How do I blog from in-world?

I heard a while back that I could do live blogging in-world. Something like I can drop a notecard or type a blog entry and it will be posted on the web. Where can I get a system like this?

I'm sorry if this has been asked and answered already. The signal to noise ratio in these forums is wild. All I could find were people complaining about neg rates.

As far as I know there is no such creature like this yet though I think it could be done with some clever scripting.

But what I REALLY want is a blog tab for our profiles. It couldn't possibly be THAT difficult to implement. It would pretty much look just like our profile comments, only longer and with dated entries.

Hamlet was able to do it once, from what I remember.

Set up your blog software for post-by-email, then script up something that will send to the correct address. You'll be limited, of course, by the llEmail() size limit, so it would only do for shorter postings. I think you can get about 3800 characters or so into an email.

Very neat idea. I think you might be referring to the ability to use SLUniverse.com to blog your inworld snapshots?

Info is here:

http://secondlife.com/community/index.php

The idea to do inworld blogging has come up before. Some potential ideas were mentioned here:

/120/f0/36560/1.html

I'm very interested in this, since a big part of my job is going to be helping to facilitate new communication tools like this:

/3/ae/39453/1.html#post423811

Are there any residents currently trying to blog inworld? Any cool scripting we should all know about that makes this possible? Please share in this thread, and please contact me directly if you have any ideas you'd like me to look into. (pathfinder@lindenlab.com)

Hi Pathfinder! (it told me to say hi in Robin's welcome announcement...)

One handy thing for me would be not necessarily inworld blogging, but clip-and-saving of Landmarks for sure. Some easy way I could export all my Landmarks and view them as HTML or have SL directly integrate my Landmarks folder with a personal webpage (that I could specify privacy options on and whatnot). Right now, I find it tedious to type and create links like:

secondlife://Waterhead/128/128/

because it requires a certain amount of copying-and-pasting-and-editing. (Try to create one yourself based on a fave location inworld, for example.) It would be so much easier to be able to grab code and just paste that in. Some image gallery websites do a similar thing where you can select a collection of pictures and then click on the "Generate Thumbnail HTML" button.

Speaking of pictures, Snapzilla is being more commonly used for rapid access of photos and sharing them to the world, which is great, so more bridging tools would be most welcome.

Snapzilla also is going to have forthcoming blogging tools as well There are just not enough hours in the day right now to do everything I want to with the site. Allowing people to edit their own entries and make photo albums will be the first step, along with adding the ability to forward entries to blog services after processing the postcard. Any ideas of what people would like to see would be greatly appreciated

Yea I thought Hamlet did it once too - so I figured a lot of other's would have tried it and been posting their howto's but I couldn't find anything.

I can wait for 1.6 email postcard feature. That sounds very cool.

Again, we're working on something like that. Check out Foresti's thread here, and I've sent you a PM to test it out. Obviously as a third party effort it won't be quite so integrated. (I would kill to be able to integrate my ideas into the client, talk to me Pathfinder!)

I'm not sure what Cristiano's Snapzilla project can do as far as moblogging in SL, but Flickr can handle the Postcard From Second Life emails just fine, then can be rigged to auto-post anything coming in via post-by-email to a blog/livejournal/whatever. (assuming they support your blog software, and they likely do)

jarod godel was chatting blog material through a channel to a script that stored a string until he said /blog which prompted the script to email the string to a machine that checked every few minutes and parsed the mails to a web page using perl back in february of 2004.

anyway, he published it all in the scripting forum and showed it to hamlet one day but got no response from anyone so figured the whole thing was a matter of no interest. his code was lost in the great forum dump of 2004.

I thought this was Devlin's handiwork!

It would not be hard to build something that would post the contents of a notecard (of any size) to a blog that allows post-by-email. It would require some offworld logic. I can do it and so can some other coders in SL. I'm guessing it would be a few hours of labor, assuming you already have the offworld data processing infrastructure in place.

Even Torley's idea would only take a little imagination and some PHP. Especially with in-world URLs...

one could script an attachment that would take a user input and parse together a URL that will tell a PHP script on xx.com website to post the sent-URL to the link roll or something.

bah.. I'm an open book. I should keep an idea or two for myself, ya know?

Cheers.

They must've recovered the post, because I came acros it while going through the scripting forums earlier this evening:

/15/56/8976/1.html

--BL

Very nice Brian

And Ty Jarod!! I'll probably use it for the next month or two while they figure out 1.6

Thank you for finding that, Brian. I'll take a look at this and see if I can get it set up.

If anyone else gets something like this running, please let us know. Blogging from in-world is something I'd love to see all residents be able to do.

Ok, I have come up with a completed blogging solution!

I was working on my blog tonight when I saw this article in the help section at blogger.com
Posting via E-mail

This got me thinking, as I am currently using an open source script I got from teh scripting library and adapted a little, to send out postcards and work that I do in world to my e-mail account. Realizing what I had pieced togeather, I have created a desktop blogging appliance with this script included inside of it, which I will be making free to the public through my SecondServer account, as well as making the one in my house free to copy.

Here is what you need to do to get this to work:

1) Sign up for a blogger.com account.
There are probably other blogger sites taht allow you to post by e-mail as well, but I saw this first and I do like blogger.

2) Read over the instructions at the link given above. That will explain how to set up an e-mail address to which you will be sending your blogs.

3) In world, obtain the blogging appliance from either secondserver.net, any of the Livingston Furniture Vendors, or from my house in Meins(155, 47).

4) In the edit menu, click on the only script in the content menu and open it up.

5) Around Line 11, you'll see a line of code that says

 string emailaddress="xxxx@domain.com";

Put the e-mail address you obtained from the blogger website at step 2 inbetween the quotation marks, replacing the [email]xxxx@domain.com[/email].

6) Save tjhe script and make sure that the Running box at the lower left corner is checked. Exit the edit menus. Your device is ready to Blog!

Blogging:

To post your blogs with this script, you will need to compose them in a notecard. The Name of the Notecard will be the name of the post in your blog. Note that there is a limit to how much data this script can send out via e-mail. I believe it is somewhere around 3000 charecters. Anything larger and it will split it into two e-mails and will likely disrupt your post.

When you have finished your notecard, simply drag it from your inventory onto the screen of the blogging device and your blog should be on its way.

Ok, disclaimers:

First off, I am releasing this whole project into open source. The script was originally open source from the scripting library, written by Strife Onizuka (link). I made a few very minor changes to the script, mostly incidental changes. Still, it's all open.

Now, if this somehow messes up your blog, causes your dog to catch fire, or wisks Pathfinder Linden out to the kid grid, I am not assuming any responsibility.

Have fun, report any bugs, and ummm, yea.

--Brian Livingston
http://brianlivingston.blogspot.com

Edit: Added the Notecard:
Blogging Terminal Readme

Object-Name: Blogging Terminal v1.0
Region: Meins (259584, 25548
Local-Position: (155, 49, 84)

||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Blogging Terminal v 1.0
Based off of the Notecard2TechSupport script by Strife Onizuka
Released under GPL
Copyleft 2005
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

-=Table of Contents=-
- Introduction
- Setup Instructions
- Blogging
- Disclaimers
-------------------------------------------------------------------

-=Introduction=-
So, you want to blog from SL? Good! Here's what you'll need in
order to use this product.
- A blogger.com account (Don't worry, they're free)
- This Blogging Terminal
- A little patience

Once you got those, we're good to go!
-------------------------------------------------------------------

-=Instructions=-

Setting up the Terminal
1. First off, make sure that you have a blogger.com account set up, along with an actual blog setup. This is all explained at the blogger.com website and throughtheir extensive help section.

2. In order to blog from Second Life, you will need to setup an e-mail address at blogger.com to send your blogs to. You can do this through the settings menu for your individual blog. Detailed explanation of this can be found at:

http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=135&topic=38

Make sure to write down what the e-mail address is that you set up with blogger.com.

3. Back in Second Life, open the Edit menu for the Blogging Terminal. In the content menu, you will see this notecard, as well as one script. Open the Script.

4. Around line 11, you will see the following line of code:
string emailaddress="XXXX@blogger.com";

Replace the [email]XXXX@blogger.com[/email] with the e-mail address you chose in step 2.
If your e-mail address was [email]sldude.asparagus@blogger.com[/email], the line of code should read:
string emailaddress="sldude.asparagus@blogger.com";

5. Save the script and make sure that the "Running" checkbox is still checked. Close the edit and script windows.

Your terminal is now set up.

-------------------------------------------------------------------
-=Blogging=-

To post your blogs online, you will be composing them in a notecard. The Title of the Notecard will become the subject of the post, and the text contained within the notecard will become the main body of text.

When you have finished composing your notecard, simply save it, drag it from your invintory and drop it on the screen of the terminal. If everything goes as planned, your blog will be updated within a few minutes.

-------------------------------------------------------------------
-=Disclaimers=-

I will not accept any liability if for some reason this product results in your blog changing in some manner, your dog catching on fire, or Pathfinder Linden being zapped clear to the kid grid.

Again, this is based off of the script of Strife Onizuka, available in the scripting library. The monitor model is my own model. This entire project has been released as open source, so feel free to change it, adapt it, whatever. All I ask is that you a)

Have fun

--Brian Livingston

----------
Message Converted from notecard with Notecard2Blog version 0.1 alpha

Awesome! Thanks for all the details, Brian.

Hmm. I set up a Blogger account to test this out. Something is wonky with the "email to blog" function on Blogger's end in general. I can't get any email sent to Blogger, either from my own personal email account or from the blogging terminal, to appear.

I've notified Blogger about this. Maybe it's just me?

At any rate, thanks for posting this solution!

Did you check the "Post" Box to the right of the field where you entered in your secret phrade that creates your e-mail addy in the settings menu? If you don't, it will just queue your posts and save them as drafts.

--BL

Yep, did that. Still not working. Maybe it's because I set up the Blogger account just today? Perhaps it takes a day or so for the email-to-blog feature to "kick in?"

I'll keep messing with it and let you know once I've achieved success.

Hmmm... that's odd. I had my master blogger.com account already set up, but I added the individual blog a few minutes before my first blog entry.

One other thing to check is that the email address parameter was correctly changed in the script. The format for the email addy is [email]username.secretword@blogger.com[/email], where the username is your blogger.com user login name, and secretword is that word you picked in the e-mail settings screen.

Other than that, I'm not sure what the issue might be. When you drop the notecard on the terminal, does it whisper any status updated to you? At first it should say something to the effect of "Parsing (notecard name)", then "Sending last email (notecard name)". If you are standing within whisper range and it isn't sending out those messages, then it sounds like an issue with the script.

But yea, let me know if you figure it out. That way, if it is something on my end, I can alter the script to make the needed changes.

--BL

Hmm, I just re-read your original post about the email to blog issue on blogger's end, so it does sound like an issue on their end.

Edit: Ok, I just sent off an e-mail from my private account and it has not posted as of yet on my blog, so I think something might be up on their end.

Edit 2: I just sent out two more e-mails and the last two posted pretty quickly, so I think it might've been a typo on my end for the first attempt at off-world posting. I'll have to look into this a little more. I guess my suggestion is that if everything is set up correctly and your blog doesn't go through, hold onto the notecard and try again a little later. I'll send off a support mail to blogger about this in a minute. Hmm.

--BL

OK, got it to work. I think Blogger was having problems earlier, at least the email-to-blog part of it.

One thing, tho. The terminal you gave me had the email script inside set to no-modify. I had to use my "special powers" to make it editable.

Ack! Thanks. I'll change that as soon as I get on. I also want to check one part of the code to make sure there isn't a potential security issue, but I think I have that covered.

--BL