T-Mobile re-jigs Web’n'walk for customisation
Rating: Can’t find My Stuff on
Web’n'walk? Just hack it
By Tony Dennis
How bizarre is this? I
was chatting to Richard Warmsley of T-Mobile the other night at the launch of
the new Sidekick Slide (known in other markets as the Hiptop) from Danger. I’ve
been very impressed so far with the loan model which the company leant me.
Anyway, Mr Warmsley
was talking about a re-jig which T-Mobile has just carried out on its trademark
‘Web’n'walk’ service. This has been re-engineered in order to make it much
easier for the consumer to find content.
So when you fire up
your handset browser and point it towards home, it should be possible to see
the results of this revision. Right in front of you there will be a new option
called ‘My Stuff’, although in other markets I believe this will be called ‘My Favorites’.
There are three choices presented as
standard on My Stuff. eBay, Yahoo Weather or email. If you select email, you’re
then offered the choice of Windows Messenger or Google Mail.
The intention is to encourage consumers to
personalised their ‘home page’ and add as many links to their favourite sites
as they can. Warmsley claimed that in T-Mobile’s experience, the Top 10 sites
visited by his company’s subscribers bears a strong resemblance to the Top 10
sites visited by a fixed line user.
What was very interesting was a glance at today’s most visited sites. Up there
with the winners was Facebook, followed by National Rail and Timeout. Also
popular are Sky News and Sky Sport plus Rightmove – which I found a little
surprising. Moving homes and you use your mobile phone? Hmmm.
Anyway, this whole exercise turned out to
be somewhat hilarious. Warmsley informed me that My Stuff would go live today
in the UK (Friday 26th). But when I turned my lovely new Sidekick on, there
was no sign of My Stuff. Even though you’re taken to Web’n'walk automatically
and there is no sign-up procedure.
So I reasoned that since my handset was
effectively still a test phone and its browsing was been controlled by Danger’s
servers, I probably wasn’t being recognised properly. Thus, out came the SIM
card and I inserted it into a loan Nokia N76 from Nokia itself.
The snag is that you have to set the
handset up yourself as a result of this messing. A little digging via Google
and I found you have to point the browser at www.tmobile-favourites.co.uk. Not
the British spelling of favourites. An Hey presto! I was onto Web’n'walk with
the My Stuff option just sitting there waiting for me to customise it.
Great fun – mobile phones. Aren’t they?
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