Third International Conference on Broadband Communications, Information Technology & Biomedical Applications

MOBILE BLOGGING SYSTEM

Judith A. Owigar Christopher K. Chepken

School of Computing and Informatics, School of Computing and Informatics,
University of Nairobi, PO Box 30197 - University of Nairobi, PO Box 30197 -
00100, Nairobi, Kenya 00100, Nairobi, Kenya
owigarj@gmail.com 


Abstract
The Mobile Blogging System involves remotely
updating a web site from a mobile phone. It represents
an attempt to bring reality closer to the end-user via
sending text messages to a web site. Today in Africa
communication is hampered by lack of adequate
physical infrastructure this may include: poorly
constructed road networks, limited access to electricity
and unreliable telecommunication infrastructure.
These issues affect the coverage of news events that
occur in remote and highly insecure areas. With
today’s mobile phones almost anyone can create text
messages about an occurrence in their environment in
order to deliver news worthy stories in real time as
they unfold.
This paper documents the work done on creating a
service that makes it possible to share news events with
the world by allowing a user to submit, delete and edit
text messages from a mobile phone and these actions
are automatically reflected on a web site on the
internet. It is noted that the outcome of the work
undertaken was successful and useful.
This service only deals with text messages and it is
recommended that more work should be done to
incorporate other forms of multi-media for example
pictures, sound and video.
 other phone on the planet. These devices' greater range
Key terms
Blog, Moblogging/ Mobile blogging, Micro-blogging,
Web blogging, RMS (Record Management System),
GPRS (Global Packet Radio Service), MIDLet (J2ME
application).
978-0-7695-3453-4/08 $25.00 © 2008 IEEE
DOI 10.1109/BROADCOM.2008.40
Authorized licensed use limited to: Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University. Downloaded on July 14, 2009 at 21:10 from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
Introduction
Overview of mobile phone application
development
The whole world is going mobile. Phones, computers
and media devices now fit in our pockets and can
connect us to a variety of information sources and
enable communication nearly everywhere we go. Infact
mobile phones can comfortably be referred to as
Africa’s personal computers. There is considerable
interest in exploiting the appeal and abundance of
mobile technology for its development use.
Wireless communications is a huge field,
encompassing everything from radio and television
broadcasting through pagers, mobile phones, and
satellite communications. The field of mobile phones is
expanding very fast at the same time that standards and
protocols are being adopted, used, updated, and
sometimes discarded.
Conceptually, wireless communications can be split
into two types, local and wide area. A local device is
similar to a key fob with a button that unlocks a car, a
900 MHz cordless phone, a radio control toy, or a
Bluetooth network. All of these devices operate over
short distances, typically just a few meters.
Wide area wireless devices operate effectively over a
much greater area. A pager or mobile phone is a good
example; you can talk on your mobile phone to any
relies on a more elaborate land-based network. A
mobile phone doesn't have that much more radio power
than a radio control toy. What it does have is a network
of carefully placed radio antennas (cell towers); the
phone can continue to operate as long as it is within
range of at least one tower. The mobile phone device
receives service from a wireless carrier, a company
that operates the land-based network.
While a number of industry consortia and standard
bodies, such as the International Telecommunication
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 Union, are trying to define or foster the development of this technology is known as Twitter and it was founded
standards for the wireless world, today's wireless world in 2006[2].
is still fragmented and complex. For example in Kenya
there are two mobile service providers on which a Overview of the Mobile Blogging System
mobile phone might run on; either the Safaricom Developed
network or the Celtel network. In contrast in the U.S. 
mobile phones run on AT&T, Spring and Verizon The mobile blogging system works with all mobile
Wireless. systems that have internet connection and that have the
java application installed. It also provides for remote
Web blogging website manipulation by submitting, updating and
 deleting content on the website in a simple to use but
Web blogging is a technique that makes it easy for powerful system. The user first registers for the service
people to publish their thoughts on the World Wide from their mobile phone or from the web site before
Web. Since the dawn of the Web, it has always been they can start sending entries to the website. Once the
possible to publish content, but blogging simplifies the user is registered short entries can be sent from their
process and adds important features. Anyone with a mobile phone to the web site. The user can edit these
web browser can publish a blog, without having the entries on the web site. Alternatively they can use their
knowledge of HTML or any of the other technologies mobile phones to send their entries. The application
usually associated with web publishing: FTP, Telnet, exhibits the nature of a multi-user blog in that it can be
Javascript, and Java Servlets. Blogging is still in a managed and updated by different users provided they
volcanic stage technologically; the landscape is are account holders within the blog. Because of this
covered with competing and rapidly evolving packages multi-user aspect, the application allows users, both
and protocols. those registered and unregistered, to read posts created
 by other users with blog accounts.
Mobile blogging 
 
Mobile blogging or moblogging is a form of 
Client
blogging in which the user publishes blog entries  (Mobile
directly to the web from a mobile phone or other 
mobile device. Mobile blogging provides an instant phone).
way of accessing and collecting personal memories.
 Datab
Through this relatively new technology users are  Server ase(M
allowed to create and maintain their own personal web  (PHP) ySQL)
sites from their mobile phone. The users update their  Client
web sites by simply sending their images and/ or text  (Website
)
from their mobile phones. This eliminates the need for 
manual maintenance of web sites. Mobile blogging 
applications have become popular as an instant way of
accessing and collecting personal memories and blog

Figure 1: Overview of the System Developed.
entries from mobile devices.


Mobile Phone Application. (Mwanahabari
Micro-blogging
app.)
Micro-blogging is a form of blogging that allows 
users to write brief text updates (usually less than 200 The Mobile phone application was developed using
characters) and publish them, either to be viewed by J2ME. The first action performed when a journalist
anyone or by a restricted group which can be chosen by starts using the application for the first time is
the user. These messages can be submitted by a variety authentication and log in.
of means, including text messaging, instant messaging,
When the program is launched for the first time, the
email, MP3 or the web. Micro-  


Login form is shown. The information users enter into



 



   this form is permanently stored on their mobile device
 

 

   using RMS (Record Management System) so users

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 won't see this form or need to login on subsequent
launches. The application uses the login credentials to
upload and download posts to and from the Web
server. For the  record, the first record was
used to store the username and the second for the
password. Hence, if the number of records was less
than two it showed that the login data had not been
stored, so the application displays the Login form is
displayed.
Once the journalist puts in their username and
password their credentials are sent to the web server
that registers the details on the website and stores them
on the database. The username and password was also
stored on the phone for later reference. This is a one
time action that the user does not have to repeat.
Considering that mobile devices have relatively small
screens, it was not advisable to include very much
information for the given task. Every time the user
sends a request to the server their username and
password is also automatically sent to be authenticated
and verified.
After the authentication the journalist chooses
whether to upload a story, download a story or exit
from the application.
Figure 2: Screen shot showing the main
actions available to the user.
If they exit from the application they will be taken to
the menu screen that is the screen from where they
accessed the mwanahabari application.
The Upload option enables a user to send a news
story to the web site specified in the application. This is
done using the HTTP protocol. In the phone this is
enabled by the MIDP API using the HttpConnection
interface that supports HTTP network connections.
HTTP connections enable MIDlets to connect to web
pages. These connections can only be made from
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within the MIDlets. This is a limitation and it impacts
the design of MIDlets.
Connecting over a network connection in a MIDlet
consists of the following three steps:
Establish a network connection using the connector
class.
Obtain a stream on the connection using one of the
connection interfaces.
Read data from or write data to the stream using one
of the I/O stream classes.
The data sent is the username, the password, the
news story and the news title. All these data is sent
using the GPRS infrastructure. The data is sent to a
specific server page on the web site that is listening for
requests to connect and transfer data. Once the data is
received and understood by the server it is stored in a
database from where it is retrieved to be stored on the
web site.
The Download option allows the user to download a
story from the web site. What this means is that the
user is able to get a story on the web site to be viewed
on their phone. This will require the MIDlet to read
and display the stories posted on the remote website.
The MIDlet will use a HTTP connection to access the
server page that retrieves the most recently sent update
and sends it to the journalist who requested the update.
To retrieve a post, the application sends the user's
username and password plus the username news genre
they want an update on. The response will be the latest
post uploaded to that genre. A screen shot of the
download screen is shown in figure 3.

Figure 3: Screen shot showing the news
genres from which the user can choose.

Once the request is received by the server, it
searches the database for the most recently updated
news story for the specified news genre. Once it gets
the data is sends it to the mobile phone from where the
user can view the news story. Also sent to the mobile
 phone is the author of the story and the time it was
submitted.
 chronological order.
Overview of the User Experience

Figure 4: Overview of the user experience.
Web Server Subsystem
 The TypePad system was specifically developed for
The blog application required the implementation of
many features that would be needed in a typical
reporting application, these include: building and
rendering master-detail relationships or editing and
deleting records; hiding or showing content and
controls; and managing input validation from multiple
virtual forms from the web site and also the input sent
by the mobile journalist. When building a client/server
application with a J2ME client, the first choice that
comes to mind for the server-side implementation is
J2EE. This is undoubtedly a good choice if one has
access to a Web Server that supports J2EE. But J2EE
is an expensive Web server. Therefore the next best
choice was PHP because it is free and open source and
most domains support it.
The web server was configured to enable the news
stories to be shown from the most recently submitted to
the oldest. It also enables multiple messages to be
posted the same day, and they are visually grouped
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together depending on the news page they were posted
to, but still are able to be viewed as posts in reverse
The authenticated users will be able to submit, edit,
and delete messages and comments, while the system
users will only be able to read messages and post
comments. To allow or prohibit posting and editing
based on the user, the journalists will have to
authenticate themselves before they can proceed to do
their intended action.
Web site Subsystem
The website was programmed using Macromedia
Dreamweaver MX. The website can be accessed by any
user who has access to an internet connection on a
computer. The website displays the news stories that
have been sent by the respective users. Each story
posted has the same format.

Related Work

This project is an extension of the work that has
been carried out by previous developers in Kenya.
Previously the applications developed mostly sent the
SMS (text) requests to gateways that then sent the
requests to web servers. This project takes it a notch
higher by allowing the phone to communicate directly
to the web server through the phone MIDlet. This gives
 programmer control of the whole implementation.
the
There are existing commercialized applications that
function similar to the system discussed in this paper.
use with the iPhone. It enables users to create text
and/or image posts that can be sent to the existing
TypePad web site. It works with the following systems:
Palm OS 5, Symbian Series 60, Windows Mobile 5 and
6 . The difference between the Mwanahabari Mobile
blogging System and the TypePad application is that
the Mwanahabari system can be installed in any mobile
device that has a Java Virtual Machine. It adheres to
the java motto of write once run anywhere.

Another system that is strikingly similar with the
system discussed in this paper is Twitter. Twitter is a
free social networking and micro-blogging service that
allows users to send "updates" (or "tweets"; text-based
posts, up to 140 characters long) to the Twitter web
site, via short message service (e.g. on a cell phone),
instant messaging, or a third-party application such as
Twitterrific or Facebook.
 Updates are displayed on the user's profile page and
instantly delivered to other users who have signed up to
receive them. The sender can restrict delivery to those
in his or her circle of friends (delivery to everyone is
the default). Users can receive updates via the Twitter
website, instant messaging, SMS, RSS, email or
through an application. For SMS, four gateway
numbers are currently available: short codes for the
United States, Canada, and India, as well as a United
The principal limitation of the application is that it
uses the HTTP  method, which limits the number
of characters you can send in the query string.
Therefore it limits the total number of characters that
can be sent by the user from the mobile phone.
Exceptions in J2ME are not well documented;
therefore solving an exception is difficult. For example
the exception 
   !"


Kingdom number for international use. Several third  

 #
  
    
parties offer posting and receiving updates via email.





   
The distinction between the Mwanahabari System
     

and Twitter is that communication to the web server #
your device not having connection, DNS (server)
from the mobile device uses GPRS for the is not acceptable, the DNS name you want to connect is
Mwanahabari Application while the Twitter not "valid" or the fact that most Series 60 devices say
Application uses SMS. "System error" for each and every error they encounter.

Recommendations and other Conclusions
Improvements in the Developed System 
 Mobile phone technology is a rapidly developing
technology that cannot be ignored. From this project it
The GET method, which was used in the
has been noted that the potential for applications on
development of the system, has a constraint on the
mobile phones is enormous. Especially in enabling the
number of the characters that can be sent over a
provision of education to all people especially those in
network. This is because the GET method attaches the
marginalized areas.
characters to the URL which is then sent as a string.
The  method would have been a better choice
While mobile devices are not necessarily required to
because it does not limit on the characters that can be
support these activities, their use affords a highly
sent over a network.
personal experience embedded within an authentic
context of use. The range of activities for which mobile
The application could be modified to enable the
devices are being used suggests that these technologies
sending of different forms of multimedia messages to a
are fundamentally changing the nature of our very
web site. This will increase its functionality
existence.
tremendously. The J2ME Mobile Media API (MMAPI)
is the only option in J2ME / Connected Limited Device
Configuration (CLDC) / Mobile Information Device 
Profile (MIDP) to address the camera or the
microphone of a mobile phone. The basic functionality [1] Introduction to Mobile Blogging
of the MMAPI is supporting, recording and playing of  $$  
$
 $#$ 
audio or video data.  $

Research into enabling e-learning on mobile phones %3&Topley,K (2002). J2ME in a Nutshell. Sebastopol,
should be encouraged so that it can be a cheap and
Canada: O’Reilly.
convenient alternative to e-learning on computers that
are expensive, bulky and are not easy to carry around. [4] Mobile blogging with TypePad.
 $$ 
$
Discussion
[5] Twitter.
Despite the successful completion of the project,  $$'$'$ 
there were a number of problems and challenges
encountered during the development period: [6] Morrison, M (2001). Sams Teach Yourself Wireless Java
with J2ME in 21 days. Indiana, U.S.A.: Sams.

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