Russell Beattie Notebook

YamiGo Free Wireless Village Service

Posted on Tuesday, August 24th, 2004 11:26 PM

I meant to post this a week ago, but remember when I reviewed the 7610 and couldn't play with the chat and presence apps because I didn't have a OMA Wireless Village server to connect to? Well, Rafe helpfully pointed me at YamiGo.com a free chat and presence service which you can use with your IMPS enabled phone such as a Nokia 3220, 5140, 7610, 6230 and 6820, SonyEricsson T630, K700i, and Z1010, and Motorola's v500 and v600. Very cool! Check out the site, even if you don't have these phones as it's very innovative - an open web-based chat service! Rock!

YamiGo sent out a newsletter last week with a ton of information about their service. Though I have to say that I only was able to connect once, and since then I've gotten an error, they seem to be heading in the right direction as they've completely opened up the back end of the service. There's a web page where you can check presence (think about that - this isn't just chat presence, but *mobile* presence) and an API you can download which allows you do things like send messages and create chat bots:

As an example we developed a Google search service that uses the input from the user to perform a Google search and return the content as the reply meessage. Eg: the user can send a message to "wv:google" or "wv:google@yamigo.com" The message body will be used as is and passed to Google search engine.

I mean, come on, that's cool as hell. I don't care if I'm having problems right now connecting because they'll get that worked out and then this will be a rocking service. Who needs SMS when I can wire up some kick-ass mobile alert system based on their API? The system also interops with XMPP (Jabber) and the other IM systems as well which isn't new if you've used Agile Messenger, but if you're not on a Series 60 phone, that adds some serious power to your mobile.

I don't know if there's any real sort of business model around this service, but I swear if I had enough hours in the day this is something I'd have love to have done myself just to see what you can do with it. It's just neat. Open standard mobile clients, open server, etc. throw it out there and see what happens. I still go back to my iMobs thoughts from last year: there is a real need out there for a ".mac" style web service for mobile phones that provides email, chat, sync, storage, help desk, etc. Imagine combining YamiGo with MightyPhone and SnapFish mobile and you start to get what I'm talking about: a server-side companion to your mobile phone.

It's amazing that YamiGo has been out there for months now, and I've never heard of them! I wonder what other cool-ass services are just hanging out there waiting to be discovered?

-Russ