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Go `Moblogging' today!

We now have our first portal that enables mobile blogging

POTENT COMBINATIONBlog and cellphone come together for communication

The web log or blog has emerged as the Internet's single most powerful tool for personal empowerment. It allows each and every one of us to carve out our own little space on the World Wide Web, where we can share our opinions, thoughts, likes and dislikes, with all who care to read them.

Powerful tool

In recent months, two different tools, the blog and the mobile phone have come together to create an even more potent combo, the Moblog — a mobile blog, where content is posted on the Internet from a mobile or portable device, such as a cellular phone, or a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA). The term Moblog itself is credited to Adam Greenfield, who coined the term, and went on to organise the first International Moblogging Conference in Tokyo, Japan, in July 2003.

In fact, the idea of sending your innermost thoughts (and pictures just snapped with your camera-phone) direct to your personal Moblog became so popular that in 2004, Singapore launched a National Moblog Day. With many phones now equipped to capture mega-pixel photos and good quality video, a new breed of citizen journalist, is being seen — proactive public-spirited individuals, who happen to be in the right place at the right time, and would like to share with the world, whatever they saw and heard.

With technology like this, no government can ever hope to gag or throttle public opinion, or restrict it within is own boundaries.

The Moblog knows no boundaries. Indians could read about Moblogs, but had difficulty in experiencing the excitement, because most free blog services are not tailored for direct uploading from mobile devices.

All that has changed this month with the inauguration by India's pioneering portal, Rediff, of a special site tailored for mobile blogging. The site can be accessed at www.rediffiland.com. Once you have registered at the site, you can then use your mobile phone to create your own Moblog, by SMSing the desired text.

Mobloggers will also have the added advantage that they can reach the huge audience of Rediff's regular viewers numbering around 40 million. Right now, the Rediff Moblog service is in beta or test stage, and is free to use.

There is even the possibility that Rediff might share revenue with bloggers who drive traffic to their sites. That may or may not happen, but the ability to create your own personal blog content is now only an SMS away.

So, what's stopping you?

A. VISHNU

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