Mobizines - Update All

Mippin to be shown at Mobile 2.0

2007-10-12T07:55:00.001+01:00

Mippin is to be demonstrated at the Mobile 2.0 Conference in San Fancisco on Monday. See the other companies showing and the speaker list, and conference details.

Mippin - nothing to install, just point you browser at http://mippin.com.

Mippin is Launched

2007-10-12T07:52:00.000+01:00

Mippin is our new product and is launched today. See our press release.

And thanks to all those bloggers who have already commented

Ewan from SMSTextNews said "Mippin is just phenomenal. Really, really smart"
Alessandro from Biskero said "The guys from Refresh Mobile did it again"
David Cushman from Fasterfutre said "This is Widsets on steroids"

Also Read JemiMa Kiss in the Digital Guardian... http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/digitalcontent/
, David Murphy of Mobile Marketing at http://www.mobilemarketingmagazine.co.uk/2007/10/sitting-in-the-.html
, Mike Butcher of Tech Crunch http://uk.techcrunch.com/2007/10/11/mippin-monetises-feeds-for-mobile/

and Ewan again at: http://uk.blognation.com/2007/10/11/mippins-mobile-portal-now-in-public-beta/

plus TVDigest, PerfectPath , GoMo News (sorry we'll sort you out very soon and thanks for being nice about it!!!) and ShinyShiny.

See the video of the service at:

Mippin - nothing to install just point your phone's browser at http://mippin.com

Menace on your mobile

2007-08-22T09:20:00.000+01:00

News filtering through the lofty windows of Refresh Towers this morning informs us that there is a rather large buzz about getting such comic classics as The Beano and The Dandy converted from their traditional paper formats to the digital medium of MMS!

Wowee!
Huzzah!

Breakthrough!

(No... Really)

Apparently:

"Publishers are looking at challenging traditional comic books by sending children stories, frame by frame, straight to their handsets as picture messages."

Which is quite frankly - AMAZING!

Don't get us wrong, magazines on your mobile are pretty damn good, (or 'Mobizines' as we like to call them - ahem)...

But comic books too? That'd be awesome...!

I'm sure that the kids (who I'm sure this particular money-making venture is aimed at) would probably only have to pay something like £1.50 per issue/MMS delivery... and kids are so good with their mobile phone subscription services - I mean - they never get ripped off!

Now if only there was a service out there already - that could deliver such comic classics like Garfield and/or Dilber t...

As well as provide users with the ability to create their own comic strips...
And then to get them sent straight to your phone...

For free.
No subscription charge.
Nothing.

Now THAT would be AWESOME.

;)

As a great woman once said...

2007-08-07T17:08:00.000+01:00

"It's oh so Quiet! ...it's oh so still."

Yes it is... but WHY?

Well - we like a bit of Bjork in this office y'see...
We think she knows her stuff.

There's nothing quite like a bit of Icelandic warbling to help you concentrate on the day-to-day business of making your mobile life an easier and better place to be...

Because y'know...
...that's what we like to do here at Refresh Mobile.

It's kinda why we've been a bit quiet of late... We've been busying away on a new way to make your mobile life, better.

But how?
Well...

Mobizines was our first foray into the mobile space...
Then came Eyemags...

Both of which have done stonkingly well, (and will continue to do so), winning us accolade after accolade...

And now..?

We would like to introduce you to the newest edition to the Refresh Mobile stable.

Welcome to... Mippin beta

Wooo! Cheer! Hurrah!

Isn't it brilliant?!
No? Well it will be when it's live... Honest!

Yes - that's right - Mippin isn't live yet...
Our team of techies have finished defining and are now working on the refining...

NOW we need your help!

As you can see - Mippin is still very much in beta - we need testers to help us iron out all the bugs before we release it to the general public...

So, if you'd like to sign up for our beta - then go for it!

More news soon.
In the meantime - you can find out more about Mippin and what it means over at the new blog!

See you there!

"Zing Boom!"

Extra! Extra! Read all about it!

2007-07-17T11:02:00.000+01:00

The Daily Star goes mobile with Mobizines!

That's right folks...

On the back of the amazing success of the City PM Mobizine -

Mobizines is happy to announce the launch of it's first national newspaper Mobizine with The Daily Star!

Here's the science* bit:

"Fresh from the press twice a day! With highlights of the top stories and all your favourites from the paper to keep you entertained. The Daily Star brings you the latest News, Gossip, Sport and even Page 3 straight to your phone Mon-Fri. With new editions available at 11am and 5pm the now Twice Daily Star is free and available to download right now!"

Cool!
Ok - so what does it actually look like on your phone?
I reckon we can handle that...

Looks good huh? We like to think so...

You can find out how to get the Daily Star Mobizine here - if you already have the Daily Star Mobizine - refresh your 'Add New Mobizines' list and the Daily Star should be there waiting for you...

Oh and just so you know: No techies were harmed during the creation of the above graphics.
:o)

*Really we mean 'marketing spiel' but to the techies amongst us - that is 'the science bit'.

And as if by Magic...

2007-07-10T10:45:00.000+01:00

We're back!

Yes yes - we know - it's been...
*checks calendar* ...ooo blimmin' eck!

...it's been over a month since the last post...
(really? that long? Wow)

Things have been a bit crazy here at Refresh Towers of late - what with uber brand new projects being created (shh - more on that soon)

Eyemags achieving one million downloads...

Vodafone breaking Mobizine downloads...

The launch of our first National Newspaper Mobizine...

...and that's just the tip of the iceberg!
But no fear - we're back and as strong as ever.

Anyway - it's all a lot to take in so let's tackle it one thing (and one post) at a time....

First off - Vodafone.

You may've read recently (ooo - say about a month ago?) that Vodafone's new 'mobile internet' complete messed up Mobizines for any Vodafone user who tried to download the service.
Well - you'll be please to hear that it has now all been fixed.
Voda have since apologised (to everyone - wasn't just us this affected) and we can all live happily ever after!

If you're still not sure you have the correct version of Mobizines - drop an email to help@mobizines.com along with your phone number plus make and model of handset and we can check it out for you.

We'll be back later in the week with more on all of the above - and we mean it this time!

Stay Tuned!

Vod - aaargh - fone

2007-06-07T15:46:00.000+01:00

BREAKING NEWS FOR ANY BRAND NEW MOBIZINE USERS ON THE VODAFONE NETWORK

If you are on the Vodafone UK network and have attempted to download the Mobizines service since June 4th 2007, you may not have the correct version.

If you tried to install and you saw a message that starts with the following text:

"Your handset may be capable of receiving this service but we have not yet tested it and cannot guarantee the quality of the service you will receive..."

First:
Check to see if your phone is on our supported handset list -
If it is supported and you still saw the above text then there is a very high chance that you may not have the right version of Mobizines.
This strongly applies to anyone using a QVGA and/or Symbian phone... (N95 users take note!)

Please email us at help@mobizines.com along with your phone model and mobile number and we will endeavour to get you fixed and up and running ASAP.

Our people are talking to Vodafone's people RIGHT NOW and we will hopefully have this problem solved as soon as possible.

More news as we get it...

EDIT:
Our friends at smstextnews have a reasonably good explanation of it all here.

Testers Required!

2007-06-05T12:17:00.000+01:00

Good day to you avid reader!

Just a quick blog post to mention that our next big release is coming very soon and we are currently on the lookout for peeps to come help us with some end user testing before we go public...

See below:

"Refresh Mobile are looking for open and honest, London-based mobile phone users to test their new version of Mobizines and are willing to pay £10 (in either Virgin or Amazon vouchers) to anyone who is willing to help.

Anyone who wants to volunteer needs to be free to spend 45-60mins at the Refresh Mobile offices based in Fulham Broadway, London any time between Mon-Fri, 9am - 6:30pm before June 12th 2007.

If you are available and are interested in shaping the future of the latest release of this exciting product - then please email james@refreshmobile.com for more details.

Please Note - There are only a small amount of places available on this occasion and guests will be invited on a 'first come, first serve' basis."

We've posted this up on a few sites already and a reasonably good response - however we are still looking for a few more volunteers...

Hope to hear from you soon!

Use Mobizines over WLAN For FREE !

2007-05-29T15:18:00.001+01:00

Many of you may know that we ran a recent beta test for the N95. Over 80 of you volunteered to be part of this beta and we're very grateful to each and every one of you.

We've listened to you feedback and the most common enhancements that was requested, was the ability to use WLAN where is was available.

We been prototyping how this could work and now have a test version that automatically detects if the handset is hooked up to a WLAN router. If you are hooked up, this APN is automatically selected. Needless to say, it is super quick and overall a really great experience.

We're considering beta testing this variant, if you think we should beta this variant, please let me know at devices@mobizines.com

Kevin

Yet another great phone to get Mobizines working on

2007-05-29T11:16:00.000+01:00

A piece of historical greatness from one of my favourite blogs: Paleo-Future. It's a 1910 description of what a wireless phone would be like.

The text is great and I'll try not to spoil it by giving it all away, but it's worth noting that the inventive spirits of the Washington Post had already figured out what to do with unsightly aerials: it's the umbrella - what you look like when it doesn't rain I dunno, although the article does helpfully suggest that indoors you can attach your wireless telephone to your bedstead.

Presumably there's a USB-Remington interface for printing out text messages, although the built-in MP3 player would require the transportation of unwieldy memory sticks in the form of rolls of wax.

Future here we come

2007-05-25T10:28:00.000+01:00

Sony's not dead yet!
Sure they might have the odd problem but Sony's R&D is still rocking. We haven't seen anything with quite as much of a "I want one of those now and I don't care how much it costs me in time, money or personal self-esteem" factor as the 16.7m colour OLED displays Sony demo'd yesterday...

That's more colours than my MacBook Pro, thank you Apple.

Still, it's kind of funny it taken a world of designers a year to notice that they only have 6 bit colour.

Anyway, you want to see what this awesome new thing looks like?

Well it turns out there's this really cool new thing called YouTube, which is like television, only better because the pictures are smaller and there's less chance of seeing Kate Thornton or an Ocean Finance ad unless you really want to. And someone (EDIT: The awesome nihonblog PinkTentacle) has posted a clip from Japanese TV up there.
It's right here.
Right now.

There are higher resolution OLEDs, but Sony's is the first that looks like it's consumer quality. Not sure about the support wiring round the edges, but when that's smaller this will change the way we approach gadgets altogether.

At the moment mobile phone screens are limited by some fairly straightforward human factors like the width of the hand and the desire not to look completely nebbish while making a call.

Ever seen someone making a call on an old-school Blackberry? My point exactly...

Add in a display that rolls up and you can have both a phone that fits neatly in an inside pocket and massive screen real estate when you need it.

So hurry up with the future, Sony-researcher-san. I'm already a couple of decades overdue on my hovercar and personal jet pack and I need my fix!

Story from Digital World Tokyo, video from PinkTentacle, image pinched from icanhascheeseburger.com.

And Lolcats rule.

The Devil Wears...

2007-05-22T11:18:00.001+01:00

Prada, apparently.

Well - it makes you think...

Done thinking? Cool...

Now - as you know the other day we finally got our hands on a brand new LG Prada phone...
We're all busying away on our next big release and we haven't really got time to develop a whole brand new variant of the Mobizines client to work on this handset...

So imagine our surprise to find that our touchscreen client, very nearly, works on the Prada!
Admittedly it does need a small bit of tweaking here and there...
But our resident touchscreen guru Andre, (Big up the Dre!), is on the case.

The official line is: We do NOT support this device*.
*But we're working on it!

In the meantime however - have a look at this video that we hastily knocked up...

Yes it's the wrong way round and yes it's a bit blurry but it's the best we could do under such short notice!

I guess eventually we'll probably do some kind of beta testing... if you want to be involved - drop us an email (with LG PRADA in the subject header) at bloggers@mobizines.com - we'll make sure your name gets passed onto the relevant folk...

We've got a new toy

2007-05-17T15:47:00.000+01:00

And it isn't an N95...

...can you guess what it could be?

Hehe...

I know we promised a techie-orientated post (and there is one coming soon) but our dev team have been having a good play with the contents of that box today...

Maybe we'll knock up another video for you...
More on this... Soon.

Feedback Forum

2007-05-16T13:14:00.000+01:00

We've had some mail!

Woo...

Well - ok - not actual mail. But one of our readers has commented on this lovely blog of ours and we thought we'd re-post it and give it a (well deserved) response.
Cool.

Well - here's the comment we received:

"Hey. I dont usually comment on websites.
But this ones thrown me... I found out about this blog way back at the first day.
I was super hoping to see more about wap design, the process you might go through, Some thoughtful insight on the mobile world, etc etc...
But all ive seen is a plug for your mobizines site - Which obviously its about mobizines so why not.
But I was super hoping I would see more informative posts.
Hopefully you take this comment to heart because you people seem to know what your talkin' about.
If you do take this to heart... mabye you can explain how its feasible for you to offer up mobizines free? I'm wondering how you would benefit mainly in this question.

Heres hoping you run with my comment. (and not to the trash bin)

Signed: Anonymous"

First off - Thank you for your feedback Mr Anonymous (whoever you are!).
When we got the email here at Mobizines with your comments in we immediately forwarded it to our techie/development team and challenged them to come up with some more 'informative' (shall we say) posts about Mobizines etc and how they all work.

Basically - Your comments have been taken on board and we are doing something about it!
Originally we didn't want the blog to become overly-techie and/or just a 'plug for the Mobizines site' - but if more process/design stuff is what you want - then we shall try and fulfil that need, (as well as sticking in the odd random post as per usual).
So...

WATCH THIS SPACE!

In answer to one of your questions mind -
(about Mobizines being free) -
Have a look at the last paragraph of our very first post.
Hopefully that might go some way in explaining how we do it - let us know if not!

Also...
Here's hoping this 'Feedback Forum' section becomes a regular thing...
If you have something to contribute to the Mobizines team or if you have any feedback about the service and/or the blog - You can reach us by either:

a) Leaving a comment on this here blog of ours or
b) Mailing us at bloggers@mobizines.com

We're generally quite a nice bunch of folk and most things get addressed pretty sharpish..
Hope to hear from you soon!

Top Tip: Ever wanted Mobizines at the touch of a button?

2007-05-12T05:47:00.000+01:00

You can configure your right (or left) soft key on your N95 (or any other Symbian handset!) to access Mobizines by using:

Tools > Settings > General > Personalisation > Standby > Shortcuts > Right Selection Key

Or alternatively, for the you can add the Mobizines icon to your desktop - aka The Active Standy - by using:

Tools > Settings > General > Personalisation > Standby > Shortcuts > Active Standby Apps

We’re offering prizes for other Top Tips and will be publishing them here in our blog.

Kevin

Mobizines - Uncovered!

2007-05-11T14:40:00.000+01:00

Hot on the heels of going live on the Nokia Content Discoverer both on the N73 and the N95...

We have also just gone live on the T-Mobile 'T-Zones' Portal!

Woo!

So...
If you've got a mobile phone on T-Mobile and you don't have Mobizines...
(although I'm not sure why you're here if you DON'T have Mobizines - you should be here instead)

Get yourself to your T-Zones portal and look for a thing called 'What's New' - it's there under 'Top Services'.
Found it?
Cool...

*Click*

From there look for 'Uncovered'
No.... Go PAST the Page 3 Girl... PAST IT I TELL YOU!

Phew...
Once you made it (just) into 'Uncovered', scroll down to 'Info & Entertainment' and...
*Click*

And Voila!
Mobizines is there!
Wanna install? Oh go on then...
*Click*

Yay! Mobizines goodness for all!

Thanks to all our friends at T-Mobile and T-Zones for helping us get this live.

Hope you enjoy the service...

Oh - and as a point of interest -
Two of the founding members of Refresh Mobile (the company behind Mobizines) are originally from T-Mobile themselves.
Aww... The whole thing's come full circle.
As a great man once said: "I love it when a plan comes together."

Oh and thanks to Martin who quite rightly pointed all of the above out to Jim the other day.
Nice one Martin.

Edit: Richie has just pointed out that anyone with Web n Walk* will not see T-Zones on their phone and will have to manually type in www.t-zones.co.uk to gain access....

*Ahh... Yes. Web n Walk. Probably the best data bundle in the world...

Japan dumps the PC, gets texting

2007-05-10T12:53:00.000+01:00

Interesting story in the Sydney Morning Herald (brought to our attention by the inestimable Digital World Tokyo) about Japan's shift from the PC to the mobile phone. The number of Japanese 20 year olds with internet connected PCs has dropped from 23.6% to 11.9%. From a European/British perspective the notion of only 1 in 10 of such a high spending market having PCs is very alien.

Some Japanese universities report a sizeable chunk of their students graduate without using a computer.

The reasons are many: the computer form factor - qwerty keyboard and all - just doesn't translate well to a country whose language can be written in four different character sets, sometimes all in the same sentence.

By contrast the mobile web is booming: sites like Mixi (Japan's MySpace) and Yahoo all place mobile as at least as important as Web. The keitei takes the place as a communications device that the PC has in the UK.

Our top 3 support requests: 1

2007-05-04T17:59:00.000+01:00

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)

Our top 3 support requests: 2

2007-05-04T17:47:00.000+01:00

N95 is coming!

We're getting flooded by requests for the N95 beta software. We've been in beta a bit longer than we'd like with this one, but the software is now ready and we're just waiting for Symbian signing. We expect this will be added to the main Mobizines install system by the end of next week.

By the way we'd really like one of these t-shirts

<------------ from ThinkGeek. Ta.

Our top 3 support requests: 3

2007-05-04T17:36:00.000+01:00

Number 3: PIN problems

PIN number requests for My Mobizines are still a major issue. We (currently) need to verify that you're making a request from your own handset (I know you know it's your handset, but frankly I don't think we've been properly introduced).

We've noticed that we're getting loads more requests for PINs for new Nokias because of our NCD distribution deal. Those Nokias get everywhere.

This process isn't quite as reliable as we'd like: international bulk SMS turns out to be a bit like sticking a message in a bottle and letting it float out to sea. So while people in the UK get PINs no problem, we have difficulty getting PINs through to countries as diverse as India, the USA and China. Which are, obviously, quite big.

For now if the PIN doesn't arrive your only option is to email help@mobizines.com but we're dropping the PIN requirement in the next release of the software (which wshould hit the street ina couple of months). This should make registering from places we don't have decent SMS coverage easy.

More on Canadian data costs

2007-05-03T14:35:00.000+01:00

Google Spreadsheet of the price of data in Canada (and some other places).

Note that Rogers Telecom helpfully multiplies your costs by 6 if you wander into that big country south of the 49th parallel, taking you from 0.5 cents a kilobyte (yes, kilobyte: I've seen phones that send more than two kilobytes in request headers alone) to 3 cents.

Putting it in a Google Spreadsheet is a really cool and powerful way of demonstrating how twisted data prices are, so top marks to Thomas Purves for putting it up as a part of his post reported on here.

We'd like to expand on that so - I'm trying to put together a "best deal" spreadsheet in Google.
But modelling it is evil.

Cost is the thing we get asked about most of all, and its a really thorny issue to crack, largely because the mobile operators go out of their way to make it as hard to compare as possible.

In the UK alone, for example, you have operators that operate tariffs with a daily cap and an excess, (eg, Vodafone will charge you a pound each day you go online, so long as you use less than 15Mb of data, with a £2 surcharge for each megabyte over the 15Mb), operators who charge per service (eg, Three) and operators who charge a flat rate for all you can eat so long as you don't take the mickey, (T-Mobile, ray!).

Unfortunately, that's usually only one tariff in a portfolio of tariffs so, for example, T-Mobile's pay as you go offering looks a lot like Vodafone's, with a daily surchage, and Three also offer flat-rate pricing via X-Series.

Why's it so difficult to compare? The argument goes that if users were able to compare easily between mobile tariffs (and data's only one part of that) they...gosh!... would move to operators that offered better prices, thus increasing churn and starting a price war. I used to work for a small web agency that did some consulting work for a large airline. One of the ideas we came up with as a sales promotion was the concept of the Isoquid. The idea was to draw lines on a map of the world showing how far £200 would take you by air, so that if you did happen to have exactly that sum of money in your pocket you'd be able to book a ticket from the interface we designed. The idea was turned down because it showed all too graphically how European flights were artficially expensive compared with flights to the US. The £200 that got you to New York would drop you somewhere short of Geneva. (Bear in mind this is before the budget airlines really kicked off.)

On top of that confusion the amount of data that you use reading Mobizines (which are free from us to you, except for Three users, and the three quid a month is a bloody good deal) depends on the number of titles you have and the type of title.

Take the example of someone who only subscribes to Sudoku, (it's okay, we still love you, but you're missing out on a world of fun). The Java client version of Sudoku, which is one of the most popular downloads we have at GetJar, is 168 bytes to update. That's right, you can fit it in one line of BBC Basic. Refresh to get a new puzzle daily and Vodafone's new pricing means you'll end up paying £30.

On the other hand someone with subscriptions to Evo and Monkey (say) which are 225 times more data will only pay four quid because they only update on a Wednesday.

So while we hear your requests for a simple way to calculate how much subscribing to a Mobizine is going to cost, it's extremely hard to build up the comparisons without ending up with something that looks like a City trader's desktop. We're working on clarifying the proposition (or make things simple, in English) so watch this space.

So why does a gigabyte of data cost £20 in New Zealand and £2908 in Canada?

The polite answer is that New Zealand has a more competitive market than other territories. The impolite answer is that the operators are petrified of ending up competing on raw price as simple ISPs so they're very very gently deflating costs.

Eventually they will be bit pipes and you'll be able to choose whether you want to use the add-on voice service from your mobile operator or just stick with your Skype subscription but it's gonna be a long time coming. (And perhaps the wifi providers will eat their lunch while the telcos are still trying to decide which wine goes with Sea Bream.) In the meantime expect a very distorted market.

Oh and all of the above and the fact that the regulatory authorities have enough on their hands dealing with things like cutting voice roaming costs to worry about data yet...

What is Mobizines Daily?

2007-05-03T11:45:00.000+01:00

Have you got Mobizines on your phone?

If the answer is 'Yes' then you might already know what Mobizines Daily is, (but read on anyway!).

If the answer is 'No' then (first off - WHAT ARE YOU DOING! GET IT NOW!) maybe you might like to know...

*puts marketing hat on*

Mobizines Daily is your guide to what's hot in your Mobizines service today!

With me?
No?

*sigh*

Ok...
Basically - every day we scour the entire Mobizines catalogue for five of the best stories available from our top titles and offer a taster to you via the wonderment that is Mobizines Daily!

Step by step:

1) Open Mobizines Daily -
Right you are...
*Click*

2) Pick a story -
Hmm... I wonder what Britney's been up to lately...
*Click*

4) Read the snippet.
Hang on! I want more Britney! How do I get the full article? Oh I see!
*Click*

5) Go back to your Mobizine selection screen -
I can do that...
*Click*

Huzzah! The full story on Britney and Amy! PLUS loads of other extra stories from Popworld!

Got that?
Cool...
Mobizines Daily is published every day at 7am, (UK Time).

Do you read Mobizines Daily?
What do you think?

Leave comments below or email us at bloggers@refreshmobile.com

Mobizines Exclusive!

2007-04-30T13:21:00.000+01:00

Got an N73 or an N95 folks?
Well just in case you haven't - why not have a look in your applications folder for something called 'Download!'.
FYI - That's the icon over there ---------------------->

Found it?
Cool.
Now click on it - you should see a screen that looks like this:

Got it? No? Missing some icons? Ok...
Hit 'Options' then 'Refresh list' to update the content...
Got it now? Cool.
Now click on 'Services UK'.
And you should see a screen like this:

Yup.
That's right... Mobizines!

Not only is it now available for download onto the N95/N73 care of the Nokia Download App (Or 'Nokia Content Discoverer (NCD)' as we call it in the business, but it is also the super-whuzzy flash client too!
So no more having to email us your operator/number etc... while we wait for Symbian signing.

Woo!

A big thanks to all the guys at Nokia for helping us get this live.
We really really appreciate it.
Cheers...

Ooo - and in keeping with the blogging tradition - a big shout out to Neil at Nechbi.com for being one of the first bloggers to notice...

Orange joins the data club

2007-04-26T09:22:00.000+01:00

This just in from the Blogroll via Ewan @ smstextnews:

"Well, will WONDERS never CEASE?

Butter me in jelly and call me Christopher!

Look again. Yes, Orange, uh huh, ORANGE are launching an unlimited data add-on. This is from the company who most recently brought us the unbelievable and downright laughable ‘unlimited’ off peak data deal if you signed up to their 75 quid a month price plan. As if ‘off peak’ was any use.

Muchos kudos to SMS Text News reader Barry O’Connell for spotting this in The London Times!

So, the future’s bright, right? Have a read..."

The link Ewan is referring to is here.
But cutting to the meat of it - (as we do often do) - it works out like this:

Contract: Internet “snacks” – 30p for 15mins with daily cap of £1.50 or a “bundle” priced at £1 per day or £5 monthly for evening/ weekends or £8 monthly “anytime”.

Pay-as-you-go: Internet snacks – 40p for 15 mins with daily cap of £2 or a daily £1 bundle

Orange has (at last) joined the elite!

This is great news for Mobizines users -

T-Mobile, 3 and now Orange are clearly leading the way with their data bundles...
Vodafone are following up this summer and o2?

Well put it this way - they're not on our Christmas card list.
What about yours?

Not the N95!

2007-04-25T11:22:00.000+01:00

There have been a few mutterings around the office of late that we're concentrating too much on the Nokia N95 on this here new(ish) fancy blog of ours...

Well!

We're happy to announce that the Mobizines service is now live on the Nokia 6300.

To quote Nokia:

"Clean, modern design with stainless steel covers, 2 megapixel camera with 8x digital zoom, music player and FM radio, multimedia messaging, and a video player and recorder..."

Well they should add 'Mobizines Reader' to that list too!

The Nokia 6300, the Nokia N95 and the Nokia E65 are all over the press (certainly in the UK anyway) at the moment and we're happy shout out that we support all of these handsets.
The current clients are all Java but we are working on Symbian variants for both the N95 and the E65.

On a personal note - a friend of mine got the 6300 a while back and I almost dumped my (then) N73 for it overnight!
It is a great little phone and probably the best choice for non-techie/non-business mobile phone users.

Anyone out there got one of these handsets?
Have you tried Mobizines?

Let us know!
Leave a comment or email us at bloggers@mobizines.com

(note - we've got a new email address)

PS - Click here to see our handset compatibility list

Taking your lovely new N95 to the beach

2007-04-23T15:59:00.000+01:00

A couple of words of warning if you are taking your new and lovely N95 on holiday with you...

1. Avoid sand.

The slider mechanism really hates it and mine now makes a terrible grinding sound.

2. Take a spare battery.

The MP3 player gives a good few hours worth of playing but I frequently found myself having to limit my phone usage to stay charged for a full day on the beach.

Still, minor gripes, it really is a fantastic phone...

What's in yours?

2007-04-19T13:00:00.000+01:00

Got an N95?
I have. So has Richie.
Rich got his from T-Mobile.
I got mine from Vodafone.

Let's have a quick comparison, shall we?

Two sections: Box & Handset

In the box for T-Mobile:

Handset (obviously)
Mains Charger
TV-Out Cable
Hands-Free Kit
Mini-USB Cable

So that's what Rich got.
Me and my Vodafone package?
Well I got all of the above PLUS the following:

In-Car Charger
512mb MicroSD Memory Card + SD Adaptor
CA-44 Adaptor (the thing that changes old Nokia charges to new ones - you know the one)

First round to me then... er...I mean Vodafone.

Ok - moving on - What about on the handset?

T-Mobile - Rich got LOADSA stuff!
Vodafone - I got LOADSA stuff too! Except...

I'm missing my Internet Telephony Settings - (just like the Orange variant).
Boo.
Not only that but also on Richie's download app - he gets cool stuff like:
System Rush, EA Games, Gizmo VOIP...
What do I get?

Snakes.
SNAKES!

No matter how many times I refresh - ALL I GET IS SNAKES!
Nice.

T-Mobile (Richie) wins that round then!

Conclusion? It's a draw*.
If you want loads of accessories and stuff (and you don't mind missing out on a few features) then get your N95 from VFUK.
If you want access to all of your N95 features & software (and are quite happy to purchase your own accessories) then get your N95 from T-Mobile.

Happy shopping!
Obviously we haven't checked Orange and/or 3 - so if you have this handset on either of these networks - let us know what you have and haven't got!

*On this note - Rich thinks that ultimately I'll win as I kind of have a bit of a reputation for flashing the odd phone or two... ahem.

PAYG or FAYG?

2007-04-18T14:17:00.000+01:00

Are you Pay As You Go or are you Fleeced As You Go?

That is the question...

We all know the Mobizines Service is Free right? RIGHT?!
Right.
And we all know that the operators are very slowly coming round to the idea that we might not want to pay through the nose for our data charges, right? RIGHT?!

And although some people take issue with this - at least the operators are trying...
They are trying right? RIGHT?!

WRONG!!!

I get in this morning and start my usual 'pre-work blogroll browse' and thanks to the lovely Technokitten...

(whom I also happened to meet at a mobilistic soiree last week - cheers lass)

...I have now been enlightened to the world of PAYG Data Charges.
To use a common web phrase... OMG!

Vodafone seems to be leading the way with a whopping £7.50 per mb!

That's insane!
Almost as bad as their (current) contract prices!
But hey - it could be worse...

You could be paying for mobile data in Canada, OUCH!
Now THAT hurts.
(thanks to Ewan @ smstextnews for that one)

Edit: I've just been told off for being too negative - I'm going to go and do some research on PAYG prices - see if I can find the best offering.
Not just the worst.
BBS.

My Mobizines for mouseless devices

2007-04-18T09:41:00.000+01:00

Rich just showed me the coolest thing ever.

When we were putting My Mobizines together for the website we decided that it would be the coolest thing ever if we made the interface all drag and drop and Web 2.0ish. (I've now recanted and a more accessible version is in the works, but bear with me).

About that time Robin bought himself a PSP "for research". The website rendered OK but of course the PSP is mouseless: there's a pointer but you can't drag. So I hacked in the ability to triple click a Mobizine icon to subscribe. All was happy, the PSP project was kind of forgotten, and we went back to drag and drop as a metaphor - but triple click remained.

Scroll on six months and mouseless browsers are popping up everywhere. We tested My Mobizines on the Wii and - with triple click - you can indeed subscribe to a Mobizine.

And now for today's discovery: Rich just brought his brand new N95 over and showed me My Mobizines running on it in zoom mode. Triple click an icon and - bingo - Mobizine subscribed. This is obviously really bizarre as the point of My Mobizines was to provide configuration of your mobile device from a web browser, and here was a mobile device configuring itself.

I think this says more for the clever people at KDE, Apple and Nokia for making the N95 do proper web than my coding (no, the Javascript isn't obfuscated: that's how I code). It also says an enormous amount about the rock solid frameworks My Mobizines is built on: prototype by Sam Stephenson and script.aculo.us by Thomas Fuchs et al. As I side note I made a right tit of myself at a conference yesterday when I met Ryan Singer from 37Signals and I utterly gushed over prototype and the great stuff 37Signals has given the community. Oh well, sometimes its good to be a fanboy.

Overclocking madness

2007-04-17T10:30:00.000+01:00

Make Magazine (they really ought to be on our blogroll...there...done!) is reporting that someone has figured out how to overclock (and underclock, which is handier when you're trying to beat a game) a Nintendo DS Lite.

Which makes me wonder...overclocking the DS Lite requires the dexterity of a brain surgeon for flies. If someone's prepared to put that much effort into a games console how come there are no hardware hacks for mobiles?

How much effort would it be to clock an N95?

Whatley adds: A prize for the first person to correctly guess why Jim has chosen Bob Hoskins as his referral picture for this particular blog entry...

Top 10 Worst Phones (part 2)

2007-04-12T16:17:00.000+01:00

As promised the top 5 suckymost handsets...

5. The Danger Sidekick.

Continuing the strange American obsession with souped up pagers, we present the Sidekick. Not a lousy device (seems a little unfair to call it a phone) by any means and it did have one really whizzy feature: the rotating screen. Flick it and the screen spins out. Which is fine so long as you can remember which way the screen spins. Try to push it the other way and...look mum, I've got a wireless screen!

4. The Pogo.

What happens when you get a bunch of web designers in severe glasses in a room with a bunch of hardware engineers. The boo.com of wireless. I might be slightly biased as the Pogo was tenuously connected with a Web agency called Razorfish who have subjected me to some of the dullest meetings ever. Plus I used to work with someone who'd worked for Pogo and every new bit of technology you came across and got excited about was met with a curt "yeah, we invented that at Pogo." Which is impressive the first couple of hundred times you hear it.

3. The iPhone.

Of course it's going to be fantastic. It'll revolutionise everything ever and usher humanity over the edge of the singularity into which technology develops so fast that we mere moderns won't be able to comprehend what's happening. But Steve Jobs won't let us put Mobizines on it (yet, the Apple TV doesn't seem to be very tinker-resistant) so it's therefore no good.

2. Ericsson T39.

It's a WAP phone...with a single line display! Great if you like scrolling but the buttons are sized for a two-year old. Frustration in a clamshell. The T89 nearly made this slot thanks to the irascibility of its pointer thingy (for correct term see this slightly nsfw cartoon strip) but the T89 was colour which had much the same effect on the WAP development community as gravity did on physics. After all before Newton invented gravity stuff kept flying off didn't it?

But my...er, I mean, the jury's least favourite mobile phone of all time is...

1. The Siemens U10.

I have a particular horror of this phone stemming from my time working with the team setting up the UMTS for a large network operator beginning with T. And ending in -Mobile. You could not get it to do anything for longer than 30 seconds before it would "spontaneously power-cycle" as one QA report had it (that's crash to you). It was about the size of the XBOX 360 power supply and despite a generous screen the OS vendor (Motorola) had decided to use a font that was about this big thus rendering the advantage of the big screen redundant. It was like using a large-print book as a phone. Siemens did produce some good phones before their ultimate demise, this wasn't one of them. My job was to pair this beast up via bluetooth with a Microsoft PocketPC device (see Pocket PC, above) and use that to test browsing over 3G. Now, the Pocket PC of the time had a uniquely nerve-jangling chime to indicate that the bluetooth connection was broken, which would require restarting the U10 and the PDA. I used to hear that chime every 5 minutes or so as the U10 would crash, or drop radio power because its battery was low (read: always) or simply forget what it was doing and just shuffle about looking dazed. After a while I was hearing that chime in my sleep. I would happily drive over a road made of kittens and puppy dogs in cute little bows just for the satisfaction of smashing one of these to plastic shards. Bleurgh.

Phew. And relax.

They don't make 'em like they used to. Thank God.

Perhaps Nokia users are just easier to please

2007-04-12T14:18:00.000+01:00

Robin, our chief technologist (he posts here occasionally as "Eyemags"), has done some interesting research on user voting patterns on eyemags. He's posted the preliminary analysis at the Nokia Forum blogs, but the gist of it is, that when asked to vote on the quality of an Eyemag, Nokia users tend to rank their experience higher than any other handset owners. We've a bunch of theories about this (they have better screens, they can only see the first option, they're more enthusiastic by nature than Samsung owners) but nothing definite. Robin's story also got picked up at the Register in their inimitable nudge-nudge, wink-wink style.

A cool quarter mill for Shozu

2007-04-11T16:45:00.000+01:00

I'm a big fan of Shozu. It's the ideal mobile app for me as it integrates so nicely with something I actually use the phone for. It augments rather than interjects if that makes sense. Anyway, Shozu rather cunningly inserts "Shozu" into your Flickr tags to make pictures posted via its service easy to find and it's just clicked over the 250,000 mark at the online photo service I use - Flickr. I reckon that's about £25k's worth of pictures at Truprint prices.

Go Shozu!

Incidentally there are some very amusing pictures in the Shozu/Interesting stream. Modesty forbids me from posting the Starbucks one, so here's some dogs.

10 Worst Phones Of All Time (part 1)

2007-04-11T15:16:00.000+01:00

OK, so the N95 is a lovely piece of engineering, but it's time we celebrated the other side of the coin, the turkeys that wouldn't fly, the phones that should have been codenamed, "but seriously, WTF?"

In order to get in this highly exclusive list a phone needs to have some serious design or conceptual flaw (or simply not work), a flaw that really should have spotted and ironed out. Either that or the phone in question should have been placed in a burlap sack and dropped off a bridge.

In reverse order then:

10. The Nokia 7110

Actually, the 7110 wasn't the worst phone ever. As a phone (for making phone calls) it worked fine, with triband GSM and a really usuable UI. Its reason for getting in the list is that it was the first phone to demonstrate exactly how much WAP was going to underdeliver. "WAP is crap" started with this phone, although that really isn't the phone's fault. The other reason it's here is for the spring-loaded keypad cover which was slick as you like for 1999, but required the owner to hold it at exactly the right angle to work properly. And you had to put up with loads of people telling you it wasn't actually the phone used in the Matrix.

9. The Motorola P7389

This phone came out at the same time as the Nokia 7110 when I was working for a company developing some of the first WAP sites. You could get either the 7110 or the 7389 from O2 and my colleague Ben volunteered to get the 7110. I got the 7389. A week later after missing dozens of calls and still unable to find my texts I swapped it for the 7110.

8. Any phone running Windows PocketPC Phone edition

Just for the genius decision that you couldn't start calls from the missed calls register. If you could find it. Er...but...The new OS is much better (you can let my arm go now, Scott)

7. Nokia N-Gage

Partly for the notion that you could beat Nintendo at mobile gaming, but mostly just for the genius placement of mic and speaker. A whole new internet cult was born: Sidetalkin

6. Motorola V100

It's a pager. Not a phone. You can't fool me, I'm a professional.

...read on tomorrow for 5 to 2 and then I'll do a big countdown in my best David "Kid" Jensen style over CCS's version of Whole Lotta Love (stops, realises that at least half the people in the office won't have the faintest what that is, feels old) before getting to number one!

We love our N95...

2007-04-10T13:07:00.000+01:00

...So much we made a video of it !

Not only did we film Mobizines on the N95's beautiful screen - but we utilised the TV-Out port to our best ability too...

Scroll down to the vid and have a look see what I mean...

Featuring:
(in order of appearance)

Richie's N95,
Mobizines - Java Version*,
Mobizines in vertical & horizontal screen format,
MAXIM Mobizine in vertical & horizontal screen format,
Our very own Mobizines Daily...

...and a Mobizines Blogspot exclusive:

The new 'Autoscroll' feature that will be built into our next release...

Enjoy!

*Yes yes - we know the N95 is a Symbian handset - but Richie is our Java fiend and as the vid was his idea we used 'his version' of Mobizines.
We do have a Symbian version of it mind, we just haven't released it yet but;
If you'd like to give it a go - email us (along with your phone number and operator details) at help@mobizines.com and we'll send you the necessary files to install it yourself!

Tube Map you say?

2007-04-04T17:37:00.000+01:00

"Whassat den?!"

Well - we've been trying to collate a list of all the apps we like/admire/use daily to share with all of our lovely readers out there (all five of them).

So far Jim and I are yet to receive anything back from the group email we sent out last week along the lines of:

"Oi! Give us something for the blog!"

But to be fair to the guys upstairs - they do work hard - and the next release isn't far away.

SO!

In the interim - one of our 'blogrollers' - the lovely technokitten to be precise - reminded me of a handy little app we found a while back via the wonders of Transport for London.

Basically - on some handsets you can download a lovely interactive Tube Map via their wap site.
Unfortunately you're unable to get to this if you use an N73 or an N95 for example.
Ah-ha!
That's what TFL would have you believe!

We managed to find the source of the downloads and we've decided to share it with all you lovely people.
Got a phone? Gonna be in London Town anytime soon?
Then get this super duper Tube Map!
It's easy peasy... Ready?

Get your Firefox browser + WAP browser plug-in (if needed) and go to here:

http://wap.tfl.gov.uk/kcml/tubemap/downloads/

Once you get there use the following as a guide:

6230 - does 128px screens - Er.. 6230 then.
6600 - does 176px screens - That'll be your N70 etc...
S700 - does 240px screens (QVGA) screens - N73, N95, etc, etc...

Huzzah!
Tube map wonderment for all!

Why do you have to go to the above wap/website to get the map?
Well - you don't.

Go to the official wap site site on a 6230 and you're laughing.
Go there on an N73 however and you will not be shown the link to download the app.

Boo! Hiss!

New Handsets from T-Mobile

2007-04-04T09:41:00.000+01:00

T-Mobile UK adds Nokia N95, BlackBerry 8800g to its offering...

Us lucky Brits!

The first one is the Nokia N95 "multimedia computer", whose price starts from £0 and goes up to £289.99 (one of our guys has already done this - expect a video update soon)

The other one is RIM's flagship BlackBerry 8800g, priced in a £0-159.99 range. Of course, in order to get any of these devices, you'll have to sign for an appropriate contract.
Still, it's good to see two of the top devices available on any carrier/operator.

Maybe the others will catch up soon?

We just love testing out new handsets in this office - as you can see we've got Mobizines working on the N95 and we also support some Blackberry handsets - but not all.

Guess we'll have to get the Tech Team working on the 8800g!
Just out of curiosity:

Have any of our readers tried the Blackberry version of the Mobizines client yet?
If so - we'd love your feedback - email us at help@mobizines.com or leave your comments below...

Not all that quickly though

2007-04-03T13:27:00.000+01:00

Maths-phobes look away now.

Something about James' post struck me as a little odd. Not anything James said, but the quote from Voda: "Currently, you’re charged £2.35 for each MB. But from June 1st 2007, you’ll only pay £1 for up to 15MB per day. That’s 30 times more pages for the same price."

Huh? How does that work out? If 1Mb equals £2.35 before the change, and 15mb equals £1 now then actually you get 35 times as much data per pound! (35.25 to be precise).

No wonder it's taking the mobile operators so long to figure out that flat, or at least predictable, data tariffs are what we want. They can't even work out the basic maths in their pricing models.

Incidentally, that comparison above is only valid for the 15Mb you get for a pound. Stray over the 15Mb and Voda will charge you £2 a megabyte. For £2.35 you get 15.675 megabytes. Put another way that means you only get 15.675 times as much data for the same price as before not 30 times.

The thirty times statement comes from the proposition that you are paying for the first 0.5Mb of use per day and the other 14.5Mb are free. This is what's know in the trade as a bit of a strange 'un, rather like buying a chassis and getting the rest of the car for free. You can't buy a smaller bundle than the 15Mb offer, so the actual price of the thing is a pound for 15 megs however it's presented.

Slowly but surely...

2007-04-02T17:45:00.000+01:00

The operators are coming round to the idea that not all of us want to pay hideous fees for our data! As you can see here, the Mobizines service is FREE(ish). However - with some network operators it can cost you an awful lot of cash for that little thing we like to call Data.
As one of the lass' here at Refresh Towers used to say:

"Mobizines! Getta Bitta Data on ya Dog! Innit?!"

The T-Mobile Web 'n' Walk is clearly leading the way with their 'all you can eat' tariff. That combined with Three's X-Series demonstrates that very soon, draconian data download charges will be a thing of the past.

Good news today (well - ish) - Vodafone have just announced some of their plans for their data strategy...

The link is embedded up there ^ but for those of you who just want the meat - the site says:

"Currently, you’re charged £2.35 for each MB. But from June 1st 2007, you’ll only pay £1 for up to 15MB per day. That’s 30 times more pages for the same price."

It's not exactly the tidal wave of change we were hoping for but it's a step in the right direction (if only a little one).

To be fair to the guys at VF - they do allude to a monthly web browsing package but unfortunately give no details.

So we wait...

Opening up the floor

2007-04-02T13:22:00.000+01:00

A small number of us started the business planning process for Q3/Q4 2007 earlier today.

Lots of ideas flying around between the Refresh Mobile elite this morning...
;o)

Our next meeting, with an expanded set of attendees, is Wednesday 11th April.
I'm always happy to have our folk bring along their own ideas into where we should be heading next - but I thought I'd open it out even further:

Do any of our readers/users have any ideas or comments about what they'd like from the Mobizines service?

Leave a comment and let me know - be great to hear from you,

Kevin

N95 has Arrived

2007-03-30T15:40:00.000+01:00

Those of us that do not have a hangover because we were not invited to the do last night have just got excited because the N95 has now arrived at T-Mobile UK.

Richy has just ordered his and it only cost him for less than £40 for the upgrade (including P&P) as long as he agreed to extend his contract to 18 months. Worth every penny, its a great phone. Cannot wait for mine...

Hangovers all round

2007-03-30T12:38:00.000+01:00

The Mobizines Team held a bit of a bash last night for all of our UK-based content publishers as a big thanks for their involvement in Mobizines and a big HURRAH! for their successes so far.

Thanks to all of the publishers that were there last night – not a bad turnout actually, with something like 25 of our titles present and a further 8 'soon-to-be' Mobizines titles there as well...

(We were expecting the event to take place in early February but the freak snowstorm pushed us back. As a result, it was a wee odd to be handing out our Christmas Prizes at the end of March. Not sure the winners were complaining though!)

The prizes we gave out were for those titles whose hard working independent activities generated the most user interest from October through December 2006...
Basically our way of bribing people to get promoting and it worked!

So, ladies and gentlemen...
The winner is...

– big drum roll please -

City AM
(applause)

City AM launched last October and their front page promotion and editorial promotions were a grand way of getting City AM readers educated on the City PM Mobizine.

Now for the gushy bit:

Well done to the City AM team. We salute you for your splendid Mobizine; bringing City AM stories to the square mile and the rest of the planet with your updates on the morning’s stories as well as some tasty insight into tomorrow’s news.
Plus we are loving your rather big smiles in the 'official' photo...
All three of you - Martin Muncaster and Will Atkinson of City AM, (on the left and on the right respectively) with our CEO, Scott Beaumont (in the middle).
Looking good guys!

In second place was Time Out. One of our oldest titles which continues to attract interest for their up to date content and news on what’s happening in London Town. We're guessing people need to be in the know of what’s bubbling away in fair Londinium and what better way to do it than on le mobile.

The same can be said for Holy Moly - A mighty mobile experience and our well-deserved third place. A big thank you to the man himself for coming and missing out on his own team’s booze-up, what dedication! The stuff that appears in Holy Moly is still a winner with the Mobizines reading folk and the HM name has a very strong place in many hearts, especially those that can’t get enough of munching on scandalous gossip... You knows who you are.

Oh and finally...

Thanks to all of the publishers that made such positive comments about Mobizines, the service you receive from us guys and the team here at Refresh Towers.
It is really appreciated…
In fact we positively encourage any compliments…

(flattery after all gets you very far indeed…especially in this office... isn't that right Jim? You beautiful, beautiful person you)

Ahem...

Three new phones from Nokia

2007-03-30T11:42:00.000+01:00

Just picked this up on my RSS...

"The Nokia 5070 is an affordable phone (100 EUR before taxes) from the company's active line of products, that targets young consumers.
The 5070 packs an FM radio, a camera, and it could be used as an MP3 player. Battery of the device should hold up to 3.5 hours of talk, and up to 12 days of standby time.
The Nokia 5070 will be available in red and blue colors.

The second device is the previously rumored Nokia 5700 XpressMusic, a phone that "adds a new twist to mobile music."
It's a 3G device that runs Symbian OS with S60 3rd edition (Feature pack 1 or 2, I guess).
The 5700 XpressMusic aims to bring the combination of a music and a smartphone lifestyle to the younger crowd. In terms of specs, the Nokia 5700 XpressMusic comes with a 2 MP camera, a hiqh-quality screen which can display up to 16 million colors, the standard 3.5mm audio jack, a Bluetooth with A2DP support and the loud stereo loudspeakers. Memory of the device is expandable with microSD cards. Interested parties should wait for the Q2 2007, when the Nokia 5700 XpressMusic will start selling for the price of 350 EUR, before taxes and subsidies.

Finally, the Nokia 7088 is a device that targets the fashion-aware crowd in the CDMA markets. This phone is part of the Nokia's L'Amour Collection, and we've already seen its first photos, as well as the FCC's approval. The Nokia 7088 a slider feature phone that boasts the high-quality screen, a camera, a voice recorder, and a music player. It is expected to be available in selected markets in Asia/Pacific, Middle East, Africa, China and Latin America during the 2nd quarter of 2007."

These phones arent available yet through Nokia...
But I've been considering putting something on the mobizines.com web site asking for volunteers/offering prizes for the first consumers to get Mobizines working on these phones...

Thoughts?

Minor bug fix release this morning*

2007-03-29T14:13:00.000+01:00

We've just rolled out a new server release (no need to update your Mobizines client: it's just at our end) that fixes a problem some Symbian Edition 3 handsets were having where they couldn't get beyond the initial Mobizines catalogue download.

If you've recently tried installing Mobizines on a fancy new Nokia and have run into this problem it's worth having another try.

* That has to be the most exciting headline on the blog yet.

Dolce & Gabbana Gold RAZR with Eelskin Case

2007-03-29T11:01:00.000+01:00

I was just putting together a post on the Prada phone (soon come), when this appears in my blog roll via Digital World Tokyo: the D&G RAZR. Not only is it gold (gold I tell ya!) but it comes in an eelskin case and costs four times as much as a standard RAZR. They are therefore flying off the shelves.

Incidentally the choice of eelskin is interesting as there's an old urban myth that says eelskin wallets can wipe the data off the mag strips on your credit cards. Luckily MythBusters showed that one to be wrong so your SIM data will be safe. In fact they had to go up to 800 Henries or Gausses or something to wipe the data - if Cap'n Hex was here he'd tell me the right term, but he's at Star Trek convention dressed as a tribble.

UPDATE: turns out we had Gold D&G phones in the UK two years ago, but they're now discontinued. A rare case of Japan being behind the rest of the world. Bet we didn't have eelskin cases though.

The Power Outage

2007-03-28T17:24:00.000+01:00

We had some problems with the electricity coming into our building earlier... this was Jim's far from unique approach to working through it.. ;-)

Jim adds: I was holding a phone. We're a phone software company. That counts as work.

And for "problems with power" Kevin means "have so many computers the junction box melted." Just so's you know.

Neil & Robin - Building the Future

2007-03-28T14:39:00.000+01:00

It's all go today in the technology department!

We've been refining the new 'pre-installable' version for Symbian 3rd Edition handsets that ship in about 2 weeks time.

This is a picture of Robin and Neil creating a new "catalogue" version of our N95 and N73 client...
To commence shipping in the UK from around April 10th!

The picture was taken with an N95.

This is Mini Mobi

2007-03-28T14:09:00.000+01:00

Being part two in the series of the heroes of Mobizines.

Also known as Simon Lie. Simon tests the service and builds all the installer files. It's a big job: Simon was our employee of the year last year.

Simon is currently applying to become a British citizen (he has the good luck to be born Australian, but likes the climate here better) and so knows lots of obscure facts about the British constitution and whether you put the tea in before the milk or vice versa.

Our New Blog...

2007-03-28T12:04:00.000+01:00

Welcome to our new blog folks!

We've been working on it for a few days now and it is finally beginning to take shape.

Lets have a quick look around shall we?

This side of things is the actual blog.
This is where we'll wax lyrical about what makes us happy, what makes us sad and what makes us want to sit in the Marketing Den and eat cake.
As you can see we've covered off most of that already...

Happiness: Having a few N95s to play with!
Sadness: Losing registration SMSs in Mombai
Cake: Trying to tell you that we are FREE.... most of the time.

That's the main part covered...
Arrgh - Sorry, just being poked by Ops.

What is it?!
Oh.. Ok!
Ahem..

We will also be letting you know about any service outages/upcoming releases that will effect you directly.

Now - on the left of your screen we have the following...

Mobizines Preview - Believe it or not - this is VERY similar to what the Mobizines service will actually look like on your handset! We have a few titles for you to browse here on the blog - but the rest of them, (the other 60 or so), are only available on the mobile client itself.
Latest Mobizines - Kinda self-explanatory this one. Got Mobizines? Yes? Good! Make sure you update your list to see/add the latest titles to 'GO LIVE' on the service.
Blog Archive - Once again, does exactly what it says on the tin. 'Tis quite small at the moment, but hey! This place is only two days old! We do have actual work to do y'know?!
Your Hosts - The folk who write this place and keep it up to date. This list currently consists of plebans from Product, Web and Ops. We're working on adding more folks from the respective depts around the office(s). Marketing are next. Yes. You know who you are.
Our Links - We'd be silly if we didn't have links off to all things Mobizine/Eyemag related. The links here cover off everything that we have put online about ourselves. Have a look - see what you think - then let us know in the comments!
Blog Roll - Who do we like? What do we read? If you're on it - we read it. Wanna be on it? Drop us an email at help@mobizines.com or let us know in the comments. Expect this list to grow.
Technorati Search for: mobizines - This, I am reliably informed, is here to show us where we are being talked about as well as looking 'pretty cool'. Consider it our way of embedding ourselves more deeply into the mesh that is 2.0. ...whatever that means.
On the Office Sound System - Conveniently for us, the coolest cat in the office has her PC wired up to the speaker system. And fortunately for you - the tunes normally come via Last.fm - so this list automatically updates! Huzzah! We like Last.fm - it's how we share our love of underground Swedish thrash metal... and The Cure.
Labels - Labels are labels. We like to label things.

Have I missed anything?

SMS getting lost on the way to India and Pakistan

2007-03-28T10:34:00.000+01:00

...lost before they reach Bombay

We seem to be having trouble getting the SMS that contains the registration PIN for My Mobizines through to India and Pakistan. We get a send receipt back from our SMS provider but it looks like somewhere down the chain the SMSes get forgotten about and they never end up at the phone they're intended for.

We're looking at a new registration method that will remove the need for the SMS step, but if you do get stuck, send us an email at help@mobizines.com (we already get all the world's spam on that address so I'm quite happy posting it here) with your phone number and we'll try to sort it out.

James is being shy

2007-03-27T17:43:00.000+01:00

And has suggested that someone post a link to his interview with SMS Text News.

That's SMS Text News interviewing him, not the other way around.

As I seem to be the only person blogging today, and if Whatley posted it himself he'd look like a big 'ead, here it is....

James Whatley is interviewed by smstextnews.com - if you want to see the real face of Mobizines, here he is.

Big news from Samsung

2007-03-27T15:33:00.000+01:00

64Gb worth to be precise, cos that's how big the new SSD hard drives are according to this magisterial post from DigitalWorldTokyo. At the moment these things are only found in the big Windows Mobile devices but with a 1.8 inch footprint (that's a smidge over 45mm) it would fit in the beefier variety of normal phones (yes, Nokia we're looking at you.)

64Gb would take my entire music collection and leave me with just enough space to store my contacts. Now I just need to find someone willing to build an audiophile headphone preamp for mobiles and my perfect phone could be around the corner.

These things will be everywhere soon: according to DGT Samsung is predicting an increase in revenue from $400m a year this year to $6.1bn by 2010. That's like a gazillion per cent or something.

Blog dev update

2007-03-27T11:13:00.000+01:00

According to Google Analytics we're already getting visitors (hello!) - there's no such thing as a soft launch these days, but I'm going to link this formally to the Mobizines website on Friday. (There will be a small ceremony, featuring interpretative dance from the marketing team to honour this great event.)

In the meantime I'm trying to make the widgets on the left look a little less brutal so the layout of this page might change a bit (if you're reading this via the atom feed, ignore this witter.)

(YES I KNOW IT'S THE WRONG GARAMOND!)

Look! We've got an N95!

2007-03-26T14:45:00.000+01:00

Well - we've got three actually...

...and Guess what?!
Mobizines looks GREAT on it!

I managed to let the techies upstairs let one out of their sight for a whole week a little while back and I can safely say you are looking at the phone of 2007.

Do not misunderstand me when I say this - I'm not talking about 'the phone' that everyone will be chatting/blogging about (they're already doing that).
What I'm saying is - by the middle of the Summer; EVERYONE YOU KNOW WILL HAVE ONE.

Y'know how right now everyone's either got an N73 or a Sony K800i?
(that's the case in this office anyway)
Well forget about your iphones buddy - the N95 is the way forward.

What can I tell you about it?
Hmmm... Well - a few mobile bloggers have their own N95 RIGHT NOW - so there's probably not much I can tell you that hasn't been covered already...
My own opinion?
It's cool.

It slides both ways, which is cool.
It has a 'proper' headphone jack, which is cool.
It has a massive screen, which is cool.
It's got an AMAZING camera, which is also cool.
Nokia Pop-port? No.
Mini USB Port? Yes.

That last point - I'm sure it will a good thing in the long run (no - scrap that - I'm certain, I've already half-inched my colleague's blackberry cable) but Nokia just keeps changing things! AARGH!

That doesn't really count though - the phone is amazing and really needs to be seen to be believed.
Vodafone have promised me my own one in 2wks. These things often get delayed so we'll see - but if you manage to see one out on the market, get one!

Then once you've got one - Get Mobizines!

The man on the left is Q

2007-03-26T14:21:00.000+01:00

Being part one of a brief guide to the heroes of Mobizines.

Q stands for "Quality" and he takes it very seriously. If there's a problem with the live service he can morph into a giant Swedish robot and fix it. The rest of the time he eats cake and keeps the rest of us honest.

From my Flickr account

Why's it free then?

2007-03-26T13:32:00.000+01:00

We get this asked a lot. It seems that people simply can't believe that something with the crispy goodness of the Mobizines service doesn't come with a hidden cost.

The truth is a little more complicated: we don't charge most people to use Mobizines. Download the app, choose your content and we'll never bother you with a bill. But in some circumstances you can end up paying a little (less than a pint, assuming you drink premium imported lager in Central London) to read Mobizines.

People on the Three network in the UK and on T-Mobile in Hungary, for example, pay a small subscription. In both those cases you get charged a tiny amount (£2.99 at Three) a month to use Mobizines, because those operators have chosen to charge for services rather than data.

We're also launching some premium channels, such as the Chelsea FC Mobizine, that need a text subscription. (UPDATE: apparently, Chelsea's free too! Nobody tells me nuffink.) So there's a charge for that (UPDATE: or there isn't rather), although the other 60 or so titles are and will remain free (UPDATE: including Chelsea!).

Which brings us to the other way you might get charged for Mobizines: data. The mobile operators charge rather a lot for data access on the move in the UK. (We also have a South Africa operation and the average megabyte costs about 10% of the price in the UK.) Mobizines is a data service and grabs content from the server when it gets updated. The more Mobizines you have, the more data you use.

The best deal at the moment is the one I'm on: T-Mobile provide unlimited data access for something like £7.50 a month. The worst are things like the Orange Raccoon packages where data can cost you a £1 a megabyte once you go over your four megabyte allowance.

The other answer to the "Why's it free?" question is that we're planning to support the service on the back of advertising. If you're using Mobizines already then you'll already know what I mean by advertising and you'll know that they're not exactly intrusive. But the people with the big spreadsheets here reckon we can fund the entire operation on ads like those (and if you've ever been on the phone to one of our sales guys you're more likely to believe that, because they can talk the hind legs off a donkey, and then sell them back at 15% mark-up.)