In The Wild: Mobile messaging services - Crickee, Hotxt, Juize, Tex2me

This evening I was out with my two girl friends who I know way back from my school days. It’s been a month or so since I connected with them and it was good to catch up. One of them, Jo, has a new boyfriend whom she is texting like absolute crazy.

“Ah hah,” I say to her, “Why not check out Crickee, Hotxt, Juize or Tex2me?” (alphabetically ordered there).

“I’ve got 500 free texts,” she says.

“Right, but you go over that every month, yes?”

She nods. I explain the concept behind the mobile messaging services and both of their eyes light up.

“For free?” they ask.

“Pretty much,” I reply.

They’re instantly hooked — which is interesting. Normally they have no interest whatsoever in mobile ‘applications’. So I show them text2me first. They are gripped at the concept. Jo, in particular. She can see the use it would be as she’s doing something like one text every 3 minutes during our meal.

I use my Opera browser to register them both successfully on the tex2me website. We sit and we wait. Alas, no text message download link is received to either of their phones so I try inviting them via the tex2me application. Failure: My stupid Sony can’t input full-length UK mobile numbers into the invite field. Not a tex2me problem, a java issue on the handset.

Both Jo and Nat visibly wilt. They were keen to try out the service!

I can’t remember how to invite people via Hotxt (besides which, the application behaves like a dog on the W550i — it’s perfect on other handsets though) so I fire up Juize.

My gosh Juize is smart. It’s very, very sexy indeed. I didn’t know the extent to what they offer. If you haven’t tried it, I suggest downloading it and checking it out. I’m username ‘ewan’ on Juize, send me a note.

Anyway I use the invite function on Juize to invite them both. Luckily the Juize implementation throws up a free-text box for me to type in the mobile numbers, getting round the stupid limitation of my Sony.

Beep Beep! Two seconds later both of them had invites.

Jo’s Vodafone Sony Ericsson 700 series handset had no trouble at all. She managed to register more or less right-away. We were both tricked by the date-of-birth field. It wanted full year of birth (e.g. 1977) and we’d put in ’77’. That was the only hickup. We weren’t paying attention.

Nat’s install was a little problematic. Her Nokia 6230i on Vodafone downloaded, installed and ran Juize. But when it came to actually connecting, kept on saying ‘can’t connect go GPRS’ (or something similar). I tried a load of different gprs options on the handset and eventually gave up. I reckon there must be a work-around.

So, Jo and I were at least registered. I was desperate to demonstrate the sending/receiving of a message so I knocked up a j-txt, addressed it to her and pressed send.

ERRRRRP! Woops! It wanted me to load on £3 in credit. At this point, both girls began to panic. They thought they were both going to get whacked for cash. Always an issue with the consumer. I thought Juize was free… I misunderstood.

So I told the system to go ahead and whack me for the £3. Alas by this point the girls were turned off.

Arrrgh. I had a small window in which to demonstrate the technology and hook’em… and I failed.

As I drove back from the evening (super cheeseburger at the pub, by the way), I ruminated on the issues. The mobile messaging companies aren’t to blame here. If anything it’s the network and handset manufacturers that are holding back development. I sat in front of two prolific consumer mobile users who would both have converted immediately to whichever service had worked off the bat for them. I’m sure of it.

The range of potential screw-ups is monumental. Handset problems, GPRS misconfigurations, java incompatibilities… geez. I wonder just how much cash has been lost by not standardising the operating systems or basic features on networks and handsets from the get-go.

If we can do it in the computer world with USB, why can’t we do it with handsets and networks? It’s absolutely 100% frustrating being the mobile evangelist in this case, and ending up depressing the whole party because what I’d promised could not actually be delivered 😐

Still, for those who can get it working, these mobile messaging services are superb.

I was bowled over by Juize in particular. I hadn’t given it much of a going-over since I downloaded it. When I saw the MSN feature on the applet, I had to give that a go. Wow. Within seconds I was connected and my whole buddylist was there. My MSN buddies started chatting to me. Now, I’ve used MSN style services before but this is one of the best designed for the mobile that I’ve come across. Very intuitive, smart, quick. AND this, working on my flakey W550i! If you haven’t tried it out, do so. There’s a heck of a lot of facilities on the service: MSN, email, news, ringtone/games/wallpaper downloads, entertainment services (digiguide, horoscope, tv guide and more). Parts of the system are clearly premium — however I haven’t managed to access and play around with them as I’m waiting to add some credit. But if you find yourself on Juize, send me a message: ewan.

While the extensive features and smooth colours of Juize appealed, tex2me really impressed the girls. I think it was the ease of use – one simple function – messaging. I showed them me writing a message (to myself), me sending the message… me receiving the message (almost instantaneously!) and so on. They were really attracted to the simplicity.

I didn’t want to show them Hotxt working on the W550i as my handset wouldn’t have done it and I haven’t yet got my Crickee account up and running.

Note to self: Get a better handset. Preferably an N90. 😉