m-blog

If you want me, I'll be in the Caribbean, working and kicking back for a week...

Edamame and Kirin Ichiban at Wagamama. Yum!

Just missed the birthday party by a couple of days. The first mobile phone call in the UK was on January 1st 1985. When the first consumer mobile phones were launched they were "the size of a briefcase, cost about £2,000 and had a battery life of little more than 20 minutes". So they've seen my Sony Ericsson P900 then.

" Soon it'll make no more sense having a mobile weblog than it would be to call your regular weblog a stationary blog. You'll just have a weblog and how you post to it, and what you post to it, will depend upon where you are, what you're doing and what you want to say."

Davies, 2003.

There's an interesting debate happening over at Dave's place on moblogging. Be sure to read the comments. Dave stirred things up a bit when he posted to Scripting News some thoughts on this topic. So many negative comments, it's clearly a sensitive area. But why? Perhaps because blogging is new enough and moblogging is newer, there's still room to stake a claim of having invented or discovered these. But I believe this is mistaken.

There is much to discuss about what weblogging means, in all its forms, which is entirely reasonable because thoughtful people are continuously discussing all forms of media. My daughter has just enrolled on a media studies course and her first assignment was to discuss a particular genre of movies and how they affect people. But we understand movies, right, 'cos they've been around a long time? Wrong. There are always new interpretations and ways of using all forms of media, and when new media arise, and there's an interesting debate to be had on whether weblogs represent a new form of media, the debate moves on in exciting new directions. So it's important to debate what weblogs and moblogs are, but don't expect a consensus because they're different for different people. Always will be. But isn't that the fun bit?

I have a claim to stake in the history of moblogging. I had a moblog before any of you. My SMS blog was the first moblog and it continues to this day. It was so new there wasn't even a generic name for what the weblog was trying to do. Dave grokked what I was trying to do way back. I posted pictures and video to my moblog before most of you even had mobile phones. And I'll state right now that I was only able to what I did by using the software that Dave and the Userland team created. I've always tried to be fair to that.

But just for the record, and to show it is pointless claiming to be the first at anything, I wasn't actually the first person to have a moblog. Not by a long way. You see that's the problem with definitions. Anyone remember this guy? Steve Mann was wearing mobile computers back in 1980 and was later posting images taken from his devices back to the Internet (see wearcam.org). And I don't even think that Steve was the first to go on the road with a wearable computer. I recall seeing pictures of a guy on a bike with an even more ungainly mobile computer from the '70's but I can't find a link anywhere. Neither of these guys called what they did moblogging. Would you? Discuss.

Back from alt-i-lab 2004 and back from California. Lots to say about the conference and my first exposure to the inner workings of IMS. Fascinating insights into the standards and specifications world including the true nature of specification adoption after talking to people both inside IMS and out. Notes from the conference later. I had the unexpected but considerable pleasure of meeting some of the people I most admire from the weblogging world, notably Raymond Yee, Scott Leslie and David Wiley. I hadn't expected to meet any webloggers at this meeting let alone three such distinguished exponents. Raymond, Scott and David are really nice people and I thoroughly enjoyed the time I spent with them. It's a real treat to meet people from the weblogging world in the flesh and for me it de-emphasizes weblogs and weblogging per se and instead emphasizes the people behind the blogs. Scott and I along with Mark Stiles had a great evening out at a Middle Eastern restaurant in Redwood City and even the trip to Shooters bar afterwards was an experience (Mark has a great photo that I'll try to get a copy of). In the meantime, the accompanying photo is courtesy of David's camera, thanks David and looking forward to spending more time next conference.

The real highlight of my time in California though has to be my post-conference road trip around San Diego courtesy of Jack Mancilla. It was an incredible experience and I took lots of great photos. I am so indebted to Jack for being such a good host. I'm just getting the pictures web-ready so I'll post them soon along with notes from the trip.

It begins...