Adding a Shortmail button to Blogger

Shortmail is an email account that is created by signing in to shortmail.com using Twitter authorisation. It’s a bit different from standard email in that each message is limited to 500 characters (about 80 words) with no attachments, so messages are brief. It can be used privately, like a sightly longer-form Twitter DM conversation but without the need to follow one another. It can be used publicly where any one can see the conversation on the web or even public and open, in which anyone can participate via the web page, much blog like comments.

Shortmail has just released a free iOS app version of Shortmail. A Shortmail account can be setup from within the app. The iOS app makes using Shortmail very easy, quick and responsive.

With Shortmail being an IMAP email account it can also be added to a standard email client by setting up a password and following the instruction once logged into the Shortmail website under the Account > Advanced settings. It can be very easily added to the Sparrow email client with just the Shortmail email address and password. An advantage of the Sparrow client is that it displays a character count as you type although it is not as quick to notify of messages as the iOS app.

The character count for a Shortmail message in Sparrow

There is a Shortmail Me! Widget that can add a button or link to a web page to enable any one to click and send a short message. I wondered how easy this would be to add to a Google Blogger site and the answer is very easy:

1. Simply copy the button or link code from the Shortmail Me! Widget page.
2. On Blogger: go to the My Blogs Overview > Layout > Add a Gadget and choose the HTML/JavaScript gadget. Click the plus symbol to add it.



3. Paste the Shortmail code into the Contents area of the gadget window.



4. Replace YOUR_EMAIL_ADDRESS with your Shortmail address.
5. Save.
6. Adjust the position of the gadget on the layout page as desired.

Having added it to this Blog, I will find out what happens in practice.