Political activists have traditionally used placards, bullhorns and radio broadcasts to spread the word.
Freshmen political science major Alyson Burgess does it on her cell phone - not by making phone calls, but by using her moblog.
Moblog? What's a moblog?
You may be familiar with a blog. If not, a Web log, better known as a blog, is a kind of Web site often described as an online diary displaying text and graphics. Anyone can view or create it as long as he or she has access to an Internet-equipped computer. People who spend a lot of time interacting with blogs are called bloggers. When a blogger creates, updates, or views a blog, it is called blogging.
Recently, software programmers have brought the blogging phenomenon to the cell phone and dubbed it moblogging.
Camera phones helped set the stage for the moblog.
"They're [people with camera phones], there when it happens," Burgess says.
"They can post [pictures] to the web, put it on a network, and it's around the world before you can blink an eye and before a news crew even shows up," she says.
As an example, Burgess points to the pictures taken from the July 7 bombings in London. The close-up pictures of the actual bombings, as they occurred, were taken by innocent bystanders who were in the subway stations armed with camera phones at the time. The official news crew just got before and after pictures.
She says to just look at the BBC Web site's coverage of the event. You have to click on the "YOUR PICTURES" link, which shows you pictures that were taken by the bystanders, to find all of the action shots.
Shawn Conahan, creator of a moblog application called Rabble, noticed that the addition of cameras, larger screens and more memory to cell phones gave users more ways to use their phones than ever before.
Conahan also noticed that bogging is popular, Internet users usually post pictures and recordings to their blogs and the average cell phone is technologically advanced enough for cell phone users to create and view blogs just as internet users have been doing for the last few years.
Conahan noticed a problem, too. "The pictures you take, the audio you record, and the video you catch of something happening [if stored on your cell phone], had nowhere to go before Rabble," he said.
Cell phone users were still using text messaging as their means of nonverbal communication, so as a solution, Conahan introduced Rabble, which uses the technology found in the average cell phone to allow cell phone users to transmit audio and visual material between one another via moblogging.
Burgess could have left a text message telling her friends that she had met Howard Dean in person at the College Democrats National Convention this past July, but thanks to her moblogging capability, she has the pictures to prove it to anyone who logs on to Rabble.
As a political activist, Burgess's goal is to expose as many people as possible to the ideas expressed in her moblog. Her moblog has been viewed 1,065 times between its debut in March and the end of last month.
Known to other Rabble users as LiberalFury, Burgess's moblog is her platform for speaking out on political issues of the day. Ever since her first blog entry, entitled, "Warning: highly partisan content," Burgess has gained more fans than any of the other estimated 3,000 users on the network.
In this case, "fans" refers to mobloggers who have requested to be automatically notified every time Burgess posts a new blog entry. This way they can hear the latest thing Burgess has to say, as soon as she has said it.
One of those fans is none other than Conahan. "There are a few unsolvable holy wars, and politics is one of them," Conohan says, who himself was attracted to the synergistic mixture of politics and opinions that LiberalFury offers.
"Whether you agree or not, you want to weigh in, and I think this has to do with why people tend to gravitate toward LiberalFury," he says.
There are numerous other uses for moblogs, however. A moblogger from Spring City, TN who is fascinated with Japanese culture has created a moblog called Hikari, which is dedicated to Japanese music and Anime (Japanese animation).
Record labels such as TrustKill, Sub Pop, and Tooth and Nail have created moblogs in order to promote the bands that they have signed.
Rabble is currently available from Verizon Wireless through their "Get it Now" sales promotion. Moblogging on Rabble adds an additional three-dollar monthly charge on your cell phone bill, but Rabble warns its users, "Rabble is addictive, please be careful" because spending time with Rabble means spending cell phone minutes in just the same way that a cell phone conversation does - which can add up to spending even more money if you are not careful.
Current limitations exist because Rabble is such a new program. For example, Rabble users can transfer text and graphics among each other, but not audio yet.
"[The next version of Rabble] has audio support both upstream and downstream so you can record a clip of a song at a concert and put it on your channel or you can pull a podcast feed down to your phone and save it to your channel for others to enjoy as well," Conahan says.
The next version of Rabble will also allow Rabble users to interact with bloggers outside of the Rabble community.
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