Let’s face it, some people are resistant to change. As it is with my parents, the thought of using unfamiliar technology or ways of doing things scares them. I know my Mom writes great letters (You know, like those holiday newsletters) and she emails her church girlfriends several times a day, but I still have difficulty getting her to use her Live Space to share what’s going on in her world with the people she cares about. She’s afraid to try new ways of doing things. My grandmother would say, "If it ain't broke, it don't need fixin'"
So I enabled email publishing on her Live Space so she could continue to use something she’s familiar with, email, and post to her Live Space. This is a pretty simple process:
Sign in to your Live Space, click “Options”, and select “E-mail Publishing.” You’ll be taken to the page where you can turn on email publishing and make your settings. Tick the box that says “Turn on e-mail publishing”. Enter the email address you’ll be emailing your postings from, enter a secret word, select and album to save images to if you’re emailing images to your blog, and choose whether to publish the entries straight away or save them as draft for later (HINT: If you set for "Save as Draft" you have to go back to your Live Space and sign in and publish them later.) You’ll then get an email address that you send email to to publish blog entries. It should look something like this (your space name).(secret word)@spaces.live.com. Now enter this email address into your address book with the name “Blog” as the contact name. Then when your write your posting via email, just search for your "Blog" contact and you won't have to remember the whole email address. Make your blog posting and hit "Send". You've just published your blog entry via email.
Later...when your parent's start asking you, "Well how can I put pictures in my blog entries?" or "How can I do something more?" Then you can introduce them to Live Writer!
For us more savvy or adventurous users, email publishing can take on an entirely new dimension, MoBlogging. When you're out and about around town and see something interesting to write about, you can send an email from your mobile device to your Live Spaces and publish what you're thinking, or doing on the moment, just like I did when I saw a gorilla walk down 6th Avenue in downtown Seattle! Use the same process as above to turn on your email publishing, and save the email publishing address as a contact to your phone or mobile device address book. Then just write your email to your "Blog" contact and send away! You've just become a MoBlogger.
