vufone blog

I’m new around here.  Let me introduce myself.  My name is Jeb Brilliant, and I’m a bit of a mobile nerd.  I also pride myself on being very up-to-date on all the news and goings on in the mobile industry.  I like most anything that’s mobile and wireless.  What I like more is anything that can save me time and effort - that’s where vufone comes in.

Since I’m new here I thought I would start at the beginning by explaining in my own words what vufone does.  Basically it’s a sync application on steroids.  First it will sync your calendar and contacts from Outlook or Google with your handset, but vufone also syncs your text messages (SMS), photos, music, videos, documents, and tasks.  vufone is the only app that can sync so much of your content all in one program.  The vufone website acts as the middle man and does a great job of it. I had a very convoluted system for syncing that I am simplifying with vufone.  I’m going to focus on calendar and contact syncing in this first post.  Please also bare in mind I see things as a Nokia smart phone user so my view on some things may be a bit different then yours.

I started off by signing up for the vufone service at www.vufone.com.  Then I sent out a link to the download via a text message.  It arrived in a few seconds and I clicked it and started the download process.  As I was downloading the app to my phone, a Nokia N79, I clicked on the calendar section of the vufone website and found the Google logo.  By clicking on it I was given the ability to authorize vufone to sync with my Google account.  It couldn’t have been easier.  Calendar and contacts are authenticated separately, so follow the same steps for the contacts section.

Once I had authorized vufone to sync with Google calendar, the download to my phone was complete; then I began the syncing process.  After a few minutes I was set, the calendar on my phone was fully synchronized with my Google calendar.  The best part, and most important to me, is that now my phone can sync with Google automatically and regularly without me doing anything.  I don’t have to try to remember to sync my phone anymore it’s all done for me and, like I said before, anything that can save me time and effort I like.

In the next blog post I will talk more about another great vufone feature.  It’s nice meeting you all and if you have any questions or want to chat you can email me at Jeb@vufone.com (email will be active in another day or two) or on Twitter at @JebBrilliant.  Please also add @vufone on Twitter so you can follow us and keep in the loop.

vufone wizard

One of the biggest challenges developing a mass-market mobile application using J2ME (targeting, for example, Nokia S40, SonyEricsson or Motorola devices) clients is application permissions - or more accurately - how to effectively help users to download the application and set its permissions correctly.

When a mobile operator deploys a service onto his phones he can preset or pre-load the client with the right permissions and his own certificate to the device and that’s it. Third party service providers or software developers need to rely on different mechanism. When we (or other software developers) develop a software to be downloaded to mobile phones, we need to sign the application with a certain authority (such as Java Verified, Verisign or Thawt) which grants the application permissions to access data on the phone. Alas, these permissions are lower than of the handset manufacturer or the mobile operator and require the user to manually set the permission of the application.
For years this requirement resulted, IMHO, in a major setback of mobile application development and prevented real innovation to penetrate mass-market devices.

The reason I’m sharing this frustration is that this problem was the focus of the recent upgrade of the vufone service.

When registering to the vufone service users basically need to follow 3 main steps:

1. Download the agent to your phone
2. Set the application’s permissions correctly to allow smooth access to the data on the phone
3. Configure your account with the data you would like to sync, how often etc.

Since we cannot override the current crippling J2ME signing processes, we developed a special wizard which guides you though the entire process with real screen shots of a phone. Moreover, during the entire process the phone reports exactly what you did so we can either progress automatically to the next step or offer you the correct troubleshooting steps to correct your steps.

I believe that this is the first time such a tool is available and I’m certain that following these easy steps,  screen shots and simple guidance on the screen (both web and phone) will simplify this process.

Currently we implemented the full Wizard for Nokia S40, Nokia S60 and SonyEricsson devices. Other devices see a more basic version. We will add the wizards for other phone platforms in the upcoming days. We will be happy to hear any feedback to the wizards we introduced to vufone.

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).

Cheers,
Rafi Ton