Messages posted by: Michael.Maguire

The BlueWhaleMail team has been working hard to listen to your feedback and improve the software.

Recently we launched a new version with a new, improved user interface, as well as initial work towards attachment support.

We hope that you'll give it a try, upgrading if necessary.

You can upgrade by using your phone's browser to point at http://bluewhalemail.com and downloading the new version.

Note that Symbian-based phone users may find that they need to re-enter their info after the upgrade. Apologies but the upgrade involved an overhaul of how we store information on the phone.

We're working to get multiple account support working, and we hope to have it ready soon...

Many flip phones automatically 'background' applications when the flip is closed.

Some phones do not allow such 'backgrounded' applications to keep working.

We've recently made a few changes which may work better some phones. Nevertheless, we know there are some phones, e.g. Motorola V3xx which simply don't support active applications in the background.

Can you try downloading the latest version from our website and giving it a try?

Slightly different on the SonyEricsson K850i and other SonyEricsson phones.

See modified steps 4 and 5:

Start at the phone’s “standby” screen – that’s the one that shows up after turning the phone on with options across the bottom for “Media”, “Menu” and “Contact”.

Push the thumbstick to the right. The phone will display the following question and list of possible responses: “Create a shortcut to a favourite function?” “Yes, No, Don’t ask again”. Scroll to “Yes” and press the thumbstick in to select it.

The phone now shows the main menu – on my phone it has the icon for the “Messaging” application selected. It says “Messaging” at the top of the screen and the icon kind of pulses to try and show that it has been highlighted. We’re looking for the “Applications” folder within “Organizer” so use the thumbstick to scroll down two icons to the “Organizer” and press the thumbstick in to select it. (If you put BlueWhaleMail in “Games” then scroll right and up one to “Entertainment” which holds the “Games” folder).

The phone now shows the contents of the “Organizer” – scroll down to “Applications” and press the thumbstick in to select it.

Scroll down until the cursor is on “BlueWhaleMail” at this point either select "Shortc." (abbreviation for shortcut) or press the thumbstick in to select the BlueWhaleMail application.

It can help to have a shortcut to BlueWhaleMail so you can start the application quickly, or switch to it if you minimised it to leave it running in the background (which is what we recommend, unless you’re roaming).

Here’s how to create a shortcut on the SonyEricsson W910i:

Start at the phone’s “standby” screen – that’s the one that shows up after turning the phone on with options across the bottom for “Media”, “Menu” and “Contact”.

Push the thumbstick to the right. The phone will display the following question and list of possible responses: “Create a shortcut to a favourite function?” “Yes, No, Don’t ask again”. Scroll to “Yes” and press the thumbstick in to select it.

The phone now shows the main menu – on my phone it has the icon for the “Messaging” application selected. It says “Messaging” at the top of the screen and the icon kind of pulses to try and show that it has been highlighted. We’re looking for the “Applications” folder within “Organizer” so use the thumbstick to scroll down two icons to the “Organizer” and press the thumbstick in to select it. (If you put BlueWhaleMail in “Games” then scroll right and up one to “Entertainment” which holds the “Games” folder).

The phone now shows the contents of the “Organizer” – scroll down two icons to “Applications” and press the thumbstick in to select it.

Scroll down to “BlueWhaleMail” and press the thumbstick in to select it.

A newer version of BlueWhaleMail is now available for download.

You can do this from within BlueWhaleMail by choosing the 'Help' command from the main menu, then choosing 'Update'.

Michael

Facebook has updated its API's. We should have an update shortly.

Facebook made some changes to their site, and we needed to make some changes to BlueWhaleMail to adjust our service to their changes.

There's an update now available. If you choose Help/Update from the MessageList, it should download the update for you.

Hope that helps,
Michael

Dear Sherls,

We have found that there is a problem with the storage mechanism on SonyEricsson phones (technical speak: their J2ME RecordStore).

If an application using this RecordStore is closed "ungracefully" i.e. if you press the red hang-up button or turn off the phone instead of choosing "Exit" from the application itself, then because the application doesn't get a chance to close things down properly, sometimes the RecordStore gets corrupted and it's very difficult for a program to start up again.

We added some code to BlueWhaleMail to try to recover from this situation, but we still find that this recovery code takes a looong time to run (sometimes up to a half an hour).

We're trying to work around this bug with the SonyEricsson RecordStore. Sorry if our work-around isn't working quickly enough for you.

[Posted by Sherls]

Forgot to mention in my previous post, my phone is the Sony Ericsson C905 and the version of BlueWhaleMail is 01.05.07.

I am running it with GMail, which was working fine, until I had to restart my phone, when BlueWhaleMail does not load properly.

I'm afraid the setting look right -- I think instead this is an LG Viewty issue which you're running into during the first sign-on.

We've had a lot of problems with the Java implementation on LG phones, which we find to be rather poor.

Sorry we can't do a better job with this phone.

We know that BlueWhaleMail works well with Gmail.

Are you sure you have Imap enabled in your GMail settings?

To do this, while logged into Gmail's web site, go to "Settings" at top right then pick the "Forwarding and POP/IMAP" tab then click on the "Enable IMAP" radio button and finally click the "Save changes" button.

To better address data backup and geographical network latency issues, Blue Whale Systems Ltd now hosts data on servers in Canada.

Effective 25 Aug 2008, the Blue Whale Systems Ltd Privacy Policy has been updated from:

"...Blue Whale Systems maintains information on computer servers that are located in the European Union..."

to:

"...Blue Whale Systems maintains information on computer servers that are located in Canada and the European Union..."

Note that the Canadian Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (“PIPEDA”) was the first non-European legislation to receive the European Commission’s approval with regards to its own Community Data Protection Directive. See
European Commision Staff Working Document SEC(2006) 1520 for more information.

LONDON, August 11 /PRNewswire/

- Facebook Wall Posting and Messaging With News and Status Updates Straight to Your Mobile

Blue Whale Systems Ltd makes Facebook on a mobile phone as easy as Text Messaging with today's release of enhanced Facebook features for BlueWhaleMail, their free mobile push social networking application. BlueWhaleMail notifies you of your friends' Facebook status updates, wall posts and news items, and allows you to send them a message, poke them or write on their wall in response. Notifications are displayed as soon as they are received without requiring users to manually browse to the Facebook website. The service also supports email and is initially available for Nokia Series 60 and SonyEricsson phones.

"The complexity of setting up mobile applications on many phones is a great obstacle for most people so we've worked hard to make BlueWhaleMail child's play to setup" said Michael Maguire, founder and CTO, who previously worked in the BlackBerry Applications team at Research In Motion. "In a revolutionary approach to deploying mobile applications we've also launched a Facebook Web application to help with setup" continued Michael. BlueWhaleMail can be interactively test-driven and pre-configured for download at http://apps.facebook.com/bluewhalemail/ - people will only need their Facebook username and password. Alternatively browse to bluewhale.net on your mobile.

"We're trying to make social networking as much a part of mobile life as Text Messaging." said Richard Seward, founder and CEO. "With its unique combination of email and Facebook our service is the simplest choice for those wishing to stay on top of their social life while they're away from their computer". The service is free and funded by a small, unobtrusive banner ad in the display of incoming items.

As far as I know, in most countries (for example most of Europe) there is no cost for receiving a Text Message like the one we send in the BlueWhaleMail setup process (these countries are "sender-pays").

There are a few countries (such as the U.S.A and Canada) where receiving a Text Message may result in a charge (they are both "sender- and receiver-pays" countries).

Receiving an email using BlueWhaleMail will use your network operators data network, and data charges apply -- it would be good to make sure that you are on some kind of data plan.

We've tried to provide some information here:

http://www.bluewhalemail.com/forum/forums/show/10.page

but you should check with your network operator.