saynotopremium.co.uk

Mobile Application Stores and saying no to premium numbers

eric — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 18:17:15 +0000

This year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona was all about Application Stores. Finally all the big names in the mobile world are responding to Apple’s success with the iPhone application store. It’s about time too, but as to whether the responses from O2, Android, Nokia etc. are more than just lip service, only time will tell.

It should be good news for anyone who creates mobile applications and as we’ll soon have our very own mobile application that you can download for free, it should be good news for us too. Application stores are just another way for us to tell people how to not pay for dialing 0870 and 0845 numbers.

The only question for us, and it’s a big question, is whether the mobile operators like O2 will allow an application like ours into their store. Remember that the main purpose of our application is to deprive mobile operators from the profit they currently make from 20p/minute 08 numbers which could be dialed for free using our application.

GIven the experience of similar applications on Apple’s store I would guess the answer would be no. However, I attended Mobile Monday yesterday where representatives from both O2 and Vodafone seemed to be saying that their commitment to remaining open meant that they would not be exercising any editorial control over the type of applications in their stores. It’s fantastic to see an operator speak like that - whether that view is shared with others in the company is another matter. None the less an example was given of a VOIP client (voice over internet protocol - i.e. low cost calls from your mobile via a wireless network- serious competition for a mobile network) which was allowed to remain on the Vodafone developers site (Betavine). So they do seem to be walking the talk.

Once the say no to premium mobile application is up and running, you’ll be able to download it directly to your phone, and I’ll put it up on O2 developer site for a laugh, let’s see if they take it down :)

Mobile Monday Peer Awards 2009 UK Result

eric — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 16:23:05 +0000

We came second.

It was pretty close though.

Congratulations Palringo!

It really was close, like a few votes, but in general the voting was pretty low for all 7 contestants. Not very surprising as voting was only open between sometime Friday and midday the following Monday.

Also, interesting to note that if everyone of Palringo’s employees had voted, they would have wiped the floor.

Anyway, thanks for everyone who voted for saynotopremum!

Open API launched for searching 0845, 0870, 0844, numbers

eric — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 13:19:44 +0000

Calling all developers! we’ve just launched the Open API to saynotopremium (beta). With a developer key you can now search our database for numbers using either a name or a premium number, (the same functionality as the front page of the site). The API responses are in JSON or XML. Check out the API tab for more info.

If you’re interested in developing software that makes use of the API, send a mail to [api at saynotopremium.co.uk]

saynoto premium OR say no to premium

eric — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 16:25:51 +0000

Google’s “Did you mean” is playing up. How annoying. If you type “saynotopremium” in Google, it assumes you made a mistake and suggests you actually meant “saynoto premium” (with a space). That’s all well and good but now it takes up the top two results with suggestions for the ‘correct’ (actually incorrect) spelling of saynoto premium even though there was no actual spelling mistake.

So in essence we’ve been knocked off our own top spot by our own name’s spelling mistake - saynoto [space] premium is like some evil doppleganger.

I don’t know how it works but hopefully I can get this post as the top suggestion for the “saynoto premium” search and for that mater “say no to premium” too. See if it worked here.

BT scraps 0870/0845 charges, leaves 0871/0844

eric — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 18:06:43 +0000

We found out today that BT has decided to scrap it’s charges on 0870 and 0845 numbers! This is obviously moving in the right direction and hopefully other landline providers will follow.

It’s not all good news though, 0844 and 0871 numbers will still be charged as usual which still leaves the consumer with the annoying task of remembering which numbers are which. It also does nothing for mobile users who are still being charged to call ‘free’ 0800 numbers.

Still, generally the more news this issue generates the better because many companies don’t realise the implications for their customers of having an 08 contact number, having been misold the product in the first place. Worse still many people don’t even know that they are being charged to dial 0800 numbers from their mobile, so the fight continues!

See our call charges guide for a reminder of the diferent number types.

Mobile Monday Peer Awards 2009 Submission Video

eric — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 13:21:30 +0000

We’ve just submitted ourselves for the mobile monday peer awards 2009, we’re up against 8 other startups vying to represent London in Barcelona in February.

I needed to knock up a short video for submission and it included a clip of the java mobile application we’re working on at the moment, so here it is if you’re interested (there’s no sound on this one).

Wish us luck!

Soft Launch - Site Now Live!

eric — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 23:51:17 +0000

Finally we’re ready to soft launch the site. Hooray! You’ll find the Number Search and Add Number tabs should be fully functional. We’re in beta of course, so do let us know if you find any bugs.

The only point to note at this stage is that the database is pretty sparse, over the next few weeks we’ll be adding as many numbers to it as we can. If you want to see what a number looks like when you find one, try a search on this number: 08456100100 or search by company name: nationwide.

saynoto0845, 0871, 0844, 0870 .co.uk and .com

eric — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 00:19:32 +0000

I’ve noticed we get a lot of visits from people who do an internet search for saynoto0845 or saynoto0845.co.uk etc. (it’s possible that you’re one of them). I’m trying to catch them all on this page so that I can explain the situation.

There seem to be many many squatter sites all registered with similar names hoping to cash in on lost people looking for a premium number translation site. There are two genuine premium number translation sites that I’m currently aware of:

The one you’re currently reading - try the Number Search page.
And saynoto0870.com

Mobile Geeks

eric — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 18:32:11 +0000

I popped over to “mobile geeks london” last night and bounced some ideas of a few folks regarding saynotopremium. The overall impression was pretty positive and I got some really useful suggestions about the types of interfaces/API calls people would like to see. Also thanks to a conversation I had last night with a regular user of the saynoto0870 site, I might build the ’search by name’ function straight into the mobile app along with the ’search by number’ option if there’s room in the mobile java application (of course both methods are available via the API).

Database Design Done!

eric — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 18:27:06 +0000

I’m glad to report that the database schema has now been designed! I’ve written, tested and optimised the SQL queries and put the whole thing into PHP. I’ve taken care to make sure that the database will be manageable. Once we get up and running, it needs to be able to automatically maintain itself as much as possible. So there are fields in there like negativeVotes etc. which will all be available via the API. There will be the ability to flag suspect numbers and remove and update numbers as they change.

Before launching it on a public page, I’m going to let it settle for a few days, see if I can break it and once that’s done the “Add Number” page will go live so that we can begin to fill up the numbers.