Saturday, December 23, 2006

Blogging goes mobile - B.B.C. News


People will soon be able to publish their own website via their phones as blogging goes mobile.

Blogs or weblogs are online diaries - personal web pages that can be frequently updated. There are thousands of blogs on the web and they are often interlinked, creating an eco-system of ever-changing ideas on the net. The latest trend is moblogging - updating your blog with a mobile phone. Programs like FoneBlog, Manywhere Moblogger and Wapblog allow bloggers to post details about their lives from anywhere, not just from a computer. There are an estimated 500,000 people who run blogs and analysts say a quarter of them may eventually update their sites on the go.

Transform the net

FoneBlog by Irish firm NewBay Software lets mobile users update their blogs from their phones in minutes. Bloggers using FoneBlog simply send text or photos to a prescribed number and their weblog will automatically update. The system will really come into its own as multimedia messaging and camera phones take off, said Chief Executive of NewBay Software Paddy Holahan. Family occasions such as weddings or holiday diaries are typical examples of the types of sites people might set up, he said. Mr Holahan predicts it will transform our relationship with the internet and put billions of bloggers online.

Personal news

"In two year's time every phone user will have a website and be using blogs as their version of the world," he said. The popularity of blogs was recently acknowledged by search engine Google which bought the technology behind Blogger, the software that powers many of the weblogs around the world. "Google's buy is a recognition that the news in future will be reported by ordinary people with their own particular bias on stories," said Mr Holahan.

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