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.
”A blog is a web page that contains brief, discrete categories of information called posts. These posts are arranged in reverse-chronological order (the most recent post come first). Each post is uniquely identified by an anchor tag, and it is marked with a permanent link that can be referred to by others who wish to link to it.” [1] Everything about a weblog is optional, but many weblogs follow a similar format. Considering the definition, a weblog usually includes some basic components. Some of these components are a title, suggested links, a list of current entries and blogrolls. The title is a catchword for the reader what the blog contains, most are followed by an short description below the title. The suggestion link gives readers an easy way to send suggestions. The current entries are on the first page of the blog, and usually contain a link to the previous posts. This archive can be like a calendar, where you choose the day of the entry by clicking on the date. A blogroll is a list of blogs that the blogger visits frequently and calls other’s attention to it. These are also like the blogger’s personal bookmarks but are different in that they are always online.
2.1.3 History and Perspective
The first weblog was the first Web site, http://info.cern.ch/, the site built by Tim Bernes- Lee at CERN in 1992. From this page the author pointed to all the new sites as they came online. But blogging on the Internet as a mass medium does not have a long history. In 1998, there were just a handful of sites of this type that are now identified as weblogs. The term weblog was first used by John Barger, an artificial intelligence researcher in Chicago, on his Robot Wisdom site in December 1997. But in a short time weblog fans shortened the term to just blog, and dubbed each other bloggers. Blogging got a boost in 1999 when easy-to-use create-your-own-Web-diary software came along. In the beginning, weblogs could only be created by people who already knew how to build a Web site and had knowledge about HTML, FTP, etc. The first free build-your-own-weblog tool by Pitas was launched in July 1999. In August 1999, Pyra released Blogger, in March 2003, Google undertook Blogger. Blogger is now the most popular build-your-own-blog tool.
2.2 Create Handmade Weblogs
With some knowledge about HTML and FTP, some Web server space and access to an Internet Service Provider it is possible to build a simple weblog which contains the above mentioned features. The
8
Welcome to My Blog
November 4th, 08.40 PM
Here my second entry...
November 4th, 08.32 PM
This is my first entry on my very simple blog...
Figure 2: A very simple blog, the index.html document. main page is where the daily entry dates are stamped in reverse chronological order with a link to all the previous posts and so on. For example a very simple blog see Figure 2. However, it is not user-friendly to edit the HTML document every time you want to write a new entry and then post your blog by sending your newly created index.html document via FTP and overwrite your index.html file. This is the reason why advanced user-created tools automate these steps and release the author from this boring task.
2.3 Blogging Tools
The advantage of weblog-management tools is that they add to the basic do-it-yourself text editor as a system for dynamic retrieval of the entries that are added to the site. Some of the tools use a database of some kind to store each blog entry and then display them on the page as appropriate. For this purpose, most blogging tools provide some basic templates for design and layout of the blog. If the entries are in a database, more than one option is available for outputting those entries. For instance, the software can accept a search keyword from the user and, in response, display only the stories that match the keyword.
2.3.1 Hosted Web Services
Hosted weblog applications offer attractive pluses: They are cheap or even free. Another advantage of hosted Web services is that they are easy to use. This means you can sign up within a few minutes and set up the weblog in a few steps. Hosted weblog systems provide web-based interfaces, with a
9 browser text field to create, edit or delete entries like an e-mail provider. On the downside, they are less ”feature rich,” and they are somewhat restrictive because the user can only use the offered service and nothing else. But as said before, it is free and easy, which attracts the user and that is the reason why hosted Web services are so popular. Some of the most popular hosted web services are followed: Blogger - Is a free hosting service, the advanced version is Blogger Pro, a paid service. Upsaid - Is a free blog hosting journal service.7 Diaryland - A free online diary. Deadjournal - A journal site much like LiveJournal, a paid service. 8 Big Blog Tool - A paid service similar to blogger, but with more features. 9
2.3.2 Desktop Clients
A desktop client is an application which runs on your PC and communicates with a blogging system using the application programming interface (API) protocol. Many blog systems understand the Blogger API, including Blogger, RadioUserland and MovableType. More details about the APIs will discussed in Section 5. The typical desktop client features a text editing window with buttons to add images. Most of them support two options: Post and Publish, where Post sends the post to your blogging system but does not make it appear on your blog; and Post and Publish sends the post and makes it visible on your blog. Some of the most widespread desktop clients are: blogBuddy - A client to manage Blogger and other weblog tools which implements the Blogger API. It is small a Windows programm written in Delphi.10 w.bloggar - Also a client that implements the Blogger API to access on Blogger, MovableType, and on.11 Slug - A client for MovableType.12 Radio Userland - A client for Manila and Blogger, called Radio 8.13 BlogScript - Is a AppleScript for Mac OS X that simply posts the contents of the clipboard to a weblog via a single menu. selection.14
All these tools are freeware, because nearly all of these tools are provided from persons and non- commercial groups.
7http://www.upsaid.com 8http://www.diaryland.com 9http://www.bigblogtool.com 10http://blogbuddy.sourceforge.net 11http://www.wbloggar.com 12http://3e.org/slug/ 13http://radio.userland.com/manilaBloggerBridgeTool/ 14http://http://www.objectivelabs.com/blogscript.php
10 2.4 Archiving Blogs
2.4.1 Published (Static) Pages
Some weblog tools create published pages, meaning the tool is designed to output a finalized HTML document of a particular weblog page, which is then saved to the weblog server computer. The entries from the weblog owner are stored in some HTML documents, so that if he wants to create a new entry, the weblog management tool generates the HTML document and then overwrites the old document. For each change it is required to rewrite some of the HTML documents to reflect that change. This approach is easy to realize and works fine with small sites. But it can become a problem for larger sites if there are hundreds or thousands of entries, because this forced rebuild can take a good deal of time and can require a significant amount of a web server’s processing power while the update takes place.
2.4.2 Dynamic Pages
A dynamic web management tool is different, because it stores the articles in a database that runs on the web server. When the visitor requests the index of a dynamic page, that request is noted by the web server, which begins to assemble the page by running the scripting code that has embedded within the index document and adding the appropriate headlines, articles, comments, and so on. The document is generated in real time and then sent to the user’s computer like a static site.
2.4.3 Content Management System
In the past, Web authors have generally embedded the style in their page by actually typing in not just the text but ”hard-coded” instructions for how that text should appear (font, size, and so on). By separating the content from the layout, it is possible that the author of the content does not know about the stylistic components. All documents which are published, changed or deleted are automat- ically interconnected and linked together. An opportunity to realize such an approach of separating is using a content management system (CMS). Where a CMS is software that stores, manipulates, and publishes content. The primary goal of any CMS is to automate the steps of publishing so an author can focus on writing. If the editor has to manage many different steps in the process of publishing his words, the quality of his writing will suffer - or he may not write at all. The appearance is managed using templates - one template might be for the site’s index page, another template might be for article pages, and a third used for the mid-level category pages, if that’s how the site is designed. This is useful because it will easy to change the look of the whole website. All you have to do is change one line one HTML-based template and that change can be propagated throughout your entire site.
11 Some very useful functions of a CMS are: Collaborative working and user-management. With a CMS it could be defined who, what, and when may publish. For this purpose used processes work like the dual control: An editor composes the content. The chief editor checks it, and if he agrees with it then the content is free, available and visible for all. Definition of ”Content Lifecycle”. The lifetime of certain documents could be defined, so that the documents are only available for a certain time on the system and then they will removed.
3 Mobile Blogging
Mobile Blogging or moblogging is in its early stages, but mobile blogging is becoming a persuasive way to blog. With the development and quantity of camera phones arises a new kind of blogging, the phone blog- ging. Users capture photos with their camera phones, add a text annotation and instantly upload it to their blog. This makes a difference between traditional blogs and moblogs. The moblog entry consists of usually shorter messages and pictures. For a typical appearance of a moblog see Figure 3.
Blog
Blog Post
Current Number Entries of Posts
Navigation
Archive Calendar
Favorites Bookmarks
Comments Add Comments
Read Comments
Figure 3: An example for a moblog.
12 With increasing users of camera phones, the importance of this way to communicate, will also in- crease. For instance, despite the lack of photo quality of mobile phone cameras, in the first half of 2003 more camera phones (25 mil.) were sold than digital cameras (20 mil.).
3.1 History of Moblogging
The first posted entry from a mobile device on a blog was in January 2001 by Stuart Woodward. He posted from his cell phone to his blog on LiveJournal. For this purpose he has created a little program, written in Phyton, which he installed on his Internet Provider’s server. The program is run when an e-mail is sent to a certain e-mail address and it then posts the e-mail to the LiveJournal server. First entry posted to a blog by SMS was from David Davies to his SMSblog in March 2001. The term ”Moblogging” was coined by Adam Greenfield in November 2002. There are many ways to update a blog while mobile, and all of them are easy to use by design. The easiest and cheapest way to own and maintain a moblog is using one the free build-your-own moblog tools. Some of the sites which support such a specific tool will be discussed in the next section.
3.2 Mobile Blogging Tools
Mobile blogging tools are still in their early stages, but their simplicity is part of their appeal. Different moblogging tools let users update and edit their blogs in different ways. Some work via e-mail, some via WAP, some via Web forms, and some use more technically advanced interfaces, for instance, the Blogger API. But all have the same goal: to let mobile users post to their personal Web sites from wherever they are, whenever they want. The most basic programs works via mobile e-mail, for instance the Hipblog 15 tool provided by Danger Networks for its Hiptop PDA, Foneblog16 provided by Newbay, Phlog.net17 provided by a single person, or Blogging Network18 where you get paid each time someone reads your blog, and many others. After signing up for example by Hipblog, the user just e-mails new entries to an special address for the site. The subject line of the message becomes the title of the new entry, and any attached photos from Hiptop’s camera are posted neatly below the text of the message. Foneblog is another easy to use system. The user can update their weblogs by sending SMS, MMS or e-mail messages to a special phone number.
15http:// www.hiptop.com /hiplog 16http://www.newbay.com 17http://www.phlog.net/ 18http://www.bloggingnetwork.com
13 But that is not the only way to update a blog. It is also possible maintain a weblog while mobile. For instance Manywhere19 is a Java-provided interface to the popular Blogger software now owned by Google. It lets users compose a blog entry on his/her mobile, then uploads it to the Blogger site via FTP. Kablog20, is another, Java-based, blogging application that runs on any J2ME device. Also WAP phone owners need not be left out of the fun, Wapblog21 is simple application uploads WAP messages to a weblog.
3.3 Maintenance a Blog without PC
A total Phone Blogging solution is FoneBlog22, designed specially for mobile operators, that allow users to easily create and maintain their own Blogs direct from their mobile phone. This is interesting for people they do not have access to a PC or the Internet. It allows the user to view a post from a mobile phone by using WAP or a regular Web browser. Foneblog is a complete server side solution and runs over mobile phone standards (MMS, SMS, and WAP), it means it does not require a client on the mobile phone also is not needed to install any software.
4 Mobile Blogging Tomorrow - What is Next?
4.1 Additional Location Information on Blog
There are also tools which provide the opportunity to create a map for a blog. The majority of them are currently manual, it means the user needs to know the actual location information and has to input the information by himself. Some providers of these kinds of services are Localfeeds, ICMB and Blogmapper. A solution to add location information to a blog is Localfeeds.com.23 Localfeeds.com combines geographic data and syndication information to organize weblog posts and articles by city or region. Sources and headlines are discovered automatically, and organized geographically. Therefore, the user provides the information about the location by adding the URL and the zip code to a list. By adding this information, the Localfeeds.com list is the blog URL referred to by the zip code from the owner. Because Localfeeds.com uses the zip code as location information, it is currently only available for cities in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. As a result, it is uninteresting for blog owners from the rest of the world.
19http://www.simpleface.com 20http://www.kablog.net 21http://www.postneo.com /projects /wapblog 22http://www.phlog.net/ 23http://localfeeds.com/
14 A similar service to add location information but with a different solution is (from) ICBM (GeoURL ICBM Address Server).24 GeoURL calls itself a location-to-URL reverse directory. The two tags need to be added to the main index template of the blog. The following two tags are examples which have to be added anywhere within the
block:25
These added tags submit the page to GeoURL, where LAT the latitude, LOG the longitude, and DESCRIPTION an description of the blog which allows the user to find URLs by their proximity to a given location. Both of these illustrated tools make it possible to associate a blog with a location and locate a blog. But they do not offer any information about the the current location of the blogger. However, we have discussed that a blog is personal journal or like a diary. Therefore we will also discuss tools which associate every post with a location information. For example, tools used to locate every picture from the blogger. Such a service is offered from Blogmapper26. Blogmapper associates the blog entries with hot spots on a map. By clicking on the spot, the entries appear. Therefore, Blogmapper provides a collection of maps. They vary from world, continents, countries, local areas, cities to space images. To annotate the blog with location information, one has to include the blog location information in the following form:
Where 50.46 is the latitude and 06.06 is the longitude of the place on the earth’s surface with where the post is associated. This should normally be embedded in an element that prevents display and supplies the proper XHTML namespace:
Where the geo:lat and geo:long tags come from the RDFIG vocabulary27 for geographic location. The result is in XML and can be manipulated by XML processing tools (XSLT, RSS syndicators, etc). Blogmapper provides the opportunity for mapping groups. It annotates a map of a group of friends, allocating one descriptive post to each friend, and supplies the image coordinates where the friend appears. But a big disadvantage of these tools are that information about the location has to be set-up manually. There is not yet an application that automatically generates geo-stamped data, for instance, by using GPS.
24http://geourl.org/ 25This is an example for the blog tool MovableType, for further blog tools see http://geourl.org/other.html 26http://www.blogmapper.com 27http://www.w3.org/2003/01/geo/
15 4.2 Audio Blogs
A completely new trend is audio blogs. Actually, it is simpler to send an audio blog than to publish a text post. audblog28 provides a service that enables audio posting to a blog site. For this purpose you need only to call a number and then to speak. There will be a link to the audblog post, an associated icon, and a time stamp. Where each post can last up to 4 minutes in duration. It supports the possibility at the end of each post to record another post. This service currently supports the blog tools Blogger, Radio, MovableType, and LiveJournal. audblog sends the audio blog to your blog but it needs your authentication which means your Blog username and password.
5 Challenges and Issues
5.1 Application Programming Interfaces
As blogging has grown in popularity, the number of blog clients for popular blog services has in- creased. But the only way that programmers can create blog clients is that the operator has to present an API for developers. This means that alternate clients are possible only when the server of blog tools also publishes an API. Only a published API enables programming of applications to maintain the weblog without the supported software. There are some published APIs, probably the most widespread API is the Blogger 1.0 API, which were followed up in Febrary 2003 by the Blogger 2.0 API. Some of the other popular blog server APIs are MetaWeblog and LiveJournal. Using an API enables developers to design new software (clients), for exists blog tools, which allows the user to maintain these blog tools with mobile devices like mobile phones, smart phones, PDAs, and so on. The most common client is a browser in the form of HTML. This is a relatively simple solution because the update form can be easily packaged as part of the blog server application. That is a reason why the technology of blogging is now firmly based on XML (extensible markup language) or rather on the XML-RPC (remote procedure call). The XML-RPC is an internet-based cross-platform remote procedure calling protocol using HTTP as the transport medium and XML as the encoding system for the communication between different platforms. It is designed to be as simple as possible, while allowing complex data structures to be transmitted, processed and returned.
28http://www.audblog.com/
16 DIFFERENT PLATFORMS DIFFERENT PLATFORMS
DATA DATA XML-RPC
DATA XML XML DATA HTTP
DATA DATA
Figure 4: The XML-RPC enables different platforms to communicate, where requests are typed in XML and assigned in HTML.
5.1.1 Blogger API
The Blogger API is popular for posting items to weblogs and currently implemented for XML-RPC. It was originally authored by Evan Williams and eagerly adapted by Userland. The Blogger API 1.0 supports these following methods for the remote controlling of a weblog: blogger.newPost(): Makes a new post to a designated blog. Optionally, will publish the blog after making the post. blogger.editPost(): Changes the contents of a given post. Optionally, it will publish the blog the post belongs to after editing the post. blogger.getUsersBlogs(): Returns information on all the blogs a given user is a member of. blogger.getUserInfo(): Authenticates a user and returns basic user info (name, email, user ID, etc.). blogger.getTemplate(): Returns to the main or archive index template of a given blog. blogger.setTemplate(): Edits the main or archive index template of a given blog.
Where all XML-RPC requests have to send on a certain URI: http://plant.blogger.com/api/RPC2 The Blogger API has an incredibly simple-minded view of what a weblog post is. It considers the content of a post to be simply a string with no parameters whatsoever allowable. Although Blogger API is widespread, it is not a real developer support, because it is inappropriate for what people do with weblogs today, from posting images to using audio and so on.
5.1.2 MetaWeblog API
The MetaWeblog API considers post content to be structures rather than simple strings, and the struc- tures are elements of the item tag in RSS, so you can create essentially anything that you can read. The MetaWeblog API supports these following methods for the remote controlling:
17 metaWeblog.newPost(): Creates a new post. metaWeblog.editPost(): Edits a given post. metaWeblog.getPost(): Obtains a given post. metaWeblog.newMediaObject(): Uploads an image, movie, song, or other media object from a user’s computer to the user’s blog. But the MetaWeblog is not complete because it does not have a way to query a user’s blogs or obtain information, and it does not allow editing of templates etc. Therefore, some tools that implement the MetaWeblog API also implement the Blogger API, so it can use the getUserInfo call from Blogger and then use MetaWeblog for postings. An example of a mobile client is WapBlogger29, a WAP interface for the weblog tools Blogger, LiveJournal and any other weblog-style supporting the XML-RPC Blogger API.
5.2 Data Management
The data management is a very important feature, because without having the data management clearly figured out it would be difficult to build flexible blog tools. Also with data management it is possible to choose the desired relationship between the data, which results in a flexible constella- tion. A good approach to realizing this flexibility is by utilizing a CMS, because a CMS offers the possibil- ity of splitting the front-end from the back-end. Where the front-end is that what the user sees, it also is the interface between the user and the system. The back-end is the code that does the work behind the scenes and also the controls that tell the code on how to store and arrange the data. The interface is important, but without a functioning back-end, posts will be lost, files will be deleted, and worse, blogs will go unpublished. The basic function of a blog back-end is storing and retrieving text, the decision about how to store that text is very important. The used system also has to store information about the design, users, or final published location. The most common method of storing text on a computer is in a text file. But text files that are used to store data that are typically accessed by programs rather than people are called flat files. They are called flat because they do not offer any clues about the type of relationship between the data inside, they are simply a storage area. But flat files usually have to cover different pieces of data, a method to separate these pieces is to use delimiters, such as commas. Commas associate each row as a complete unit of data. For instance, the following rows could be rows in a blog CMS flat file: "This in my first post in my blog... ", 11/11/2003, kl, [email protected] "This in my second post in my blog... ", 11/12/2003, kl, [email protected] "Hi, I want to comment your first post.", 11/13/2003, af, [email protected]
29http://www.ubique.ch/wapblogger/
18 The first row, before the first comma, contains the text of the post, the second row the date of the post, the next row the name of the author, and at last, the e-mail address. The storage of blog data in flat files is pretty easy to use, but it has some disadvantages. For instance, if the rows the flat files increases it will take longer for the programm to read these files. Another penalty is that there is no built-in system that manages multiple-author editing, and some another disabilities. To deal with these things it is necessary to use a database. Or rather a relational database management system (RDBMS), such as Access, SQL Server, Oracle, or MySQL. They are called relational because the database can store information about relationships between tables. With flat files, as in the previous example, author information is stored along with the posts. In a database, information could be stored in a separate but related table. Data stored in databases is also structured clearly, so it is easier for developers to understand what each bit of data is supposed to be. Unlike a flat file system, this strict data provided by a database allows the data to be retrieved in very flexible ways. For example, it is possible to select only those posts made on November 11th with a SQL statement, as shown in the following SQL query: SELECT post FROM blog WHERE date = ’11/11/2003’ With a flat file system, you would have to write a code to loop through the entire file, saving those entries that match what you are looking for. Databases also provide built-in locking to make sure multiple users do not overwrite each other’s work. Another possibility instead of storing the data in comma-delimited format is to mark up the text. XML provides more structure to data stored in flat files, and tools are available to make SQL-like calls to retrieve data. XML still does not provide the extended data in a related table and overwrite protection, but it is a good compromise between a database and flat files. The previous example embedded in XML might look like as followed:
The blogware - is the software to create and maintain a blog - does not need higher technological enhancements than the current data management techniques offer. There are enough techniques and opportunities to manage the data of a blogs flexible and intelligent. Currently, a first step to realizing is to have a well thought one CMS. After content is in a CMS, there are opportunities to expand the way that content is used. Currently the initial goal may be to publish in HTML file, but in the future, new formats may emerge.
5.3 Usability
A reason for the fast increase of people who join the internet with their own blog is that today it is very simple - in only three steps - to create a blog, and it is even simpler to maintain a blog. All tools provide an easy-to-use web interface, which have nearly the same convenience as an e-mail editor, where it is possible to set-up and change the appearance from the blog by choosing templates, or creating a new messages. For instance, Google added recently even a shortcut ”BlogThis!” in their Google Toolbar to the blog tool Blogger (owned by Google). This feature opens a small window where you create a blog post that points to the web page which you are visiting. See Figure 5.
Current blog tools provide many useful features to maintain a blog from the web. Also mobile blog tools support some useful features. For example, for creating a new entry in a moblog it is only neces- sary to post your entry with the wished content and attachment by e-mail. But by mobile devices it is still very uncomfortable to write longer text over the key- or touchpad, most moblogs usually contain pictures with very small or without text. Therefore, in Section 4.2 the audio blog was introduced as an very attractive alternative to recording thoughts quickly instead of writing them.
5.4 Cost and Charging
The majority of services, techniques and tools introduced in this seminar are developed from non- commercial persons, therefore these services are free and usable. The tools are available as freeware. But it is going to change when commercial enterprises see a market or profit in these areas. Currently if a moblogger sends an entry to his moblog and uses a free provider he only has to pay the fee for sending the post to the wireless carrier. That is why some wireless carriers see mobile weblogging, or moblogging as a valuable service offering.
20 Google Toolbar with Shortcut to Blogger.com
Web Interface
Figure 5: The Google Toolbar Shortcut opens a small window where you create a blog post that points to the web page which you are visiting.
In order to attract the operator, some wireless carriers offer favorable terms, for instance, the wireless carriers O2 offer their operators a flatrate for e-mail sending and using (mobile) internet, or Vodaphone stores all sent messages in a database where the operator can administrate it and if he wishes he can give others access too, and so on. But some moblog services are charging their services, for instance, Foneblog or audblog. FoneBlog’s offered options for billing are Reverse SMS billing, CDR creation, Perodic billing, or billing per ac- tion. audblog charge a subscription rate per month then you can create 12 audio posts, each with a length of four minutes. For more posts you have to pay in addition to the subscription rate. There could be many options to charge for the service, some are mentioned above for example, as flatrate, per post, a subscription service, or maybe even for free.
21 6 Summary
I have introduced the terms blogging and blog, and discussed the techniques and opportunities in the area of blogging. As the core topic of this seminar, I have discussed exciting things about mobile blogging. But I also pointed out the challenges and issues in the area of mobile blogging. I have also tried to a give an outlook into a future trend. There are currently many discussions about position of blogging in the media. Also if blogging are going to change our community? And many other discussions about the effects of blogging. One thing is clear: there are a enormous potentials regarding mobile blogging. Aside from the fact that mobile blogging introduces the opportunity to publish written or recorded media like pictures, audio, or even video every time and everywhere, it also shows that this media form can be interesting for all kinds of users. But mobile blogging is not so widely developed that everyone could profit from its potential. Mobile blogging is in its early stage and it needs time to mature.
22 References
[1] Cory Doctorow; Rael Dornfest; J. Scott Johnson; Shelley Powers; Benjamin Trott; and Mena G. Trott. Essential Blogging. O’REILLY, September 2002.
[2] Steven M. Jerry. The blog of war. IEEE Spectrum, June 2003.
[3] Editors of Persus Publishing. We’ve got Blog: How weblogs are changing our culture. Persus Publishing, June 2002.
[4] Todd Stauffer. Blog On. Brandon A. Nordin, 2002.
[5] Paul Bausch; Matthew Haughey; Meg Hourihan. We Blog - Publishing Online with Weblogs. Wiley Publishing Inc., 2002.
[6] Newbay Software. A web site for every mobile phone. FoneBlog White Paper, April 2003.
[7] Ericsson Internal Magazine. Chip off the old blog. On - the new world of communication.
Many references were taken from the Web, respective links are included in the text as footnotes.
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