ZYB blog

I’m happy to announce that we have bought Imity. I’m impressed with the things Imity has achieved and glad to welcome both the team and the ideas to ZYB.

We have known the guys over at Imity for a while and discussions have been ongoing for almost as long. We both feel that this is the right time to make Imity a part of ZYB. Imity has been pioneering the area for Bluetooth-based mobile social networking and have built a great concept and a strong team. Their skills, technology and team are a great fit with ZYB now that we are adding the location-dimension through the ZYB Phonebook, where we will tie together information from Online Social Networks, GPS, Cell-Towers and Bluetooth etc and provide the best mobile address book ever.

Welcome onboard, Imity.

When we started ZYB more than two years ago there were many obstacles to building an independent, direct-to-consumer brand in the mobile services sector. The mobile industry was known for its lack of standards, walled gardens, and closed attitude towards “outsiders” trying to offer new services directly to mobile users. Despite this, we’ve established an innovative brand, added sexiness to a boring space, and created a free, useful service for several hundred thousands mobile users. And we continue to strive to deliver the best solutions for real problems - we tend never to be satisfied!

The good news is that the mobile industry is now changing and in really positive ways. Operators and handset vendors are embracing the internet and independency as we have never seen before. And by opening their doors, they’re making it easier for smaller, innovative companies like ZYB to offer better mobile services for people. These are very exciting times and ZYB is right at the forefront of the rapid changes taking place in the internet-mobile space. This could not have been illustrated more clearly by the level of interest shown by the industry in what ZYB is doing at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February – i.e. Business Week rated ZYB one of the 10 most innovative mobile companies at the show.

The bad news though is that the change is happening too slowly. There is still too much friction in the industry and that friction is making it much harder for people to get the full benefit of their fancy new mobiles and from the data packages they’ve just subscribed to. Our dream is to make services for mobiles just as fluid and free as they are for any online web application. There is still some way to go - but everything is (finally) moving in the right direction. We’re continuing to work around the obstacles and vested interests, to create an even better mobile experience for people in the future

So, you just bought yourself a new cool phone and are really existed about getting it up to speed. An ordinary ZYB user would of course just go to zyb.com, add his new phone, and start transferring the data. However, we at ZYB have also developed a tool to be used by our partners or anyone else out there who could find this useful – The ZYB Phone Migrator

The Phone Migrator takes you through a step-by-step process where the data from your old phone is sent to the ZYB server and then transferred to the new phone. The process is really quick and easy. And as it all works over-the-air, it doesn’t require the use of any cables or downloads. The ZYB Phone Migrator is available free of charge. You can check out a ZYB branded version on http://zyb.com/migrator/zyb .

T-Mobile in the Netherlands, who recently acquired Orange, asked ZYB to assist with a migration tool enabling existing Orange customers to transfer their phone data to their new T-Mobile phones. That is the beginning of a great story of how the T-Mobile Migration Tool evolved. Check it out on http://zyb.com/migrator/tmobile .

Feel free to send an email to partners@zyb.com if you would like to get the ZYB Phone Migrator on your own website.
 

Apple has just picked our beloved iPhone application for their featured webapp for the iPhone. This has gotten a lot of attention to the app, and for people new to ZYB, here’s a step by step guide on how to get your contacts from your old phone, onto your new shiny iPhone

1. Create an account on zyb.com
2. Sync your old phone using our simple guides
3. Point your iPhone to iphone.zyb.com

That’s it! You now have access to all of your contacts, and calendar events, directly from your iPhone. The interface is very similar to the one you already know from iPhone’s native contactlist, and you can of course call, email and display on Google maps, directly from the list.

Apple has promised to open up the iPhone to allow others to develop applications for it, and as soon as that happens, we will of course develop a client for it, so that you can ultimately sync your iPhone automatically, without the need for pesky cables. A lot of our users has asked for this, and to be honest, so have a lot of people on the ZYB team

If you want to be notified when our client is ready, please comment below, or shoot a mail to our guys at support.

Our little iPhone integration has just been picked as the featured webapp on Apple’s list of webapps for the iPhone

Update:

I’ve written a little guide to how to get contacts to your iPhone here

Ed Bussey (COO), Christian Birk (Business Development Manager) and Adam Homfray (Operations Manager) landed in London from Barcelona, Copenhagen and Berlin respectively, to open up ZYB’s London office early this morning. They will soon be joined by a new Marketing Manager and a Marketing Assistant. The London team will be leading ZYB’s global marketing and operational activity and working closely with London based PR and marketing agencies.

The advantage of working for a web-mobile business is that we can work pretty much anywhere in the world provided we have an internet connection and a mobile phone. So whilst the office was freezing cold and looked pretty bare this morning we were able to get the London business up and running in a matter of minutes of walking in the front door.

The office space is on the top floor of the Media Centre on Bolsover Street, not far from Great Portland Street tube. If you happen to be in the area, feel free to drop by. We always like to hear from ZYB fans.

PS. Christian and Adam are having to sleep under their desks. If anyone has a flat available to rent in London, they would be delighted (relieved) to hear from you.

The World Mobile Conference is closing up and so is our ZYB Barcelona Team after four exhausting but very successful days demonstrating ZYB and introducing the brand new Social Phonebook.

A lot of interesting people from the industry and the press dropped by for an update - even Robert Redford was there (well, at least he passed the stand). The positive response was overwhelming which confirms that ZYB is heading down the right mobile track with the recent announcement of the Social Phonebook.

In short the Social Phonebook significantly enhances the experience of the mobile phone address book by providing new, real time and interactive content on your contacts. I.e. the new features allows you to:

· See if you friends are available for a call or when they will be

· Get alerted when your friends are in town or just around the corner

· See what your friends have been up to lately and what they are doing right now

Tuesday night ZYB hosted a well-attended party at the Dostrece Nightclub. It was a time of good music, great fun and some serious mingling sparked and sparkled by the now famous 2.0 cocktail of Absinth, Tequila and Blue Curacao. Yeeha…

Also Zybberman, our beloved mascot and fellow swedish graphic designer Chris, caught a lot of attention especially from the female crowd, who were rather… mesmerized by his appearance and obvious star quality.

We’re already looking forward to rock Barcelona once again next year!

We just deployed a new version of zyb.com this morning, and it’s looking good! We’ve added some very cool new features, that I hope you will like. I know I will!

In our all-new Contacts page, it is now possible to select all of your contacts, and have their location displayed on a nice little map and get an overview on how your friends and contacts are distributed around the globe, or around your local town.

Another cool little feature, that may be more of a techie-thing, is the addition of XFN-tags to the Online Life items in your profile. Whenever you enter a new link, for instance your Facebook profile, we will add XFN data to the link, to allow you to use that info on other sites supporting XFN. Steps like this is important to allow you to control your data, and keep it open and in your hands. Next step, will be to utilize the XFN data on other sites, and help you gather all of your online life links automatically.

Speaking of your profile-page, we’ve added a Lifestream to it, that will help you and your friends keep track of your activites on ZYB. All at your control, of course.

I hope you’ll enjoy the new stuff, and be sure to leave us your comments, good or bad!

-Ole

This year at the World Mobile Conference in Barcelona ZYB will introduce “The Social Phonebook” – a groundbreaking tool that significantly enhances the experience of the mobile phone address book by providing new, real time and interactive content on your contacts.

As a special bloggers treat we’re happy to offer you the opportunity to take part in Live Phone Conference with CEO Tommy Ahlers and Runar Reistrup including an intro and Q&A about the Social Phonebook. If interested, please RSVP February 5th, 2008 at anton@zyb.com.

ZYB is also going to be present at stand D23, Hall 7, where you will be able to:

· Be of the first to experience the Social Phonebook Demo

· Meet CEO Tommy Ahlers, COO Ed Bussey and other key executives

· Attend our private party with tapas and cocktails in Barcelona, February 12th

We hope to see you all in Barcelona!

This Christmas over 100 million people will receive a new mobile phone – and they will struggle to transfer their data from the old to the new one. Luckily ZYB announces a FREE Christmas present for everyone who receives a new mobile phone!

www.igotanewphoneforchristmas.com

This unique online tool allows people to easily and securely transfer all of the Contacts and Calendar information from their old mobile phone to their new mobile.

The tool is available for free and it works entirely over-the-air. It saves people the hassle of using cables, CD’s or downloading software and the time that would otherwise be spent re-entering all of the mobile data by hand, one entry at a time. Time that would be better spent enjoying their Christmas holiday!

The service works for over 400 mobile phones, including all of the most popular brands, and you don’t have to sign up to ZYB to use the tool. Just go straight to www.igotanewphoneforchristmas.com and enjoy a merry mobile Christmas.