Thursday, August 27, 2009

How To Set Up Mobile Blogging & Limitations

So have been playing with mobile blogging and have figured out a few things of interest as well as a little info to make things easier. You could also check out Blogger Mobile for info


For SMS and MMS you'll 1st need to verify your cell phone number with blogger, and set mobile blogging up in the blogger settings. SMS and MMS both recognize your cell number, so that posting only works from aproved number/s.


To enable SMS send a text saying 'REGISTER' to the number 256447 (BLOGGR) then go to Blogger Mobile and verify which blog you're registering the cell with. After that you can send texts to 256-447, and they will post directly to your blog.

You can't sent pictures to this number--only text. You can also only send 160 charactors. If you send more than 160 you will receive the automatic text saying, "Sucess! Your post made it to your blog..." --BUT you will end up with 2 or 3 ...or 7 posts that are a garbled mix of numbers, letters, and symbols, not the blog you sent.

To enable MMS send a text from your cell to go@blogger.com. Then use the claim code they send to link your cell with your existing blog. After that is set up you can send a picture message or a text message to go@blogger.com and it will post to your acount. The subject line of your picture message will become the title of the post.

MMS is my favorite way; You can send up to 9 pictures, but only the subject line, and the message in the 1st text box you send will make it to blogger. Don't bother with notes under each picture; they will be eaten in cyberspace. If you send a text message to go@blogger.com the message will go through, but 160 characters is the maximum allowed, You can, however send many more characters in a picture message--It looks like you can send 1000, but per verizon's FAQ's site 400 is the max-- I've not tested more than 250 yet. (If you send more than 160characters in a picture message there will be verizon advertisements at the bottom of your post. Ugh)

I chose to also use the email feature because it gives the option of saving a message to drafts. I already have the option of posting without delay when I send a message to go@blogger.com. I love having the choice of saving a post for later.

To enable E-mail posting (AKA mail2Blogger)

1st go to Blogger Settings.


Choose the Email and Mobile link.


Choose your 'secret word' for the email posting
 (You'll want to choose a strong secret word especially if you set blogger to publish emails immediately)


Then enable the option, choosing save-as-draft or publish-immediately..



As with Go2Blogger the subject line of your picture message will become the title of the post.

(So far there are always advertisements on the bottom of these email blogs, but it's easy to remove them if you are editing the blog anyway)

Jessie, if you want to text a blog, and have a title for your blog as you mentioned. Just send a picture message with your blog title in the subject line to either go@blogger.com or to your blogger-secret-email address. You can leave the picture out if you don't have one; it'll still work and you'll have a title.

Michele; You'll probably need to use email and SMS since your iphone doesn't support picture messaging. It must be awful to not have picture messaging.... La la la verizon rocks.

-Happiness

1 comment: