The meteoric rise of weblogging is one of the most unexpected technology stories of the past year, and much like the commentary that populates these ever-changing digital diaries, the story of blogging keeps evolving.
One recent trend is "moblogging," or mobile weblogging. New tools like Manywhere Moblogger, Wapblog and FoneBlog allow bloggers to post information about the minutiae of their lives from anywhere, not just from a PC.
The newest of these tools, Kablog, lets users update their weblogs remotely with cell phones and other handheld devices like wireless PDAs.
Kablog works on any device running Java 2 Platform Micro Edition, or J2ME, a version of Java for mobile devices. Those devices include cell phones running the Symbian operating system, many Sprint PCS phones, the Blackberry from RIM, and many Palm handhelds running OS 3.5, such as Handspring's Treo.
Todd Courtois, creator of Kablog, offers the program for free as shareware and says that word-of-mouth has already generated several thousand downloads in the short time it has been available.
What distinguishes Kablog from other moblogging software is that it does not use e-mail or text messaging for updating weblogs. Other programs such as FoneBlog enable users to e-mail posts from a cell phone or PDA to a server, which uploads the entry onto a site. Kablog lets those who use Movable Type as their weblogging software log directly onto their sites for updating.
Russell Beattie, a programmer who wrote Manywhere Moblogger, says being able to log in gives Kablog an advantage over other e-mail-to-blog applications.
"With Kablog you can go back and edit your posts later," Beattie says, in contrast to the e-mail mode of updating his blog when he's "just posting and forgetting (and hoping)." He adds that one disadvantage of Kablog is that users are unable to add photos, sound or video to their posts because it runs on J2ME.
NewBay, which does accommodate these additional elements, has been eager to play up this aspect of its FoneBlog software, especially because more and more cell phones are being sold with integrated digital cameras. Sales of those phones are expected to exceed those of stand-alone digital cameras by the end of next year, according to research firm Strategy Analytics.
FoneBlog lets subscribers update their weblogs directly to cell phone carriers using a server installed with the software, which automatically posts Short Message Service or Multimedia Messaging Service messages.
A NewBay representative says the first carrier to use FoneBlog commercially will begin offering service in mid-February, although CEO Paddy Holahan refused to disclose its name.
Will there be enough cell-phone users who are interested in moblogging to convince carriers to invest in these new tools?
Joe Laszlo, a Jupiter Research analyst, believes that of the estimated 500,000 people who maintain a weblog, as many as 25 percent might eventually use moblogging tools to update their sites. He predicts carriers will use moblogging software in different ways: Some will lure customers with tools like Kablog that allow them to remotely update their existing weblog. Others will follow the FoneBlog model and use moblogging as a way to reduce subscriber turnover by tying a user's weblog to a carrier's service.
But whether moblogging will grow much beyond the base of people who already use blogs is less clear.
"What I'm not so sure of is whether software like this increases the total number of people blogging, or just gives a new set of tools to a subset of existing bloggers," Laszlo said. "This isn't the killer app for mobile devices."
