About Hiptop Nation

(If you don't know about Danger, Inc. and the hiptop, the rest of this won't make much sense)

I (Mike Popovic) started this site soon after the T-Mobile Sidekick was released to the public. As a (non-Danger employee) beta tester of the Sidekick I had started up my own beta-testing weblog, and lots of folks loved the idea of blogging and sharing pics from their hiptop. I modified the weblog software I'd been using and made a communal weblog and dubbed it "Hiptop Nation". Shortly after I made further modifications and enabled everyone to pull their own entries out of the pool, thus allowing personal blogging, albeit with a relatively primitive feature set compared to some of the other weblog systems out there. It is not the goal of this website to become the most featured-filled personal blogging system. I'm not sure yet if we do have any goals at all, aside from having fun by experimenting with what the hiptop brings to the blogging table. See the Hiptop Halloween Photo-Scavenger Hunt for a good example of what I mean.

The Hiptop Nation logo and current design were created by the fabulous May Woo, a Hiptop Nation regular. Be sure to check out her Hiptop Shortcut Sticker collection.

If you'd like to help support hiptop Nation, visit the support page (thanks).

And now, a mini-FAQ about the site:

Hey, how does this site work and can I get the software that runs it so I can set it up on my own server?
Hiptop Nation runs on a collection of code originally put together by Dave Bort for his own use (and modified a lot since). There is some Perl and some PHP involved. Basically I send email to a certain address with a certain keyword in the subject line, which triggers procmail to do certain things to it (sort out text, pics, etc.). Some PHP code then looks at a file created by the procmail recipe and generates the weblog entries. It's a very basic solution that works well with the hiptop. There is no easy way to go back and edit entries, though, so you'll find a few typos and such. As this was code never intended for the public, Dave would like to do some prep work on it before general release. I'll let you know when it is available.

Do you work for Danger, Inc.?
I have a "regular" day job in the toothpaste industry and am not an employee of Danger, Inc.

Why is the site called "Hiptop Nation" when the device is called the T-Mobile Sidekick?
"hiptop" is the name given the device by its creators, Danger. "T-Mobile Sidekick" is T-Mobile's brand name for their version of the hiptop.

Can you give me some tips on using the hiptop, or can I ask you something about how it works?
Sure, but you are probably much better off going to the forums at hiptop.com: http://www.hiptop.com/ - that is where hiptop users talk about all sorts of stuff like that: hardware, software, service plans, links, mods etc.

How can I contact you?
The best way is to email me - mike {at} bedope ° com
You can also IM me (AOL IM: drjellyfish) and I'll answer if I can.

Inter-Web Famousity:
Here are some nice things people are saying about Hiptop Nation:

"Kinda silly, kinda new, kinda wow."
Mark Glaser, Online Journalism Review [link]

"...postings come with pictures that communicate what words alone cannot."
Peter Meyers, The New York Times [link | local mirror]

"So how soon will we all be joining the Hiptop nation?"
Jane Paul, The Guardian [link]

"I love it like almost no other place on the web - it's being let in on millions of little personal places all at once. I can't wait until it's HiptopPlanet."
Matt Jones, blackbeltjones [link]

"Dan Gillmor's prophesy comes one step closer: The Hiptop Nation..."
Matt Jones, blackbeltjones

"a fascinating experiment with wireless weblogs"
Dan Gillmor, San Jose Mercury News [link]

"Take a look at HipTop Nation for a compelling glance at the future-becoming-present in real time"
Adam Greenfield, v-2.org [link]