At the end of July, I tried out an SMS/MMS to blog service called Phlogger. What Phlogger does is convert SMSes and MMSes sent from a mobile phone into a mini-blog. It was fun and fabulous for a while - I could send periodic updates from my mobile wherever I was and it would be almost like real-time blogging. A few others in the Malaysian blogging community took to it and signed up for the service as well.

However, Phlogger had one major drawback - I could not truly integrate my posts with my existing blog. All messages sent to Phlogger are posted onto a separate server as a mini-blog. I had to insert a java script in my site’s HTML to call up this mini-blog. Most of us ended up with two blogs running concurrently - our existing main blog and the mini-SMS/MMS-blog on the sidebar. This wasn’t a very satisfactory solution to me - I wanted to have only ONE blog and ONE blog only to collate all my thoughts, writings and life. I wanted all posts to “read” nicely in a chronological order - and not to have to refer to two separate blogs. And I didn’t like the fact that this mini-blog resided on someone else’s server and not mine. So, a month or so after testing Phlogger, I took it down.

On Wednesday, 19 November, the New Straits Times published a computing section which featured a syndicated article about moblogging (mobile blogging). I tried to followed the links published in the article, I say tried because except for one URL, the other two were incorrect and resulted in error pages! I had to Google for the right URLs! This resulted in these test posts the last couple of days.

The result? I’ve found a better way to blog while I’m on the move!

There are two ways of doing this:
(1) Install a client application on a mobile device (PDA or mobile phone);
(2) Go through a third-party processing server.

Either way, your messages/posts will be published in your existing blog, therefore be completely integrated with it. No more confusing sidebars that are chronologically disjointed from the main blog, unless you really want it and set it up to do so. Both ways also give you greater control over how the posts will appear, something which Phlogger wasn’t quite able to handle.

NOTE: whichever route you choose, you’ll need to be able to access the internet with your mobile device. This generally means using either dial-up or GPRS services through a mobile phone.

The first way requires installing either Kablog or BlogPlanet. The choice really depends on what device you have and in some cases which you prefer. From what I could gather, from a quick cursory analysis, Kablog is generally the better option for two reason: for the same devices, Kablog offers more features than BlogPlanet and secondly, Kablog seems to have better and clearer instructions.

I’ll leave you to discover both applications yourself. I decided not to try either of them out for the following reasons:
(a) for my device (Handspring Treo 600), both applications do not support the in-built camera, hence I cannot post pictures with either application;
(b) I generally do not like to install additional applications if I can help it, and since I’ve found another solution which works better for me, I decided not to try either Kablog or BlogPlanet.

NOTE: both Kablog and BlogPlanet request registration at USD10 - I’m not sure if there is a timed-trial period for both applications, or if selected features are “turned off” if you don’t register, or if indeed the registrations are entirely voluntary. Do let me know if you find out.

Which brings me to the second way - sign up for this service called Mfop2. Once you’ve signed up, all you need to do is send your posts via email to Mfop2. Mfop2 will then process that email and post it directly to your blog. That’s it. Easy, peasy!

Well… almost. The next question is how do you send an email from your mobile device? If you have a PDA that can communicate with a mobile phone, or indeed if you have a PDA-cum-mobile, the answer’s quite simple: use an email application and send it using either dial-up or GPRS. If this is not the case, then I’m not so sure…

Theoretically, if you have one of those newer phones that support MMS, you can send an email using MMS. I’ve done it before by sending one to myself - try it! However, my attempts to send emails using MMS to Mfop2 were not very successful - my emails (using MMS) didn’t end up as posts on my blog. I’m not sure where the problem lies: I have been successful in sending emails to myself and I have been successful in having emails sent to Mfop2 (using “normal” email clients) being posted to my blog. The problem only occurs when I try blogging by sending emails using MMS. I have written to Mfop2’s developer for help and I’m awaiting a reply. For all I know, the problem could lie with my mobile service provider, Maxis… I’d suggest you try it anyway and see how far you get. I’d be interested to hear your experiences.

UPDATE: I just discovered that the Nokia 7650 comes with an email application. You can therefore use it to send emails to Mfop2, or to any other services, to blog while on the go. I suspect that the same applies with some of the other newer mobile phones.

You can, at least with Maxis, send an SMS to email. Unfortunately, Maxis adds a header and a footer to the body/content of the SMS. If you email this to Mfop2, both footer and header get published. It wouldn’t be so bad if the header or footer was just an advertisement, but the header also includes your mobile number - which I don’t think is desirable unless you do want to publicise it to the whole wide world…

My solution at the moment?

I’m using Mfop2 and an email application on my Treo 600. Since the email application can handle attachments, I can post pictures. I also realised today that this was a more cost effective solution compared to emailing via MMS. It’s not at all clear to me how much Maxis charges for MMS, but I’m almost certain that it’s no less than MYR0.20 each. Now, a short blog post with a picture attached, like this one, can be sent as an email that is no bigger than 10kb in size. Maxis at the moment charges MYR0.15 for 10kb of GPRS traffic. Therefore, a post via email and Mfop2 using GPRS would generally cost me no more than MYR0.20!

I also particularly like one additional feature that Mfop2 offers. With one account, you can add what they call “guest email addresses”. This means that you can have several email addresses signed up with Mfop2 from which you will send your blog posts. That means that you can blog from your work email, your personal email and any other email account in addition to blogging from your mobile device. In fact, you don’t even have to have a mobile device to use this service. If you have world wide web access restrictions at your work place, you can still blog - by using email!

I’m going to live with this for a while and see how I like it. Tell me how you get along if you do try this out.

All three solutions - Kablog, BlogPlanet and Mfop2 - support Blogger and MoveableType. Kablog supports a few additional blogging services and I suspect BlogPlanet will work with quite a number as well.

UPDATE: I just remembered that TypePad already supports email-to-blog if you’re on the “Plus” or “Pro” subscription. And LcF pointed out in a comment below that b2 also supports this feature. If you are using either, you only have to figure out how to get an email from your mobile device to these services in order to moblog.

  

Posted on November 21st, 2003 by jl
Filed under: About this blog