Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
Brought to you by the Artificial Idea Factory.
Well, someone beat me, darn cellphones suck.
Does anyone really need to type long blog entries on the terrible interface of the current wireless phones?
Fnord.sig
But isn't this just what happens when people use the net on their phone? They update blogs from their phone...
Who ever came up with the word 'blog' should be taken out and fed to the dolphins.
If a train station is a place where a train stops, what's a workstation?
This is excellent! Now, if there was only some way to incorporate those annoying little ringtones into my website...
Posting as directed.
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.
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
Since the media can take 'hacker' and make it mean 'cracker', and the gaming industry can take 'roleplaying game' and make it mean, 'linear adventure game'...
I'm hereby hijacking 'blog' to mean 'the act of taking a dump'.
Now, getting back to the subject at hand, it is likely the person that came up with the vileness that is 'blog' would not allow the dolphins to blog him good.
Likely, we'd end up with a bunch of constipated dolphins.
What? No kitchen sink? :-)
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/01/08/203421 3&tid=95
Ya know, it's getting ridiculous nowadays.
"The idea is not really news" Good job. Wouldn't want to spoil a Monday morning with news! Looking forward to news this afternoon. Or this evening. Or tomorrow. Yes, tomorrow, once I've woken up.
its just a glorified .plan file. get over 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...
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--
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.
Hmm... what about audio blogging...
.com
That would be easy to do from a mobile phone.
Audio blogging...
aud blog
hmm...
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.
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.
Isn't blogging, as in writing a diary an egotistic wanking excercise?
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.
.: Max Romantschuk
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.
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.
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)
d035 7hi5 100k 1ik3 4n l337 5i6 2 j00 ?
blogs b-cum ++ diff 2 rd
Here in europe most sold phone are J2ME complient : nokia, motorola, sagem, alcatel ...
;)
...
...
This is not a know featured, but easilly verifiable when operator push : can play to thousand games
Enduser do not care tech they use, but just what they can do ! J2ME is evrywhere but people do not noticed
By the way the MIDP 2.0 (cf. midlets) standard spec is much more fun, because it add major feature to the J2ME environement ! Nokia already pusing this one
-ERT
Don't forget phlog 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 on this subject). Go have a look, what he really needs is to be slashdotted. LMTH (laughs manically to himself)
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.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
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.
--- I do not moderate.
--Giving to trolls for the benefit of us all
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).
You know what? I'm already typing almost all of my diary into my phone first. Only when I get back to my computer I will put those in my private blog. I'm sure I won't start paying for the privilege to do that in real time.
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
see my dutch page regaring this: //willy dobbe
-- for undocumented cisco commands, take a peek @ dotu
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 send email via my mobile phone to special email address that php parses once per hour for posts. if the subject contains a special key, the post is well, posted. it's seems to be working well. i don't need any special services... AMP (apache, mysql, php) and some well written web scripts do me well.
I'm tired of bombing the universe
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..."
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
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.
Besides they're dupes only in the eyes of the beholder.
Enig? Det alt for hot det smor!
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!
--- For a good time mail uce@ftc.gov
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
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.
hfbyu.y++.bfh eb xb,*,ea+y.ag,*
Free Java games for your phone: Tontie, Sokoban
not used a mobile recently then?
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
I've been using Mojo 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...
This post will enter the public domain 70 years after my death, unless Disney buys another extension.
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?!
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 software that would make the random writings/thoughts of millions of nitwits worth reading.
THAT would be a blog revolution!
Because the typical American won't pay for phones, while the typical Japanese will pay upwards of $300-$400USD for a phone.
Mind you, the former are strapped to an annual contract, while the latter aren't, but that's just semantics.
Oh, and the reason why the Japanese are willing to pay that much for a mobile? Have you priced landlines in Japan lately? You must first *buy* the *right* to get a phone, which is at least double that of the mobile. It used to be that the rights purchase paid for, among other things, pulling the physical line to the place. Now, all it pays for is some technician activating a port from a remote console.
Freaking third-rate country.
it's like paying extra for tap water, when the pure stuff is free.
...
& oe =UTF-8&q=microsoft+dirty+deals&btnG=Google+Sea rch
& oe =UTF-8&q=microsoft+%22bill+weisgerber%22&btnG=Goog le+Search
lookout bullow. much tenuousity exists in the Godless payper liesense stock markups over estimating the real price of tuxedos. the profit margin in free is so narrow, there's barely room for yacht payments.
the hobbyists must be absorbed/deleted.
look for va.msn.?NET?.. working? ticker:
nothing but gnu skies,
all you knead is love (etc...), da ta da da da.
meanwhile, back at the shillerIE:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8
blogging? with an evile twist?
goofIE ba$tards. some say hanging is way too good for those Godless greed/fear based LIEforms.
& oe =UTF-8&q=microsoft+dirty+deals&btnG=Google+Sea rch
& oe =UTF-8&q=microsoft+%22bill+weisgerber%22&btnG=Goog le+Search
va lairIE's PostBlock(tm) device: what a joke.
that's:
trustworthycomputing.com
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8
Please don't ever post news like that again.
Hrrm... I usually just sign my name.
if you use yOUR blogs to tout phonIE payper liesenses, for phonIE monIE, or priNT up sum of yOUR own, do you need to be watching for God's lightning to strike you in Your mortgaged .asp?
beware of va lairIE's PostBlock(tm) device, as it has been shown to cause bouts of spontaneous chuckling.
stay tuned...
DUPE!
Sigged!
Now we can have all sorts of morons hitting speed-dial and shouting out "FIRST POST!" on their phones. Yeah.
Some men spend their entire lives trying to kill themselves for having been born. --Ross MacDonald
Excellent idea! They should all be *forced* to use horrid input devices for weblogs... maybe they'll get tired of it and shut the hell up for a change. =)
Hokey statistics and ancient misconceptions are no match for a good thought in your head, kid!
Ah yes, wonderful T9 text entry. So how come my phone won't let me type "fuck"? Or "hehe"? Or "hmm"? Or any of another million words that are precisely the kinds of words that you're most likely to use when you're SMSing someone? What about names? Really these "guessing" text-entry methods are pretty dodgy. I, and i think most people, would be happier with a keyboard. And more than 250 characters when you're SMSing, for that matter.
I'm surprised I didn't see this one coming. It's the perfect marriage between useless technology and a waste of time.
Heh, $#it happens :)
--zemote--
Most Japanese phones are sold on a contract, with a highly subsidised up-front cost (sometimes just 1 yen) but the average monthly charges (ARPU) are around $50 (though this has gradually fallen from more like $100 a few years ago).
All these cellphone things remind me of the extra episode of the anime "Platonic Chain." This series is made up about little weird snippets of the modern consumer tech world just a little bit into the future.
... I don't know if it's a promo or what), people with video cellphones (kind of like this one, sent to a website) go around the city video blogging their daily lives. And guys who consider themselves players video themselves picking up chicks.
In "Platonic Chain Web," the extra episode (not exactly part of the series
It's the wave of the future.
I can post thru email... My mobile phone can send email... I've been able to post from my phone to my weblog since last year...
What's the big deal?
"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. "
Oh yes... and expect IP squatters to submit a stream of patent applications in this vein:
"Method and apparatus to perform some blatantly obvious function that people have been doing for hundreds if not thousands of years, but this time from their mobile phone"
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
It truly depends on what you buy and how you buy it, and who you buy it from.
You can go to an NTT Docomo store, and buy the phone outright, and be in a non-binding contract. You can also get them subsidised from a pseudo-authorised reseller, and get them as low as $50, or lower, depending on the model.
The NTT Docomo *monthly* are *much* lower than $50 now. I'm *currently* paying $30/month, plus a little more for going over the minutes and some international calls on it. Now, the reason ARPU is so high, I'm assuming, is because the figure includes people who use the bloody things *a lot*.
Now, FOMA is another story. I've yet to see a FOMA handset for less than $100, but the monthly bills on them are slightly less.
This is slightly offtopic, slightly on, but it looked like a good place to put it.
Does anyone know of an easy to use journaling tool set for the web. I have a friend that will be hiking around the country, and was wanting to be able to stop in at internet cafes or what not, and update all his friends on his progress. What I'd like to be able to give him is a web site that he doesn't need to know much, but able to upload pictures, and make journal entries quickly, and with little technical savvy.
I don't know about you but my phone has a learning function - which does include fuck and hehe and all the other words I like to use
So sad I did not know what a blog was till today. I thought it was still called a weblog. Anyway in my goggle search I see where goggle purchased Blogger (one of the the biggest names in "blogging". Ick!
It will be interesting to see what they play to do with this technology.
Dan Slagle
Keeper of the "Unofficial iMovie FAQ"
If I want to remember a detail for a blog, I use the voice recording feature on my T68i. Just take the memo, its way faster than typing, and you can do it while you're driving or whatever if you have an earpiece. I listen to the recordings when I upload (but only really as a reference, I type something 'fresh' based on what I recorded).
If you ask me, voice-to-text is the one missing piece that would really solve the problem of text entry on mobile devices. If the phone (or a backend app) could turn my recorded voice into live text... that would rock.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
A friend of mine wrote pop2blog, which is essentially like the Hiplog service for hiptop owners, only it posts to your MovableType blog via the Blogger API. The script is out under the GPL at http://bixworld.com/pop2blog/
This comment was not generated by Uber Elephants...
I hated 'surfing' when the web first appeared... it seemed like such a lame comparison.. or 'browse' for that matter, which is something animals to when they forage for food.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
And on a side-note, Rogers AT&T, the only decent GSM provider where I live (Calgary - Fido being the unfortunate alternative), LOCKS the Circuit Switched Data feature of the phone, forcing you to use their extremely overpriced GPRS service.
Now GPRS is a superior service for connectivity, but not for $5/month for 150kb of data (that's just a few web pages! I wouldn't be happy with that each DAY!) CSD would be much nicer for me, even with the 30-second connect time and external ISP requirement - at least you get charged plain air-time charges. +2 Karma to whoever out there tells me how to unlock the CPS service of these phones (REAL Karma, not this fake stuff...:)
Sorry for the rant here, but it's not entirely OT - I'd love to use my Treo to update my website from the road, just not at the prices they want to charge me... (I could set up an SMS/email gateway easily enough if all I wanted to do was blog, but I'd also like to use SSH, WebMin, etc).
Or, just send a picture from your cell phone camera or HipTop and don't worry about typing -- CamBlog.com.
It doesn't matter what kind of phones we americans get (I have a Danger Hiptop which has a full keyboard for PDA/web/email functions and a toy camera attachment).
The last time I was in Tokyo a Japanese guy asked me pretty much the same question, I told him imo the real problem with why American phones suck is that the American cellphone network sucks. And the American cellphone network sucks because America is a freaking big ass country. And I mean "freaking big ass" in every sense of the way, but in this context I especially mean that it's got a lot of cellphone network that would have to be replaced in order to have the sort of system that can support the new generation phones.
Do you have any idea how much that would cost? I don't exactly, but I bet it's hella more than what it cost the island nation of Japan or even big ol' Europe for that matter. And in this economy try getting a corporation to lay down a bet of that size that they aren't going to get immediately leap frogged on their choice of rollout.
As much as the stream of consciousness folks tried to shove it down my throat, I will always believe that editing is a duty.
C'mon. It has to be the right thing to do, as nobody wants to do it.
Keep your packets off my GNU/Girlfriend!
missed Audblog?
Solid!
CarlaZone bllog has uploads of live images from a cell phone with a web cam...
When he decided that instead of 'web log' he would start saying 'we blog' (Peter was an early weblogger, from the Bay Area). Funnily enough, he's mothballed his site and isn't blogging anymore. Lot's of early webloggers have quit as the "blog as verbal torrent" kicked into high gear.
What is going to happen to you that is so important that you have to blog it from your cell phone?
for those of you without midlet capable phones, or any else of the new fangled stuff, try this.
1. Create an email address on you server (come on, any good blogger runs his server out of his speakeasy DSL connection).
2. Write a script, perl or something, that goes through and parses email sent to this address.
3. Send an email from your phone to this address, include some simple authentication mechanism, say like this in the body:
r00t1sc00l
blog blog blog blog. today i ate this things, slept, and thought about getting sex.
4. Script retrieves email, checks for the password (in this case r00t1sc00l), and sticks the rest into your blog.
5. You could do more with this, say a command between the password, and your dumbass thoughts that no one cares about, that could let you replace the current blog, edit something, etc etc.
Now... how hard is that? If only my nokia still works, damn this ancient phone of mine, only allowing recieving of email, instead of sending. At least I got it for freeeeeeeeeeeeeee. (as in beer, yay beer).
Lemure, wtf! Don't you mean Lemur?
.. and you are in geek heaven. As reported (fittingly) on the Cool Gadgets blog
when was the last time you bought a cell phone, last century?
Canadian actually... and I often wonder the same thing. Why is it that N. America has to suck hind teet when it comes to cellphones... and the fact that a standard flipphone w/o plan still costs around or over $500 (CAD)
"If a tree falls in the forest, does anyone hear it fall?"
Perhaps we need a new saying:
"If someone makes a blog entry, does anyone really care?"
--- Why are you wearing that stupid bunny suit? | Why are you wearing that stupid man suit?
If you've ever used any of these three words, please, punch yourself in the nuts.
If you're thinking "no way! those last two are cool!" punch yourself in the nuts AGAIN. You've got it coming.
T9 is complete crap for things like imdb.com (the url that person was trying to enter) or blogging or txt mssging in general. I and everyone I know just turns it off, it's waaaaaay too annoying: the times it does work don't even nearly compensate for the major hassle when it doesn't (all too frequent unless you're an English Literature major).
Fuck off, Jew.
Don't curse me, you ill-fated AC! Because there ain't no other Nave in this world.
Slashdot community, please notice: I am looking for a girlfriend.
Nave H. Weiss
If addiction is judged by how long a dumb animal will sit pressing a lever
to get a "fix" of something, to its own detriment, then I would conclude
that netnews is far more addictive than cocaine.
-- Rob Stampfli
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...