August 21, 2001. Newly armed with Nik Haldimann’s Wapblogger (2001-2005) on my trusty Nokia 7110i I bash out a record seven blog posts in one day. On the bus, in the lift, in the café, In just a few short hours I live every mobile blogging use case known to marketing.
That date remains my personal best in terms of posts per day, as the temporal Swiss cheese of this site testifies. But the moblogging bug stayed with me and shaped my writing. There’s something about having only eight buttons for a 26 letter alphabet that that forces thoughts down to the bare essentials. Maybe that’s a good thing. Later came photos, also often posted to Flickr direct from mobile (hey, someone else pays for my data.)
Has mobile blogging changed the world yet? No, it has probably not even changed blogging very much. But like Bill Gates said, “a lot of people overestimate the changes in the short run and then when they see that they’ve overestimated those changes, they underestimate what’s going to happen over a five to 10-year period.” And I bet he didn’t SMS that to his website.
As 21 August 2006 approaches I’ll be thinking about what’s changed and what needs to change next for this capability to reach its full potential. I’d love to know what you think too.
Matt Edgar writes here 