News Archive

23 September 2005
Mbasics builds mobile video portal for Dutch newspaper
Eindhovens Dagblad, daughter company of Wegener Dagbladen BV of the Netherlands, has awarded Mbasics the order for the development of a mobile video portal. As of early October 2005, owners of a GPRS or UMTS phone can watch mobile videos with the latest news from the Eindhoven region. The video portal is network independent and suitable for all WAP and i-modeTM devices and PDA's that support video.
The news videos are preceded by a short commercial from selected advertisers. This allows consumers the unlimited and - apart from the cost of data traffic - free use of the video portal. End of 2005 the service will be evaluated, including opportunities for future deployment.
Parallel to the mobile service Eindhovens Dagblad launches a video portal on fixed internet. Noterik Multimedia BV from Amsterdam supplies the website and produces the video files for both the fixed and the mobile channel.
Mbasics builds the mobile portal on its All Device Support service (ADS), which has proven itself in real life as the publishing platform of, among others, the Dutch mobile consumer portal Telfort Spot.

15 April 2005
Mobile internet guide for TINE 2005
Mbasics is the supplier of the official mobile internet show guide for the Netherland's largest ICT fair, The ICT and Networking Event.
TINE 2005 will take place on April 19, 20 and 21 in the Amsterdam RAI buildings. Mbasics will be pleased to meet you at its highly visible stand no. 09.400.
To use the mobile show guide, enter http://mobile.tine.nl in your mobile internet browser. The site is adequate for i-mode, wap and html devices, and features among others maps, daily programs and contact options for close to 300 exhibitors.

12 October 2004
Mbasics delivers online Handset Profiling service
Mbasics offers a new service which strongly simplifies the development of mobile applications. Using a single markup format, mobile internet sites are produced for all GSM/GPRS and UMTS handsets. These include i-mode and WAP devices, PDA's, and phones associated with mobile portals such as Vodafone live, Orange World and T-Zones.
The markup language used is XHTML Mobile Profile (XHTML MP), the format maintained by the Open Mobile Alliance and adopted widely by the industry. The Handset Profiling service operates as a proxy server which dynamically translates this markup to the format most suitable for the receiving device. In parallel images are automatically scaled and their color constitutions optimised for the different handset screens.
Besides suppliers of consumer services Mbasics expects also developers of mobile enterprise applications to show interest in the service. One European telecom operator has already taken the Handset Profiling service into live use.

5 March 2004
European expansion of portal support and payment systems
The Mbasics platform now supports a large number of official mobile portals of operators throughout Europe. Among these are the i-mode and WAP/XML portals of KPN Mobile, E-Plus, BASE, Vodafone, Telfort, Orange, T-Mobile, Telefónica and WIND.
In parallel, operator-independent payment systems have been expanded to cover the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Spain, Italy and France. Mbasics started to apply these payment systems in 2001 in two countries, to generate revenues for its customers from unofficial i-mode and WAP content.

28 April 2003
E-Plus licenses Msitebuilder
E-Plus Mobilfunk, Germany’s third largest mobile operator, licensed Mbasics’ Msitebuilder service. The service will allow E-Plus customers to easily create colorful, communicative i-mode and WAP sites, which are dynamically optimised for E-Plus handsets.
Image processing and messaging functionalities have been given prevalent attention in this state-of-art application. Among the messaging features is the option to send images from mobile sites by email, basically allowing any user to build their own mobile greeting card service.
The service is expected to go live in May.

31 October 2002
Second generation Mbasics tools launched
Using one single content management platform, mobile sites published are now simultaneously available through i-mode, wap and pocket pc. The new site building services include full support of colors: in images, texts and page makeup. Multiple national and international content payment systems are in operation. In line with the new offering this website will see a major overhaul before the end of December. Companies who are interested in utilising the Mbasics online tools to publish mobile services for others, please contact Mbasics for evaluation of beneficial resale arrangements.

3 April 2002
Released: Msitebuilder

25 January 2002
i-mode and color imaging implementation started
These exciting features are being incorporated in a new site building service which will be launched in March. After completion and testing, the same features are planned to be made available for existing Mbasics accounts.
The new tools will allow easy creation of mobile sites that utilise the advanced properties and color screens of i-mode devices, and of WAP phones such as Ericsson T68, Nokia 7650 and Trium Eclipse.

19 July 2001
WAP animations are here - in the footsteps of Japanese success?

Animations WAP site: http://mgo.to/screensavers

A WAP animation is a short sequences of images, displayed in a WAP phone. Despite their limitations these small movies are sometimes surprisingly smooth, which will only improve as new phone models support more images and also colour. With the continuing delays of UMTS, animations may provide the closest experience of mobile video for the time to come.
Mbasics, a developer of mobile internet tools, has launched a service for the construction and hosting of WAP animations. The service provides that the animations are automatically tuned to the calling device - an indispensable feature given the diversity of WAP phones currently in the market.
Both the construction tool and the animations have been field tested for several months. Indications of market acceptance are positive, as has previously been the case with i-mode cartoons and animations in Japan.
For testing and demonstration purposes Mbasics maintains a WAP site from which a number of animations can be downloaded for free. The animations keep running after breaking the phone connection, saving GSM airtime and costs and making them suitable as offline phone screensavers.
Mbasics expects consumers to be willing to pay for WAP animations, on a similar level as for ringtones and operator logo's. Content providers are offered the use of the animations construction and hosting facilities for a fee starting at 1000 Euro per year. Considering that the service works fully online and runs on existing GSM and GPRS infrastructure, no additional investments are required.

8 June 2001
Graphical site statistics
Graphical site statistics are now available for all accounts, Free and Pro. The graphs are dynamically generated for pageviews, sms sent and emails sent over the past 28 days. These are the pageviews of mGo.To/Humor, seen at noon today:

Site stats are accessible from a separately provided url, which can be linked in with a click of the button.

1 March 2001
Mbasics to support i-mode in parallel to WAP
Mbasics, one of the leading services for construction and hosting of mobile internet sites, will be supporting i-mode by the middle of this year. The decision follows the joint announcement of NTT DoCoMo, KPN Mobile and Telecom Italia Mobile to bring i-mode to Europe by the end of 2001, and was stimulated by earlier interest in the Mbasics platform from Japanese commerce.
CEO Frans Franken: "We expect that i-mode will be positioned as the fast way to access the mobile internet, which will primarily be the merit of the GPRS networks that are to become available during the year. WAP has acquired a poor reputation partly due to the comparatively low bandwith of GSM, but also because of initial lack of phones and content. While now operators are on their way converting existing GSM networks to GPRS, and phone manufacturers are working hard to get the first GPRS devices in the streets, there is outside Japan still little initiative in the field of producing i-mode content. We are determined to be at the forefront of providing the tools for creating content on the highest level, both for WAP and for i-mode."
Mobile sites hosted with Mbasics are stored in XML format. Depending on the type of device or browser used, the site visitor will receive the information either in WAP or in i-mode format. Browser detection is currently applied by Mbasics to cover for other, less apparent differences in WAP devices.
Initially only the commercial accounts in the Mbasics service will feature i-mode, running over GSM networks with GPRS to follow as it becomes available. Existing WAP accounts have been successfully tested with GPRS. During the second half of the year all Mbasics accounts are expected to be operational both in WAP and in i-mode formats, and both for GSM and for GPRS networks.