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This site is no longer maintained.
My current weblog.
Saturday, September 07, 2002Blogwalking
l.m.orchard has coined a new term for mobile weblogging, Blogwalking. He's thinking about the impact of PDAs on weblogs, how environmental metadata might be incorporated, and how weblog and aggregation systems could take advantage of opportunistic networking.
He starts off with the idea of running Movable Type on a Zaurus. I had a similar idea earlier this year, documented in Blogging Anywhere. I never tried to implement that idea but have been reconsidering it as I contemplate leaving Radio Userland for Movable Type. The downside to this solution is that using a PDA as the primary repository of weblog data doesn't seem like a bright idea. PDAs have limited storage, are easily lost, and are lousy as servers because they are usually powered off. Most of all, PDA web browsers are extremely poor writing environments.
Out of the box, however, the Zaurus is one of the most compelling platforms for blogwalking. The built-in thumb keyboard is a major advantage for writers and gives the Zaurus a size advantage when compared to other PDAs with add-on keyboards. Battery life is good when battery-draining peripherals aren't installed (ie: WiFi cards). The Zaurus' use of the Linux kernel allows it to use software and tools that were originally designed for servers and desktops.
What the Zaurus needs are some tools to improve the blogwalking experience. In the context of Movable Type, a tool for bi-directional synchronization of entries would be an excellent start. From there it would be nice to have a tool like Pocket Blog that offers a richer environment for writing than the web browser.
As a side note, via Mark Pasc I have learned that someone documented the local use of Movable Type back in February.
