Blogging On The Trail

Posted on | November 19, 2009 | 9 Comments

I thought I would write a few words about using your mobile as a blogging device while out and about.

I’ll try and be generic as possible, but there will be instances when I give examples, and those examples will be iPhone specific. The main reason being that is my phone of choice at the moment (as if you didn’t know that already).

After this I think that will about wrap up the mobile coverage for the time being. I do have a future post idea but that can wait, I think you guys need a break from the mobile stuff.

For this post I am assuming that you are going to be using a “smart phone” like the iPhone, or an Android based phone, or a Windows Mobile based phone, or a Symbian based phone (the list does go on). By making this assumption I am also assuming that your phone is able to send/receive email, and possibly allows you to install apps.

There is also an implicit assumption also the “smart phone” you are using also has a QWERTY keyboard of some kind. Whether it is a physical keyboard or a virtual on screen keyboard.

So armed with a “smart phone”, hopefully some useful apps, and an unlimited data plan, let’s get started with this blog post.

Blog posts

Well we wouldn’t be mobile blogging if we were not writing our experiences down and then posting them at the first opportunity we get (ie a phone signal).

So what options do we have for writing our posts?

The most basic that the majority of phones and blogs support is email. Basically each post is composed in the phones email client and then emailed to the usually secret email address that the blog monitors. When the blog detects the email has arrived it takes the contents and creates a blog post for your blog. (Right: Alan demonstrates the ideal conditions for mobile blogging)

This will usually meet the needs of most people. It does have one draw back, which we saw on my first TGO Challenge crossing. That is out of order blog posts. This happens because the order that emails arrive in the inbox can’t be controlled, so if a mass mailing of several days takes place in one go, things potentially can get out of order. The only way to get round this is say all emails as drafts, and send one at a time with a gap inbetween to make sure that they go up in the right order. Not an elegant solution, but hey better than posts out of order.

The next option is to use a dedicated app to write the blog entries. The iPhone has a few apps available for doing this, and they cover most of the blogging platforms out there. My favourite is the FREE wordpress app, which allows me to write not only posts, but pages and manage the comments. On Windows Mobile based phones there is moblog.  The nice thing about using the app compared to using email is that there is no getting posts out of order. Oh and you don’t have the stress of seeing how many emails are waiting for you when you get back. You can ignore that side completely and get on enjoying your walk. Another advantage is that depending on the app being used you can embed photos within the post itself, and not just have them tagged on the end of the post.

The third option is not to worry about uploading any blog posts at all, and just use your phone as a place to store your notes. Which means you can still use the either of the above two options to do this. Or use your favourite app for recording notes. On a Windows Mobile phone this could be the Mobile Word app that comes with it as standard. You then when you get back have to somehow get those notes off the phone and onto your PC/Mac, and then once tidied up onto your blog.

Pictures

Most phones have a camera these days. Heck I’ve bored you with enough photos recently taken on my iPhone. These inbuilt cameras vary in the quality of photo that they take.

At the most basic level once the photo has been taken it can be attached to the email containing the text of our blog post. So that when we eventually send the post it will (blogging software permitting) be tagged on to the end of the post when it appears on the blog.

If your blogging software doesn’t allow you to send in photos as attachments there are third party services that will allow you to email in a photo and they will then generate the blog post for you on your blog containing your emailed in photo. The draw back is usually your photo is now sitting on some-one elses server, and your post will also carry an advertising link for that service. This may be something you are happy to accept for the service they are providing for you. Flickr does allow you to email photos in and have them posted to your blog (read here for how to do it).

If you are using a blogging app, there may be better control over the image which can be embedded with in the post itself.

However before we attach that picture to the email or embed it in the blog post we may just want to do some processing of the image. I’ve talked about my workflow on the iPhone previously (it has expanded a little since then as I’ve come across new apps, as this screen shot (Right) of the apps I have installed shows).

We are not looking for Photoshop here, just little apps that allow the basics to get a descent image out to include with our post. Maybe some cropping, colour adjustment, maybe apply a filter, frame the picture or even annotate the picture.

Once the edits have been made to the photo it can be saved and then as before embedded in the blog post or attached to the email.

Audio

As far as I know, so far no one has live podcasted as they have been out on the trail. But it is possible (guess what I am looking into at the moment). So what I will present to you in this section is my thoughts on this subject so far.

Most of the “smartphones” have a voice memo app with them as standard. So this gives us the means to record our thoughts and the possibility to turn them into a podcast (on the trail or later). There are a couple of iPhone apps that allow you to record podcasts, and their prices cover a wide spectrum from $4.99 to $149.99. You can imagine with that price difference the more expensive one is aimed at pro podcasters, or some-one who needs a hell of a lot of sophistication.

After making a podcast to go up, there is then the problem of getting the file uploaded (not a major problem and easy to over come) and then distributed and embedded into the blog.

There is an app called Audioboo on the iPhone, which allows audio blogging. Sadly you need to be online to use it, and it is limited to 3 5 minutes in duration. They will hopefully allow in future versions the ability to create audioboos (or whatever they are called) offline for later uploading. Which when available will make it very useful. You can embed the audioboos into a blog or post them to Facebook but I don’t think that this is automatic at the moment (hopefully they will add this as well). While on the wishlist for audioboo if they up the allowed duration as well that would more or less make this a perfect quick podcasting tool.

UPDATE 3/1/10: I’ve just found about an alternative to Audioboo on the iPhone called Cinch. I’m trying to find out how easy it is to get recordings out of the system if you want to move them. One advantage it does have over Audioboo is that (at the moment) there is no limitation on the duration of your recording. Although they do ask that you keep them short and sweet. There is also better organisation allowed of your recordings as well. Allowing you to group trip recording together.

UPDATE 14/1/10: Just found out about this app for the iPhone called FiRe which stands for Field Recorder. It costs £5.99 from the itunes app store. Which when considering that it enables you to record a podcast using your iPhone in stereo and works with the Blue Mikey and Alesis ProTrack mics is not bad. It certainly is a better option than Cinch and Audioboo for those wanting to record audio while out and about. Mainly because it can be stereo, don’t need to be online, and there is a bit more flexibility. I’ll cover this in more depth in a later post.

Video

Some of the “smart phones” allow video to be recorded as well. Like the photos (above ) the quality of the video varies from phone to phone. As does the tools available to you once you have captured that moment.

(Left: What do outdoors bloggers do when they get together at the pub? That’s right blog. Gayle is on the left, and Alan is on the right)

On the iPhone 3GS you can shoot video, trim the video and then post it to Youtube. You can configure Youtube to publish your channel to your blog (which I haven’t tried yet) which would handle publishing the video to your blog.

But the video editing doesn’t stop at doing a simple trim on the iPhone. There is an app called ReelDirector (£4.99) that gives you the ability to add a little bit more polish to your video. Look at this list taken off their website site:

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