Mobile Blogging is Working

With our due date getting closer, I am eager to plan ways to communicate the news to our family and friends, as well as providing timely updates. Yeah sure, the traditional phone calls and mass email message will work, but I just would not be me if that was all I aspired to achieve.

My migration to Blogger last month gave me the ability to post from any Internet connected computer, but while we are in the hospital or otherwise on the move, I also want to contribute content. While I was testing my migration, I tried to setup support for posting to my blog with my mobile phone, so called moblogging. I have a Cingular 2125 generously supplied by my employer. Blogger supports moblogging from certain cellular carriers by associating the MMS address of the originating phone with a blog in their system. I was able to complete the association process, but I have not been able to successfully post using that method. I am still unclear as to whether the source of the difficulty I encountered was Cingular, Blogger, or both.

I finally got it working, but not as I had originally envisioned. I have had a Flickr account for quite some time, and though I enjoy the service and community very much, the other methods by which I have shared photos with friends and family have served me well enough to maintain the status quo. In trying to establish a simple and elegant method of moblogging however, I have taken my first step toward a more active relationship with Flickr. I have leveraged Flickr's support of posting to my photostream by email and then forwarding that post to Blogger. I had no idea Flickr completely supported this within their system until I started investigating more of their feature set. All I have to do is send an email from my phone to the correct address, and Flickr does the rest. As you can see, I am even able to attach a photo taken from the camera in my phone which is posted as well.

I must say, I am impressed with the results!