stigFromOslo.com

I can offer no explanation, but all of a sudden everything seemd to work! I’m sitting in the car waiting for my girlfriend thinkig “I’ll just click that WordPress icon one more time. Just for god measure.” And just like that it runs like a dream!

I am prompted for URL and login information, as well as an API code to my blog, and three text fields and one click later I’m in! Now, that’s how it is suppose to work. Well, apart from all the installation issues of course…

So thanks to @WOMWorldNokia and @tallboyz I am now powerblogging like a pro on my Nokia N97 mini!

Thanks to a tweet from @WOMWorldNokia asking for tips, @tallboyz suggested i try this alternative install package for WordPress for Nokia. With my spirits renewed I removed all my previously installed packages (the WordPress package and all the Qt-stuff) and downloaded the new installer directly to my phone. It ran all right and as part of the install downloaded six other packages, presumably Qt-packages.

Upon completion I answered yes to start the program and since everything had gone so perfectly well so far I actually expected it to work. But instead I was left with a hanging browser and another application that wouldn’t run. I tried to restart the phone and run WordPress again, still no result.

But since the symptom was very much the same as last time – the app being installed but returning nothing when clicked to run – I tried to install the QtMobility package still laying around on my memory card. Again it installed fine, and the result was different: Nothing happened. Even after a restart the app did absolutely nothing when clicked.

I must admit – it is tempting to give up, but then again: I need to get this working! (BTW: This post is written on a regular PC…)

I still haven’t given up on findng a better alternative than MoPress for blogging with my Nokia N97 mini on a WordPress site. So today I did some more searching and found WordPress for Nokia. I recognized the page from my earlier searches, but since this thing isn’t even out of beta, my previous though was to find something else. Well, since what I found since wasn’t up to par I decided to give the beta a chance.

I downloaded the package and tried to install it, but was promptly informed that Qt was not installed. So I canceled and went hunting for this other little bugger. It wasn’t exactly easy to find, but thanks to some comments on the very site where I found WordPress for Nokia I found a link to some packages I think was released by Nokia.

The packages were different parts and versions of Qt, and thanks to some trial and error I found out that the package I was looking for was called Qt installer. It installed a whole lot of different things on my phone and I was starting to think that this actually wasn’t too bad. How wrong was I…

After installing Qt, the WordPress for Nokia package also went in without a hitch. But when it came to launching the app nothing happend. I tried to exit all other running programs, I tried running it twice, I even cold booted the phone; still nothing.

So I went back to the comments on the website and started reading. After a while I found someone who had experienced the same as me. They were adviced to install another package called QtMobile, and from what I understood that made everything much better. Someone was even kind enough to link to a zip-file containing this fix-all package. I installed it, and sure enough: WordPress for Nokia is now running on my Nokia N97.

One might think that the story ends here. That after installation I got my blog set up in a flash and that this post is written with a big smile using WordPress for Nokia. Alas – so lucky were not I. While the configuration page was simple enough to fill in, the program has proven completely unable to make propper contact with the website. All I saw was “connection timeout”-messages. After trying four different connections – wifi and GPRS/3G – it seems the app has finally recognized the presence of a WordPress system on the website I am directing it to, because now all I’m getting is a program that fails to respond. The last message I saw was “fetching user blog” or something similar, but as I’m writing this post WordPress for Nokia is running like a zombie process in the background. And since the only way to kill it is to power off the phone, and because I can’t save drafts with MoPress I feel kinda stuck. Thank the ghost in the machine for multitasking!

Yesterday I wrote about my misson to find an app for my new Nokia N97 mini that will allow me to post to my WordPress blog. After quite a bit more searching than I had expected, I found the application I am using right now: MoPress version 1.1. It was easy enough to comfigure and hasn’t given me any trouble yet, but it has more than a few short comings.

I believe I mentioned in my previous post that the scrolling doesn’t work as expected, and I stick to that. But the lack of tagging was wrong. Just below the content field is a text field for tags. I haven’t tried it yet (I will on this post), but I assume it works like most other tag fields.

The thing I have found missing today is the functionality to start a post, save the draft, and return to edit and finish it later. The same type of function would allow the user to edit already published posts. I would classify these as critical functions for a blogging tool. Wouldn’t you?

The mission to get the Nokia N97 mini to talk to WordPress continues. After some more searching on the Ovi Store I found an app called MoPress. It cost
me NOK 10, and after two attempts to get the store to accept my credit card, I managed to get the app installed. And this is my first mobile post.

So far so good, but does it look when it is posted? And will the Twitter plugin pick it up and post a new blog post tweet? To be honest I am not sure I have configured the Twitter plugin correctly, but that is a different story.

Right off I notice that the text field in this app doesn’t scroll properly. But that is a minor thing more important is: Does it post? Let’s find out!

Yesterday I got a Nokia N97 mini from my girlfriend (thank you ) as sort of a late birthday present. The Nokia N97 mini is marketed as the ultimate blogger’s phone, but is is really?

I am – as you obviously know – running this WordPress site. It is a standard stand-alone installation on a webhotel linux server with a few automatically installed plugins and a non-standard, automatically installed theme. The phone has several applications available both pre-installed and available on Nokia’s Ovi Store for blogging. And the “share online”-function has been an integral part of the Series 60 phones for several generations now. So getting the phone to talk to the WordPress blog should be a simple “enter your name, password and link to blog here”-type procedure, right?

Wrong! I have tried the pre-installed applications, I have tried searching Ovi Store for a tool for the job, and I have tried setting up Pixelpipe to do the job. All to no avail. No apps on Ovi seems to be able to post to WordPress, Pixelpipe along with the “Share Online”-function only allows for images, video and audio to be posted, and the WordPress for Nokia project I found thanks to Google is in beta and not supported by Seires 60 version 5.

The only thing I have gotten to work so far is installing the WordPress Mobile Pack plugin on the WordPress blog and access the admin pages through the phone browser. But that isn’t what I want! I want to be able to write my posts offline, save drafts, send them to an outbox, and have them posted either automatically or manually when I get to a WiFi network or a home network.

If you have any tips for an app that might work, or a config modification for the share online function that will allow me to post unlimited text (and media) to my WordPress blog – please leave me a comment, a tweet or a post on Facebook. I refuse to believe that Nokia N97 mini and WordPress won’t talk to each other.

I have been battling the question “what shall my homepage be like” for many years now. I’ve started blogs, written home pages, gotten my own domain, started more blogs, merged different pages and blogs, gotten on Facebook, started tweeting… It’s basically been a big, hairy mess. And here is my problem:

I wanted to separate my personal life and my professional life online. As a consequence I started to blogs – one professional blog where I could post comments and articles about information security, digital forensics and other IT-related topics, and one personal blog where I would write about stuff that friends and family would be interested in. Like how my vacation was and how much I hate snow.

This worked out great for about two days, when I noticed I had another problem: Language! My primary language is Norwegian and living in Norway I mainly read Norwegian news papers. Which means I am most likely to want to comment on Norwegian events and news articles. But working with computer science, my main professional language is English. And let’s face it: There is a huge difference in audience volume when writing in English as opposed to Norwegian. So now I had to deal with that too.

The result was that I more or less gave up on the whole thing. My blogs were nothing but dead weight in cyberspace, and all I could be bothered with was a few micro-posts on Facebook and Twitter. Until today!

Thanks to inspiration from the Twig podcast, my friend Azathosk’s blog and a series of discussions I’ve had with friends, I have come to the realization that my online presence – my cyberpersona if you will – must be one! My professional and personal life is the same life, and if people just want to read half the stuff on my blog, well, then they just read half the stuff.

Therefor I have consolidated all my posts here at stigFromOslo.com and I have started to formulate in my head a project on exploring the wonderful world of Web 2.0, social media and cloud computing. I hope to bring to you a series of experiences and ideas on how these things can work together to make life more cyberpunk (in a cool way) and how social media and the cloud can work as an integrated tool for entertainment, news and practical life experience.

Stay tuned and please feel free to comment, ask questions and share your own experience and ideas. After all – even cyberspace is interactive!

stigFromOslo.com announces a new wiki for the Shadowrun RPG campaign Roumble in the Jungle. The campaign is closed, but the wiki is available at http://www.stigfromoslo.com/sr3/.

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