Use Your Smartphone to Update Your Blog

It seems like everyone and their brother has their own blog nowadays. Whether it be on Myspace, Facebook, one of the many dedicated web-log sites, or their own domain. Reports, reviews, news, lifestyles, fashion, photos, the world over and over goes into personal blogs by the thousands every hour. Most big news stories are no longer broken by the main-stream media, but by private individuals posting reports and videos of the event to their blogs before a regular reporter can even arrive to the scene. How do they do it so fast? Are they looking out their window as they are sitting at their computer desks, instantaneously uploading and typing? Of course not. Thanks to cellular internet service and smartphones, people are carrying mini-computers with instant internet access with them at all times.

Updating to your blog via a smartphone is a simple task really. As long as you have the right software, it doesn't really matter what kind of phone you are using, be it a Treo, Blackberry, Sidekick, Blackjack, Mobile Q, or iPhone. With any one of these or many other devices, you too can be a roving reporter typing all your news and uploading photos to your blog and getting all the information out to your readers. It may not even be especially newsworthy. You may be on vacation and want to share some breathtaking experiences from the Hotel room several days before your actual return. Maybe blogging is your professional job. Not so unusual in this day and age. You may need the ability to work from anywhere and everywhere in order to meet those tight deadlines.

Diarist is a program created for any phone using WindowsMobile and .NET framework. Developed by New Zealander, Kevin Daly, this application can connect you to your blog and upload both text and photos, no matter if you are using .Text, Community Server, Blogger, Blogsphere, dasBlog, or Blogx. There is also limited support for MetaWeblog API.

Another program, although older, certainly works well and has always received good reviews. It is also newly updated to version 3.1. That is PicoBlogger, which is also for MS Smartphones. Picoblogger claims to work with any blog publishing system, including Wordpress and Blogger. Users of Picoblogger also have their own community where bloggers can comment on each other's work. Autoblogging promises a one-click solution and notifications, and a phone download center round out the application.

Our next program worth mentioning is actually a universal messaging client known as Trutap, but one of its features is a nice blog posting utility. In all, the application works with MSN messenger, Yahoo IM, AIM, ICQ, Blog.com, Blogger, Facebook, Flickr, Friendster, Livejournal, Photobucket, Typepad, Xanga, and Email-to-blog. Trutap can be downloaded free from their website at http://trutap.com .

To end the reviews of mobile blogging software, we go to the phones themselves. Many smartphone manufacturers have their own proprietary software for bloggers, the best of which, no surprise, is from Apple for the iPhone. Another great manufacturer blogging program comes from Nokia. If you use either of these phones, it is not necessary to look any further.

This should help you start out if you are new to blogging or new to smartphone use. As with most software, it is a personal choice, so experiment a little, find what sort of blog works best for you and then find the mobile application that fits your needs best.