How do I blog from in-world?

Ok...

A few changes

- I fixed it so that the script is now editable. Sorry about that.
- If you are planning on getting this via a secondserver vendor from in-world, you will need to pay the vendor something. It will refund you the money, but the purchase mechanism is started off by the "pay" feature.
- If you'd rather ,just IM me and I will send the package on over to you.
- The package should be fully copyable, so hand it off to anyone you like!

--BL

Brian,

Does your script do something to get around the size limitation on outbound emails?

Ah, I meant to address that. The script will split the out going post into multiple e-mails, if the size is over 3800 charecters. That being said, 3800 charecters is a large amount of data. I just checked a paper I had to write a few weeks back and 2 double spaced pages with 1' margins came out to around 3000 charecters.

--BL

Thanks for working on this, Brian. I bet a lot of people will find this useful.

One more question. Some blogs check the "from:" field of the email when processing the email-to-blog request, as a way to prevent spamming. Any way to set that from within your script?

Well, if the blog software can be set up to authenticate by checking the sending address, all that needs to be done is to find out the blogging terminal's UUID and resulting e-mail address. You can do this by simply setting the outgoing e-mail address in the script to your private e-mail account, firing off a test e-mail, and then gleaning the object's e-mail address, or rather the address that any e-mails should be sent from.

Does that make sense at all? That should work, I think...

--BL

Edit:

The above solution should solve any potential issues with RL spamming. I had a thought that it might be possible for someone to spam your blog from inworld by just dropping notecards on the terminal, but in the tests I ran witha friend, we discovered that it isn't a problem after all as you can't edit someone else's item, which is what you're doing when you drop the notecard on it. Just don't pass on a blogging terminal to someone without deleting your blog e-mail address from the script, or else you might start getting someone else's posts on your blog

--BL

Brian was kind enough to give me one of his blogging terminals to put in my new Walkering Media Center (still under construction at Louise 228, 192 or so).

Since I want to create a place where anyone can come and use in-world media tools, I got to thinking, maybe there's a way to code it so that multiple users can use the same terminal.

So that's what I did (till 5 in the morning last night). There's now a multi-user blogging terminal on the second floor above ground level at the Media Center.

To use it, just click on the terminal, tell it the email address of your blog, and drop the notecard. I've tested it a bit, but not very robustly. It seems to work. I'd love to hear about any bugs anyone finds.

While this accomplishes the goal of letting different users use the same terminal to post to different blogs, there's one problem: When you chat your email to the terminal, any nearby residents can hear it, and potentially then make rogue posts to your blog. I can't think why anyone would want to do this, but it's possible. I haven't been able to think of a way to get around this short of putting the terminal in a remote location like a skypod or something, but that kinda defeats the purpose. If anyone has any ideas about how to get email addresses into the terminal dynamically and more securely, I'd love to hear them.

Since the project is open source, I'll be providing a copyable version of the multi-user terminal as soon as I can get something with the right perms from Brian. And thanks again, Brian, it's a very cool project.

EDIT: Hm, having just re-read Brian's edit above, I'm not sure if it will actually work for different users. It works for different blogs from the same avatar right now, but I haven't tested it with an alt or anything. I'll be back to you after more tests. Or feel free to come and try it out for yourself. Let me know what happens.

Okay, I fixed and tested mine with a friend. We were both able to blog from the same terminal. I used llAllowInventoryDrop or whatever it's called. There's some idiot-proofing that needs to be done at some point, but the thing works, so come check it out if you're interested.

It's funny, I came here to ask about how to set up a multi-user blogging terminal. Now I see you have done it!

Thanks so much. I'll be stopping by to get one of these and test it out. Fantastic!

Walker:

Did you sort out the permissions issue, or do you still need me to send over another copy? I thought I checked that specific item to make sure that it had fully open permissions, but I'll check later. The script should be fully modifiable and such as well. If I missed something, just give me a buzz

I am quite excited to see this new development. Now public areas can feature Public Blogging Terminals... Now if someone could rig up a spiffy looking phonebooth structure, that'd look pretty sharp (or at least it does in my head).

On a side note, I'm working on a more appropriate model to allow for mobile blogging. Right now I just have the old script sitting in a prim attached to my hand. It works ('cept in no-script areas), but it is a pain to use, as you have to go into it's edit menu and drop the card into the contents menu, as right now it won't let me add a notecard the way you do with the original terminals. However, it's pretty cool to be able to blog from whereever, whenever. Combined with the public blogging terminals and the private terminal, blogging on-the-fly is now going to be easier and simpler than ever.

--BL

Brian, the package you gave me had full copy and mod perms, but it seems to be no-transfer. I'd love to get one I can transfer, and then I'll package it as you did, so that people can pull a no-transfer copy from the box if they want one.

There is still the overhearing issue to solve for true usability on the multi-user version. I haven't quite worked that one out yet.

cool project though, thanks for turning me on

Okay, I have an idea for solving the multi-user privacy problem, though I can't implement it tonight.

Since the user has to compose a notecard anyway, why not just have them put the email address in the first line of the notecard? Then the parser moves that into the emailaddress field and doesn't add it to the message text.

I'm not sure I understand the code well enough to do this, but I'm going to try at some point.

I can see it now: in-world blogging phone booths all across the grid!

cool

Fixed. There's now a secure multi-user blogging laptop (since I couldn't copy Brian's terminal) on the second floor above ground level at the Walkering Media Center in Louise, I think at 228, 192.

It takes the email address in the first line of the notecard, then doesn't include that line in the text that's posted to the blog.

It currently only posts to Blogger, though I plan to expand its functionality to other blog engines. If anyone has a request and can point me to the FAQ/Help page where it describes how to set up an email address for that engine, please IM me and I'll implement that support as soon as I get around to it.

There are copies available in Louise for people to take and spread around the Grid, although remember: it's an open-source project, so do not sell.

All feedback welcome. I have no idea how useful this will be, but it was fun to mod. Thanks again, Brian!

LiveJournal and WordPress allow blogging by e-mail, as do Flickr (for moblogging) and some others. But perhaps rather than focusing only on services that can receive blog posts by e-mail, a hook into an API could be developed. The Blogger API is pretty much standard (I dislike Blogger myself; I'm a Movable Type and WP blogger) and would be a good one to start with.

lol I don't even know what an API is!

EDIT: Okay, I looked it up.

That sounds too complicated for my little brain. But the project is open source, so anyone who wants to do that is welcome.

Walker: Eek, sorry about that. I could've sworn it was all modable. My comp has been acting all kinds of strange, so I haven't been able to get in for more than 15 minutes without freezing up unfortunatly. Sorry about that.

--BL

Hey it totally wasn't a problem, Brian. I had fun taking screenshots and pics of my iBook last night anyway. Besides the blogging laptop, I made myself a laptop for my desk in my SL office. The picture on the screen is of Walker Spaight inside Second Life. So now, not only can I blog from within SL (if I had a blog), but I can even play SL from within SL!

I just signed up to Blogger, then to Flikr, then sent an in-game postcard...

http://tigercrossing.blogspot.com/

Took 10 minutes to set up and it... WORKS!
And it works well enough that I might actualy USE it on a regular basis.

So if you don't want to mess with scripts and want the added touch of photos too, just try the Blogger/Flikr/Postcard combo.

Looking good! Flickr works with other systems too, btw - I have it publishing pictures very nicely to my Movable Type site. I can have it post to LiveJournal too but for some reason the formatting isn't as nice.

Now that I think about it, I guess publishing by e-mail should work for most people. I guess making a hook into an API would just be an interesting fun coding project, just to see if it worked.

Cool, Tiger. I don't know anything about Flikr (or is it Flickr?), but I guess I'll check it out.

One thing: The new version of the blogging laptop doesn't involve monkeying around with any scripts at all. You just put your blog's email address in the first line of the notecard, then write your post, touch the laptop, and drop the notecard on it. (The parser discards the email address before it send to the blog.)

I'm not arguing for it as a better alternative to postcards or whatever, just saying.

I recommend Flickr (it's Flickr) pretty highly, though I don't even have a pro account with them. I think my favorite part of Flickr is the ability to "tag" photos - assign keywords to them. You can also put a note (or multiple notes) around a specific part of a picture. For example if you have a picture of you and a friend and you want to say "I'm the one on the left" you can put that info in the caption, but you can also put a note around your face and say "this is me" - it shows up on a layer over the picture rather than on the picture itself. It's a pretty darn nifty service. It was bought by Yahoo within the past couple of weeks, though, so changes could be coming...who knows!

I've tested the current system with TypePad, and it works great.

Only issue is, the default configuration of the script runs a "check" to see if you are sending an entry to a blogger.com account. It won't allow email sent to any other domain.

Easiest way to fix this is find the line in the script that says:

posit = llListFindList(test, ["blogger.com"]);

and change it to

posit = llListFindList(test, ["typepad.com"]);


Now here's how to get it working with typad:


When you email a blog entry to a TypePad blog, the system needs to know ahead of time what email address you are sending the entry FROM (for confirmation).

The easy way to find out the unique "FROM" address your SecondBlog Laptop is using is to simply have the device send an entry to your regular email account.

NOTE: See above...you'll have to temporarily enter the domain name of your regular email address (e.g., gmail.com) in that check field to make sure it allows the email to be sent. After you've sent a blog entry to your regular email account, switch the code back so it allows email sent to typepad.com

Copy the "FROM" address from this email sent to you by the SecondBlog Laptop.

Then go this page:

https://www.typepad.com/t/app/control/profile?__mode=mobile

Under where it says "Indicate the email addresses you will be using," enter the FROM address you copied in one of those fields.

Then scroll down to where it says "Select how you would like the system to verify your messages" and click on the radio button next to "Secret Email Address."

Scroll down, save your settings, send a blog entry to your secret email address, and you're done.

There's some information on posting by e-mail to Movable Type here, at the VirtualVenus MT wiki.

Cool, you guys, thanks!

Yes, the current version is only set up for Blogger. I want to eventually have a version that will switch blog engines with a /command of some sort, then parse the address accordingly. (Though when I'll have time for that is anyone's guess.)

btw, for anyone who has one of these (v1.3) you'll want to delete the line toward the bottom of the "send" subroutine that llSays the email address you're sending to. That was a debug line and shouldn't be in there. The whole point of this version was to keep the email address out of public view. I've fixed it in the in-world version available at the media center.