Mobile Blogging Seminar
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Rheinisch-Westfalische¨ Technische Hochschule Aachen Lehrstuhl fur¨ Informatik IV Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Otto Spaniol Mobile Blogging Seminar: Data Communication and Distributed Systems SS 2003 Murat Basaran Betreuung: Andreas Fasbender Ericsson Eurolab Deutschland GmBH Contents 1 Preface 5 1.1 Motivation . 5 1.2 Structure of This Paper . 5 2 Blogging 5 2.1 Overview of Blogging . 5 2.1.1 What is a Blog . 6 2.1.2 Definition of a Blog . 8 2.1.3 History and Perspective . 8 2.2 Create Handmade Weblogs . 8 2.3 Blogging Tools . 9 2.3.1 Hosted Web Services . 9 2.3.2 Desktop Clients . 10 2.4 Archiving Blogs . 11 2.4.1 Published (Static) Pages . 11 2.4.2 Dynamic Pages . 11 2.4.3 Content Management System . 11 3 Mobile Blogging 12 3.1 History of Moblogging . 13 3.2 Mobile Blogging Tools . 13 3.3 Maintenance a Blog without PC . 14 4 Mobile Blogging Tomorrow - What is Next? 14 4.1 Additional Location Information on Blog . 14 4.2 Audio Blogs . 16 2 5 Challenges and Issues 16 5.1 Application Programming Interfaces . 16 5.1.1 Blogger API . 17 5.1.2 MetaWeblog API . 17 5.2 Data Management . 18 5.3 Usability . 20 5.4 Cost and Charging . 20 6 Summary 22 3 Abstract Blogs are frequently updated Web sites usually written by a single person to share opinions and observations with the rest of the world (online community). This is not new technology, but since blogging simplified these processes by proliferation of simple build-your-own-blog tools, users of these sites have increased rapidly, keeping fans and followers, and form a powerful new way to publish many kinds of data. With the development and the current possibilities of mobile devices, mobile blogging will bring new opportunities into existence in a multi-media based kind of publishing and archiving of personal data. This seminar will introduce current techniques and tools that are used in mobile blogging. It will give an overview about the state-of-the-art mobile blogging. Lastly, it will discuss the challenges and issues regarding mobile blogging. 4 1 Preface 1.1 Motivation In the beginning there was the distribution of the Web, making worldwide digital publishing available to anyone with an Internet connection. Millions of people made mostly static webpages introducing themselves to other people around the world. Then came the weblog: with the proliferation of site-building tools like Blogger, Movable Type, and Radio, among others, worldwide publishing technology was not only available, it had become easy to use. Now there is a rapid and thorough increase of these news sites, keeping fans and followers up-to-date on specific topics reported by individuals. To judge by their popularity and what the media has written about them, weblogs, or just blogs, are the first native media form of the World Wide Web, and a dynamic one at that. The next wave coming now seems to be the moblog, with the ability to use the opportunities from blogs and even more so while mobile. The user is now able to record everything as text, pictures, audio or video and publish anywhere at anytime. 1.2 Structure of This Paper This seminar discusses technologies and potentials of mobile blogging. Section 2 introduces weblog- ging with a discussion of basic terms about blogging, as well as opportunities in these areas. Section 3 gives an overview of mobile blogging. Section 3 will further explore the area of mobile blogging in detail and will show the state of mobile blogging today. Section 4 will give an outlook of future trends and developments. Section 5 discusses some of the current challenges and issues with respect to Mobile Blogging. 2 Blogging 2.1 Overview of Blogging One of the newest trends in the Internet is owning a weblog. This basically means frequently updating your own website, publishing opinions and observations. This activity, also named blogging, makes the weblog attractive. Because the content of a weblog changes constantly, this is inviting for the reader. There is something new to read nearly everytime they visit, and so they are going back repeatedly. Commercial Web sites use this strategy to commit the user on his site by refreshing their Web site frequently. 5 A weblog is based on the Web, as in the World Wide Web, and log, in the sense of a record of events. Blogging is a technique that makes it easy for people to publish their thoughts on the World Wide Web. Whereas Blogging or a blog is the shortened form of weblogging or weblog, which refers to a Web site that is frequently updated in a diary fashion. Since the dawn of the Web, it has always been possible to publish content, but blogging simplifies the process and adds important features. Anyone with the ability to write an e-mail could publish a blog, without knowing HTML or any of the other technologies usually associated with Web publishing: FTP, Telnet, Javascript, Java Servlets, PHP, Perl, and so on. Blogging is still in its infancy technolog- ically; the landscape is covered with competing and rapidly evolving packages and protocols. The number of bloggers (a person who keeps a blog) at this time is increasing by 1500-3000 people daily and estimates of the number of weblogs today range from fewer than 500 000 to more than a couple of million [1]. But what exactly is a weblog? Title Date Stamp Description Archive Monthly Archive Calender Current Entry Blogroll Add Comments Search or in the Read Comments Blog Figure 1: A typical weblog from a blogger (Scott Free), powered by MovableType 2.1.1 What is a Blog There is not an exact pattern that matches all the features of a blog and covers it completely. One of the most popular weblog providers Blogger1 describes a Blog as: 1http://www.blogger.com 6 ”A Web page made up of usually short, frequently updated posts that are arranged chronologically – like a new page or a journal. The content and purpose of blogs varies greatly – from links and commentaries about other web sites, to news about a company/person/ idea, to diaries, photos, poetry, mini-essays, project updates and even fiction.” In practice, a weblog is a Web site that is normally written by a single author usually in a personal tone and offers an almost voyeuristic look into someone's life. The author writes about his activities during his daily life or unusual things which are happening in his environment. A blog can also be a Web site written by a community who shares its opinion with others or builds a group of specialists on a specific issue. They can be a homogenous group with the same political opinion, for example, to organize politicking or they can be a group of professionals writing about development and changes on a specific topic or area. For example, a project leader could write to his team about the actual state of their current project, sales figures, announcements, developments, and so on. Employees could use a blog to give their workgroup information about the current state of the project while absent. There is even a kind of blog that is war-oriented - so called warblogs - by journalists and at times, by civilians. For example, at the height of the Iraqi conflict, one of the most popular warblogs was a blog named Where Is Read?2. The author, who signed himself Salam Pax3, is a young man living in Baghdad who reported what he saw as he walked the streets or watched TV coverage - from burning oil trenches to the collateral effects of ”pinpoint” missiles. On 20 March, Pax posted a statement claiming that contrary to reports by the BBC, the Iraqi state radio network had not been taken over by the U.S. Army and events proved him correct [2]. This is a good example to show the possible force of this kind of journalism. It can also be quite educational. Some teachers and educators use blogs in their courses and class- rooms. For instance, I am still using a blog for my example class, for descriptions and announce- ments.4 On the EatonWeb Portal5 is a listing of more than 9000 weblogs. This list of blogs is classified in many categories, languages, countries, and so on. It is possible to search in a large pool of blogs about nearly anything. (A similar collection but for photo blogs is the site Photoblogs.)6 A reason for the fast increase of users who join the internet with their own web site is that today you can create your own site simply by using some free software or web services. The main reason is the user does not need any knowledge or skills about techniques and programming languages used on the internet to set-up and maintain a web site. 2http://derad read.blogspot.com 3Salam Pax is a pseudonym composed of the Arabic and Latin word for peace. 4http://programmierung.blogspost.com 5http://portal.eatonweb.com 6http://www.photoblogs.org 7 2.1.2 Definition of a Blog It is difficult to give a clear and concise definition for a blog and to summarize all the things about blogs. Fact: It is a kind of online publication and since its inception, blogs have changed and have overlapped with similar forms of online publishing. That is the reason why it is equally problematic to explain fully what a blog is and what it is not. The following serves as a general definition of the weblogs style and format.