Mensamind unveils weblogging portal

SRINIVASA RAO DASARI / Hyderabad

The next time you come across an incident of human interest anywhere in your surroundings, there will not be a need to call in the TV channels. Instead, you can capture those rare moments with your camera phone and send them to any portal that supports multimedia messaging services (MMS), from where TV channels or news agencies can download and use it. This has become possible with the latest multimedia mobile technology called moblogging or mobile weblogging. It is one of the most unexpected technology stories during the recent past—camera phones supported by weblogging to make an impact on the market, particularly in the communications sector. Indeed, moblogs are seen as a new era in online journalism.

Mensamind, the Hyderabad development centre of the US-based $1.2 billion Mensamind Inc., recently launched a global multimedia mobile blogging portal—mensablogs.com—which enables mobile camera phone users to take and publish text, pictures, audio and video inputs from camera phones instantly. This works on different platforms like GPRS, CDMA and 3G mobile network technologies using MMS. mensablogs.com is based on Mensamind Live Publish }software.

With this launch, Mensamind, an enterprise software solutions company, says it has a comprehensive, enterprise-scale mobile wireless imaging communication and content publishing solution. This will realise the vision of developing exciting, dynamic, rich-media content though cameras, mobile phones and mobile multimedia messaging services for consumers and business verticals such as media houses, homeland security, real estate, insurance, healthcare, etc.

Mensamind has tied up with indiainfo.com for offering moblogging services. In order to popularise the concept and business values of mensablogs, Mensamind and IndiaInfo have come together to offer mobile media blogging services to IndiaInfo customers in India and abroad. With this, IndiaInfo has become the first consumer portal in India (actually South Asia) to offer complete multimedia mobile phone blogging services.

Mensamind is currently holding talks with the Andhra Pradesh police department for deployment of this technology. The company is also in talks with publishing houses, telecom operators and insurance companies.

Mensablogs is not just text or pictures; it allows customers to record moments in video-audio formats using a mobile camera phone, and publishes them as quality media content. It is offered free of cost for all camera phone consumers. As prices of these mobile phones fall, the usage of such facilities will go up. With the advancement of technology, the duration of the video clip will increase to one minute from the present 15-20 seconds.