might want to consider getting a phone with T9 predictive text, like pretty much any phone you can buy in the UK (and most of Western Europe as well). One keystroke per character. Most teenagers I know can type quicker on their phones than they can on a keyboard.

Re:Good to see

[Elwood P Dowd (16933)]

Most teenagers I know can type quicker on their phones than they can on a keyboard.

Apparently there are kids in Japan that can key in 200 wpm. That's faster than they talk. Text messages can, in some cases, work as a better communications medium than speech. When you're standing in the same room.

Alvin Toffler was a fag.

Re:Good to see

[corsetboy (599118)]

a person cannot carry a pad of paper with them all the time
a small note-book and pencil are more robust, reliable and equally compact than any mobile phone or PDA. appropriate technology.

yeah, until

[The Tyro (247333)]

Some genius decides to blog on their mobile phone while driving.

You know it'll happen, because you've seen 'em too... driving with their knee, phone in one hand, lipstick (or a McDonalds shake) in the other, chatting away.

I don't know about you, but mindless "yeah.. Uh Huh..." conversation is at least possible while driving (and with a hand-free headset). As far as eloquent conversation goes, you probably won't be Winston Churchill while your attention is on the road, but you can at least make guttural affirmative noises. Blogging, on the other hand, requires some coherent, focused thought (insert obligatory comment about Slashdot trolls here).

Talking on a cell phone may be challenging, but I find dialing while driving to be almost impossible to do safely. Blogging on a cell phone? Somebody's gotta be dumb enough... I hope they have air bags.

Re:yeah, until

[YrWrstNtmr (564987)]

Blogging on a cell phone? Somebody's gotta be dumb enough... I hope they have air bags.

It's not their air bags that are the concern, it is the person they crash into that has the problem.

First post from my cellphone!

[by Anonymous Coward]

Well, someone beat me, darn cellphones suck.

How is this interesting?

[johny_qst (623876)]

Does anyone really need to type long blog entries on the terrible interface of the current wireless phones?

Maybe it's just me...

[Anonymous MadCoe (613739)]

But isn't this just what happens when people use the net on their phone? They update blogs from their phone...

It's not just you.

[Boss, Pointy Haired (537010)]

Sadly, we're going to see a lot of this over the next couple of years.

As mobile Internet access becomes reality, the media will be awash with boring articles that offer no more insight than performing "Function X" from your mobile phone.

Next.

I hate that word

[soccerisgod (585710)]

Who ever came up with the word 'blog' should be taken out and fed to the dolphins.

Excellent!

[creative_name (459764)]

This is excellent! Now, if there was only some way to incorporate those annoying little ringtones into my website...

Keypad

[Big Mark (575945)]

If I have to use a mobile 'phone's keypad to update my blog I think I'd rather not. It's bad enough trying to dial someone, let alone compose a LiveJournal entry.

And mobile 'phones with keyboards just look wrong. Save it for the PDAs.

-Mark

Dupe

[dphoenix (623525)]

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/01/08/203421 3&tid=95 Ya know, it's getting ridiculous nowadays.

From the /. headline

[hdparm (575302)]

but the interesting part is the host of links to interesting new (free) software that lets you do it

The interesting part for me would be the host of links to interesting new (cheap) mobile services. Fuck free software if it'll cost a fortune to do it.

Perhaps the answer is in the article itself:

The latest trend is moblogging - updating your blog with a mobile phone.

Name of the new trend tells us plenty...

T-Mobile Sidekick/Danger Hiptop

[zemote (317235)]

The T-Mobile Sidekick/Danger hiptop is the perfect device for this type of blogging. There is already a growing community of these type's of Hiploggers over at http://www.hiptop.com/hiplog/ The nice thing about the Danger Hiptop is the querty keyboard, makes for a better mobile web experience. I bought my wife one of these and it is great.
--zemote--

blogging

[by Anonymous Coward]

the way i see it is blogging really is just an outlet people use. now people who read blogs of other people seem a /little/ weird for me. The ability to update your blog via a phone might not be so good. imagine all these girls on dates

GIRL: "hold on one second"
BOY : "anything , baby"
* GIRL punches in blog of how bad date is going
* BOY uses his wireless web to read her blog
BOY : "i brought you flowers"
*repeat update procedure

not a good thing.

WeBLOG

[flokemon (578389)]

For me a blog still means a weblog, ie. a collection of links, not some kind of journal (although I love some of the livejournal entries - teen diaries more than anything really.).

How can you really surf and spot places you want to link to with a mobile phone? Ok, so it is getting better than it used to with the new generation of big colour screen mobile phones, but I still can't imagine surfing around from my phone and updating my blog from there.

And the phone keyboards?! R we going 2 c journals updated in abbreviated style?

It just seems to me that it can only be a way to get even more irritating teen journals getting published on the web. Not so good.

Who was first?

[stuartcw (93333)]

Right now on Joi Ito's Chronology of Moblogging [weblogs.com] I am listed as the first person to post to their blog (in my case Livejournal) from their email enabled phone on January 4, 2001 at 4:16pm. I wrote a Python script over that New Year holiday that I hooked up to Qmail and used Livejournal's HTTP API to post the message. I'm sure that I wasn't the first person to do it as many people were discussing this around that time but I may possibly have been since at that time email enabled phones were not common outside Japan, where I live.

I'd love to hear from anyone who can show that they posted from their phone using email before then so we can set history straight.

On February 5th I added to graphic to help me remember that these were posted from the phone.

Now how to lower the cost?

[Max Romantschuk (132276)]

This is a great idea and I'd love to use it... But i doubt I could live with the fees that my operator would charge for making even just one entry a day. Even though I live in Finland most operators bill like crazy for data traffic.

A PDA-based solution with which you could update your blog offline and sync it when you have access would be nice.

More boring and useless weblog

[crux6rind (609204)]

Most of the weblogs i ever come to belongs to some narcistic teenage girls writting bullshits. daddy bought me a new car. whoopie.... Posted by Trixie on Sunday, February 23, 2003 - 08:00 AM EST (684 Reads) Read more... (459 bytes more) gotta go to school on my new car. oohh joy!!! Posted by Trixie on Sunday, February 23, 2003 - 08:53 AM EST (684 Reads) Read more... (459 bytes more) oooh look!!! thats Jake (the cutes guy in my school) *drool* Posted by Trixie on Sunday, February 23, 2003 - 09:00 AM EST (684 Reads) Read more... (459 bytes more) Why is that 18wheeler looks awfully close to my car? Posted by Trixie on Sunday, February 23, 2003 - 09:13 AM EST (684 Reads) Read more... (459 bytes more) I cant feel from the waist down. (gotta call 911) i'll update later... PS; is that a gasoline i smell ? Posted by Trixie on Sunday, February 23, 2003 - 09:19 AM EST (684 Reads) Read more... (459 bytes more)

Re:More boring and useless weblog

[British (51765)]

If I only had mod points, I would give them to you(funny of course). You must read livejournal review(http://livejournal.us) don't you? :)

Re:More boring and useless weblog

[arvindn (542080)]

And who are you to decide what's bullshit and what's not? The Trixie in your example would probably say "most of the weblogs I ever come acress are written by impossible linux geeks about things no one ever cares about".

If you've really read any blogs at all, you'd know blogs interlink extensively. This is a great mechanism to increase the signal/noise ratio. Same way that the web works, except much quicker in time. So you wouldn't come across lots of blogs like Trixie's unless you went looking for them.

If Trixie's got readers, who have the same interests that she does, that's fine; as a community they are able to discuss what they'd be discussing anyway, except much more easily. If not, nobody'd link to her and she'll stop posting the junk after a while. Get over it: the internet stands for freedom of speech; anyone can express themself; and you can't gag them just because you think they're stupid. Actually, its my opinion that blogging needs a certain amount of humility, rather than being a consequence of vanity.

Phlog

[vohlish_n (261634)]

Don't forget phlog [phlog.net] an on-line community developed by a friend (and regular slashdot reader). Whenever I call him up, he's always busy "phloging" which always makes me laugh. Images of him, whip in hand when really he's probably sat with his perl book. It looks fun, though I cannot use it as my T68i communicam is next to useless (see my previous comments [slashdot.org] on this subject). Go have a look, what he really needs is to be slashdotted. LMTH (laughs manically to himself)

Soon it will all be much easier.

[juuri (7678)]

With Opera out for Symbian 6 devices you can use a real web browser to read/post to blogs if you desire. More importantly there are active working ports of Putty (ssh) as well, so now just go finagle a P800 and enjoy the net in your hand.

Bogging ?

[veg (76076)]

A friend of mine had this idea and suggested calling it 'bogging' rather than a blogging, as you could add entried whilst on the bog. That's where I have all my profound thoughts anyway.
(For non British, 'bog' = toilet).

Karma sacrifice

[CoderByBirth (585951)]

Is it just me whose arm involuntarily clamps down on the armrest by the pure fucking geekyness every time I hear the word "blog"?

gAAAAH!
cut this shit out already

No wonder the tech industry is in the dumps

[by Anonymous Coward]

blogging from cell phones? Is this really the most
exciting thing that has happened lately??

Just think about what we used to talk about:

15 years ago: You can buy your own computer!
10 years ago: you can get a unix on your computer!
6 years ago: all of humanities knoweldge--on your computer!

now: blog from your phone!!!!

Where's the excitement? Where's the next big than?

I'll be impressed...

[TopShelf (92521)]

when you can actually do this via voice-recognition, rather than composing text by hand. Ah, the day when you can simply flip open your phone, and start off with, "Captain's Log, stardate..."

802.11 iPod moblogging

[acb (2797)]

I wonder when it'll be possible to moblog from a WiFi-enabled iPod. Even if the text entry interface sucks, the sheer trendiness of the combined buzzwords will carry it through.

Stop the insanity!

[WheelDweller (108946)]

Which Illuminatti keeps telling us that doing text-entry on a cellphone is a really fun, good idea?

Whoever it is, has never tried to communicate by pressing M-M-M, G-G, R-R-R. And blogging is just another application pushing this to the limit.

We don't need to blow our brains out, trying to type (as well as display) on a cellphone....WE NEED BETTER CELLPHONES. It doesn't have to be the size of a lunchbox...just a little larger. How about doubling the size and using handwriting input? Maybe a keyboard with real letter-keys? And a 1" screen isn't gonna cut it, either.

How about something like a tricorder: snap it on your belt and 'Bluetooth' a set of headphones to it? When it's time to enter a lot of text, just unclip the main unit and lift the lid to start doing some real work.

Since before the world 'slapped themselves in the forehead' and realized we only need a handful of Amazon.coms, only a couple of PayPals, and NOT another mega-auction site, someone has been pushing the internet on these microscopic devices. And the industry has greeted this technology with a yawn. It's great stuff....but using it is very annoying.

Let's quit wasting time trying to make the phones small-and-sexy; let's make'em useful, instead!

It's getting here...

[jonr (1130)]

The next generation of cell phones with Symbian (SonyEricsson P800, Nokia 7650) and PalmOS (Handspring Treo, Palm Tungsten W) are going to make this workable. Handwriting, even small keyboard will make this feasable. (Finally!)
J.

Re:Stop the insanity!

[perlyking (198166)]

Do American phones not have predictive text input?
Not that i'm defending updating blogs from mobile phones, I think it will just make them worse.

Re:Stop the insanity!

[rufo (126104)]

Apparently your cellphone is from the last stone-age. Every cell phone I've seen in the past two years or so has predictive text input, so when you're tapping out a message you only have to press each number once and it guesses the most frequently used word. Then you push a button to go down the list if the word it guessed isn't the one you wanted (which is rather rare, all things considered). It works very well, and takes most of the pain of typing on your phone out.

But as far as taking what you're talking about literally, seems to me you're thinking about either a Danger Hiptop [danger.com] or a Palm smartphone such as a Handspring Treo [handspring.com]. I happen to have the Treo 300, which works with Sprint, and it's quite the gadget - not sure if I could live without it now. Best thing about Sprint? Unlimited Vision (Sprint's faster-then-dialup data services) for $10/mo. If you buy a Hiptop (aka Sidekick) from T-Mobile, you get unlimited data for the first year, but after that you have to pay their standard rates for data, which pretty much blow - $10 for 10MB, and that's assuming you don't go over. Both of these devices have input methods better then your standard touchtone keypad, and both have gotten decent reviews, so if you want something smarter then your typical cell-phone, I'd check them out.

MMS logs

[epollux (653000)]

Since you can send an MMS to an e-mail address then it is really easy to automatically fetch the e-mail extract the image and create a log. I am running mine: www.birlouez.net/mms

If you're the type to rant in your blog...

[gagravarr (148765)]

I've been using Mojo [netranked.com] to post to my LiveJournal from my wap phone for about 6 months. So, when I'm sat at the station and Virgin have canceled my train again, I can log in and rant about it. When I'm bored and waiting for someone, and I've been thinking about something for a bit, I can write about it I find that the biggest problem to mobile blogging from your phone is the data entry - you think it's hard enough to use the thing to write a 160 character SMS, try using it to write a fully fledged blog entry...

My first mobile blog entry

[grundie (220908)]

2day I hd a gr8 tme. I wnt 2 my m8s wrk levng do nd nded up gting drnk :-) On a relted nte ppl hve bin cmplaing abt my blg bng dfficlt 2 red, no wy mn!

If only somebody can invent...

[dark-br (473115)]

If only somebody can invent software that would make the random writings/thoughts of millions of nitwits worth reading.

THAT would be a blog revolution!

It's a ...

[haggar (72771)]

DUPE! [slashdot.org]

Great

[nesneros (214571)]

Now we can have all sorts of morons hitting speed-dial and shouting out "FIRST POST!" on their phones. Yeah.