(Instant Messenger Weblogging)
InstaBlog appeared as a result of two things: I asked myself what would be the simplest possible way to maintain a weblog, and I wanted to try out the extremely cool Perl MSN IM client I found a few days ago.
InstaBlog works like this: You run it as a background process on a machine with Internet access. (It can be your primary machine, since it won't tax your system resources.) It has its own Passport identification and is constantly logged into the MSN instant messenger service. When you find something worthy of noting in your weblog, you open up a chat window with the InstaBlog and type your weblog entry. The InstaBlog takes it, adds it to a copy of the weblog it maintains, and uploads it via FTP to a webserver.
This is just a proof of concept, don't take it too seriously :-) Here's a link into a test weblog.
It's written in Perl, and you can download it here: instablog.zip (8 KB)
UPDATE: a few bugs fixed, so it's something like version 1.1 now
Here are somewhat more detailed instructions.
1. Register a user for the InstaBlog bot at Passport.
2. Login as that user and add yourself at its contact list - so it can receive messages from you. Logout - you'll never need to log in as it again.
3. Download the source and edit the config.xml file - you will need your FTP user/password, a directory on the web server to upload to etc. - it's all in the comments in config.xml.
4. Run instablog.pl on your machine - it can run alongside your MSN IM client. You should see it coming online.
5. Open a conversation with it and send it a message. You can see the minimal supported markup if you type "help".
6. Your message should appear on the website specified in config.xml. The InstaBlog bot uploads three files: the actual weblog.xml, the stylesheet to display it (weblog.xsl), and an index.html which redirects to weblog.xml.
Note: The weblog is output in the form of XML/XSL, so it's highly doubtful it will work on a non-IE browser.
Comments? Comments are welcome at assen a-in-a-circle engineer period bg.
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