Tuesday, May 30, 2006

MoBlogging: An Executive Summary

What's Moblog?

Defn: A moblog, or a mobile blog, is an online record of anything you feel like sharing with the world, whether they want it or not. The difference between moblogging and regular blogging is that you use your phone or Pocket PC to post text or pictures.

Defn2: Mobile Blogging (also called moblogging) is the act of posting text and photos to a weblog from a mobile device. The element of reading weblogs via mobile devices is also gaining popularity.

Brief History of MoBlog
  • Earliest development occurred in Japan.
  • Stuart Woodward is believed to be the first person to post from an ordinary mobile device in Jan 2001
  • Moblogging gained much adoption in 2002.
  • Term “moblogging” was coined by Adam Greenfield in 2002.

Current Mobile Trends
  • Mobile phones/devices have a very significant role in our day-2-day affairs. Primarly, it connects an individual to the rest of the world anywhere anytime. These days Mobile phones provide an end user lot more features than just making calls & sending text msgs.
  • You can share your memories and conversational content – photos, videos, text messages, multimedia messages, and notes - into a chronology that you can easily browse, search, and share.
  • Mobile phones have replaced computers as the de facto e-mail terminal of choice for many Japanese who are not in technology, finance, engineering or other computer-intensive occupations. This is particularly true for the young, who most clearly prefer handsets to handhelds.

Context differences of blogging between mobile & PC:

  • Mobile: Living in the moment, multitasking, varying environment
  • PC: Longer attention span, more focused, rich input & formatting methods

Blogging Patterns
  • “I blog the instant moments first from my phone and return to them with the PC to edit them”
  • “I use the PC more for thought posts and the mobile mainly for pictures”
  • “I blog stuff I did not blog previously, since I can post, for example, when traveling”

Who are the major players?

Nokia | Six Apart | Earthcam | SonyEricsson | TMobile | Cingular | Vodafone | Google | Yahoo | Microsoft | Virgin Mobile | Sprint | Motricity | Verizon Wireless | O2

Current services which are available:

Motricity's provides scores of games for millions of members stretched across several carriers and it wraps around specific games tools for rating and reviewing a title, for creating buddy lists of fellow gamers and for communicating to these groups via SMS.

TextAmerica is an online photo album or moblog site that allows you to take pictures & Videos from your digital camera or camera phone and post them to their site.

Buzznet.com is a photo sharing and journal community. The site features tools to create your own public or private homepage with integrated photoblog and journals. Buzznet also provide a rich set of API's based on XML-RPC and ATOM.

Google's Blogger Mobile lets you send photos and text straight to your blog while you're on-the-go. While Blogger Mobile is currently only available in the US.

Nokia provides a service called M-Blog for Nokia users to post the pictures & videos from their mobile phones. Nokia also provides an update to its cell phone blogging software – Lifeblog,

Six Apart has apparently purchased Splashblog, the mobile photosharing solution for handhelds.

Sony Ericsson that support Google Search and Blogger.

Cingular's new mobile blogging and social networking platform called Rabble.

Other Innovative Ideas


REXplorer is a rich interactive scavenger hunt designed to enhance the tourist experience for young adults through the fun and excitement of a public game using mobile technologies as a part of the Regensburg Experience1 (REX) Museum. The well-preserved medieval city of Regensburg (to become a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2006) serves as the game board for the competition.

MoBlogs - the Future of Distributed Learning and Distributed Learning Institutions.

Connectivism - Is a learning theory for the digital age. Learning has changed over the last several decades. The theories of behaviourism, cognitivism, and constructivism provide an effect view of learning in many environments. They fall short, however, when learning moves into informal, networked, technology-enabled arena.

eTravel Assitant for Backpackers - The aim of the project is to design an electronic travel assistant for backpackers and extend existing research methods so that they are more appropriate for mobile group research.

EarthCam adds a twist to the usual photo blog. With a paid subscription, $4.95 US a month at the time I wrote this, you can access Web cams around the world on your phone. You can also set up your own Web cam on your desktop computer, and view it on your phone. This could be useful for people who want to see their children during the day, or check on a pet.

Mobile P2P - I bet this would be the next 'big thing' to happen. Imagine the power of P2P with your PSP or XBox or any hand held device.

Disclamier: The information found in this summary on MoBlogging is aggregated from various resources & articles which were found on World Wide Web through Google Search. The content/idea/information belongs to respective owners & I don't claim any credit for them. This summary is meant for educational purposes only.

Wednesday, May 10, 2006

Quote of the Week

"Nobody should start to undertake a large project. You start with a small _trivial_ project, and you should never expect it to get large. If you do, you'll just overdesign and generally think it is more important than it likely is at that stage. Or worse, you might be scared away by the sheer size of the work you envision.

So start small, and think about the details. Don't think about some big picture and fancy design. If it doesn't solve some fairly immediate need, it's almost certainly over-designed. And don't expect people to jump in and help you. That's not how these things work. You need to get something half-way _useful_ first, and then others will say "hey, that _almost_ works for me", and they'll get involved in the project. "

--Linus Torvalds

Found this interesting quote here.

Tuesday, May 02, 2006

Interesting post on REST

I just stumbled on this interesting post titled 'How I explained REST to my wife' by Ryan Tomayko. The best past about the post is that Ryan explains the whole concept of Internet & its related technology in its latest avatar (read SOA) in a conversational manner. He covers the concepts of internet in the past & its limitations, their protocols and how things have changed over the passage of time in a layman's terms & drives the picture of SOA or to be more precise REST in a simple manner.

Google offers 3D modeling tool for free

Few months ago while I was reading the Google's Official Blog I read this post. The post titled ' A new home for @Last Software ' was written by of @Last Software. Google acquired Skecthup, which offers 3D modelling software & is now offering the same software in two versions - free & paid. I have been following Google for quite sometime now & their acquisitions of - Keyhole, Picasa, Writely & the most recent one Skecthup. What excites me is the stratergy of Google's Integration of these newly acquired services to their eco-system in a meaningful manner & offer them for free. I am eagerly waiting for Google to integrate Writely's Web Word Processor into their GMail service, so that I can have all my essential documents available anytime anywhere.

I was curious to know the
Google's Acquisitions in the past, so I digged in a bit to get this post by William Slawski of 'SEO by the SEA' titled 'Google Acquisitions'. This post has an impressive trail of companies accquired by Google starting right from the acquisition of Deja.com in the year 2001 till @LastSoftware, 2006.

Yahoo! offers 'Tech' service

Just hit this new 'Tech' service from Yahoo!. Now Yahoo is trying to compete with the mother of Technology site c|net.com. I am not sure whether Yahoo can match the kind of reviews & news on latest technology like CNET, but, competition is always good for the consumer. Don't u agree with that?

Via: Digg.com