Battleangel | Personal

Progress is relentless in some aspects. If you don’t make an effort to keep up then you WILL be left behind, no matter how good your excuses are. And is it just me or is the wheel of ingenuity spinning so fast nowadays that everything seems to come half baked out of the oven?
One of these emerging internet trends is the so called “moblogs”. I.e. being able to post text and images from a mobile device directly to the web. While not new, it hasn’t become an instant hit because of technical limitations. The prime example of this concept in action is Text America made famous by TechTV’s Morgan Webb.

Inconceivability: It obviously requires a camera enabled device, which I don’t have. And a good one, which is rare and ridiculously expensive. I have yet seen a mobile device that I’m prepared to even write an SMS on. To me, they operate completely hands-free. Even navigating menues is a hassle.

Problem: It requires A LOT of mobile bandwidth.

Problem: I want to host the blog myself. Sorry. Thats just the way I am.

Problem: Few or none good script examples exist. So setting up a real mobile photolog like Text America will be impossible. I’ve found a few ideas like for example EasyMoblog. But they work more like a traditional blog …

Possibility: The way I’ve seen it done on practically every site is that articles / images are emailed to the actual blog. And for that we already have support in Nucleus (PostMan). But there is a big difference between doing mobile blogging and having a purpose, like posting fleeting snapshots of the world. Personally I don’t feel that mobile text blogging is anything for me. I just can’t work around other people most of the time. So I better just use a voice memo until I get back home and grab a real keyboard. But still I believe it would be entirely possible if a little annoying to create a new category in Nucleus and also a new skin and template that gives the impression of a gallery display. Sure.

Conclusion: Until I can have an affordable solution for mobile one-click php gallery posting I’m out of the game.

A good way to stay updated on mobile blogging:
Moblogging at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism

And lets hope Nucleus gets “real” moblog support before the motley Movable Type crew does. Someone implied that MT would have the feature in the next major version. But that next major version has been on its way for ages now.