Blogcritics The critical lens on today's culture & entertainment
New software lets you blog via cell phone:
- While most of the world will continue to post their weblog entries from a desktop PC, a new outfit based in Dublin, Ireland, called NewBay Software has designed a service called FoneBlog that could eventually let wireless customers create a blog using only a mobile phone.
To be fair, posting to a blog from a wireless device is not terribly new. For example, using Blogger Pro, the enhanced version of Google’s Blogger.com service, users can automatically post to a blog via e-mail. Users create an e-mail address associated with their Blogger account that no one else knows, which allows posting from any e-mail address. That means it’s possible to write a blog entry from an e-mail-capable mobile phone, wireless PDA or pager.
NewBay’s idea, which it is demonstrating at the 3GSM World Congress, a wireless industry trade show taking place this week in Cannes, France, focuses on letting users with advanced mobile phones enhance their text blog entries with pictures and sound clips.
Users would set up their accounts by sending an SMS message to a mobile number and receive their account information by a reply SMS. They could then select a pre-designed look and feel for their sites. Wireless providers would host the sites and allow their customers to update them just by sending SMS or MMS messages. The blogs would be viewable both on a regular PC Web browser and also on the browsers available on wireless devices.
….As it happens, the blogging craze is hitting just as many of these operators are trying to figure out how to encourage their customers to send more messages. Taking it wireless could be a smart move for wireless operators, though it doesn’t hurt to beware. Blogging is hot right now because it’s new and easy to do. It is, like so many other things that have come and gone on the Internet, a fad. Yet sometimes fads have a way of sticking around. [Forbes]
Um, thanks for the vote of confidence. I believe blogging has moved beyod the “fad” stage, but what do I know?
