Santa Tracking Site

It is not Monday, and this is not a mobile site! But it is Christmas and this is a great site.

As your may be aware NORAD is the bi-national U.S.-Canadian military organization responsible for the aerospace and maritime defense of the United States and Canada, they use highly sophisticated tracking equipment to monitor the airspace above Canada, USA and the North Pole. It was the monitoring of the North Pole that led to the annual tracking of Santa. And before you ask, yes this is the real NORAD. Check out the offical NORAD Santa Tracking site and share it with the kids.

Merry Christmas, normal service will be resumed in the New Year

Looking at mobile sites on your PC

It is often the case that you want to review a mobile site from your PC. There are a number of ways that you can do this, but probably the easiest is using an emulator in a web browser, as you can then also easily grab screen shots of the service.

The emulator that I normally use is the one provided by dotMobi. As you can see in the screen shot below it frames the site in a handset image.

Have a try on these sites:

Google

Facebook

And finally, given the bad weather you may find the weather.co.uk site useful.

Do you use another emulator? Please share via comments below.

Time to spread some Christmas Cheer

This week we have a site that you can share with customers, suppliers and friends. We have made a Christmas micro site, with a variety of seasonal content available for download, and best of all its all free!

To get to the site simply text WIN to 83738 (standard text charge), you will then get a WAP push to allow access to the site. Have an explore, and try some of the content.

We are planning to send a Christmas MMS message to our customers and suppliers, wishing them a Happy Christmas and giving them a link to access to this site - if you would like to have your customers and suppliers included please send your contacts mobile numbers through to me, please send in excel ideally in a +447 format.

For non-UK mobiles and iPhones please browse to http://bit.ly/winxmas

Radio 2 Foodie Club

No excuses this week, as this one is simple and free, and best of all its run by WIN. If your not in the UK try signing up on a test SIM in the office.

As you are probably aware we run a number of services for the BBC, including text in services for radio stations. We also run SMS News alerts, and text clubs and its a text club that you can try this week.

The Radio 2 Chris Evans foodie club is extremely popular. To join simply text Food to 88291 and receive a weekly link to the Radio 2 mobile site with a creative recipe. That's it! So give it a go.



If you want to end the service simpy text STOP to 88291.

Now for something more interesting... Fring

At its heart Fring is an instant message application with some social media add ons. But most usefully for WIN people it gives you access to Skype on the move. Even if you have used Fring before its worth downloading again as they have just added Video calling (so far for Nokia 5800, N97, N95 and N82. More devices soon.) Oh and yes iPhone and Android phones are supported too.

Installing Fring (see further down for Android an iPhones)
There are three ways to install, by sms, mobile internet, or sideloading from your PC. The easiest is sms, so hop over to http://www.fring.com/, and we'll get it installed.

On the home page, choose "Download", and you should get the following page, fill in your details and then click "Join".

You will then get an SMS (example below), with a link in it, click through on the link and start the download process. Its not a large file so should not take long to download.

You may have to authorise the install at various steps, but a bit like a computer just keep saying yes, and it will eventually install.

Android Install

On your Android phone, go to Settings > Applications and check the box to allow ’unknown sources’

Point your phone browser to m.fring.com and download - simple. More help here.

iPhone Install
Like all iPhone applications you need to go to the app store to download Fring. More help here.

Blackberry
At this time it looks like Fring does not support Blackberry, but let me know if you get it working.

Post Install
When Fring first fires up you will need to configure various things... so lets help you through that.

(1)   (2)   (3)

First of all (Fig 1) you will be asked to configure your access point, the way Fring will connect to the internet. If you have a WiFi enabled device you can use WiFi when available, this is great if you are at home or in the office. If you are planning to use regularly you should be on a data plan.

Next you need to set-up a Fring account, so click New User (Fig 2) and setup user name and password - this will mean next time you install on a phone it will remember all your other details.

And finally you can add you IM accounts, and as we all use Skype let's do that. So choose Skype (Fig 3)

(4)   (5)   (6)

If you get a message like Fig 4 click on close, you can always scan for users later. You should then be able to enter your Skype details (Fig 5), exactly the same deatails as on the web. Fring will then load all your Skype contacts (Fig 6) and you are ready to chat.

Get Chatting with Skype on Fring
Once installed Fring is pretty intuitive. Click on a contact, and a chat screen will open, so pick someone and try it out. If you want to Skype call them, highlight them in the contact list and simply press your green call button, and you will start a Skype voice call (for selected phones you will be offered the option to video call). So give it a go and let us know how it went on the comments.

Other things try...
Fring has lots of other "add ons", on the home page click "Options", scroll down to "Go To", and then select "Add Ons". You can then add things like MSN, Yahoo Chat, Twitter and more, take a look

Comments? Please let everyone else know if it worked for you.

Now For a Mobile Download

I said we were going to take things slowly, so here is the next little step, downloading some free content.

For this you will need to be able to get online on your mobile, which was covered last week. The only costs involved is a standard charge SMS and data charges for mobile internet browsing.

So the step by step instructions are:

• Text SNATCH to 83738 (in the UK, otherwise browse to http://www.pocketfreefun.co.uk/ on your mobile) this will send you a special kind of sms called a WAP Push (or Service Message depending on manufacturer) to your handset - iPhone users this is not currently supported your device, so try using a friends phone.
• This WAP push message is unique link to a mobile internet site, click on the link and your phone should go to the site.
• Once on the site (pic below) have a browse around and select a piece of content to download.

• To download the content click on it, and follow the instructions.

This site is hosted on WIN's P2 platform, and features royalty free content much of which was produced in the KL office. We run a similar free site called Phone Deco for Maxis the largest Malaysian Networks Operator. This site at peak has done 30,000 downloads a day and has been a great success with Maxis and their customers. We are currently offering similar sites to other Network Operators to drive data usage and customer loyalty - to find out more email Soon Heng Lim in KL.

Getting Going, small steps this week.

Well as the first post in the WIN Mobile Monday series I thought we should take it easy, and check that everyone's mobiles work. So there are two mini tasks this week, Sending an MMS and Getting Online. These tasks all require that your phone is correctly configured, this may sound trivial but one of the commonest issues when using mobile services are that basic services are not enabled by the mobile network operator (MNO). So lets get started, but firstly is your phone on a contract or does your phone have credit? If not this won't work, and nor will most things!

Sending an MMS
So the first thing I would like people to try is send someone else in the office an MMS (Multimedia Message Service). Now since I don't know every phone these instructions are generic, but should broadly work, if you get stuck leave a comment below and I or someone else will help you out. Note if you have an iPhone you will need to ensure you have the latest firmware to be able to send an MMS.

• Go to messaging
• Select New message, and message type MMS / Multimedia.
• Now add a photo/image to the message, click options or similar, and choose insert photo/image. Sometime you are given the choice of a saved image or a new one you decide.
• Now add someone's number and click send.
• The message will take slightly longer than an SMS to send, and your phone will need to make a data connection to send the message.
• Once successfully sent you should see the sent message in our sent items.

If the message wont go, you will need to check the two most common problems.

• Do you have the right MMS settings, your Operator customer care or handset manufacturer will be able to send you the settings. If you get stuck here are the site for the major manufactures, who have instruction for most handsets: Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Samsung.
• You may need to ask your Operator to enable MMS, this is less of a problem these days as most operators enable by default.
  
  
  
  
  

Getting Online
The process for getting online, is again different for each handset manufacturer, but will broadly be similar.

• Go to the main menu screen, and click on the web / globe symbol.
• Click on this link and you should go online to you network home page.
• Once on the home page have a look around, then try navigating to another site, try going to http://www.bbc.co.uk/. The site will automatically detect that you are on a mobile device and give you a mobile ready version of the site.

You should see a web symbol similar to the above

Many phones have shortcuts, so if you have a Nokia try pressing and holding the "0" key, and it should take you online - if you take a look the key also has an "i" symbol, standing for internet.

Like the MMS settings if things do not work you should call you operator or visit your manufacturers site: Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Samsung.


Let Me Know How It Went
Hopefully you will have been able to send an MMS and get online - things that will be need for future sessions. But please let everyone know by posting a comment below, Did it work? Any thing unexpected happen? Top tips for your handset / fixing problems.