Sun, 25 May 2003
Mobility to Speak.
I still haven’t made up my mind about this ‘moblogging’ thing at all.
The institution of personal journals or logs is a fairly established one. It’s a tradition, art, skill and craft.
But recently that act of noting down one’s thoughts in a fairly literate and considered manner has been instilled with an urgency that rivals that of the most sensationalistic journalistic traditions.
It has to be blogged NOW.
It can’t wait until you get back to your home, have time to gather your thoughts and sit down with a coffee. Hastily jotted scribbings pecked into a website form or messaging interface using a cramped mobile phone keyboard is evidently superior to thoughtful ideas and measured words.
Why? Because it’s, like, NOW! Not later.
‘Later’ is passé.
The primary usefulness of a GPRS phone like the Nokia 3650 in the context of weblogging is not the ability to jot your thoughts down, live, on a numerical phone keypad or even the infinitestimal qwerty keyboards on some of the more text-oriented phones.
It is, in all honesty, a poor man’s wireless ethernet. Instead of relying on my phone as an interface I should have viewed it as a glorified modem and used my laptop to type and post thing. My mistake, to be sure.
Had I not been afraid of having my laptop stolen by a gang of fat, sleazy ‘Comic Book Guys’ looking for money to pay for their collector’s edition Transformers toys, that is.
Apart from the fact that, unlike the Dust Or Magic conference a few weeks ago or the San-Diego Comics Convention, the Bristol Comics Festival simply isn’t interesting enough.
Most of us, as well, have no need for this artificial urgency, the need to weblog and post on events as they happen. There is enough stress in our lives already without the addition of another layer of subdued panic and hurry on top of the layers of stress stemming from work, society and family.
I did meet a lot of interesting and entertaining people at the social events surrounding the comics festival. It’s just the festival itself that instilled images of barren cultural wastelands in your mind.
The rise of ‘smartphones’—our first true mobile computers—is a good thing. Picture messaging and multimedia messaging is much more fun than it should be and the capabilities of the phone itself means that it is an interesting and exciting target platform for developers of content and applications.
It’s just ‘moblogging’ that I’m not sure about.
Maybe I’ll get into it with time.
Baldur.Clifton, Bristol.
Sat, 24 May 2003
Ho Hum.
Yesterday was a bit of a bore, but that’s to be expected of launch parties and award parties. My fault for forgetting how boring these things can get.
Just about to miss Jeff Smith’s special event due to an attack of lunchtime hunger and caffeine craving.
Let’s see if I can find anything interesting around here.