10 Minute Guide to Plurk – Part 4

Let’s get Mobile!
Previous 10 Minute Guides to Plurk:
Part 1 – Getting Started
Part 2 – Let’s Get Plurking
Part 3 – Cliques – The Great Idea With the Awful Name
Part 3a – Printable Emoticon List for Mobile Phones
Come Plurk with me (if you haven’t joined yet, on the first screen, click “Sign In“)

I’m not sure I’m entirely sane trying to write today’s Plurk Guide. You see, last year while we were on a trip, my little one removed my phone from my pocket book and lost it somewhere between NC and NY.

The loss wasn’t discovered until we arrived home that night, and by then of course, it was too late. When you travel with children you have to make several stops along the way, so there was no telling where it disappeared.

Since I’m home most of the time anyway, we put off getting me a phone. Of course NOW it would make things so much easier, but then, I mainly used it for calling Ken (aka Plurkified) in the store whenever we’d gotten separated to figure out where we were supposed to be meeting.

Since I don’t have a mobile phone, I posted on Plurk for help. It wasn’t long before I knew what the address was for the mobile page, how to get there, and even received a picture of a Plurk phone, made for me by TacticalSniper after I threatened to paste a Plurk picture on Ken’s phone and take a picture of it.

So, how does mobile Plurk or mplurking work.

Back a couple weeks ago, when I first asked for Plurk questions, julep67 answered with:

I can’t figure how to text to plurk from my phone. It says in the terms that I can, but I can’t figure it out. Any help would be great.

It wasn’t long after that, that Plurk added a mobile button to the toolbar.

This made it very easy to find your mobile page, just click the button.

A couple updates later though, Plurk changed things again. Now you might see either the mobile plurk button or the button to embed a widget on your plurk page.

If you do get the Embed button instead, you can simply refresh your page until you get the mobile plurk button or go to http://www.plurk.com/m/.

Every time I see the page, I’m reminded a line at the beginning of While You Were Sleeping, “There are a lot of things I remember about my childhood. I just don’t remember it being so orange.

Using this big, orange page is a little different from normal plurking. For one thing, there’s no timeline. Plurks are shown in a normal, slightly boring, up and down mode.

I’m not sure why the numbers are on the bar. Only the first 9 plurks on each page are numbered, and to date I haven’t heard of any real purpose for them.

Edited to add: DarinRMcClure shared with me that “the numbers on the left 1-9 are for mobile navigation via keypad.” Thanks so much, Darin! Feeling silly for not figuring that one out now.

About a week ago, when I asked for comments about mobile Plurk, both shadeofmelon and Angela told me they really wish they could see the plurks which have new responses.

I did some exploring with the mobile timeline today, and unfortunately, the items are still listed in the order received, and not by most frequent comments, which means that you’ll have to jump around the mobile pages to find which all of the new responses.

In order to post, you’ll have to type in the orange box at the top of the screen.

Unlike regular plurks, in mobile plurk you have to set the starting verb if you want to use one. You set it in the small box beside your name. Otherwise, the verb won’t be colored, even if it’s a verb on the list.

Another difference is that there is no number count when you’re typing a plurk. At the end of the bar there is only the Plurk button.

If you go over, you are given an error message when the page tries to load. Unfortunately, I don’t know for sure whether you will keep the plurk you typed in…I suspect that you will, but it would be nice to know.

One really nice thing about mobile plurks is that you can still embed pictures and videos, complete with a mini shot of the posted item.

In order to comment on a mobile plurk, you click the response link, which takes you to a new page:

To respond, once again, write your comment in the orange box, being careful not to exceed 140 letters.

Plurkers Thoughts:

When I sent out a request on Plurk asking people what they like or don’t like about mobile plurking, the answers were interesting.

Both Topsurf and TheNerd mentioned that sometimes in mobile Plurk you can’t send responses, although you can read the original Plurk.

Rammi and miketempleton added an issue I’d heard others mention on other posts:

Sometimes when I click on responses they don’t show up.

Robdubya brought up something interesting that I hadn’t heard mentioned before:

I use iPhone and don’t like that I can’t see the pictures.

Now that made me curious, so to clarify, I asked if smileys show up on the iPhone.

Topsurf responded that moving ones don’t always, while plain ones do, and miketempleton expounded:

It looks like the smileys embedded into plurk show up on my iPhone, but not the custom ones people post.

Now that makes a LOT of sense, since even on regular plurk there’s an issue with some of the renegade smileys either appearing too big or too small.

Evandoyle shared:

Well it’s easy if you have an iPhone or an iPod touch, really easy.

Topsurf and Desertnut agreed and miketempleton added:

I use the iPhone as well, which makes scrolling easy….

Bikeman threw a wrench in the spokes though when he adds:

Here it is a no go on my cell, but can update from my Palm T/X.

Guess when I start looking for a cell phone, I’ll need to test out different ones to see which ones will let me Plurk.

Zsafwan mentioned that he “hates the fact that you can’t add a friend on the Mobile Plurk.”

Miketempleton returned to add:

If you use an @ username in your plurk and click on it, it takes you to the web profile instead of the mobile one.

The more I use the mobile interface, the more I see how decent it really is. It’s no iPhone app, but it works well.

Finally, Ronno971 added “I like to use it to stay connected. It could use more features though.”

If you’d like to see the discussion or compare a mobile discussion to a regular one, here is a normal threaded plurk, and here is the mobile one.

One last note:

You may notice that Mobile Plurk doesn’t offer a list of emoticons. In mobile, you have to type in the emoticon code, ie (s_dance) for . Plurk Guide 3a has a complete, printable list of available emoticons codes and pictures, but please note that using the code without the requirement to unlock it (whether it’s karma or inviting people) will put the word in your plurk instead of the picture, ie. (p_yupi) will show instead of .

So have you used mobile Plurk yet? What are your thoughts on it?