Rating: King Zyb is dead, long live King 360
Although Vodafone acquired the Zyb online backup and syncing service back in 2008, as from December 1st the service stopped accepting new subscriptions. That’s because the technology has been redeployed to form part of Vodafone’s 360′s ‘People’ application.
When GoMo News first tested the Vodafone 360 service in early November ( See here) , there were only two handsets that were compatible. Those were the Samsung H1 and M1 models.
Hence the promised lack of clients for other handsets was bemoaned, when the real answer is that those clients are now provided by Vodafone’s People. The best way to sign yourself up for this service is to go onto the old Zyb site. It then redirects you to Vodafone 360.
The site says, “Vodafone 360 works on 247 mobile networks globally and more than 400 mobile phones, meaning it’s available to everyone for free.
Vodafone 360 takes the best of ZYB and makes it even better. With a Vodafone 360 account you can access your phone, email, chat and social network contacts from a single secure address book that’s always backed up online and synchronises automatically and wirelessly between your phone, PC and Mac.”
Oh, goodie. From the look of things, those 400 handsets include the infamous Apple iPhone. Tragically, GoMo News hasn’t managed to get the service working yet.
Having completed the sign-up procedure and receiving a text giving the requisite URL, all attempts to download the necessary client were met by the dreaded HTTP Error 403 – Forbidden’ error message. One other blog had exactly the same experience, though.
Vodafone 360 people looks like it is going to be a cracking service. The contacts importing facility is pretty comprehensive encompassing the usual suspects: – Facebook; Windows Live and Google Mail. It also includes popular UK ISPs such as NTL World/Virgin Media and other mobile operator’s such as O2.
The last time GoMo news looked, Zyb had at least 20 million participants. They must be feeling a tad perplexed if their mates have tried to sign up but found Vodafone 360 instead.
The curious thing – as Richard kindly pointed out in response to GoMo’s story on iPhone migration, is why didn’t Vodafone mention the Zyb/360 People service as an obvious means of migrating your contacts from another handset over to the impending iPhone 3GS?
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