It’s been nine months since I set up this blog as an experiment into what it would be like to write a blog purely from a mobile device- this is a brief summary of what I’ve learnt from the experience.

Firstly, it’s not the best way to blog. From a technical point of view, not being able to cut/paste chunks of text, manage links, merge half written posts into a single piece, use functions like a spell checker (especially when combined with the iphone’s propensity to add apostrophes)- there are dozens of minor niggling roadblocks that make life difficult when you take a “desktop” computer out of the workflow. Some of these are only temporary (like cut/paste on the iPhone), but not all of them. The way you use a mobile is fundamentally different to the way you use a keyboard and mouse.

But at the same time, I can’t see myself maintaining a blog without a mobile device any more. It’s a brilliant tool to use for blogging- for writing notes when inspiration strikes, or you come across a piece of information that relates to a post you’re in the middle of writing. Not necessarily to replace, but to augment existing tools.

The self-imposed limit I gave myself of only using a mobile was the reason that this blog has ground to a halt- it’s not that I started using my mobile less, but that I started using it to write more and more “proper” blog posts that I could rework on a desktop machine, then add more to next time I found myself on a bus with something to add. Rather than a seperate project, it has morphed into the work I do over on my main web home page.

So this blog is now going to drop the “mobile only” rule for managing posts and instead just be about the world of mobile technology.

If you’re interested in the wider world of communications technology and digital media, you might like to follow me over at SomeRandomNerd.com instead- posts here will feed into the main site as well.

So my mobile blog experiment is over. It’s been an interesting experience, but this moblog is dead; long live mobile blogging.