Note: Article updated on 4/15/08 to correctly note where posts default.
CellSpin is the easiest multimedia blogging platform for smartphones I've seen to date. Similar to Utterz and Trutap, CellSpin lets people post photos, videos, text, and audio clips to various online profiles--in CellSpin's case, Picasa Web photos, Flickr, LiveJournal, Blogger, eBay, YouTube, and Windows Live Spaces. Of course, you can't post text to YouTube or video to Facebook, but CellSpin keeps it clear in a convenient chart.
Posting is fairly simple from the downloadable app. You click one of four large icons corresponding to the type of media you'd like to post, and then begin composing. CallSpin launches the cell phone's camera, video camera, or audio recorder, but you can also import media from your device memory or storage card. In addition to uploading to one or more of the sites you've already selected online, each post is also recorded on your CellSpin account. Users can also create clogs (community blogs) or follow a clog that aligns to their interests.
(Credit:
CellSpin)
I mentioned that I thought CellSpin is currently the easiest to use, but perhaps what I really mean is that it's the most conventional. Utterz and Trutap also post to quality sites, with some overlap, but each effectively targets a different user set. Utterz is the most open setup, since it relies on users to e-mail or call in their media, something they can do from nearly every phone. However, there's no app client for generating a cohesive feel; all the software is on Utterz's server end. Like CellSpin, Trutap uploads media posts from an application interface, but it's not yet compatible with all U.S. carriers, so if you're on AT&T, Sprint, or T-Mobile, you're out of luck. (The service is in beta, however, so this could change in the near future.)
In rare instances, CellSpin suffers installation woes. On a T-Mobile BlackBerry, for instance, the carrier and device had failed to communicate. With a few manual changes to the TCP settings, all was dandy.
CellSpin is free, but ad-supported, with a current campaign focusing on social awareness. You can download CellSpin for BlackBerry, Symbian, and Windows Mobile phones or sign up online from your desktop or mobile browser.
Up until today, only Windows Mobile 5 and 6 and BlackBerry users could take CellSpin's mobile blogging and media-sharing platform for, well, a spin. On Thursday the San Jose, Calif. company announced a big addition to the family: phones on the Symbian platform.
Adding Symbian cell phones, many of them high-end, brings CellSpin's free beta service to over 300 handsets and over 30 carriers worldwide.
CellSpinners can quickly share photos, video, text, and audio to Blogger, eBay, Facebook, YouTube, Picasa, LiveJournal, Flickr, and Windows Live Spaces, with more partnerships on the way. Of course, there are a few limitations brought on by the partner sites. YouTube only accepts video submissions, for example, and photos are the only media that can be uploaded to Flickr, Picasa, and Facebook. The blogging sites and eBay accept all four media types.
Inspiration for a blog can come from anywhere--at any time--so you'd best be prepared. Lighter than your Wi-Fi-enabled laptop and more immediate than jotting journal notes is TypePad Mobile (for Symbian, Palm, and Windows Mobile,) a blog-updating app offered by TypePad for its paid subscribers.
Blogging about mobile blogging from a mobile phone.
(Credit: CNET Networks)I evaluated TypePad Mobile on a gleaming HTC Vox S710 (watch Bonnie Cha's video review) running Windows Mobile 6. The smart phone's nice slider QWERTY keyboard and motion-sensitive vertical-to-horizontal display made for favorable testing conditions.... Read more
Nokia N93i
(Credit: Nokia)
Nokia N93i with Vox
(Credit: Nokia)As fellow Webwarer Josh Lowensohn reported a couple of days ago, Nokia and Vox have teamed up to bring mobile blogging to a new level. The N93i comes preloaded with the blogging service, so you can use the phone's 3.2-megapixel camera to capture photos and video and instantly upload them to Vox to share with all your friends and family. It's a wonderful idea, but if you're anything like me, you're not going to bother if the process is too labor intensive or kludgey. Well, good news, folks: Nokia gave me a working demo of the two working together, and it really was a simple thing. The booth attendant shot a lovely video of me putting my hands over my face, saved it to the phone, and within a couple of clicks had the video uploaded via a Wi-Fi connection to a sample blog for all to see (yay!). For someone who doesn't even have the patience to wait for Web pages to load on her cell phone, I was pretty impressed.
Here are some more details about the smart phone (or, excuse me, the multimedia computer, as Nokia calls it) itself. It's largely similar to its predecessor, the N93, but it has a swanky new mirrored face and refined keypad. As mentioned above, it has a 3.2-megapixel camera that can record video at up to 30 frames per second and with DVD-like quality. There's photo-editing software onboard and video-out capabilities so that you can hook it up directly to your TV. The N93i also features the Symbian operating system for your work needs and a built-in music player and streaming media support. As with all the models in the Nokia N series, the catch is that no U.S. carrier has picked up the N93i, which means if you want to snag one of these puppies, you'll have to pony up a hefty $700 or so (ouch) to buy an unlocked version of the phone. The Nokia N93i is scheduled for release by the beginning of 2007.
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