Three Days with a Phone

woofim.com is a cool mini blogging service which focuses on allowing full management as well as posts and user discovery directly from the mobile phone.

it includes few cool features such as:

1. upload and posting of media (in addition to text);
2. create a personal mini blog (for example, you can see my personal woofim page)
3. ability to create topics and share entire topics rather than a single post - for example you can see my topic about mobile phones and gadgets.
4. create private topics or items that are accessible only to your friends
5. and the coolest feature of all is the ability to follow a keyword and not only a person.

The service is in a private beta but you can request an account to participate in the best testing.

For years (and years) I struggled with the mobile operators’ “Walled Garden” attitude. For years mobile operators tried to convince me that only they can offer quality mobile services simply because (and here you can add any reason you want). The truth was that all they wanted it to keep their grip on the user.

In the last couple of years I began witnessing cracks in this approach. Mobile operators added developer environments and portals which allowed simpler integration to their networks and easier ways to access their users and more.

So I should be happy. Well, I’m not.

The main reason is in parallel we witness the birh and rise of new “Walled Gardens”. Apple’s MobileMe offers me their service but ONLY if I use an iPhone…well, I don’t. Microsoft’s My Phone offers me their service but I have to be an owner of a Windows Mobile phone (ya….really…me…Windows Mobile…). And Nokia offers me OVI but I have to use a Nokia S60 phone….

Moreover, each and every service keeps me locked within their domain. Lets assume I use a (hmmmm) Windows Mobile phone (just joking there) and I want to move my data to the latest and greatest Nokia N97 (please release it already…) - hmm… sorry.

OK… I want to sync my data with Google (Calendar and Contacts) - nope sorry. I want to share my pictures with Flickr - nope sorry.

Someone give me device independar, Internet service friendly mobile content sync service!

vufone - synchronize your phone to the web

vufone is a personal utility which allows mobile phone users to backup, synchronize and manage their phone on the web. The vufone service allows seamless, periodical, automated and simple bi-directional synchronization or contacts, calendar, messages, images and photos, video files and music to a secured account on the web. vufone also allows you to mesh up and share your data with services such as Flickr, Picasa, Facebook, Youtube, Google Calendar and Google contacts.

visit us at http://www.vufone.com and watch our short intro video.

Register on vufone.com by March 1st and get one year free service !

Backup your mobile phone Regular automated backup of your phone (contacts, calendar, messages, photos, videos and music) No cables needed, over-the-air backup Safe copy of your mobile information on a secure server Contacts, messages, calendar, photos, videos or documents Restore to any new phone brand or model Synchronize your phone with vufone or other services Get your Microsoft Outlook meetings or Google Calendar on your phone Automatically synchronize Microsoft Outlook contacts or Gmail contacts to your phone Synchronize your Microsoft Outlook tasks to your phone Use your phone contacts in Microsoft Outlook or Google contacts Manage your phone contacts and calendar on the web Periodical and automated synchronization over the air Upload and Share your photos, videos and music Upload your pictures, videos and music from your mobile and view them online Download music, pictures and other files from the web to your phone Create online albums and show them to friends and family on the Web Send your pictures and videos to friends’ phones Upload your mobile photos and videos to your favorite social network Facebook, Flickr, Picasa, YouTube View your photos and videos online in full quality More Cool Features MyPersona - make your picture appear on your friends phone when you call them Grab pictures from any Internet site directly to your vufone account and your phone using our Internet Explorer and Firefox plug-ins. Turn any web picture into your phones wallpaper Listen to your mobile music online

Supported Phones

see our supported phones page for a full list of supported phones using Java, Symbian and Windows Mobile platforms from Nokia, SonyEricsson, Motorola, Samsung, HTC and more.

Use vufone in your local languge.

Currently supported languages are: English, Spanish, German, Italian, French, Dutch, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Portuguese and Russian.

The vufone service released a client for windows mobile professional edition devices (WM 5, 6 and 6.1). Now you can use all these touch screen windows mobile phone to sync to our service.

We will be released the windows mobile standard edition (a.k.a smart-phone edition) shortly.

Checkout the new supported device page - there are over 280 supported phones now.

“vufone™ is a personal service which allows, amongst others, full synchronization, access and management of the user’s data including contacts, calendar, messages and files; Picture and video uploading to a personal area and to social networks such as Flickr & Facebook; Synchronization of personal media files between the personal computer and the mobile phone; Extending Outlook to the mobile phone using an outlook plugin; Simple, over the air, user data transfer between devices when, for example, upgrading a phone while assuring data integrity and adaptation to the new device; Ability to send picture from any web site directly to the phone using vufone’s MSIE or FireFox plugins.”

Cheers,
Rafi Ton

Hoora! I can’t believe we’re finally here! vufone is launched!

Before we begin with vufone, let me first catch my breath. Perhaps it would be a good idea to start where it all began and tell you what brought us to this point.

About 2 years ago, 716 days ago to be exact, I bought a new mobile phone. After nearly 20 years of Nokia addiction I decided to jump back in the water and I got the new (at that time, of course) Sony Ericsson k800i. The walkman capabilities, 3.2MB camera and slick interface just did it for me.

Excitement turned to dismay as the next few days were hard to imagine. The phone itself was great, don’t get me wrong, but I just couldn’t get my old data on it. Imagine the ultimate black book, my mobile contact list, after all these years. The ringtones, some of them cut specifically for me by a DJ prodigy who also happens to be my sister in law, were they all destined to be gone? and what about my messages? could they ever be salvaged? I was sweating bullets!

For the first couple of days I juggled PC suites, Nokia’s and Sony Ericsson’s respectively. I couldn’t get them to communicate with each other. I then pulled my bluetooth capabilities to the max. Finally, I registered to 3 different internet services that asked me to master guru terms like SyncML and forced me to dig deeply into my phone settings. In the end, I managed to transfer most of my contacts, some of my ringtones and none of my messages.

It sucked, it was cumbersome, it was tiring, it was frustrating and in the bottom line it was a failure. Then came a wonderful moment of Eureka. And we sat down, rolled our sleeves and decided to solve it.

2 years and later vufone.com finally opens to the general public. Vufone was primarily designed so you won’t have to go through what I went through, but we realized it can actually do much more. You don’t need to learn any technical term, just register and follow the instructions. The rest is up to you.

So what exactly can you do with vufone? Well, to start with you can back up, restore and manage all of your contacts, meetings, pics, clips, tracks, ringtones and messages. This means you can switch phones without losing a single bit of information. You can manage your appointments and meetings from our web or using our MS Outlook plugin. In addition, you can upload your pics and clips on an ongoing basis and share them with your friends via your favorite social networks. You can also synch your music tracks with your phone and play them on the go. Come to think of it, you can actually manage your phone using a friendly web based interface.

You may say “these guys probably support only a handful Windows mobile device” - well, No. Our focus was on mass-market phones. Sure, the service supports Windows Mobile and Symbian, but more importantly, it also supports your standard feature phones such as Nokia S40, SonyEricsson, Motorola and others. Take a look at the Supported Devices page to see a full list of supported phones. Don’t see your phone there? drop us a note in the support forum. Supporting many languages was also a priority for us, realizing that as weird as it may sound, there are other spoken languages other than English. So, we launched the service in the following languages: English, French, German, Chinese (traditional and simplified), Spanish, Portuguese, Russian and Italian.

Oh yeah, we realize our service ain’t perfect yet and we appreciate your support in making it such. For the next 3 months we offer it absolutely for free. For the lifetime of your phone that is. That’s right, join vufone now and get it all for free for the lifetime of your phone. 100% FREE. Guaranteed.

Happy to be here and thankful for your support and feedback, both good and bad (good is fun to hear, bad helps us improve).