Moblogging

I’ve been trying out various moblogging methods in the past week. I loved that during my vacation I could snap a photo and send it online instantly via Blogger’s email post feature. That feature remains my favorite way to get pictures and text online from my phone. I can do it from the phone’s camera without installing any extra applications, and the post appears as the latest item on my blog, where people will notice it.

However, that last pro is also a con. If I send a lot of pictures, they push my regular posts off the front page very quickly. If I continue to use this method, I will need to change my blog template somehow to deal with this problem, or create a secondary blog just for moblogging and pull it into this template.

I also don’t like the fact that the pictures are stored on Blogger and not my SmugMug. I’d really prefer all my pictures to be in the same place. I installed SmugShot on my phone to see if it would work for me, but I ultimately don’t like it very much. The application doesn’t remember that I want my mobile photos to go into an album called “Moblog” and not their default “SmugShot”; I have to change the album every time I open the app. I also have it set to auto-tag my photos, but it doesn’t do it. Plus, posting this way doesn’t get the picture automatically on my blog. I tried installing a Flash slideshow of my moblog pictures, but it’s not really the same. It’s the kind of widget most people ignore when they’re visiting a site. Plus, I can only caption the photos, not title and caption like I can with Blogger.

My ideal solution would be something that would automatically save the photo to SmugMug, then create a post on Blogger that incorporates the SmugMug photo and whatever text I’ve put in the email, with the title of the email being the title of the post. Further, I’d love to be able to take a bunch of photos, caption each, and then send them as a bulk blog post, to keep the mass of pictures from driving other posts off my front page. That last would require an application, I imagine, since the iPhone can only send one picture at a time, and can’t do email attachments otherwise.

It’s possible some sort of solution exists for different blog software; I’m open to that too. I love Blogger, but since I publish via FTP I can’t use a lot of its features…and to be honest I trust my host (pair) a lot more than I trust Blogger’s servers (no offense), so I’m not going to shift my blog to Blogspot. I’ve toyed with the idea of using WordPress. I’ve also thought about Movable Type; pair lets you add it to your account for a nominal fee per month.

I guess I’ll keep looking until I find a solution that makes sense for me. Suggestions are welcome!