Using ShoZu and Jaiku to microblog?

ShoZuShoZu is great! Did I say great? I mean fantastic!

I just realized how often it occurs that I want to post a short message to Jaiku (read: Jaiku, Twitter, Numpa any other microblogging platform that has an open API). This happens on strange times, at strange places and weird occasions. It’s mostly when I’m not near a PC that I get the most inspiration. Here comes the mobile phone to the rescue! Or is it? Currently it’s often too much hassle to open up http:/m.jaiku.com on my mobile browser and post the message. A great opportunity wasted…

Posting short messages should be a 15 second action. Even using the Jaiku Mobile client or the Jaiku Widget is just to much effort in order to post a message (they are ok for reading though).

It would be great if ShoZu could revolutionize this the way they did with posting photo’s to Flickr or video to YouTube. Once you have ShoZu installed on your phone, posting photo’s to Flickr becomes a “no-brainer”. See, point, shoot, upload! It’s as simple as that.

JaikuNow image being able to do the same with short text messages. Think, write, post! This could be implemented in the same way you create SMS messages but instead of sending the message to a phonenumber you would send the message to ShoZu. A lot of phone support writing text notes an sending them through SMS, email, Bluetooth, infrared. So an other option would be to write a text note on the phone an select text “send to ShoZu” option.

I wonder how hard it would be for ShoZu to support this with all those available open API’s …

Comments (14)

  1. Raimo wrote:

    Nice idea..Wouldn’t a shortcode work fine aswell? What would you think if I can send photos o Twitter via Shozu??? It shows the description + creates a tiny url

    Wednesday, August 8, 2007 at 1:31 #
  2. A shortcode would definitly work but it’s much more of a hassle to implement and maintain … and it would cost money to send a message. Not very tempting.

    Photo’s to twitter might be possible already in this setup:
    ShoZu -> Flickr -> Flickr RSS feed -> Twitterfeed.com -> Twitter

    Haven’t tried it though.

    Wednesday, August 8, 2007 at 9:19 #
  3. Kjeld wrote:

    Just use the standard MetaWblog API
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MetaWeblog
    and it will be posible to support all kinds applications to post. It is in out roadmap for the D2C version of our system.

    Wednesday, August 8, 2007 at 11:18 #
  4. Kjeld, to do what? To post to Jaiku? Or were yiu referring to Raimo?

    The api’s are not the issue, the (native) client application is.

    Wednesday, August 8, 2007 at 11:21 #
  5. Kjeld wrote:

    Applications like ShoZu support the MetaWeblog API, http://www.shozu.com/portal/tour.do?operation=imagesharing so if you set the destination to your location then it is ok.
    Nokia’s send to blog action is the one you are refering to.

    Currently sending an MMS with text and Image Video or Audio to a shortcode or email adress is the best option. The only limit for this currently is the send limit of 300Kb for an MMS size.

    Wednesday, August 8, 2007 at 12:45 #
  6. Kjeld, what point are you trying to make? That sending an MMS to a shortcode in order to upload images? Why would you want to do that? ShoZu supports “native” 1-click uploads?

    Anyway the whole issue is that the ShoZu application doesn’t support native message upload to Jaiku/Twitter/etc. As long as that is the case the API’s don’t matter.

    Shortcodes are not an option. To pay money in order to post a simple message online is absurd in these days were you can upload photos and videos for free.

    Wednesday, August 8, 2007 at 13:27 #
  7. Kjeld wrote:

    The point i am trying to make is the following:
    To upload a short text including an image/video/audio file these days on 80% of the markets phones from these days is MMS to an email address. That is the native supported “free” option you are searching for.

    Steps:
    1) Make a picture or text
    2) Send via MMS
    3) Ad aditional content “text” or picture
    4) Send to supporting blog systems email MMS2Email inbox

    and it is in all phones.

    Try it yourself for you private blog http://www.rossgerbasi.com/?p=132 or cook one up yourself.

    Wednesday, August 8, 2007 at 14:49 #
  8. Maybe I haven’t been paying attention lately but since when did sending MMS message became free of charge?

    The option of publishing to Jaiku using an emailadres would be a good option though. Lets say that you can send an email to your_secret_name@jaiku.com and it would publish the subject of the email.

    Wednesday, August 8, 2007 at 15:16 #
  9. Kjeld wrote:

    [quote]Maybe I haven’t been paying attention lately but since when did sending MMS message became free of charge?[/quote]
    you are right it isn’t ;) What does it cost send an MMS on a free dataplan?

    Wednesday, August 8, 2007 at 16:23 #
  10. I have no idea what it costs to send a MMS and that great (*kuch) t-mobile site won’t tell me either.

    But now along the way I’m comming to the conclusion that the simplest option is to use something like TwitterMail, but you guessed it, it only supports twitter …

    Actually that completes the circle! Check it out:
    1. create email
    2. send to TwitterMail
    3. Twitter posts the message
    4. forward the Twitter feed to Jaiku
    5. Jaiku reads the Twitter feed and posts the message

    Wednesday, August 8, 2007 at 16:31 #
  11. Hi there,
    Interesting to read your comments on ShoZu. I can discuss this with the team as a feature request but I’m just curious how you would like to see the ShoZu > Jaiku integration done? Eg. Have Jaiku as a destination option in ShoZu which verifies your username and password, then open ShoZu client manually every time you want to to post a text only message?

    Thanks, appreciate your requests.

    Mark (ShoZu)

    Wednesday, September 5, 2007 at 2:09 #
  12. Hi Mark, thanks for your comment. I posted this suggestion directly to ShoZu some time ago and got a reply from Jared. According to him this feature is already on the roadmap.

    The main idea behind this request was to make it as easy as possible to post text messages to services like Jaiku or Twitter. The easiest way would be if there would be an intergration in the native messaging appliction that had an additional option that said send to Jaiku/Twitter.

    But I must say the current solution where I use an emailaddress to send quick messages works pretty good. So the need for this feature has been reduced.

    Wednesday, September 5, 2007 at 9:37 #
  13. Mathijs wrote:

    The solution is of course Mobypicture! :)

    You can post directly to all the platforms mentioned…

    Check it out:
    http://www.mobypicture.com

    Monday, October 15, 2007 at 21:37 #
  14. @Mathijs: nice, but can you send messages without photos to those platform? That was the whole deal here.

    Tuesday, October 16, 2007 at 11:37 #

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