Letters from NYC

Tech Tuesday - Treo Blogging

Tech Tuesday - Live Treo Blogging

Tadaa! I'm blogging straight to Munu from my Treo phone, something I've wanted to do for some time. This will be a work in progress, so please be patient!

Some time ago, when I first got my nifty little smartphone, one of my dreams was for Treo users to be able to blog easily and navigate through sites as if they were using their PC's. In doing so one of my hopes was that it would redirect technological research to expand the horizons of mobile users and the web.

Well, ever so slowly it's coming to pass. I have 2 people to thank for this little post. The first person I need to thank is my blog brother Jon, of We Swear. He and I had a phone conversation, (while he was visiting NY in July) on how he wished he could blog from his PDA about his NY/NJ trip while commuting back to NJ. His major complaint was not having the ability to blog due to the time constraints on him and his limited PC access. When he got home he began to blog less and I thought to explore PDA blogging for our mutual benefit, so that our sites wouldn't languish and become part of the abandoned blog statistics.

I tested a few applications to see if it could be done, after all my Treo was able to handle everything else so far, except make me a sandwich. There were no good solutions for the blogging platform he uses. I however, fell in love with the opportunity to blog directly and seamlessly from my Treo to Blogger and used my camera on my cell to revive an old love of photography. The result was my companion site, NYC Postcards, which has been linked to by About.com, and several major European travel sites. Actually, in the short time that site's been up it's garnered more hits than my .munu blog. Go figure.

But the 2nd, and most important person I have to thank is Eric of Eric's Grumbles Before the Grave. He has helped me to search for a solution and has painstakenly tested out several in the hope of blogging directly to his site. He's gone out and not only done research, but also tested some of these apps on his own time and pocket. He not only came up with the template for Munuvians to use. He also discovered that Google recently developed "a WML gateway. It works in your regular browser OR your [web enabled phone] browser" so that it converts "any HTML page into WML" enabling anyone to view web pages easily on their phone." Just input the following URL and add the URL of the page you want to view through your phone at the end. He put my url at the end so I can easily see it. I have enabled the link so you can see what I see on my phone.

http://www.google.com/gwt/n?u=http://lettersfromnyc.mu.nu

In doing all of this he's made all our sites easier for PDA users to read. Now you can put a link on your site so that PDA users can download or email the appropriate link to their phones and view any blog more easily.

I'm very grateful for all he's done as he's made this medium available to those overseas by simply sharing this information. You see in many countries in Asia, blogging and reading of sites is done via a small phone interface. His template has enabled my small European and Asian readership to see/read my site easily and without crashing. They are grateful for his efforts too.

So stay tuned as Eric pushes the envelope of Technology in small ways with big results. Don't believe me... then you need to read Eric's post on Technology and Liberty. He writes eloquently about the importance and role of Technology in extending our freedoms. These are the very reasons I am so passionate about pushing the limits of technology. If there's only one post you read this week, I suggest you read that post!

ps. I went in directly after my initial Vagablog transmission to update this post via my pc. Sorry, had too much to say.

Posted by Michele at January 3, 2006 04:53 PM