Friday 4 May 2007

Our top 3 support requests: 1

Can't see all the Mobizines

The most popular issue is a bit knottier: the Mobizines you get depend on the way you get the Mobizines Reader, who your network operator is and what your phone is. Quite understandably people come to the Web site and look at the 70 or so titles in the UK, and wonder why their phone is only listing a subset. It's a bit complicated but I'll try to explain:

Limited memory phones

The first thing to point out is that we have to limit the number of titles listed on the phone for some phones. If you have a Siemens C75 or a Nokia 6100 you'll only see 12 titles because if we add more your device will run out of memory and Mobizines won't work.

Text to 63333, 692355 or 82200

If you got your Mobizines Reader by texting to the UK, US, South African or German shortcode numbers you'll get a selection of titles that are related to the title you texted in to subscribe to initially. You should see about 25 titles on the phone to add. So if you come in for Fast Car, say, you'll get Evo in the list because we've made the assumption that you like cars.

Texting to +44 7624806310

If you got your selection by texting into the International number you'll get our world selection of titles. These are titles that we have permission to distribute globally - not all of our content partners want us to distribute their titles all around the world, usually because they only own the content for the country they're in.

Downloading from GetJar etc

The same is true if you download your Mobizines Reader from GetJar or one of the less official phone software sites (we distribute the installers officially on GetJar, AllAboutSymbian and Handango: if you see it somewhere else you might want to check it's the latest as people have been known to download our software are distribute it themselves. We don't mind, but it does mean that there are multiple versions about.) Because GetJar is global we load the GetJar clients with content that is OK for every country. If you want a UK version to download you can get the Jar from our website.

Installing from the NCD

The Nokia Content Discover has a special group with some exclusive Nokia content in it. Again, it doesn't have the full gamut of content.

BBC Headlines

Yep, that's us. If you have the BBC Headlines service (not the BBC News Select application!) you have Mobizines loaded with only BBC content. You can get the BBC news and all the other Mobizines titles by texting "bbcopen" to 63333 in the UK.

Three

We also operate the Mobizines service on the Three network in the UK. This costs three pounds a month (with a penny change) and Three choose the titles. At the moment, for example, the RSS Mobizine is not available on Three.

UK Mobizines outside the UK and (vice versa)

If you're in the USA, Germany and South Africa there are local services set up for you. We understand if you want to access UK content as well (or vice versa if you're in the UK and you want to read titles from one of the other countries we're in). Unfortunately licensing means we need to keep things separate.

But I want {insert name} Mobizine!

We feel your need. We try to work with our distribution channels and our content partners to make as much content available everywhere: it's what we're about. Sometimes for reasons legal, technical and metaphysical this just isn't possible. If you're in the UK and you want another Mobizine you can simply text 63333 again and we'll switch your subscription.

You can also sign up for My Mobizines and subscribe to stuff outside the list on the phone that way: this will be particularly useful for people with the limited memory client (check out the GetJar mobizines-tiny.jar details for a list of affected handsets.)

We're also pushing hard for new content for the global group: keep checking the Add New Mobizines screen in Mobizines Reader and you should see some exciting new stuff coming soon.

(The picture? That's actual rocket science that is)

2 comments:

Martin said...

Mobizines is also on T-Mobile UK from within the t-zones Portal (in the "uncovered") section.

Unknown said...

Thanks Martin, I'd overlooked thst. The T-Mobile version has some different rights restrictions again, so it needs covering here. I will edit.