I very much respect the quiet dignity of the old chap in his uniform standing outside Waitrose in the local High Street selling poppies to raise money for the Royal British Legion and to remember all those lost in the war(s).

I always try and drop off a few quid at least.

The chaps at Moblog have come up with a nifty new service. I’ll let Alfie explain:

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Hi Ewan,

just to keep you up to speed on the shenanigans over at Moblog, I thought I’d let you know about a Moblog we’re doing for this years Poppy Appeal. It’s from the POV of their Poppy Man mascot, essentially in the form of updates as he travels around the country promoting the Poppy Appeal. As well as his own posts, we’ve opened the moblog up for people to post images of poppy related things they are doing.

All they need to do is to take a pic of themselves wearing your poppy (sure everyone has one by now right?) and text it to the blog, with a short message of support for the campaign (or anything they like). MMS to 07786201241 starting with the word popm or email to poppy_man at moblog.net and their post will show up at http://blog.poppyman.org.uk straight away.

Talk soon!

Alfie

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Thanks for the update Alfie — excellent concept. There’s donation information for the Royal British Legion here.

PS: If I’m not very much mistaken you can see a rather tired looking James Whatley of SpinVox participating in the Moblog here.

I had a note in from Alfie of Moblog telling me about their new competition, Lovetheaccent.com.

It’s a rather wicked proof of concept demonstrating the integration between Moblog and SpinVox. (I haven’t written much about SpinVox recently — still loving it. Still a critical service for me.)

The competition is quite simple. Call up the Moblog SpinVox number, tell the world what accent you love or hate — and why — and your message (and audio) will be posted live to the Lovetheaccent.com site.

The best caller (I’m not sure how that’s judged… so, be creative!) will win an Nokia N82 along with a year’s free subscription to both Moblog and Spinvox. On top of that, you’ll also get 250 Moo cards.

Listen now using the player below or see the links below for other options:

Episode link and feeds:

[Link] Direct link to this episode’s MP3 to download
[iTunes] Subscribe or listen in iTunes
[RSS] Subscribe via your feed reader or another podcatcher

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The contributors:

Ewan MacLeod is turning off Motorola RAZRs and burning phone holsters he is SMS Text News.
James Whatley’s blog is here. He works for SpinVox doing clever social media stuff and their blog.
Dan Lane’s blog is at http://invalid.name. He’s CTO at Howler Tech.
Alfie Dennen is from Moblog… the original mobile blogging platform.  So that’s Mr Dennen to you m’kay?

Sites mentioned in the podcast:

Moblog

Ewan’s post on the Three store hoodie ban

The iPhone application store

Have O2 goofed MMS security?

James’s ‘Carephone Warehouse’ post

Things of the week:

Agfa Bluetooth photo frame
James’s midnite flit to York aided by Textperts
AGPS and Nokia Maps
iPhone Apps: Grafitio and Urban Spoon

We’re really keen to get your feedback on the podcast – please let us know in the comments or tell Ewan – ewan@smstextnews.com.

The cleverness about this campaign is the way they’re using mobile technology:

“Bloggers from the three organisations will be roaming the festival, taking pictures and video clips and posting them to  http://leavenotrace.org.uk, which is also available as a mobile website, http://m.leavenotrace.org.uk for easy access on-site. Because these posts will also be marked on a Google map, we’ll be showing where the best examples of green living are – whether it’s solar-powered showers, sculpture made from recycled materials or water-saving systems – as well as highlighting the nooks and crannies of the festival which might otherwise be missed. Plus everyone on the farm can contribute images and video can be posted to the site by sending an SMS or MMS with the keyword TIDY at the start to 07786 201 241″

The bloggers will also be using another of our favourite mobile technologies Spinvox to post to the site during the festival meaning they’ll be producing the entire site’s content from an entirely mobile platform.

Excellent stuff, but also both technologies available to everyone to use right now… It’s incredible to see how quickly mobile blogging technology is maturing.