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This week, TechMan gives you tips on moblogging:

If you, like hundreds of thousands of others across the globe, have started your own Web-based journal or log ("blog" for short) a recent Internet trend might both strike your fancy and distinguish your blog.

It's called moblogging. That's generally pronounced "mo-blogging," rather than "mob-blogging," as it's a combination of the terms "mobile" and "blogging."

The principle is simple. Moblogging is the adding to one's blog when away from a computer -- sometimes posting photos, sometimes text, and sometimes both.

The possible dangers of moblogging have been a hot button issue with Hollywood publicists this month. Gawker.com, a celebrity sighting Web site, has launched a "Stalker" map feature that allows celebrity sightings to be uploaded to the site in real time. Critics say it could put celebrities in harm's way, if actual stalking was facilitated by the sightings fed to the site.

But most people don't moblog celebrity sightings. They log their observations and opinions for a small group of friends or to online moblogging communities.

"Basically, I just go to the e-mail program on my cell phone, type what I'm thinking, and it goes up on the Web. It's really easy," said Matt Hornyak, an undergraduate student at Carnegie Mellon University's School of Computer Science. Mr. Hornyak has been keeping his own moblog for months.

"I also collect random pictures. If I see something randomly amusing -- then it goes up on my site."

A wireless PDA, like the Treo 350 Mr. Hornyak prefers, will work, as will the 600, 650 and 700 models. Blackberry devices can also be used to moblog. But so can any camera phone with e-mail capability.

There are even phones specially optimized for moblogging, such as Danger Inc.'s T-Mobile Sidekick II. Manufactured by Sharp, this Java-powered phone is marketed as a "hiptop" and combines phone, PDA and even laptop functionality. This allows users to text-message, e-mail, instant message, play games and surf the Web, all from one device. These are all things that can also be done with any number of cell phones with a data plan from the service provider.

However, as Mr. Hornyak pointed out, "I haven't seen a lot of people use [camera phones] to good effect. Part of it is that camera phones have horrible resolution, plus the multi-tap function makes it take forever to [type and post] text."

The mini-QWERTY keyboards of PDAs, Blackberries and Sidekicks allow for much faster typing.

To see or try moblogging, any number of blog-dedicated sites, including typepad.com, blogger.com, blogspot.com or livejournal.com, can be used.

If only pictures are to be uploaded, photo-only sites like Snapfish.com and Flickr.com are useful. There are also moblogging communities online, such as moblog.busythumbs.com, where mobloggers can "gather" virtually and exchange posts.

But much of the world of mobile computing, even this more recent phenomenon, was presaged decades ago. "Experience capture" and "wearable computers" have been around in theory -- and in clunky prototype form-- at least since the early 1980s.

"Our first wearable computer was in '91, focusing on the industrial sector. These were kind of expensive to begin with and focused on work and industrial [applications] rather than the social," said Professor Dan Siewiorek, director of CMU's Human-Computer Interaction Institute.

"We worked with PennDOT bridge inspectors so they could basically capture speech, pictures and so on while they were literally hanging underneath the bridge. The camera would take the picture and record [the locations of] a hole or a stress crack. Then, you could add it to the sketch of that bridge as you went along."

Anind Dey, another professor in the HCI Institute, said that the key to the popularity of mobile applications has been the widespread adoption of cell phones by consumers.

The possibilities of the technologies are seemingly endless. The technologies exist for public blogs tied to locations like museums or tourist destinations. Visitors could contribute remotely by cell phone. At the Fringe Festival in Scotland last year, said Professor Dey, University of Edinburgh researchers set up a system allowing patrons to leave reviews of shows using their cell phones.

"It's not quite the Wild West, but it's unknown ground. It's unclear what will ultimately succeed."