Mobile blogging (or moblogging) is blogging directly from a cellphone. For example, Flickr provides a unique email address that will simultaneously add photos to your Flickr stream and your personal blog. Blogs from ten major providers are supported, including WordPress, Blogger, TypePad, Movable Type and Live Journal. Simply snap a photo (or record a video) with your cellphone’s camera, and send it to your special Flickr email to publish it on your blog.
Ever need a question answered when you are away from your computer, and only have a cell phone? ChaCha is a free mobile search service that responds to queries asked via telephone or send as a text message (SMS). To ask a question, either call 1-800-2ChaCha or text your question to 242242 (C-H-A-C-H-A on your keyboard). A live person (called a guide) will research your question, and answer via text message.
“What are you doing?” Twitter is a micro-blogging social networking site that asks that one question, and gives you 140 characters to broadcast an answer to all your friends, family and co-workers. Intrigued by the possibilities? Here are a few guides to get you started: MasterNewMedia’s Twitter - A Beginner’s Guide , Caroline Middlebrook’s Big Juicy Twitter Guide, and Rafe Needlemen’s Newbie’s Guide to Twitter.
Disappointed with photos you’ve snapped with your cell phone? Here are three pointers for improving them. Use the entire frame, don’t just focus on the center. Adjust the brightness level if the image on your display seems too dark or too light. Place your subjects off-center for a more interesting layout. For more tips, read CNET’s Capture Great Shots with your Phone .
Google Maps Mobile has just announced a free download for your cell phone that will display real- time traffic in thirty metropolitan cities. To learn more, visit the site from your home computer. To download the free mobile phone application, visit the site from the web browser of your cell phone.
Most cell phones can be used as portable modems, allowing you to access the Internet from your laptop. You will need a connection kit (usually a data cable and software such as those sold by Gomadic ), ISP login details, and a data plan to pay for your usage. Although most cell carriers only offer 56Kbps, Verizon has broadband speeds ranging from 144Kbps to a possible 2MB per second. Contact your cell carrier for details.
Google SMS (Short Message Service) gives short answers to text queries from your mobile phone. Just send your search as a text message and get retail locations, phone book listings, or dictionary definitions in response. For example texting “Starbucks 92014″ to 46-645 (GOOGL on most phones) returns two locations of the ubiquitous coffee house within the 92014 zip code. Text “d ubiquitous” for a dictionary definition of “ubiquitous.” For more details, read Google SMS.
Even if your handheld offers Internet access, it is often slow, expensive, hard to read, and difficult to navigate. A lower tech way of getting news, movie listings, weather and sports on your PDA or smart phone is through your daily computer sync. You do sync every day, don’t you? AvantGo offers thousands of free channels, and integrates with most syncing software to load your handheld with your choice of daily content.
To send a text message from your computer to a cell phone used to require that you knew the recipient’s cell phone provider and the exact syntax of their address, such as 1234567890@mobile.att.net. But with Telefilp you can reach almost all mobile phones with one easy to remember syntax: 1234567890@telefilp.com . The Telefilp service is free and does not require any setup or registration.
For those times when a dictionary is nowhere in sight, but your email-enabled cell phone is handy, check out the free dictionary and thesaurus email services from Wordsmith.org. To access, send an email to wsmith@wordsmith.org with a command (”define” or “synonym”) followed by your word in the subject line. For example to get a definition for “parsimonious” use “define parsimonious” as the subject. To look up “penurious” in the thesaurus, place “synonym penurious” in your subject line.
