From my friend Rani in Singapore, I read with interest of a new service designed by two 19-year old twins Keng and Seng. It’s called Phone Logger, or Phlogger, and it allows anyone (not just those residing in Singapore) to update their blogs (online journals called web logs, or simply blogs) via their handphone’s Short Message Service, or SMS. Actually it utilizes the more advanced MMS, or Multimedia Messaging Service, which includes longer messages and photos. The service is free, and while testing has already got 340 registered users.
An interesting idea, and great that it’s being developed in this part of the world. My main worry, apart from the less-than-mouthwatering name, is that it’s already been adopted to mean Photo Logging — see phlog.net, by a guy called Alan from Reading in the UK. Who was first? There’s also moblogging, for mobile blogging, which is pretty much the same thing as Photo Logging, firing off photos from your handphone to a website. Fotopages is one example of this. Other terms still floating around: Photog, Photblog, Phoblog. I’d plump for moblog to mean any blog that’s being updated wirelessly, whether it’s pictures or text. Objections, anyone?