Nokia is getting into the mobile blogging business with its new partner, blogging expert Six Apart.
Their new initiative promises to make posting camera phone images to a blog easier than ever before.
Mobile blogging, or “moblogging” to the initiated, involves posting to a blog directly from a camera-enabled cell phone.
It allows users to take pictures with their camera phones and post
them to their blogs, instead of having to connect to a computer, resize the image and then post it to wherever
the blog resides.
TypePad 1.4, Six Apart’s newest release announced today, will power the blogs. The product,
part of Nokia’s “Lifeblog” solution, is a hosted personal blog
service. The new version includes a number of new features that make moblogging simpler
for users, including integrating “mixed media” templates that allow for a mix of photos and text. Six Apart
has also simplified blog setup and posting in this new TypePad release.
Picture messaging has been part of wireless carriers’ offerings since the dawn of camera phones,
and moblogging is seen, by Six Apart at least, as being a complementary effort to those services.
“There’s only a limited number of places you can put these images, and it doesn’t really integrate with the
rest of your digital life,” Anil Dash, a vice president at Six Apart, told internetnews.com.
“This is something that opens up what you can
do with those pictures and finally make good use of the camera function on your phone.”
Mobile phone giant Nokia’s Lifeblog solution is set to launch in the fall and will be available
on the Nokia Nokia 7610 and later with their Series 60 phones.
“Nokia Lifeblog is further evolving into a great tool for life sharing. Thanks to the collaboration with Six Apart,
a shaper in the blog community, users will be able to upload multimedia like photos, videos, text
messages, and multimedia messages to their TypePad account,” said Christian Lindholm, director of Multimedia
Applications, Nokia Ventures Organization, in a statement. “With the Nokia Lifeblog application and TypePad
from Six Apart, we can help operators and other service providers to offer their customers the best possible
mobile blogging experience.”
Beyond being a potential boon to camera phone users, Dash also sees moblogging as an important component and
feature of blogging itself.
“It’s absolutely critical to the future of blogging,” said Dash.
“I think it’s one of the core things that will help grow blogs in general.”
The new moblogging initiative and features included in TypePad are not currently part of Six Apart’s
other blogging application, MoveableType, though Dash hinted that it might be coming in the future.
“There is obviously a lot of interest and demand for moblogging for the MoveableType audience,” Dash said.
“I think we’ll be doing something in the future but it won’t be this specific project.”
