Turn Your PC into a 'Moblogger'

ptorrone writes "Engadget's weekly how-to article this week shows how to turn a PC in to an 'automatic moblogging' machine. Their example they show a Windows PC, what do you use on your Mac or Linux machines to post images automatically?"

I guess the big question is...

[TwistedGreen]

what the hell is a "moblog"?

And who comes up with these ridiculous names?

Do we really need more blogging?

[genericacct]

Seriously, I think there is too much stuff put on the web just because people can. Blogs are mostly narcissistic rantings, with no regard to what purpose they serve. I'm getting tired of googling for something, only to turn up a useless blog or forum discussion.

Re:I guess the big question is...

[Anonymous Coward]

no, the big question is who the hell thinks so highly of themselves that they believe everything "interesting" they see should be posted onto the internet and why do they think that?

i mean geez, are there really that many people with TRULY interesting lives?

And it is so secure!

[YankeeInExile]

And it is so secure!

Basically, the way it works is as follows: you send any email with a picture attached to your TextAmerica account, the email address is the login/password so it looks like this [e-mail]. When we set up TinCam, the WebCam application, we will enter this info in. If you want you can send a test message to your moblog now, simply send an email and attach a photo, then visit your site to make sure it all worked. This is also a quick and easy way to post pictures on the web as well.

If I were doing something like this, I would probably use Perl.

#!/usr/bin/perl5
use Handwave::Camera;

use constant MYUSER => 'notauser';
use constant PASSWORD => 'notmypassword';

while (1)
{
my $image = Handwave::Camera->new();
#
# maybe use some of Image::Magick to transform image
#
my $message = new MIME::Lite ( To => MYUSER.'.'.MYPASSWORD.'@tincam.com',
From => '[e-mail]',
Subject => 'another photo',
Type => 'multipart/mixed' );
$message->attach( Type => 'image/jpeg',
Encoding => 'quoted-printable',
Data => $image ) ;
$message->send;
sleep 60;
}

Re:Do we really need more blogging?

[Your_Mom]

What we are seeing in just evoloution. People are still figuring it out. I mean, look at the web mid 1996. Everyone had a web page full of useless stuff, a boat load of javascript and way too many blink tags. What little content there was, was "arcissistic rantings, with no regard to what purpose they serve". Give it a bit, people will get bored and move onto the next 'big thing'.

I try to post semi-useful thing in mine, like "I got this error at work today, here is what I did, It drove me nuts", in hope that google will index it so other people don't have to go through the wild goose chase that I had to go through. But mostly, mine is journal-type stuff.

Re:Do we really need more blogging?

[Capt'n Hector]

I always see these comments in discussion about weblogs, and they REALLY piss me off. These comments are ignorant at best. I won't speak for the unwashed masses of webloggers, but I've been doing it since 1999, from the original, editthispage manila software. Blogs can start out as "narcissistic rantings" but once you start writing well, everything changes. All my relatives and friends regularly read my blog, and they appreciate it for the window it gives into my mind. For example, this entry [weblogger.com] sparked a discussion between me and my uncle.

So before you start a narcissistic rant about how blogs are mostly narcissistic rantings, remember that this useless forum discussion takes place on a blog. That's right, slashdot is a blog.

Re:Slashdot Valedictory

[tunabomber]

Why is the GPL "anti-capitalist"? It provides corporations with high-quality software that they can use without paying license fees. And furthermore, it requires that any modifications to the software must be released to the general public, which would benefits all users of the software, corporations included.

Also, it encourages competition by preventing malicious companies from pulling an "embrace and extend" maneuver on an existing piece of software. I think it's far more anti-capitalist when a company does what ever possible to lock users into their proprietary product, deflecting the attempts of others to release competing products. Eliminating the competition is not the same as competition.

If you release software you've written yourself under the GPL, you are not some pinko anticapitalist commie. It is your right as a participant in a capitalist job economy to name your own terms under which you do work, whether it be $140/hr or for free (possibly with the GPL as the sole string attached). Remember, communism is where people are FORCED to work for the benefit of the greater whole. In the FOSS, people VOLUNTEER to work for the benefit of the greater whole. It's capitalistic because the developers have the ability to choose whether or not they want to volunteer or demand pay when they write software.

And no, the GPL does not FORCE people to give away their source code- if you don't want to give up your source code, don't modify GPL'd software. It's not like you'd even have the opportunity to modify the software if it was released under a proprietary or "shared source" license, so don't complain.

Re:Do we really need more blogging?

[AmericanInKiev]

to much stuff on the WEB?

I don't hear Goggle crying.

What does it f**** matter if there is "too Much Stuff"

Search engines will sort it out - and competition will ensure they do a good job.

There are problems in this world but you have certainly not identified one here

AIK

Re:Do we really need more blogging?

[WuphonsReach]

Slashdot is more of a forum where anyone is allowed to come and discuss any topics.

Ha ha ha ha! Seriously, you must be new here? (Hell yeah I'm burning karma on this... no offense)

Slashdot and discussion do not fit into the same page. It's more of a soapbox-style comment system then a discussion forum. The user-interface has serious issues that interfere with having anything akin to a discussion. Discussion/forum software would allow a person to track threads that are interesting and easily check back to see if anything new has been added to those interesting threads. Slashdot doesn't allow you to do that (unless you manually bookmark stuff, or feel like constantly re-reading everything). In fact, any suggestions to that effect to the programmers gets either shot down, or "well, we don't want to it that way (some simple method), instead we're waiting to write some huge complex system (which will never get written)". (Case in point: adding another drop-down to the filter bar to only show posts within the last 1/2/4/8/12/24/48 hours.)

While it may not be a blog, calling it a forum is even farther off-the-mark.