Content Adaptation by mobile network operators - resolved!

We told you we'd keep you posted on that one so there it is! If you have a look at our post of last July the 10th (Content Adaptation by mobile network operators), you might remember that all of a sudden quovadislive.com pages were automatically being reformatted on mobiles connected to specific mobile operators. That is called "Content Adaption". Although content adaptation is not a bad idea, it simply didn't work for our web services. Therefore we immediately contacted Vodafone UK to see if we could have our website whitelisted so their "Content Adaptation" software doesn't reformat our pages. The guys over there have been very supportive and worked on the matter immediately. We've also sent an email whitelist request to Vodafone Ireland the same day which seemed to have gone un-actioned as our webpages were still being reformatted 20 days after in Ireland. So we've contacted Vodafone UK again to see if they could help and we are now pleased to announce that our webpages are not being reformatted when connecting through Vodafone Ireland neither. From QuoVadis Live! we'd like to thank Brian, Ryan and all the rest of the team at Vodafone for their support. Thanks guys!

Map your point of interests too with QuoVadis Live! geowizard

Seemed kinda obvious isn't it? Until today users could add new venues only when mapping geoevents or geotours. From now on, users can also map tourist point of interests (POIs), that is places worth visiting (and not strictly commercial), and sport and leisure centres. The "Map event!" button in the top bar has also been replaced with a simple "Map it!" button. Clicking the "Map it!" button launches our user-friendly Geo Wizard which will guide all the way to map your geoevent, POI or activity successfully. Know an unmissable geoevent, a POI worth visiting or a nice sport & leisure centre? Feel free to map it at quovadislive.com.

QuoVadis Live! celebrates Apollo 40th Anniversary

In a few days, it will be 40 years since the first moonwalk... Wow! 40 years already! Apollo Missions represent an amazing testimony of the great things mankind is capable of achieving. 40 years ago 400,000 people working together simply won the biggest challenge to date: to land a man on the moon. What many of us are dreaming of, only a few 12 have achieved. The Apollo Program is trully inspirational to us in that sense it makes us always push the outside of the envelope.

WE at QuoVadis Live! quovadislive.com would like to pay a tribute to all those men and women involved in the Apollo Missons and especially to those lucky enough to walk on the moon. To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the first man on the moon, we've implemented a little control at the bottom right of each quovadislive.com map that will rocket you directly to where these heroes went.

Again happy 40th anniversary to the 400,000 people involved in the Apollo Program. Kudos to them all.

Apollo 40th Anniversary at NASA:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/apollo/40th/index.html

Apollo Landings on Google Maps:
http://www.google.com/moon/

Send events to QuoVadis Live! from your Twitter account

If you've got an account on Twitter and if you are following QuoVadis Live!, you can now send your event to QuoVadis Live! as a direct message which has to have the following format:

EVT*<name>*<date>*<time>*<location>*<admission>*<category>*<type>*<short URL>

Name is the name of the event;

Date is the date of the event in dd/mm/yy format;

Time is the time of the event in hh:mm format;

Location is the location of the event in venue,city,country ISO code format;

Admission can be F for Free or T for Ticket or R for Registration or I for Invitation;

Category can be A for Art&Culture or B for Business or C for Comedy or D for Demonstration or F for Family or M for Music or S for Sport or T forTechnology;

Type can be C for Conference/Seminar or E for Exhibition or F for Festival/Concert or M for Meeting/Match or T for Tradeshow or W for Workshop;

Short URL is the event's short URL.

Example:

EVT*The Rocky Band*19/08/09*19:25*The Top Notch,Dublin,IE*T*M*F*http://short.net/abcdef

Unlike geoevents directly mapped at quovadislive.com, events sent as direct messages are not immediately published. Once published, you can update and complete the geoevent information with more details (description, picture, movie, etc.) if you have an account on QuoVadis Live!.

Login to QuoVadisLive.com from your Twitter account

If you've got a Twitter account, you can now login from Twitter to QuoVadis Live! even if you don't have an account on QuoVadis Live! yet. All you have to do is to click on the "Login from Twitter" button in quovadislive.com homepage.

Then you're taken to Twitter for authentication purposes where you'll be given the possibility to let QuoVadis Live! connect to your Twitter account which is needed to update your status on Twitter whenever you map a geoevent on QuoVadis Live! or you report your geolocation (except when in hidden mode). And because we've implemented OAuth standards you certainly don't need to enter your Twitter name and password in QuoVadis Live!.

Content Adaptation by mobile network operators

We were conducting mobile tests as usual when we had the unpleasant surprise to see our pages being rendered in a way that doesn't match the way we've developed them. Apparently the problem is not new since other mobile content developers have experienced similar symptoms and it seems one mobile operator we're using for testing has a service supposed to "adapt the content" of a website for mobile phones. "Content adaptation" is a very loable thing. However, like for many other websites, it doesn't work for us. On the contrary. It's making our web services completely messed up. The fact is we already have a way to adapt the web services we're developing so you can have an enjoyable experience whether you're using a PC or a mobile device to access quovadislive.com. Anyhow who know how the content has to be displayed the best than the guys who are developing the service? Now apparently there's a whitelist so the "content adaptation service" doesn't render sites in that list and passes the "user-agent" info which is critical in order to detect whether you're using a computer or a mobile phone and therefore format the content accordingly. We've just sent a request to be added to that whitelist and see what gives. We'll keep you posted.

About content adaptation:

http://bit.ly/x0axc