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Hack 83 Photo Moblogging

Camera phones have added a colorful new
dimension to the text-heavy world of weblogging. With photo
moblogging, you can publish pictures to the Web directly from your
phone.

If you want to share your latest cool camera-phone photo with a lot
of people, you should investigate the world of photo
moblogs.

The word blog
is
a contraction of web log and refers to a linear,
journal-like, informal text-entry system. A moblog
is a mobile blog that allows entries to be made from a
wireless mobile device, such as a wireless phone or PDA. Moblog
content can be text, audio recordings, photographs, or even video.
Figure 7-18 shows an example of a photo moblog. This
hack will focus on moblogs that can handle photographs and videos.
Perhaps we should call these kinds of moblogs multimedia
blogs, or mublogs?

Figure 7-18. A Textamerica photo moblog

Just as text-based blogs let you satisfy the urge to be a journalist
or essayist, photo moblogs let you satisfy the urge to be a
photojournalist or photo essayist. Photo-moblog web services let you
send your camera-phone photographs directly to your own web site. You
don't need to wait to get back to a desktop computer
or buy an additional hardware peripheral. You will, however, need
email service from your mobile-phone service provider.

A growing number of photo-moblog sites offer free accounts:

Buzznet (http://www.buzznet.com)

Buzznet lets you participate in various kinds of communities based on
themes, social groups, or geography. It can also syndicate your
photos using Atom or RSS (Versions 0.91, 1.0, or 2.0). Another option
creates a simple JavaScript source that you can embed on your web
site to display the five most recent images posted to Buzznet.

Expressions (http://www.my-expressions.com)

Expressions is a hosted, visual blogging system, designed and
developed by photographers, artists, and bloggers.

Fotolog (http://www.fotolog.net)

Fotolog is a free-service meeting ground for photo bloggers of all
types who want to share their images with others.

Fotopages (http://www.fotopages.com)

You can use Fotopages to create a photo journal, a visual diary, a
photo album, or even a regular blog.

mLogs (http://www.mlogs.com)

mLogs lets you add audio commentary, as well as photos.

Phlog (http://www.phlog.net)

Phlog has a clean and easy-to-use web interface. It gives you access
to a Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) that lets you customize your web
page's look and feel if you are comfortable working
with CSS.

Textamerica (http://www.textamerica.com/)

Textamerica gives you the ability to upload 3GPP video files with
sound as well as still photos. It also provides an RSS 2.0
syndication feed to let you display photos and videos on your own web
site.

New photo-moblog sites are appearing rapidly as the number of phone
cameras continues to explode. This technology fad will probably take
the same evolutionary path as other web fads and eventually see a
consolidation of sites in the near future. So, make sure you keep an
archive of your favorite camera-phone photos, just in case the photo
moblog you use now disappears in the future.

Most photo-moblog sites give you at least two ways to get your photo
files from the camera phone to the site. The first method is the
familiar web-browser interface that lets you copy files from your
desktop computer to the web site. The mobile nature of moblogs leads
to the second method, which you will probably want to use with your
camera phone: emailing the photo directly from your camera phone to
the moblog web site.

Each photo-moblog service provides specific instructions on how to
email a photo from your camera phone to that service. The
general procedure is to email your photo to a special email address
that the service assigns to you with an authorization password. You
provide this password as part of the email address in the format
Figure 7-19, I've used Buzznet
to syndicate my camera-phone photos to a personal web site.

Figure 7-19. Syndicated camera-phone photos on a personal web site

Regardless of how this technology evolves, the ability to publish
photos and video directly from your phone to a web site provides
tremendous opportunity for keeping friends, family, and the world at
large up-to-date on the world you see before your
eyes.

Todd Ogasawara