mobMMS update blog

URGENT - site goes offline for server change 22nd Feb!!

2008-02-20T16:01:00.002Z

Due to a complete lack of space on our current server, we're changing hosts. This has happened sooner than expected, hence the lack of warning. The site will go offline sometime on 22nd Feb and I've no idea when it'll be back up, but hopefully as quickly as possible. I'll need to set up the new server and upload all the content so it could take a day or two at a very rough guess.

Apologies for this - I'll see if I can get the url to redirect to this post during the down time to keep you all up to date. Otherwise, please bare with us for a few days!

Thanks

(ps spread the word if possible to others)

Bit of a design tweak!

2008-02-03T17:05:00.000Z

As you'll hopefully have noticed by now, I've given the site a little bit of a tweak in terms of the design, and added a little bit more colour to it rather the the pure grayscale theme I was using previously. Gone is the starburst background, now replaced by dangling stars instead, and the control panel is a bit more homely with a wallpaper effect!

Feedback - good or bad, as always, is welcome! Either post it up here, or on our forum

Important info!

2007-12-10T15:49:00.000Z

Please take a look at this post in our forum for some important news regarding the site! We need your feedback on it!

Earn money from your photos and videos on mobMMS!

2007-03-02T14:19:00.000Z

Yes, that's right - the WAP site is going live as I type this, and along with it is a brand new feature, the ability to earn some real-life cash with your mobMMS postings! :-D

Here's the theory:

You send a photo or video in to mobMMS, and as long as you've send it using your unique email address which links it in with your account, you will see a new panel in the left-hand column like the one in the image below:

You can then set the price in terms of credits for each image or video in your collection. Currently, each 1 credit costs the downloader 10p, but this may change (I'll make sure it's kept up to date somewhere).
The site tries to suggest a best-fit price for your content, and suggests it. But of course, you can set your pricing to whatever you want, up to a max of 15 credits (£1.50).

Should you not want to include your content in this scheme, you just click on the "deny" button and it will no longer be downloadable. Naturally, private or deleted stuff isn't available for download either (unless you've added people to the private allow-list who then try to download it). You can re-include it in the downloads, or deny it from the downloads whenever you wish.

Once someone had downloaded an item of yours via the WAP site, your account gets the credit added to your balance. This balance then gets converted to cash once you reach a threshold level (still in negotiation, but we guess around £10), and you can withdraw it to your PayPal or NOCHEX account.

Sounds good? Well only downside is that a large %age is taken out by the networks just for them allowing us to do this payment stuff :'-( This is about 50-60% of each payment. Plus we need to take a wee bit out to actually keep the site alive as all this is costing a pretty penny I tell thee! But whatever is left after the networks steal their amount from it, you can guarantee it'll be a fair %age. I can't give figures just yet as we need to confirm these percentages with the network and billing provider, but I'll let you all know ASAP.

Naturally, you'll be accumulating credits on your account as soon as the billing system goes live on the WAP site. You'll also be able to track in real-time what people are downloading from you and what your mobMMS credit balance is (http://www.mobmms.com/info/stats/ currently), so if one image or video is more popular than others, you can tell that from the stats and make more of them!

As always, this is work in progress, and we'll be giving everyone using the WAP site for the first time 15 free credits just to give it a whirl, so all stats will be reset once these have expired and the billing system goes live properly. I also need a little more time to polish off the user stat-tracking page, but that'll be finished pretty soon hopefully. But the most important thing at the moment is getting the WAP site up and running otherwise you won't be able to earn anything at all!

Post any feedback or questions up here and I'll try and answer them as this isn't the clearest of posts. I'll be putting up proper pages and explanations for this all on the main site later, just want people to know why random new panels are popping up all over the place!

Rotation of images!

2007-03-01T00:27:00.000Z

It's another new feature! Although I added this a while back just haven't gotten round to adding an update on it...

Basically, if you've taken a photo the wrong way round with your phone - there's now no need to worry, as they can be rotated so they're the correct way up once you've uploaded them to the site - amazing!

Just keep an eye out for the buttons with the and icons to do the magic!

Make sure you send the pics in using your own special email addresses displayed once logged in, otherwise these options won't be available to you.

QR Code beta-testing

2007-01-02T19:14:00.000Z

Well first Happy New Year everyone!

Now, new year = new features - first one being the addition of QR codes, and will stay...if it works! ;-)

Basically a QR code is like a barcode you see on food items, except instead of being scanned at the checkout and telling you the price, it's scanned by your camera phone and takes you to the mobile version of the site, where you can download a copy of the image or video to your phone.

Some phones come with software pre-installed for scanning these QR codes, others you need to download some software to get it working.

If your phone does not have the software pre-installed, go to http://reader.kaywa.com/getit to download it if your handset is supported.

This is an example of a QR code:

Scanning that with your QR-enabled phone should take you to the mobile version of this page - give it a try!

So, what's the point?
Well, just a bit of fun really! Plus it saves you having to type in the url by hand, and eventually if it works well I'll be adding a load of easy-access features using it as a shortcut :-)

If you give it a try, please post in the comments section here and let me know how it went!

mobMMS WAP - MMS on your mobile!

2006-12-18T18:00:00.000Z

Wanted to be able to view all the juicy content over on mobMMS wherever you and your mobile are?! Well, soon you'll be able to! :-D

It's a bit silly for a mobile phone MMS site not to have a WAP site designed specifically for phone access, and whilst we did have a WAP site up, it was rather...basic! Plus you couldn't access any of the adult stuff on it.

So we locked ourselves away and are just about ready to unleash mobMMS Mobile onto the unsuspecting world!

Think the proper mobMMS site...just smaller! You'll be able to view images, videos, write/view comments, view latest comments, send/receive personal messages, and so on all from your phone!

And being mobMMS, we try to make sure the experience for the end user (that's you!) is optimal...so all images are resized automatically to best fit your mobile phone screen, thus leading to quicker loading time and better visibility of photos :)

"I've got a really ancient fossil of a phone which only supports WAP 1, not this new-fangled WAP2 magic", I hear you say!
Fear not my friends, for our site will automagically detect the best WAP version your phone supports and dish up the right content accordingly - whether that's WAP1 or WAP2!

"I've got a REALLY ancient fossil of a phone which dates back to the dark ages and not only supports WAP 1, but doesn't even have a colour screen!", I hear someone hanging their head in shame at the back say...

Don't even worry about that - our site will still dish up the right stuff for you, and images will be in the oh-so-retro .wbmp format (i.e. black and white). Although why on earth you'd want to is beyond me...but who am I to judge?! ;-)

Now...all this techo-stuff sounds great in theory...but in practice it's a whooole different matter. So that's why I'm posting this - to get beta testers!

If you fancy a sneak preview before everyone else and want to help give it a test run, drop aleco a PM and he'll get back to you with how to access the sparkling new WAP site! :-D

Free MMS message sending is back!!

2006-11-12T23:17:00.000Z

Huzzah!

Basically you can bypass the cost your operator charges you for sending an mms regardless of content size. Our free MMS method allows you to only pay for the data sent, and if you get data included as part of your tariff, you can send MMS messages in to us completely free of charge! :-D

I've explained it in more detail over on mob453 forums, so go read up on it to see how much you could save!

Bear in mind this is still a beta service (as an increasingly large amount of the new services are!!), so if you encounter any bugs or odd things, please let me know so I can investigate them!

Works fine for me sending pics and vids though :-)

2006-11-11T18:52:00.000Z

Server move - downtime expected

Just a quick note to say that our server is going to be moving homes!

Expect a max of 2.5 hours downtime during the nights (between 11pm and 5am sometime, UK time) of 17th and 18th November 2006 while the equipment is physically moved to its new location.

2006-10-29T00:01:00.000+01:00

New video player!

Yay! I've still got a few things to sort out on it, but everyone say hello to the new mobmms video player!

Bit of an improvement on the old one I hope - you can now fast-forward/rewind, view the video normal size or standard 3gp size if it's too blocky, see the length of the video, and general improvements such as the watch again thing at the end of the vid :-)
Oh it's also about 1/4 of the filesize of the old player which means you can start watching even faster! ;-)

What'cha all think? Got any suggestions for improvement?

2006-10-24T22:26:00.000+01:00

beta feature - selective privacy

Ok before I start this is a beta feature and may start/stop working at any point, or be removed completely! However, testing and feedback would be very useful!

We've done some closed-beta testing and it seems to be working fine, so I've decided to unleash it for wider testing.

Basically, if you send in or set an image of your own as private, you can now allow certain users you choose to be allowed access and see to this private image/video, whilst everyone else still can't see it/access it. This is set on an image-by-image basis. The option to view all private images/vids will be added at a later date.

As it's still in beta, you can only add users to the allow list by entering in their user/album id.

To find out their userid, just visit their profile. There'll be a new line under the link to their album which states their user ID.

Just copy this number into the box in the new user access panel and press "submit".

You should now see their name under the "Users allowed:" bit, and they will have access to your private image.

To remove a user from your allow list, just press the icon next to their username in the list and their access will be removed instantly!

Please let me know what you think of it, any bugs, any improvements, etc. etc. in the comments section here please :-)

2006-10-08T18:27:00.000+01:00

Got a blog/website?

If so, fancy having your latest album pics and vids displayed on your very own site?

Well I'm currently testing it out here as you can see in the right hand column.

The top one ("My latest mobMMS pic") is the single-image version, which just displays the latest image from your album and displays it with no messing around. This is the easiest option for most people.

The one below that ("My latest mobMMS pics") is one which allows a bit more customisation, but is a bit more fiddly as you need to set a few variables - but you'll be able to do a lot more with it, such as:

show/hide the subject title

show/hide the date and time

show more than 1 of your latest photos at once

alter the size of the thumbnails displayed

show/hide your avatar

show/hide a link to your full album

I'll also be adding options like "random photo" and "random photos from your album".

And if that's not enough, with a bit of css magic you'll be able to customise it to ensure it fits in with your blog/website! :-D

Now, this is currently done with javascript at the moment, rss/xml versions will be on their way shortly, so we should have all bases covered for those wanting to display mobMMS content on different sites!

It doesn't even have to be your album - if you like someone else's album, it'll be simple to swap your latest pics for someone elses, allowing you never to miss one from your favourite mobMMSer by accident again!

I'll be putting up instructions and details soon once the last few tests have been done, as the url/location of the script may change during this period.

Is this something you'll use? Or got any other feedback? Let me know in the comments!

2006-10-07T17:50:00.000+01:00

Image and video theme suggester!

Well decided it was a good idea to have a "theme of the week" type thing going on with the site, so those unsure what to post or do in their pics can just follow the suggested theme!

Should hopefully allow for some fun themes like Halloween, Christmas and so on - and if everyone gets involved with the theme then even better! :-D

Maybe the winner of the best photo sticking to the theme of the moment will get a prize (...or more likely due to lack of funds, a place in some kind of Hall Of Fame I'll set up).

It probably won't change every week, in fact I've no idea how often it'll change...so can't call it "theme of the week" really, but keep an eye on it for changes!

Post ideas for themes and stuff up here and we'll get them in the rotation :-)

2006-10-05T22:58:00.000+01:00

New email addresses!

Ok just going to be a quick post as I'm a bit ill and busy!

New email system is live, as in the email address you need to send pics in has changed for registered users.

Why?

Well I didn't really want to, but it needed to be done.

Basically, this has been in the works for many months, but I only just got the time to do it. Software updates and a few bugs I won't go into just yet, as the old method still works for the time being until people get used to it, meant that I had to alter the way emails are sent in :-(

What I had wanted to do was to change it to your username and then your password, eg aleco+mypassword@pics.mobmms.com, but unfortunately that was impossible as several people have characters in their usernames and passwords which are illegal when it comes to sending emails...
Sorry to this user but you're the best example I've got of it:
http://www.mobmms.com/view/index.php?action=profile;u=6513 is a prime example - that username just would never work as the start of an email address!

So we were stuck with a decision - as usernames became effectively a worthless part of the address, we scrapped that part, and instead of just a completely random string of letters and numbers (eg f3kj4le2 or something), we opted for what we've got now - a sort of half-pronounceable random password followed by your album/user id.

Also people seemed to be struggling with the + part of the email address so I've tried to minimise the useage of that for just the main part of the email addy.

So...hope that clears things up for the mo, I might explain more after the full changeover!

Feedback, as always, is welcome

2006-09-13T18:41:00.000+01:00

Idea time again :-)

Well a lot less serious than the previous post!

Basically, remember the beta thing on the pages with the image thumbnails? Well I hope so as it's there on every page basically (with possible exception for Opera users)! Anyway, with the old design it used to show the rating of the image.

However, due to the more complex stuff used on the site now, it'd need a lot more processing in order to achieve the same thing now, and with the server already under strain I don't want to make it any worse, so am not adding this back just yet.

So...how about I replace the rating bit in it with...a baby avatar pic of the user!? If they have one that is. It'll allow you to see who sent the pic in without opening a new page up too.

I'll be messing around a bit with it anyway, so keep an eye out.

Thoughts on a postcard, or just post up a comment here ;-)

2006-09-08T12:19:00.000+01:00

Serious news time folks

As you might've noticed, mobMMS is free to use, had no ads or sponsors, and therefore makes no income, which would be fine except the costs of keeping the site up and running are spiralling up each month which is making my bank balance look rather worrying!

I've been trying to think of ways to keep the site as it is, but to somehow try and get some ££ back to cover these costs.

We had been relying on mobMMS's big brother site to pay for its running (mob453.com, but alas, due to reasons I won't go into here, it's currently doing ringtones free of charge too, leaving zero income but huge bills still! :-(

Obviously I can't keep it running this way as a negative bank balance won't keep a site up, so I've come up with the following possible solutions:

charge for a WAP site
eg charge something like £1 (or equivalent amount in different countries, ~$2/€1.5) a month for access to the full downloads of vids and images

subscription fee
maybe a small subscription fee for members who will get benefits non-paying members don't.

pay per download, sender gets %age
But, I quite like the idea of setting up a wap site where people pay per download, but the sender of the image/video gets a percentage of the amount charged too, and that's what I think I’m going to try and set up. So the more people upload, the more money they'll make themselves! ...Although I'll need hundreds of people to do so in order to cover the server costs! But at least the community will be getting back what they put in as well, whilst hopefully allowing us to cover the costs of keeping running!

Still trying to decide about the above, so now's your chance to give your views/feedback/suggestions/ideas/etc before it's too late and I start work on one of the above!!

2006-09-06T20:18:00.000+01:00

Oooh some good news finally!

It's taken a while, but...yes...that's right...

The "Most Popular" pages are back in action!! :-D Enjoy!

2006-09-06T17:26:00.000+01:00

Ok this blog thing is weird I really need to get to grips with it properly one day!

More updates:

1. Problems sending pics in to your album address when using your phone email?
Some people seem to be having problems sending photos in using the email program that came with their phones. It's not a problem with mobMMS, but seems to be a bug in the email software. For some reason it doesn't seem to like the @pics.mobmms.com bit...or in fact any email address with a subdomain in it...go figure!
Got me stumped as it's completely valid as an email addy (my Pipex one was @dsl.pipex.com), so I'm not sure there's much I can do to fix that unfortunately.

I would therefore suggest that if you have problems with the phone email, try sending it as an MMS. That will definitely work and help you to rule out other problems. We also have a free method of sending in MMS messages, but I've not updated it to work with the new site just yet...

2006-09-05T23:30:00.000+01:00

First annoucement I'll start with is the good stuff:

1. New smileys!
I added a whole kaboodle of new smileys today - I'm sure some are going to get used a little more than others though... ;-)

2. The "Latest Comments" page:
This is now working properly! No more random amounts of replies per page, or even pages with nothing on...all nice and functional again now :-)

Only minor problem is a bug from porting all the stuff over from the old design and database meant that older posts are displayed in a messed up order until a new reply is made. I probably could find a way to solve this but it would take a serious amount of time for not really a great deal of benefit.

3. The "Most Popular" page...
Yes, I know it's still broken, but I didn't see the point in rushing to fix it because all hit counters for the images were reset when the new theme went live, so am just waiting a while for some pics/vids to get a decent number of views. Expect to see it's return at the weekend.

4. Profile page:
I also know the link to user profiles isn't up there just yet. I might sort this out tonight if I have time, otherwise it'll happen in the next few days. That whole page needs updating though so it's not finished yet by any means.

Well, that's your lot for today. Getting tired now and the other posts need to go into more detail about slightly more complex stuff, so I'll bore you all with that at some other date!

aleco
mobMMS.com

2006-09-05T23:11:00.000+01:00

It had to be done, the inevitable "first post" of a blog (my first ever blog too).

So, what's this for?

Well, it's supposed to be an area located off our mobMMS server (which has suffered the occasional downtime ;-) ...so hopefully this'll be up if that isn't!) to keep everyone up-to-date and informed about goings on/updates/downtime/ideas etc. and to maybe receive feedback on them!

Now that this post is out the way, onto the real content!