I am honored, of course, that MOpocket has made the cut.
For now the easiest way to download the product is to point your phone’s browser to http://cv.mwap.at. Or if you’re a download-and-sych-to-your-phone kind of person, point your computer’s browser here, and if you need the Palm version, get it here.
I would hope or imagine that the COTM would take advantage of technologies like Mozes or TextMark to create an easy WapPush solution.
Most phones are supported, but it doesn’t work on Verizon (surprise) and if you have a Treo, you’ll need to download Java . For a more complete guide to compatibility, click here. Above you can see a pic of it working on my N-70.
Did this one slip through the mobile blogging radar or was I just sleeping, I know I did not receive the memo.. Apparently, one of my most favorite and cherished applications on my phone (probably one of the to 5 apps used on my phone and the reason I bought a Symbian phone) Shozu has added some new uploading capability to their service.
For those of you that do not know what Shozu is a totally free application that you put on your phone that allows you to immediately, via a data connection, upload your photos and video’s to your favorite media social networking site like, for example, Flickr. The app also allows you to add captions and tags (both automatically and manually), view comments people have made about your pictures on your phone as well as send to a secondary source (either automatically or manually) such as an email address or another media social networking site .
Well, it seems, a couple of days ago Shozu announced that users of its free one-click image uploading service can now transmit video clips directly from supported camera phones to their accounts on YouTube, the Internet video-sharing site that gets a staggering 80 million video views a day. This will come as a breath of fresh air for Flickr users who cannot upload their photos (because Flickr does not support video yet). Before the direct uploading feature was provided Shozu users where attempting to upload their mobile video to You Tube via You Tube’s email uploading technology… but You Tube kept rejecting the emails which get sent from a Shozu address.
But apparently that is not all Shozu has added, surfing around the Shozu forum section I also discovered that not only was the You Tube fiasco fixed in late July (a couple of days before the official release) but that the ability to post FTP sites and personal blogs. If this is the case then I can safely say that Shozu has solved all my MOblogging problems.
Yep, more MOblogging news. The popular blogging interface is now allowing those that use Blogger to blog to moblog with Blogger Mobile using their e-mail capable cell phone device. Ha! say that one 10 times fast!
Blogger Mobile lets you send photos and text straight to your blog while you’re on-the-go. All you need to do is send a message to go@blogger.com from your phone. You don’t even need a Blogger account. The message itself is enough to create a brand new blog and post whatever photo and text you’ve sent.
Later, if your want to claim your mobile blog or switch your posts to another blog, just sign in to go.blogger.com and use the claim code Blogger sent to your phone.
While Blogger Mobile is currently only available in the US, you can always send posts to your blog using Mail-to-Blogger.
There’s even a feature, called AudioBlogger , that lets you call Blogger from any phone and leave a message that is immediately posted to your site as an MP3 audio file. (It’s fun at parties.)
With the recent news that Six Apart, the company behind the ultra-popular Typepad Blogging/Content Management Application and Moveable Type (which runs MOpocket) has just announced the launch of their mobile version, Typepad Mobile, its time to really ask the question “What Is A Moblog.”
As Oliver Starr over at Mobile Crunch put it:
“,,,TypePad Mobile is not intended to be a full featured blogging application, but rather a quick, easy and intuitive way to capture moments of your life or things you wish to share or remember and post them to your blog in real time with a minimum of trauma or frustration. “
Six Apart is not the first to come to do this of course. Nokia’s Lifeblog has been hooking up with Typepad and other blogging sites for a while now. I also remember the days of uploading mobileMT onto my server to access my MT admin page via WAP to post via my Nokia 6820 and Treo 650. That did not last long. For a while I just reverted to the linking my Flickr account to my blog setup and just send picture emails from my phone to a designated Flickr address which then posted it onto my blog. Then I found MO:Blog a nice little MOblogging platform for the Treo650 that I used mostly to update the EdgemontDebate website at tournaments while I was coaching high school policy debate.
At this point I stopped trying to update any of my significant website via mobile technology. The hassle was not worth it. The closest I come to MOblogging now is uploading my cell phone pictures onto my Flickr account via Shozu. But even then I rarely add comments or a specific tag until I get home latter.
So this got me thinking as to what is a MOblog? Syntactically, the word moblog is a combination of the words “mobile†and “weblog.†The term was coined (according to Joi Ito) by Adam Greenfield on November 5th 2005 in order to best describe the interface behind the happenings at Hiptop Nation which Greenfield describes as “the future-becoming-present in real time,†the inevitable outcome when you fuse digital cameras and text-entry functionality with a way to publish it to the web. The history of the moblog goes back much farther than than that though and anyone who is interested can read all about it at Joi Ito’s History of Moblog Page.
When it comes down to the end result, however, a moblog is really nothing other than a blog that’s posts are either maintained or produced via a mobile or portable device such as a cell-phone or PDA. The blog can be entirely a moblog or a regular blog with occasional moblog posts included.
The original technology behind moblogging actually has nothing to do with mobile technology at all. The majority of Moblogging depends upon a “mail-to-post†technology that either your blog-software provides or can be found via 3rd party services and/or software such as Flickr, Foneblog, InTheFieldOnline and TextAmerica etc.. The way mail-to-post works is fairly simple and makes posting to a blog as easy as sending an email, literally. The moblogging software provides you with an email address to which you must send the content you wish to be published on your blog to. If it’s a 3rd party service then some more configuration is necessary but this usually involves no more than providing what type of blog software you use (Radioland, Movabletype, Wordpress, Blogger etc.) as well as the username and password you use to access the blog normally. Some services actually require you to provide that information at the top of every email.
The exceptions to the “mail-to-post†technology are software’s like Kablog, Shozu, Lifeblog (Nokia) Rabble and Juice Wireless, which do not rely on e-mail or text messaging for updating weblogs via the mobile medium. Like many of the desktop blogging tools, such as Ecto these services are integrated Moblog client software that you download directly onto your portable device. Via the software you can then log directly into your blog or their service for updating or posting. Its important to note that some of this services such as Rabble and Juice Wireless are their own social networking communities and while some, like Rabble, allow you to post pictures and material onto your blog as well, the posts always also go onto your Rabble or Juice accounts. Shozu as well links up your content with a social community site like Flickr or Buzznet. In that regard Shozu can also act as a mail-to-post in that it will also automatically forward any of your pictures to an email address and if that email address is set up to post to a blog the low and behold it will.
Nevertheless, this direct data transfer method will probably become the next phase in moblogging as manufactures of popular desktop blogging tools begin to produce their own software for Palms. Pocket PC’s and other Smartphones, as Typepad has done. The next step will of course involve being able to access your blog via the web on your phone the same way you access it on your computer, but until the data-transferring of various carriers as well as the browser capabilities of portable devices improves it remains for now only a frustrating possibility. All of these options, of course, require the ability of your phone to connect to a data Network, which requires you to activate a data-plan from your service provider. I strongly recommend that heavy mobloggers purchase the unlimited data-plan ?.
What makes moblogging “mobile†blogging, therefore, is the ability of sending and receiving Network data from your portable device of choice; a technology that only three years ago was not considered mainstream in the United States. There are all different types of moblogs and ways to moblog. Moblogs are usually short and to the point with an emphasis on documentation in real-time over journalistic jouissance. Most moblogs are purely graphical and consists of nothing other than low-pixel resolution photos taken with camera-phones, which are then immediately uploaded to the blog. Some of them provide a textual explanation or musing to go along with a picture. Very few of them are nothing but text. All of them are based on a spontaneity fueled by the ability to capture and share moments wherever you are. The graphic emphasis makes a whole lot of a sense because of the speed in which you can take pictures and then load onto a message or client based software. And as anyone who uses their phones dial-pad or small QWERTY keyboard buttons knows, typing long messages can be quite daunting and time consuming. It doesn’t lend itself well to the real-time spontaneity that the moblog has evolved into. But this is exactly what makes the moblog distinct. The distinction of the moblog, in comparison to its other blog counterparts, has to do with its limitations as well as its possibilities combined; a dialectic that has allowed the moblog to develop into a cultural medium all its own.
One of the main issues when it comes to moblogging is that its spontaneous real-time nature requires an event or happening to go with it. No one but you and your family looks at Aunt Petunas cat moblog. Some of the earliest moblogs became popular because of the bloggers coverage and or participation in a certain event, such as a conference, party, rally or protest. Some of the first pictures we saw of the horrible tsunami that devastated the South Pacific where camera-phone images. But it is for this very reason that moblogging and politics can fit together so perfectly. Politics, besides being an event in and of itself, is a catapult for a plethora of events, issues and happenings that occur everyday, all of which moblogging can capture and spread instantaneously, no matter where you are. When you stop and thing about it, that’s an extremely powerful tool. The political ramifications of this are enormous, but not in the traditional political way we are used to thinking. Moblogging takes the New-Media political critique created by the blogosophere and explodes it into real-time.
Over the past two days I have received two emails from two distinct companies both claiming to have found the ultimate business man or woman’s ubiquitous white-board dream. Both Scanr and Clicktoscan ( from Realeyes3D) allow you to scan, copy, and fax with your camera or camera phone. The idea is that you take a picture of a document, whiteboard, or business card (both currently in beta), e-mail the picture to them and then they do the rest, perform OCR on the file and send you a PDF version of the document. The whole process only takes about a minute or two, and the content of the PDF file that is delivered to you is tagged and easily searchable. This, the claim, provides a great way to keep digital copies of important documents, and it’s truly like having a FedEx Kinko’s with you all of the time.
I have given both of them a whirl and while the ability to send directly to a fax machine (or email) by placing the number or email address in the subject line of the MMS is pretty damn cool, neither ClickToScan nor ScanR won me over enough to get me to stop using an application like Shozu to record my ubiquitous camera phone needs. UPDATE: Andy Tiller, CTO of Shozu, has shown me a great way to converge Shozu with ClickToScan… UPDATE bellow.
For one thing, their is just to much involved in the processes of both ClickToScan and a Scanr. Its not as simple as taking a picture with your camera phone and sending it via MMS to either scan@clicktscan.com or doc@scanr.com. First you have to figure out your camera phone’s pixel resolution and set it to various settings some of which I have never heard of (at least on the Nokia N70 or 6682).
I liked ClickToScan’s web interface on this end in that when you put in your camera phone’s information it told you what to expect from it when using their service. I was shocked that the N70 got a lower usability score than the 6682.
Nevertheless, both sites pretty much tell you that for white boards the minimum pixel resolution is 1 and for business cards and and docs its 2 (which already eliminates a good number of American users). I tried both services using a Nokia 6682 (1.3 mega pixels) and a Nokia N91 (2 mega pixels). With the 6682 I took a picture of a whiteboard and a document. The results from ScanR and ClicktoScan where both far from satisfactory.
From scanR I received the SMS on both phones: service@scanR.com() The image you sent to ScanR is too small. Set your camera to 1 megapixel [it is] or higher resolution and fine mode [it is].
ClicktoScan sent the image to my email but told me that Clicktoscan has scanned your image but the resulting document may not be satisfying because the resolution of your original image is too low. To avoid this: (1) Ensure that your camera phone is 1 megapixel or greater [it is]. (2) Ensure that your camera is set to the appropriate resolution and image quality (it is) and (3) Ensure that your camera is not resizing images (see below) [oi! another thing to worry about!] They tell you solve the MMS resizing problem by setting the “creation mode” in your MMS settings to “unlimited” or “free” which worked, in my case, but also means that some of the receiving phones I try to send an MMS to may no longer support the message (unless I remember to switch back to guided mode). Besides, switching the MMS mode did not change the problem. But at least Clicktoscan brought this issue up.
As expected, the same problems existed with the 2 mega pixel N91.
To the average user I believe these companies are already beginning to ask to much when they ask you to take the picture and send it via MMS, especially here in the States where unlimited data plans are cheaply available (especially to the business types they are targeting). I believe a data uploading solution like that of Shozu is much better equipped for this type of thing.
Honestly, I only fiddled about the programs for an hour or so, achieving minimal to no success which for me means if I can’t get it, my dad or girlfriend or aunt definitely wont get it. They are not going to dedicate more than 15 min to figuring out something like this. They get Shozu cause it’s easy.
To be fair, the services work fine when using a regular camera and one of their up-loaders… but this is already missing the point of on-the-spot mobile phone to scan ubiquity they are shooting for isn’t it. So I guess, in a way, its more the fault of the Camera phone manufacturers (image quality) and the networks (MMS size sending issue) then their own but then again that is what they have to work with so perhaps this type of service is to young or early.
But then again, Shozu works just fine with all types of issues and probably, if they wanted to, integrate this type of functionality (and in a way already do). You can now set up your favourite email addresses and blogs in ShoZu - and then email or post your photos and videos in seconds. What do you say AttillatheChicken… Shozu to fax?
UPDATE: As I mentioned by stating that”and in a way they already do…” Shozu CTO Andy Tiller has pointed out that you can actually use Shozu to solve a lot of the MMS and image quality problems. I tried it using both services and it worked like charm! Yeah Shozu for saving the day! See comments bellow for more
If I where going to go with one or the other I would have to suggest ClickToScan in that their website and information was a lot more informative and user friendly. Also with 50 Mb of storage, you can securely store and forward your documents from your phone, your account or your PC, whenever you need to (when it works). With clicktoscan you can go back to documents you’ve previously scanned, either from your web browser or from your phone. In that sense it is a real document management system. Clicktoscan will also send you something, even if its screwed up, which at least makes you feel like you have accomplished something and at the very least can try to remind you of what you where aiming your camera phone at when you attempted to capture it.
With the unfortunate events that are occurring presently in the Middle East I thought it would be a good time to bring to your attention a little project underway by my pal Erik Sundelof (a fellows at Reuters Digital Vision Program at Stanford University, a program that aims to develop technology to advance humanitarian goals in underserved communities).
Erik thought it would be interesting to see what the people on the ground (on both sides) are seeing and be able to report back live as it happens. So Erik has set up a Typepad blog that both sides can post to via their cell phones. The system uses a positioning solution developed Erik while a fellow at Stanford. The positioning system allows an end user, amongst other things, to determine if the mobile content was really sent from near or on location. Erik also built an SMSBlog for MobileActive.org, the online community for mobile technology and social activism.
But all of this is really part of his larger “In The Field Online” project in which Erik imagines every cell phone as a citizen media outlet. The point is to allow people ‘in the field’ to report news stories (or any other types of content for that matter) to the web using just a cell phone, but is developed in such a way as to be extremely extensible. As such one can basically push any piece of information - text, audio, graphic, picture, video from any cell phone to the web. It is the natural extension to citizen journalism as it creates the vehicle for people without internet to be able to get their voices heard on the internet.
The idea just came naturally to him:
I started to think about what would be my first thought after a car bomb went off. Certainly not to run to an Internet cafe. That’s probably the last thing I would think about. But I might call my friends with my cell phone to tell them I’m all right. Then you have your phone out, so now the possibility is that you could also record that, shoot it and send it to Reuters, the BBC or wherever. That would be a great tool to really create a vehicle and channel for those people to get their frustration out, that would help the democracy part.
Recently Erik was interviewed by Mark Glaser at MediaShift PBS to talk about citizen media and the future of its implications on the media landscape. “I truly believe cell phones are the right way to go here.” Erik tells me. “Combine this with the proper business model and you have a really powerful tool.” Or as Erik himself put it in the interview:
“The key here is that the media organizations need to realize they are losing control. They can’t really control [the news] now because people are posting this stuff to other blogs. I think it would be better to merge traditional reporting with citizen media rather than have a [totally] new media.
To take the best of the old fashioned news organizations and bring in the power of the bloggers, because you have so many people investigating. Mix them and you have an extremely good organization and you’ll have content that’s really important in finding out the truth.”
So, in the spirit of the project, people in Israel or Lebanon can now post to the blog by simply sending an SMS to the number +1 650 455 2692 (yes it’s a US number but this is an experiment more or less, Erik is working on getting a more local number). Pictures can be sent via MMS (as well as just posting) by sending an Email to mms@inthefieldonline.net. All messages for now must start with a “TP” and end with a “STOP.” If you want to include a title in your message, text as follows: “TP” add a title here “BODY” yada yada “STOP.” WIthin the next couple of days, Erik has told me that the capability to post videos to the blog will also be made available.
If you are not reporting on the crisis in the Middle East but want to try Erik’s tool out anyways try this very simple showcase here - http://inthefieldonline.net/showcase. Step by step instructions are as follows:
2. Choose to send that via a Picture Message/Multimedia Message/MMS (or email if you would prefer that)
3. Send this message to show@inthefieldonline.net (of course short-codes are supported.)
4. Just watch the computer screen and you will see the post pop up on its own.
The simplicity also exists for SMS:s and it has been tested in most continents.
At the moment, he’s working on a cooler version of the service in the hopes of attracting Silicon Valley funding, or perhaps paying customers who run newspaper sites or other media outlets. So VC listen up. MOblogging could possibly be the next big thing. The blog Mobhappy has already made this easy for you to understand. His hope is to build an open source software platform with a programming code that can be improved and modified by anyone; to enable people to send in photos or video to central sites or to their blogs or websites of their choice. The simpler, the better.
If you are a volunteer nonprofit organization or political campaign you are probably very interested already.
The interview by the way is fantastic and has loads of information and answers to questions you might have about the technology.
Yes, yes I am here at CTIA and and digging up great and cool stories to write about for you. The irony is that blogging time is limited in that I am here juggling 3 different roles… business as well `as press but I will do the best I can
The internet at the conference is horrible, which always surprises me at big tech conferences. It took me 30 min to successfully post this post. Tech conferences, especially Wireless ones, should really make sure the internet (at least for the press) is superior beyond belief.
In the meantime you can follow my live mobloging of the event at my Flickr.
So last night, via the inspiration of Markus Angermeier, I went a little FLICKR crazy and set up a couple new FLICKR groups that may interest you being that they are all somehow mobile technology related.
The first group “The Ubiquitous Camera Phone” is about documenting the ways in which people use their camera phones for ubiquitous purposes such as remembering a parking space or notes on a blackboard. The group was inspired by a recent post I wrote on the subject and has already received positive feedback and some press over at Stuart Mudie’s blog Blethers and Smart Mobs.
Based on the already existing “Cell Talking” group which documents pictures of people talking their cell phones, I created the FLICKR group “Texting” which I describe on the site as Pics of ppl txt messaging or snding SMS’/MMS’ or pics of anything 2 du wit txt messaging.
For the activists in you I created the ”
mobileactive” FLICKR group which will document pictures of people or organizations using mobile phones for social activism. The group is based off of the already existing mobileactive community.
And for my fellow mobilists I created the “mobilists” FLICKR group which will document the wanderings and visual musing of mobile bloggers from around the world.
All groups are open so that anyone can join! Can’t wait 2 see your pics!
p.s. Another group I created, for those that “get it,” is 23 Skidoo, a group meant to visiualy investigate fnord and catalogue fnord the many sinister appearences of the number 23 in conspircy fnord occult and other settings. fnord.
A new report from In-Stat finds that while “a camera is considered by many users to be one of the most desirable features in wireless handsets, yet, evidence suggests that only a tiny percentage of camera phones are used regularly to transmit pictures or to store for later use.” The report, “Mobile Imaging Services — Focusing on the User Experience” (#IN0502053MCD), covers the market for camera phones and related services.
The report also says that those who now use camera or camcorder phones say they are less likely to replace their phones in the near future than other users, I know I won’t.
“People who haven’t yet purchased camera phones are very enthusiastic about all the uses for their images,†says David Chamberlain, In-Stat analyst. “However, once they start using their new phones, they are turned off by perceived poor picture quality, slow network speeds, and the difficulty of creating and sending pictures. Our survey found that very few pictures actually make their way out of the handset to be shared with others.â€
Thats true.
But one thing that the article or report doesn’t talk about is the highly innovative “beyond camera” ways people are using their camera phones, some of which can be read on the musing of the Pondering Primates Blog. But beyond using the camera phone to read barcodes, I have seen a plethora of people use their camera phones to record ephemeral information and visual documentation wherever and whenever it’s needed. I have seen someone use their phone to take a picture of a meal they enjoyed, I have been in the car with someone who took a picture of an intersection to remember it later. And I have been in a conference board meeting where someone took several pictures of a white board before it was erased so he could review the notes while on the plane ride back.
The best example I have ever heard is of a friend of mine’s grandfather who takes pictures of what section he is parked in, in a parking garage.
I know I have taken a picture of a book at a book store, as well as its bar code (in order to look it up later on Amazon) but more importantly to remind myself that I wanted it in the first place.
And I KNOW insurance companies are beginning to use it to document claims like flooding damage and fender benders.
And lets not forget the heavy impact they are having on citizen journalism and and moblogging. Some of the first pictures we saw of emergency situations like the Tsunami came from camera phones.
This could go on…
Do I use my camera phone to take “vanity” pictures of my friends and family? Very rarely. But I do use it just as much for on demand real time situations.
When it comes to a camera that is located on a portable communication device, it’s time we looked beyond the “traditional image capturing” that we normally think of when we think of camera’s and start to see them for the ubiquitous capturing devices that they are. The focus on the disappointment of the camera phone does not take into account its smartmob like possibilities.
What are some ubiquitous ways you can think of using your camera phone for?
The gentleman over at Mobhappy teamed up with the fella’s over at Free News to create a dedicated Carnval of the Mobilists mobile RSS reader. In the past MobHappy and Free News have worked together to create and offer a mobile RSS reader.
