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MOBILE APPS DEVELOPERS SHOW THE WAY
The Star, In.Tech, Aug 25, 2005
LOCAL mobile application companies have been doing the country proud for the past few years, albeit without any fuss and fanfare.
These companies have been representing the country at communication fairs, earning the respect of the Asian community in the process.
However, despite their achievements within the regional mobile applications industry, these companies are not well known among users.
Ten developers under the Maxis Developer Programme (MDP) showcased their mobile apps at CommunicAsia in Singapore in June.
Three of those companies – MNC Wireless, Murasu Communications and Xirien Technologies – spoke to In.Tech about their interesting new applications.
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Users will be able to check their e-mail on the go using MNC Wireless' Go!Mail. |
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E-mail on the go
MNC Wireless believes it has just the app that everyone wants – Go!Mail. It allows anyone with a J2ME handphone to check their e-mail (any number of POP3 e-mail accounts) on their phone. The app also allows users to open and view attachments such as text files, JPEGs, BMPs, GIFs, PDF (Portable Document Format) and even ZIP files.
Go!Mail uses GPRS (General Packet Radio Service), EDGE (Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution) or 3G (third-generation) networks. No installation of any client software is required and all the user needs to do is log in to a WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) site.
Jasmine Lee, chief executive officer of MNC Wireless, says: “We know that e-mail is still the killer app for the Internet. When WAP first started, you could do e-mail on the go on WAP 1.0 and 2.0 but it was very slow.
“Now on 2.5G and 3G it is much faster and the user experience will be better. The other good thing about this is that it works with any POP3 e-mail and you can even open attachments.”
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| Jasmine Lee: 'Go!Mail works with any POP3 e-mail and you can even open attachments.' |
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For everyone
“What we want to do is reach the masses. We know that a lot of Malaysians have e-mail accounts. They may not have PCs at home but they have e-mail accounts and on average each person probably has 10 accounts. We think that this app will really take off,” says Lee.
Another advantage of using Go!Mail is that the e-mail is not hosted on the user’s phone so there is no worry of space constraints. When a user views his e-mail it is not downloaded to the phone. Similarly, when an e-mail is sent out, a copy of the sent mail is not kept on the phone.
This is the magic of server technology, said Lee.
Additionally, photos which are attached to the e-mail are resized according to the phone’s screen size before the user views them. With PDF attachments, the system strips out the graphics and just lets the user view the text.
Go!Mail can also be configured to send the user an SMS (short message service) whenever he has new mail.
MNC Wireless has not released this application yet as the company is still negotiating to launch it in collaboration with one of the local celcos.
Lee says that she expects Go!Mail to be launched within the next few months and it should carry a minimum fee of around RM5 per month.
Among the Asian countries that expressed interest in Go!Mail at CommunicAsia are China and Thailand. In addition, MNC Wireless is also thinking of introducing this app to the European market – Britain, Sweden, Norway and Denmark.
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| Put masks and 'tweak' your face using Moblife P-Unit. |
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Candid camera
Another app that MNC Wireless will be launching soon is Moblife P-Unit, an entertainment app which allows users to put mugshots in an illustrated background or even give the person in the photo a new “look.”
“Camera phones are getting more popular. Apart from just taking a photo and sending it to your friend, we thought of doing a lot of things with photo-taking and making it fun,” says Lee.
Last year, the company came up with an app to “frame” users’ photos. This was a popular application and led to the Moblife P-Unit application. Moblife P-Unit was developed with a Korean partner and it was previewed at this year’s CommunicAsia.
According to Lee, Moblife P-Unit deals with face morphing and it’s quite high-tech in that it really recognises where the face in the photo fits and also where the facial features are.
“In a lot of face-morphing technologies, the software just basically changes your face. It doesn’t really recognise where your eyes, nose and mouth are.
”This app can actually cut out your face and place it anywhere in the frame,” she explains.
How do you use it? Simply take a photo, log in to the WAP browser on the phone, go to www.moblife.tv, choose a service (mask me, greetings, facial make-over, cosplay (costume play), comic me or morph me), upload the photo, and the result will be sent back to the user.
Practical uses
MNC Wireless believes Moblife P-Unit will be popular with users who are thinking of going for plastic surgery as the “facial make-over” option allows them to see what they might look like with bigger eyes or a sharper nose.
The company is hoping to offer another option to change the hairstyle of the person in the photo.
Moblife P-Unit was launched early this month. The service is accessible at www.moblife.tv via WAP and MNC Wireless charges RM2 for each photo processed.
According to Lee, both the Go!Mail and Moblife P-Unit apps are the first of their kind in Malaysia and South-East Asia.
Another app the company is currently researching involves the hosting of camera phone photos.
“A lot of people don’t have laptops or PCs at home, so they don’t know where to upload their photos, so they always have to delete photos on their phone before they can take more.
“What we want to do is hosting for mobile photos, so you can store your photos on a server and continue to take more photos,” explains Lee.
A little help
MNC Wireless as well as Murasu and Xirien (see accompanying stories) are thankful to Maxis and the MDP because it has given them opportunities to consult, obtain feedback and even learn new things.
MNC Wireless’ Lee says best of all Maxis allows her company to work with other celcos when launching new apps.
The MDP was launched in 2003 and it is the first local developer programme led by a mobile service operator. Maxis Multimedia (a wholly-owned subsidiary of Maxis) has allocated RM30mil to be injected into the programme over five years.
This year, it plans to invest RM8mil from that initial fund to enhance the programme by including tools and development support for technology platforms like Java SIM, Windows Mobile and Symbian.
Copyright Star Publications (M) Bhd
• See also:
Remotely controlling the home
SMS in Tamil
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