MMS Posting
I’ve decided that I won’t implement MMS posting just yet. I intended to get it working for my overseas trip. I got around to writing up everything (the MIME parsing code, writing attachments to hard drive, constructing the post text etc) but I realised that I have no idea about how MMS works overseas. Firstly, the system is different from SMSes – I actually had to enable GPRS with Vodafone to get MMSes to work and I don’t know if, when roaming on overseas networks, GPRS/WAP will be automatically enabled and whether I can send MMSes. Secondly, the format of MMS messages (which are essentially e-mails with attachments) seems to differ with the network which may trip up the parsing code I currently have, and there’s no way to test otherwise. And there’s no way I’m debugging code while I’m on holiday :).
Technical note: Posting to your blog with a mobile device (called Moblogging which is a stupid term, imho) is not difficult. Essentially, most mobile devices (PDAs, mobiles, Blackberry and so on) can send e-mails. SMSes need to be routed through an SMS-to-Email gateway, such as Excell. They arrive at your mail server and get processed by a script. You might run a cron job to run your script which checks for mail every so often. You might automatically pipe it to your script in through a .forward file, or with Procmail, or similar. The script then parses the email (which is where the bulk of the work lies), then posts it to the blog (via a SQL call, XML-RPC call, etc).
Has anyone noticed how different countries call mobile phones different things? In the US it’s cell phones. In Australia it’s mobile phones. In Asia it’s hand phones.
12:55am (GMT +11.00) tomorrow 
In America, I am fairly sure we call them cellular phones because our “mobile” phones were just cordless, antennae phones. Not sure, just thought I’d pitch in.
Actually we call them cellular and mobile phones; it’s just a preference. Cordless, antennae phones were always simply called “Cordless phones” (if you’re talking about landline phones).
I am quite certain I haave never heard anyone in North America call a cell phone a mobile phone.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard a North American movie refer to a cell phone as a mobile phone either.
I’ve been up and down the West Coast and parts of the East Coast… it could be a regional thing. I know in Canada and the Western US and New York they use the term ‘cell phone’.
I know in the UK they use the term ‘mobile’ phone.
Yep, and in France and French-speaking Switzerland they’re called ‘portable’ even though ‘mobile’ is a french word too. Go figure. ;p