The Mobile Blogging Experiment

After doing a bit of research on the different providers, Cart and I went to Tre to get for me a sim card with mobile internet in it for my Innov8.

Rinaz new italian sim card

I might be one of the last few people to get on the bandwagon, but mobile internet is quite fun. It was rather liberating to be able to check on emails and websites on the go.

Prior to this, I had to be content with wireless@SG when I was in public places as there were no internet bundle in for the mobile for prepaid cards.

Rinaz Samsung Innov8
My Samsung Innov8 is sexeh

As a sidenote, I found interesting that in both the tre shops that we visited, none of them carried the Samsung Innov8. And they keep insisting that internet would not able to work on my phone with their plan – till Cart had to use his sim card on my phone to show them. I’m rather flummoxed.

Regardless, I was finally able to do something that I’ve always wanted to do for a very long time – mobile blogging.

What is mobile blogging?

Mobile blogging is where users can publish posts directly from their camera. I was raring to post pictures of the interesting things that I see and immediately putting them up.

A gelato at Monte Verde
Like this gelato that Cart and I had at Monteverde

I think that its pretty cool to be able to share things with friends on a real time basis.

Applications for Mobile Blogging

Installed in the Innov8 (but also supported for many phones) is an application called Shozu. This application will allow you to send images, video and other media on your phone to various sites like wordpress, seesmic and flickr.

Shozu

I like shozu because of the numerous websites that it supports as well is its ease of use – once you’ve opened the application, you choose the file you want to send and upload it.

Shozu also automatically resizes images to a web friendly size, as well as allows you to tag and rotate your images prior to sending.

Shozu when uploaded

My only qualm with Shozu is that it is a little intrusive. Pictures would have a very prominent logo accompanied to it which, unfortunately draws away from the uploaded picture.

Apart from Shozu, you could also upload via email on the phone. It took a bit of fiddling to set up (so 1996!) but it was smooth going after that.

Setting Gmail on Samsung Innov8

There are so many websites that supports mobile uploads, thats its mind boggling.

After experimenting with different services and wrestling with the pros and cons, for simplicity, I finally decided on uploading my media to posterous – a website that is recommended by Claudia.

Like Shozu, posterous supports many external websites, but by itself, it is already very powerful. It can host practically any type of media from a phone and still manage to have a simple and clean look which I like.

Rinaz Posterous
I like this look

The lifecasting experience

The first few hours was a little awkward. I was experimenting and I took pictures and uploaded them, happily. Little did I know that I was spamming my twitter feed, which was linked together to some websites. (Self spamming is so 1996!)

Regardless, with a little more education, the next day, I decided to do a lifestream of my day. I snapped some pictures that depicted to where I was at – in the wet market, my favourite pizza place as well as the gelateria.

It was a little awkward as I could see people looking suspiciously at me – its hard to be a spy as a mobile camera is never as fast as a regular camera.

Rinaz the photobug

But I had fun, nevertheless. It was an interesting experience for me to share my experience on the go.

On the other hand, its rather cumbersome. It takes a good 10 seconds to start the camera, at least another 10 seconds to take a good picture, and depending on the speed, at least 40 seconds to write an email, attach an image and send it online for ONE post.

It got a little fastidious. How some people are able to do moblogging on a regular basis, without losing their patience is something quite impressive to me.

And as much as I like mobile blogging, I dont think that it’ll take over my miniblog nor this regular blog. Mobile blogging is a form of complement rather than a substitution. But gosh, I’ve left so many digital footprints already!

What do you think of mobile blogging? Do you prefer bits of information compared to a complete post?

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Sidenote : My package from Singapore arrived yesterday and Cart and I are rediscovering our wedding gifts. Thank you so much everyone! I feel so loved 🙂

On the other hand, Italian Customs are holding my HP Touchsmart ransom. They want money before releasing it to me.

5 Replies to “The Mobile Blogging Experiment”

  1. Horlic

    Thanks! I like my phone a lot 🙂

    There is the touchscreen version of it too, but I’m not too fond of that though.

    Bindhu

    Thank you! 😀

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