Hmmm...

Okay, so I've had an idea shot down by technical logistics, and I'm feeling let down by it. 

Anyway, the idea was to post little multimedia artworks via MMS to various weblogs, including Evernote. The idea was that the MMS would consist of a photo or illustration (maybe even a video), a snippet of text, and possibly an accompanying sound effect or musical piece. It would basically be a sort of piecemeal, episodic approach to making short films, one segment or shot at a time. 

Sadly, this was not to be, at least not in the way it was planned. For starters, when I sent a short video I shot to Evernote as an MMS directed to my upload e-mail, not only did the video not play, but the whole entry had a huge T-Mobile banner at the bottom of it, kindly (if loudly) reminding the reader that this message was sent by way of a T-Mobile handset. This probably wouldn't have bothered me so much if the video played, or at least if T-Mobile had slightly more fashionable colors than white and pink. It may have been passable on Evernote, but on Blogger, it would stand out like a sore thumb against my minimalist aesthetic sensibility. What's wrong with white text on a black background? It's far easier on the eyes than black on white. I'll admit I do like the earth-tone backgrounds a lot of people seem to be choosing for backgrounds, it gives the impression of parchment or papyrus, a nice homey and handcrafted feel. 

So, anyway, with Evernote a failure, I tried again, this time with an image and posting it to Blogger. It was a public domain image, an Arthur Rackham illustration for Wagner's Ring Cycle (God, I love Valkyries). The only thing that showed up this time was the snippet of text below the image, even the ugly T-Mobile banner wouldn't load. It all sort of makes me think people have missed the point of Multimedia Messaging Services. They'll send to other phones and e-mail accounts just fine, but somehow posting it to a web page creates a whole new set of problems no one has anticipated. 

What's really funny is that earlier today, I was helping a friend upload some pictures she'd taken with her camera-phone to her Flickr account. She's an Alltell customer, and not only did Alltell post each picture she sent twice, but it also included a third image consisting of the Alltell logo as a separate image. So, she sent three images, and got nine photos posted, three of which are just the same logo. Welcome to the internet, folks, where crap rolls downhill. Almost makes me wish Ragnarok would get here soon....