i'm outta the loop

At work and flipping though the ottawa citizen in the 5th floor lounge, i stumble upon a whole article on flickr. I only discovered this site a few weeks ago, and now it makes the citizen? This is a true testement to make lack of connection to the internet and what people are doing on it. Unfortunately the article is not online, but it basically talked about flickrs ability to help people quickely share photo's with friends n family, tagging, it's beta status, and it's 230k users.

As a side note, the front page of tech weekly was dominated by an article on tagging, whos image was the popular tag display on flickr.

To update on the bell mobility status, nothing has changed... i'm pretty close to switching to rogers, buying a kickass GSM phone over the net, and struggling with the firmware incompatibilities that will surely result suggests a friend of mine. At least it'll be a step in the right direction.

doing the flickr tour

doing the flickr tour,
originally uploaded by mebeingme.

Copied and....

This photo was originally posted to flickr... then i'll attempt to
push over to my blog. At first glance, flickr totally has an amazing
feature suite, simple/clean interface, and a robust setup. I've very
impressed with it. When i tried sending directly from email the first
time their engine responded with a text message telling me the format
was incompatible... hows that for service.

By the way, the problem with TA is not yet resolved, but is being looked at.

instant results

Although not quite what i expected... as can be seen by a comment on my first post, jade might have a fix for me. That would be nice, and remove quite a bit of reason from this blog, but hey, we're all in this for conclusion right! That won't stop me from describing my experiences with textamerica thus far...

TA has been great for me. A free site to host my moblog, tons of space, a nice control panel, and tons of ability to customize. But it was not without issues. For instance, this problem (that might be in the midst of getting fixed now) plagued me for the first month until i just gave up on it. I submitted posts in forums, sent pics to their support moblog, tried as many avenues as i could to no avail. Several months ago, my hit counter was reset. I again posted, realized many people had the same problem, it still isn't fixed. They added the ability to set your counter arbitrarily, so i did. A month or two later the number just disappeared from my site. Again, a very minor thing, i do love TA, but these annoyances built up and left me looking for alternatives. I haven't settled on any but hope to do some research that'll help. Initially i debated writing my own engine and hosting it myself... a minor pipe dream, i don't have the time and during initial design i realize there are LOTS of pieces that need to go into a full tilt moblog engine. TA's done a fine job, not without possible improvements, but pretty awsome nonetheless.

First post

Hello all. I'm creating this blog mainly to express my annoyance with my inability to have a good moblog, but also to hopefully provide resources, reviews, tools, etc., about moblogging in general. Let me tell you how it all started...

In the spring of 2004, i got my first camera phone. It's a sanyo 8100, and my provider is bell mobility here in ontario, canada. I had been with bell for years, and didn't really feel the need to switch, and also felt there might be a large burdon changing carriers but keeping the same number. Little did i know the crtc had recently regulated cell phone companies must allow numbers to be transferred to different carriers at no charge. If i had known, i woulda switched to get the best frickin camera phone around. As it turned out, i got the sanyo 8100. It's got a crappy ass camera, 352 x 288 resolution - if i had known, i never woulda got it. Shortly after i titled my moblog based around the crappy pics, find it here.

I had heard about textamerica well before i got my camera phone, hell, it was one of the reasons i got it. I loved the idea of having a camera wherever i went, and moreso loved the idea of being able to push images taken onto the net within minutes. I signed up for my blurryimages moblog, took a pic, and attempted to send it to the moblog. It didn't work. It still doesn't work.

Textamerica, and most moblog engines, have basic requirements about how they want to recieve images. Most define it as the subject of the email will be the title of the moblog entry, the body the details, and the attachment(s) as the images. When you send an picture via email from a bell mobility, it first uploads it to bell's servers, then sends an email to the recipient with an inline link to the image and whole bunch of other crap:

You have received a picture from 6137610461. View
Send and Receive Pictures through Bell Mobility. For more information go to www.bell.ca/mypictures.
Copyright © 2004 Bell Mobility. All Rights Reserved.

I was pissed. I was on support calls with bell, and this is just the way the software works... so for the past 8 months or so, i'd upload the pics, then email them to my moblog. A little assbackwards, but i got used to it.

Over the past few months, i debated writing my own moblog engine. That hasn't happenned yet, nor do i doubt it will. I realized i can use my time better educating, researching, and if need be, writing tools to make moblogging easier for everyone (or just me, that'd be fine too). I'll rant about textamerica in an upcoming post, and hit up some of the other engines and tools i've discovered soon.