Sunday morning

If you only knew what I had to go through in order to configure my new phone to post photos directly to Blogger. Apparently Verizon in its infinite wisdom no longer wants to allow its users to send their photos to third-party hosts such as Blogger (probably because it obviates the need to send them to the god-awful PixPlace), so that when you attempt to set up your phone to blog mobile photos the confirmation SMS actually causes your cell phone's OS to crash and reboot. WTF?

So after totally freaking out that I'd turned my brand new phone into a $150 paperweight I calmed down a bit and started Googling for a solution to my problem. Seems like I wasn't the only person who'd encountered this fun user-friendly feature from Verizon Wireless and several of the more techno-savvy owners had already figured out how to hack into the back end of the phone and retrieve the confirmation code needed to activate the mobile phone blogging service.

This is why I love the internet, as no matter how strange a thing happens to you, there are probably myriad people out there who have experienced the exact same thing and are willing to share their wisdom on the subject. There's a larger issue here of course about crowdsourcing and reference, but that's a topic that I think I'll save for a future Library Ass post.

In the meantime my message inbox is still fucked (though I can still read incoming SMS as long as I don't actually scroll down to the offending messages), but I can post photos straight from my phone to the Jersey Exile, so let's call it a draw for now. But how annoying is that?

UPDATE: Sorry, I was so busy ranting that I forgot to include links to a possible fix. Okay - I have a Samsung u740, so if your phone is different you may have to find a different solution, but here's how I hacked my workaround...

(HUGE DISCLAIMER! This fix involves hacking your cell phone and deleting files manually from its memory. If you feel uncomfortable in any way with this sort of thing I would recommend NOT trying this on your own, as you can permanently mess up your cell phone's OS if you delete the wrong file or accidentally overwrite essential data! If you don't want to take any chances with changing anything you can do #'s 1-5 and still retrieve your mobile phone blogging token from Blogger. This will enable you to upload to Blogger, and although your message inbox will still be screwed up you can still view any incoming SMS without causing your phone to crash.)

1. Download and install bitpim (www.bitpim.org)

2. Attach your phone via the USB dongle to your computer and run bitpim

3. Your phone will detect as an unknown model. Under EDIT>SETTINGS You should manually set the phone to SCH-A950.

4. Click the Get Phone Data and select all of the radio buttons to download your phone's messages

4. Go to VIEW>VIEW FILESYSTEM to allow direct access to your phone's file system

5. Navigate your filesystem to find your SMS folders. Double-click on the confirmation messages from Blogger in order to retrieve your token (you should be able to read the token straight from the code)

6. Delete the offending messages so that they no longer appear in your inbox, including the fs.dat file.

7. Click the Send Phone Data button to write the changes back to your cell phone. Your phone should reboot. If it hangs, just power down and up again and you should find that your inbox is now clear of the bad SMS messages.

8. Log into Mobile Blogger, give the token, and set your Mobile Blogging preferences so that Blogger does NOT send a confirmation text message whenever you post to Blogger from your phone.

9. That should do it.

Hope this helps!