MyWapBlog is a new, easy to use  mobile blogging platform. After a simple registration process requiring only a name, password and verifiable email address you are ready to start blogging.

MyWapBlog gives you an easy to remember and type mobile subdomain URL.  Mine is wapreview.mywapblog.com.  Users can leave comments on any post.  There is no comment moderation system, comments are published as soon as they are posted. This could be a problem if blog SPAMers discover MyWapBlog. Comments can at least be edited or deleted after they have been published.

There are also no RSS feeds available, something I consider essential in a blogging platform.   The lack of feeds is a bit of a show stopper for me as I depend on Bloglines Mobile to keep up with what’s going on in the blogosphere.

MyWapBlog lets you upload images directly from your phone to your blog using a “browse for file” based image manager. Uploaded images can be inserted anywhere in posts. Unfortunately, not all phones support direct uploading and there is no option to upload by email or MMS. If your phone can’t upload images, a work around is to use Opera Mini 4.1, which can do uploads on many (but not all phones). It is also possible to upload images from a PC. MyWapBlog is a pure mobile play, there is no full-web version, but the mobile site works fine with desktop browsers. Images are re-sized when uploaded. You choose Small, Medium or Large when uploading, which correspond to maximum image widths of 115 px,  169px and 235px. Both GIF and JPEG images are supported. Transparent GIFs lose their transparency when uploaded, however.

MyWapBlog it quite configurable. Using the Dashboard, you can change your blog’s title, number of posts per page and whether the home page displays full posts, excerpts (“teasers”) or titles only, which MyWapBlog calls “Optimized”. Teasers and titles link to the full post on a page of its own. If you tend write long posts (over 250 words) or use images, you should probably choose “Teasers” or “Optimized” to avoid exceeding the 10 KB page size limit of many low end phones.

There are several themes available to customize your blog’s appearance. The first screenshot shows the “Dark” theme. The themes do not display in all browsers as they depend on a stylesheet sent as media="handheld". Many mobile browsers will use handheld stylesheets but some, including S60WebKit, Netfront and Opera Mini in “desktop mode”, do not. It’s not the end of the world if a mobile doesn’t use the stylesheet, the blog will just render using black text on a white background instead of the theme colors.

In its initial release MyWapBlog is already a very capable pure mobile blogging platform. MyWapBlog seems stable and fast. Themes and ability to insert images anywhere in a post make it possible to create an attractive mobile blog with very little effort. MyWapBlog is up against some well established players in this domain, including Vox and Live Spaces. A few enhancements (RSS, comment moderation email and/or MMS image uploading) could make MyWapBlog  very competitive.

Mobile Link: mywapblog.com

Ratings: Content: Usability:

Filed in: Mobile Site Directory – RSS – Blogging