Monday, January 29, 2007

Personal Mobile Publisher

This is a way of creating a personal mobile publishing system (PMP) which can help you keep track of bits of information while away from your computer. Let's say you have planned a trip while sitting at your desktop PC and now you are about to leave and would like to bring the details about the trip. You could print them on paper or you could use the PMP and view them later on your mobile phone. This system could of course come in handy for other bits of information as well, such as booking numbers, phone numbers, maps, etc.

In the following description most of the parts can be exchanged for similar components if you prefer to use something else. I have only tested the ones I name.

Installation:
  1. Start by creating a blog at Blogger. Make sure that you specify in the settings that the blog should be private since some of the information that you will publish may be for your eyes only. Also, choose a simple template since the information should download fast into your phone.
  2. Install Opera Mini on your Java enabled mobile phone. Create a bookmark to your new blog.
  3. Install the JustBlogIt extension for Firefox.
Use:

Now, when you want to publish something from a web page to your Personal Mobile Publisher, just select it and then right click on it and select JustBlogIt!. A new window will open with the selected text filled in for you to edit if necessary. When you are happy with the result, click the publish button. To see the results in your phone, start up Opera Mini and browse to the bookmark for your blog.

If you wish to enable very easy publishing of images as well, you can try the Performancing extension instead.