Tapping the blog in this screen opens it, and makes the individual entries visible, as shown in Figure B.

FIGURE B


Tap a blog to open it. Tap an image to view it. Things can't get any easier. Roll over picture for a larger image.

From this screen you can tap a picture to view it, return to the home screen, activate the camera to take photos and add them to the blog, add a photo already stored on the device, and synchronize your device with the blog.

SplashBlog's developers are sensitive to the limitations of current mobile and wireless technology. In the interest of saving time, memory on your device, and minutes on your mobile phone plan, you can have SplashBlog store and display only the most recent 25 images on the device. Similarly, you can configure it to download smaller versions of the images that are stored on the SplashBlog site.

Working with SplashBlog.com
While taking photos with your wireless device is what SplashBlog is all about, the best way to manage those photos is with SplashBlog.com and your desktop computer. As of this writing, you can create a SplashBlog account and store up to 500 photos in any number of separate blogs, all for free (go beyond 500 photos and you will have to pay a small yearly fee for unlimited storage).

The key location at the site is your Blog Admin Page, shown in Figure C. From here you have complete control over all your blogs. You can even upload photos from your computer hard drive, making SplashBlog a way to post all your photos and make them available to wireless devices or anyone with a Web browser.

FIGURE C


Use the Blog Admin Page to manage all your SplashBlogs in one place. Roll over picture for a larger image.

Your Blog Admin Page has more features than we can describe here, including a Group Blogs page that displays all the comments you have posted to any SplashBlog, whether you own it or not. I can't think of a blog feature or control that's missing from this area.

Conclusion
SplashBlog is a great way to publish photos from wireless devices. I found it easy to get up and running without referring to the documentation, and it is just fun to be able to capture photos of an event on your wireless device, and post them from the field.

I particularly like the way you can include photos from your desktop machine as well as those from your wireless device. My brother and I posted photos from our vacation, mixing photos from my Treo with shots from his regular digital camera. We easily created a blog that combines my quick but fuzzy candids with his high-resolution composed pictures, so now all our friends know what we were up to (hmm... maybe that's NOT such a good thing...).

This program merits a rating of 4. There are some minor issues with the documentation and some of the features work differently on a PC than on a wireless device. But these are the kind of issues you would expect to see with a product that is evolving fast like this one. SplashBlog is a solid, fun way to blog your mobile (or any digital) photos.

OUR RATING: 4 of 5

James Booth is Editor-at-Large at ZATZ Publishing. In addition to writing for Computing Unplugged and Connected Photographer, he's the author of Do-It-Yourself Wedding Photography. A self-taught photographer, James also dabbles in digital graphics and has learned to be a PC and handheld specialist through personal trial and error. James can be reached at jbooth@zatz.com.