nothing: Blogger Help : On the Go with Blogger Mobile

By Biz Stone

Back in the day, mobile phones were rare and pricey. Rich businessmen carried them around in suitcases. I remember when I was in middle school and Melissa Miller's dad had a car phone. That was fancy. Mr. Miller is a fancy guy. These days, mobiles are low-cost and everywhere. In many countries, mobile phones outnumber their land-line counterparts. Around the world, mobile phones are increasingly pervasive and this is especially true when it comes to developing areas. People even decorate, customize, and accessorize their phones to reflect their personality. Sound familiar?

Mobile phones are perfect little blogging appliances that people carry around with them everywhere. Sharing photos and stories with friends while you're on-the-go by sending them straight to your blog—what could be easier? Turns out it can be easier, that's why we created Blogger Mobile. To create a blog and post to it using your mobile phone, you will need to follow these directions:

(Send stuff to go@blogger.com and you're done.)

As indicated by the graphic above, sending an MMS or email to go@blogger.com will automatically create a new blog. Your photo, along with any text you add, will be uploaded to that blog right away and then we'll message you back with the address so you can visit your new blog on the web. It's all free. When you feel like changing anything or you already have a Blogger account and you want the posts to go to your existing blog, you can log in to go.blogger.com and enter the token we sent to your phone.

Just so we're clear on this, you send something from your phone; a subject line, a photo, and maybe a caption if you so choose to go@blogger.com and we do the rest. That's our thing. We set you up with a standard issue blog using a popular design template and we upload your content so your friends and family can view it and leave comments. Your first post might look something like this:

Optional: Claiming Your Blog

We will name your blog "My Mobile Blog" and insert some text in the sidebar as a reminder that you can claim your blog. The text will read:

Claim your blog at go.blogger.com so you can change the style and colors, edit previous posts, or activate aditional features. Note: You'll need the claim code that was sent to your phone.

You don't have to claim your blog. In fact, you could never sit down in front of a PC again and just keep sending content from your phone to the Web. However, when you sign in and enter your token at go.blogger.com, that note about claiming will be replaced with your profile block and once you claim your blog, you have full access to all your settings so you can change the template and modify your account to your heart's desire.

Optional: Switch Your Mobile Posts to Another Blog

Another part of the claiming process is the ability to switch to an existing blog that you'd rather have your mobile posts sent to. For example, if you already have a blog and think it would be cool to occasionally send a post from your mobile phone in addition to posting normally. Once you make that switch, both existing and future posts will be sent to the blog of your choosing instead of the blog that was automatically set up for you when you sent that first message to go@blogger.com.

Note to users whose blog address does not contain blogspot.com: Once you make the aforementioned switch, new mobile posts will be published to your chosen blog but mobile posts published prior to the switch will not be moved over automatically. So, if you plan on publishing mobile posts to your non-blogspot.com hosted blog, we recommend you claim and switch early thus avoiding a potential nuisance.

What Services Does Blogger Mobile Support?

The initial launch of Blogger Mobile will work with your phone if you are a US customer of Verizon, AT&T, Cingular, Sprint, or T-Mobile. We will be expanding that list so if your provider is not on there yet, check back with us here.

Use It Your Way

There was an article on the BBC's web site a couple weeks ago by a guy who was using his camphone and a blog to create what he called "digital postcards" to the web so his friends and family could follow along on his trip across the United States. That's the stuff! There's even a professional photographer traversing the US snapping photos exclusively with his camera phone. He's got a web team building his site—all you need for yours is Blogger Mobile.

Setting up a great looking web site that is yours to customize as you please and using a mobile phone to keep it updated is not as futuristic as your own personal jet pack, I appreciate that. In fact, when I was back in middle school watching Mr. Miller talk on his car phone I figured that by 2005 we'd have personal jet packs. We don't. However, if I see someone flying around in a jet pack I will blog it with my camphone. That is most definitely something. We're getting there.

Biz Stone works at Google on Blogger and writes books about blogging.