MobileMe, OVI and My Phone - the Birth of the new Walled Gardents

March 11th, 2009 Rafi Posted in Mobile Phones, Mobile Technologies 1 Comment »

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!

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vufone releases windows mobile client

December 12th, 2008 Rafi Posted in Mobile Phones, Mobile Technologies, NewACT, vufone 1 Comment »

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.

“vufoneâ„¢ 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

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vufone is here!

November 25th, 2008 Rafi Posted in General, Mobile Phones, Mobile Technologies, NewACT, Personal, vufone 1 Comment »

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).

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The Enough! Series - Mobile Phone Segmentation

September 1st, 2008 Rafi Posted in Mobile Phones, enough No Comments »

I know marketing people are in love with market segmentation. They sit all day long thinking which features business people need, which are mostly used by consumers and which are most desired by early adopter. This “productive” thinking gave birth to, for example, the Nokia E61 (without the camera) which was quickly replaced by it successor the Nokia E61i (the one WITH the camera).

This segmentation causes one major problem for me: I can’t get a business phone (Nokia Eseries, Blackberry etc) with a decent camera.

Who says that a business person does not need a good camera? I can also ask the same question from the opposite side: who says that high end consumers do not want decent email capabilities with their phones (including active standby plugin, for example)?

In the recent years I used (quite regularly) the following phones:

  1. HTC Tytn
  2. HTC Tytn II
  3. Nokia E90
  4. Nokia N73
  5. Nokia E61i
  6. Nokia N95

Do you see a pattern here? I realized that I jumped back and forth between Nokia Nseries and Eseries - why (you may ask)? well, the answer is simple - when I was focused on taking photos I needed a decent camera so I used Nokia Nseries. When I needed email mostly I used Nokia Eseries or HTC Tytn II.

When I recently tested the Nokia E71 I was so frustrated with its camera that I return to (hmm hmmm) my old E61i. I’m not greedy - I would be satisfied with a medium resolution camera such as the Nokia N73 (so long as it has the same lens as the N73) although I would love to have a combination of, for example, Blackberry bold and the 8MP camera from SonyEricsson C905.

The funny result is that I compromised on the OS and stability…instead of using a Symbian phone (which I really like) I’m using HTC tytn II which has a reasonable 3MP camera, good email support and….terrible UI and an OS that I need to re-flash once a month.

I say - ENOUGH! I want to have both. Give me a E71 form factor device with a good camera or Nseries phone with QWERTY keyboard and decent email support (with active standby plugin) and I’m yours forever. It is not as the so-called business phones are cheap. Really, If I’m already paying hundreds of dollars for a “business phone” I will pay few extra $$$ to get a good camera.

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SonyEricsson C905 - Camera Preview and Sample photos

August 19th, 2008 Rafi Posted in Camera, Mobile Phones, Photography, SE C905 2 Comments »

I just received a prototype of the SonyEricsson C905. With its 8MP and good optics, it is definitely a worthy candidate to become the king of Mobile Cameras.

Here are samples of photos I took with the SonyEricsson C905.

Close up pictures taken with the C905:

Few Landscape photos with the C905:

Photos Enhanced with GIMP:

Photos taken with the C905 zoom:

This is quite impressive given that the buildings are located about 2 miles away…

Few initial observations:

  1. The C905 produces sharp and balanced photos in daylight, especially if you set the white balancing settings manually to daylight. however, in some cases the white balancing was not accurate even with manual settings especially in low light or where there is a dominant color in the photo. This problem may be related to the specific phone I have since it is a pre-production unit.
  2. The level of details in the photos is really nice - not such a huge surprise given the 8MP sensor but still…
  3. Optics is very nice and the zoom works quite nicely. Sure, it is not SLR grade, but as a replacement to most point-and-shoot cameras it is really good.
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