Upload via email

POSTED BY DANNY CHOO On Thu 2010/02/04 16:15 JST in Japanese Pop Culture
If you want to skip to the instructions then jump down a bit.
And before we start, a recap on what Mirai Gaia is - a platform developed by my small company Mirai Inc. Mirai Gaia is a multi-lingual publishing, CGM (Consumer Generated Media) and e-commerce platform that is fully search engine optimized and integrated with social media services.
Companies like Good Smile Company, COSPA, Kotobukiya, BANDAI and Japan Times (launch ETA late Feb 2010) use the platform for their online strategies. dannychoo.com and the figure, doll and otaku community site Figure.fm also run on Mirai Gaia.
Tis ready! Mirai Gaia now comes with a feature which allows users to upload posts simply by sending an email with images attached. Members don't even need to log in anymore and can even post stuff from their mobile device when they have some spare time like having a poo. But posting a photo of the poo is not recommended.
We have opened this functionality to users of figure.fm and it will also be available to all clients who have a Mirai Gaia license.
For figure.fm, we have only enabled this feature for approved users. A user on figure.fm gets approved after they have been active in posting and commenting. You will know if you are an approved user because your usual posts go straight to the top page.

Instructions Start

  1. Go to the Post By Email tab in your Edit Profile settings. For figure.fm
  2. Hit the "Generate New Email Address" button which will generate a secret email address for you.
  3. If you wish, you can authenticate figure.fm to tweet the url of your posts that you upload via email.
  4. Send email to your secret email address with photos attached. Your post will appear few seconds later and the URL automatically tweeted for you.
  5. Go back to relaxing by the pool with your dakimakura. Read on if you want extra info. If not then you are done.

Instructions End

Twitter users can allow figure.fm to automatically tweet your posts that you uploaded via email.
This is what your "Post By Email" tab looks like after generating your secret email address.
Twitter comrade Aquabeat posted a pic from her iPhone which automatically gets tweeted like this. If the mail subject is not defined then the server date is used.
And this is what Aquabeat uploaded - her most gorgeous daughter Nia-chan!
Here you can see a mail being composed after I've attached some images to it. I registered my secret mail address as a contact called "DC Upload" and after sending the mail, a new post was created a few seconds later which you can see here.
The Tokyo Live Bloggers will be using this feature soon.

Other stuff

  • For other Mirai Gaia powered websites, wait for the release announcements from each of my clients. Good Smile Company will be using this function for internal use initially this week.
  • Your generated email address is a secret - do not tell anybody apart from your best 2D friend. Anybody who gets hold of your secret email will be able to post things under account name.
  • If your secret email address was compromised (you wrote it on your forehead by accident for example) then go back to your Edit Profile page and generate another one email address - the previous one will be rendered unusable.
  • The subject of the mail is used as the title of your post. If you forget to add a subject then the server date is used.
  • Your post should show up in a few seconds after you sent the mail - a bit longer for mails with more than a handful of images.
  • You can send up to about 30 images up to a total of 10MB.
  • No limit to what you can post - just be sensible.
  • The body of the mail is used for the description of the post.
  • You can use the poll and youtube syntax in the body of the mail like:-
  • and
    1. You can post many polls in a single post - just make sure the poll id is unique for each poll like "poll=uniqueid_here_and_can_be_anything"
  • So for example:-
    1. You can set the category of the post by adding a in the body. For example:-
  • If you want to post into another specific category, then you need to have a look at the url category code. So for example:-
http://www.figure.fm/page/en/post/all/figures/all/all/all/published/1.html
The url category code here would be "figures" so:- 
If you want to keep your post hidden after you post it so that you can edit it manually after, all you need to do is add a to the email body.
So an example mail I would compose would look like:-
A photo of Nanoha looking cute.
After attaching a few images and hitting send, a few seconds later, your post will appear on figure.fm. It will be posted under your account name and you can go in and edit as usual.
Just one thing to keep in mind. Even though you can create posts from photos taken on your mobile, please try not to post anything blurry meaning that you should not be intoxicated or playing with your dolphin while taking photos which would cause blur. You especially don't want to take a photo *of* your dolphin and post it by accident.
If everything does not work then its because:-
  • You sent huge file sizes - post something in sensible sizes - a few hundred K per image.
  • You sent more than 30 images in one go. If you are posting by mail then you would probably not want to send so many anyway.
  • You tried to attach your cat to the email. jpg, png or gif only please.
  • You have an old secret email registered as a contact in your mail app but you generated a new secret email.
  • You didn't attach any images.
  • You didn't send the mail.
  • Its not plugged in or you ran out of batteries.
  • You are dead and cant send mail.
  • You don't have a computer or any means to send mail.
  • You put photos in an envelope and wrote the secret email on it.
  • You don't have a camera and therefore cant take photos and thus cant attach images to an email.
  • You tried to attach photos to an email using tape and glue.
  • You got no keyboard and thus cant type the email.
  • You got no display and thus cant compose an email.
  • You sent the email to customer support at Mc Donalds.
  • You got no Internet connection.
  • You cant type an email because your hands are cuffed to the bollocks of an elephant.
  • Aoi-chan does not like you.
Will be releasing an app for the iPhone called the MG Uploader which will work with any Mirai Gaia powered sites soon.
Hope you like the feature! This should help users to spend less time on preparing posts and give them more time to do other stuff instead.
If you are a blogger, how often do you post and how long do you spend on each one?