David Davies' Radio Weblog

Sun, 06 Jan 2002 01:04:53
Think I've managed to fix the G3, at least for now!

In case the last two posts are a little cryptic, here's what's happening. Most mobile phones in the UK can send email. You don't have to have a fancy phone, the network provider routes a specially formatted SMS message to email for you so you can even send email from very old phones just so long as they can send SMS text messages. The format of the SMS text message on my phone is:

"[email protected]##subject#message body"

I use the subject as a secret password field so that the following step can't be hijacked.

Once this SMS text message is sent, I have Radio UserLand check an email account I set up specifically for my blog. The blog email account is the email address you send your SMS text message to! Checking every minute or so keeps it current.

If a new message is found the script checks for the secret password in the subject line and if it's OK, the message body is posted to this blog home page!

Using this simple trick I can blog from anywhere providing I have my mobile phone. You don't need an internet connection and you can blog from the middle of a field if you like! I blogged my way through a football match last year as proof of concept.

Get in touch if you'd like to know more.

I'm standing in a supermarket checkout queue. Well, that's my Saturday night off to a good start!

I'm going to try to blog from my mobile phone via SMS...