Try the Moblogging (Mobile Blogging) Beta

[Update 8/15: Moblogging now works with your regular Journals -- you no longer need to go to the beta version of your Journals. All the instructions are still the same, though. Thanks -- Joe]

Hi folks -- I've been meaning to blog about a feature that went into beta in the Journals R6 release a few weeks back: Moblogging.

Moblogging is just short for "Mobile Blogging" -- the ability to post to your blog using a mobile device, such as a cell phone.

Now, you can already post text entries to your Journal from your phone, if you have AIM on your cell -- just send IMs to the AOLJournals bot.

However, with moblogging, you can also send pictures (and by mid-August, video) to your blog from your cell phone.

Plus, even if you don't have a cell phone that does pictures or video (like me, I have to admit, but it's on my list), you may still find moblogging useful.

This is because moblogging uses e-mail -- you get a special e-mail address for your Journal, and when you send e-mails to it, it posts the content of the e-mail to your blog.

So if you can send e-mail from your cell phone, that's great... but it also works for anything else that can send e-mail.

This also means if you want someone else to be able to post entries to your blog (group blogging), just give them the e-mail address. When they send mail to that special e-mail address, it will post to your blog. (That's what I meant when I said earlier that moblogging was "a back door into multi-author blogging.")

Obviously, this means you want to be careful who you give your blog's e-mail address to. (Though it's really easy to change.)

Here's how moblogging works:

1. Go to the beta version of your Journal. This means you just add beta. in front of your Journal's address. For example, my blog's address is: http://journals.aol.com/journalseditor/magicsmoke/
   
   To get to the beta, I would just add beta. to the front:
   http://beta.journals.aol.com/journalseditor/magicsmoke/
   
   
2. Click the blue "Edit Journal" button at the top.
   
   
3. In the section marked "Manage Your Journal Settings," click the link that says: "Moblogging - Post to your Journal on the Go! BETA"
   
   
4. This takes you to the Mobile Blogging settings page. On the page, you'll see a box that says "This is your Journal's e-mail address:"
   
   
   
   
   
   
5. The e-mail address in the gray box is your Journal's e-mail address: If you send e-mail to it, it will post to your blog. The subject of the e-mail becomes the title of your entry; the body of the message becomes your entry; and any photo that's attached to the e-mail (not embedded in the body) will be in the post. (Note that you can only have one photo per e-mail.)
   
   Here's what an example e-mail looks like (I'm using AOL Webmail here):
   
   
   
   
   
   And here's what it looks like after it posts:
   
   
   
   
   Once your moblogged entry is live, you can edit it just like you would a normal entry. For example, after this one published, I changed the entry title, and took out the text from my sig line and the text banner that Webmail puts on the bottom.
   
   
6. If you need to change your blog's e-mail address (for example, you gave the address to someone and you don't want them to be able to post to your blog anymore), on the Mobile Blogging settings page, click the hyperlink that says "Get a new e-mail address." When you do this, you'll get a new address, and the old one will stop working.
   

Like I said, this is all a beta test right now, so play around with it and let us know what you think.

[Incidentally, you'll note that your moblogging e-mail address is composed of two short random words, separated by a number. This is to make it easier to remember than a long number, but still be secure enough that spammers orother folks can't post to your blog. If we just used numbers, spammers could just keep sending numbers until they eventually hit a valid combination.]

Thanks -- Joe
Tags: moblogging, aol journals, beta