If there’s one thing that unites bloggers, it’s the compulsion to post things at any hour of the day and in virtually any location, whether it’s photos of the smelly guy across the aisle on the subway or a car accident or whatever. And that means blogging from a mobile device of some kind, be it a BlackBerry or a Windows PDA or a Treo or just a regular old Nokia candy bar. But anyone who has tried to do that knows that it is far from easy, even with a well-established site like Textamerica.com.
That’s why Ambient Vector, a Toronto startup run by Sutha Kamal and a bunch of other smart guys, has launched Nakama — a mobile photoblogging service that is a whole lot easier to use than most of the others I’ve come across, although it still has some glitches here and there. There’s lots more info at MobileCrunch.
I should note that I am friends with Sutha and his partner-in-crime David Crow, whom I have gotten to know through Toronto’s blogger and DemoCamp community, and I have even enjoyed nachos and salsa in their spartan little office with the server sitting on the floor in the hallway. And Sutha writes a blog about some of the things his company has been going through for the Globe and Mail’s small business website. So make of all that what you will.
There are other mobile blogging and photo-blogging solutions out there, including one called Mobispine.com and one called Splashblog.com (neither of which I have used), and you can also post photos from a mobile device with Blogger and the mobile version of Typepad that Six Apart launched with Nokia awhile back. There’s also another Toronto startup called Filemobile.com that has a photo component to it, although it also has a lot of other features. But most of the solutions that are out there require you to download and install software.
Nakama (which means “close friend” or “ally” in Japanese) doesn’t require any downloads, and Sutha says it will work on just about any phone or mobile device out there. You can post the photos by sending an SMS message and the software will even call you back to let you record an audio tag, which is attached to the photo. You can quickly and easily see the photos and video clips that your friends have uploaded and leave comments on them, and they can easily see and leave comments on yours.
All in all, it’s a pretty neat service. Two thumbs up to Sutha and the rest of the team.