Blogging On The Go free tools

Twitter

(the micro-blogging service previously mentioned in this blog and my tumblelog) really shines when you’re on the go and far from your computer or Internet access, because you can write and read Twitter posts using your mobile phone. That's why Twitter limits each post (“tweet”) to 140 characters, the same length (more or less) as SMS (mobile text messages).

You can also post text AND photos from a cell phone to a tumble log using Tumblr. This is about the fastest and easiest way to setup and maintain a basic blog, that I know of. Tumblr can also aggregate (automatically collect and post) some of your "feeds" from assorted other sources, including other services that can receive posts directly from your mobile phone or PDA, services such as Twitter, Flickr, YouTube or LiveJournal. Likewise, Tumblr aggregates feed(s) from conventional blog services like WordPress, and bookmarks from Del.icio.us -- to name just a few options. All this makes Tumblr a surprisingly powerful and time saving online publishing tool. But it's still very simple to use. I’ve written about Tumblr before (see list on right).

There are LOTS of other services (some free, some paid), from conventional blogs to social web services, that might work better for you. It all depends on WHAT you want to post, from WHERE, how OFTEN, WHO you want to read it, HOW best you can reach and update those readers, how publicly you want to share, the tools and resources you have, and how much time you want to devote to it.

Just for example, and a FEW alternative ideas, some of the other social web services with which I am familiar are listed on Me.Mykl.org. I also set up and customize blogs and other communications and marketing tools and services, for clients that are too busy to explore all these options themselves. (Please email me, if you’d like to know more about that.)

Personally, I use different tools to publish and share different things (short text, long articles, photos, videos, bookmarks). The right tool for each job. But I use Tumblr to automatically collect it all, in the order that I publish it, at Daily.Mykl.org (mostly my personal stuff) and at Mykl.biz (home of additional technology tips, like you see here, as well as my professional news).

1 October 2007