Moblogging from Spain with Vodafone (no, of course it doesn't work)

Blogger are finally putting their weight behind the idea of Moblogging with a new service launched on Friday. The problem is that the new service only works for US mobile networks (even though they only discovered 'cell phones' about two years ago). So we Europeans have to continue using the Mail-to-Blogger (M2B) service which isn't very good.

What's wrong with M2B is maybe nothing to do with Blogger so much as it is to do with Vodafone España. When I send a picture message via email from my handset to my M2B address, Vodafone helpfully adds a wad of code and images to brand the email with Vodafone styling.

Unfortunately, the code is either badly written or incompatible with Blogger (a bit of both, I reckon) and so I end up with the picture I sent, a couple of Vodafone border images and a load of html which helpfully includes my telephone number and, unless I'm mistaken, my M2B address (which ought to remain secret otherwise any loon could just come along and post to my site).

This wasn't always the way. I'm pretty sure I remember a time when Vodafone didn't do this. It seems to be of of those friendly 'services' that companies sometimes add 'for your benefit' - which always means 'for our own reasons' (- see also the abysmal Vodafone Spain website... impossble to use, laden with stupid script, lacking power).

Of course I could edit out any sensitive information from the Blogger site, but that ruins the point of blogging with photos from my mobile phone. Hopefully, Blogger Mobile will be extended to Europe before too long... but will it make any difference if Vodafone insist on editing all MMS/emails sent from one of their numbers? It's unlikely.

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