This site now has an alter-ego in the form of a new tumblelog that I’m using exclusively as an outlet for photos uploaded from my iPhone. Phumblelog = photo-tumblelog (or perhaps phone-tumblelog? What about “mumblelog” for mobile-tumblelog?).
Our lives are full of little moments that are kind of funny, or kind of beautiful, or just kind of interesting, enough to be recorded and shared with others. I like the idea of using the internet to record these moments, even if no one else ever actually follows along. I use this blog to write for other people, but I think the phumblelog is more for myself. I value it more in an archival sense: when I think back on my life so far, I wish I could have been phumblelogging the whole time. I think that would be an amazing resource to have.
My iPhone is usually the only camera I have with me, but aside from its low image quality it is perfectly suited to this task. I’m using the excellent tumblr for my phumbling. I’m not using my flickr account because this phumblelog is very explicitly sacrificing photographic quality for quantity and spontaneity. I got Bitfire’s Tumble Pro to let me start phumbling from anywhere, and I bootstrapped the site with a few older shots from my iPhone that I particularly liked.
Tumble Pro is pretty nice. The app’s geotagging system is much appreciated but seems a bit buggy; I’ve now started turning it off and on again in the app’s settings before each post to make sure it really has my location. The relatively low accuracy of the iPhone 3G’s GPS makes me want a quick way of re-positioning the co-ordinates on a map (any suggestions?). I find the text of the geotag a bit distracting in the caption the way it is, but it wouldn’t be so bad if I styled the caption like a caption instead of like a header. I might end up making a little javascript which takes the geotag from the caption and turns it into a link target for the image itself.
It takes a little longer than I’d like to upload an iPhone photo over 3G, but overall it is very convenient. I tend to just tap the “post” button and then put the phone in my coat pocket and keep walking (or whatever) while it uploads.
The iPhones of the near future are undoubtedly going to make it easy to do audio and video tumbling/phumbling/mumbling as well. Perhaps other mobile phones can already do such things. Screw flying cars, am I right?
