wap video test

Hi all,

yet another wap newbie here to irritate you with simplistic questions.

I need to put a piece of video (encoded in 3gp) onto a web site that is accessable by wap phones. I then want to be able to send a link to any wap phone so people can have a look at the video. No payment mechanism is necessary as this is just a test and a method of showing potential investors what we are talking about.

How do I make a web page accessible to wap phones, what size should I make the video to make it accessible by most phones and how do I send the link (SMS????)?

At this stage I want to do the tests myself so any advice you can offer will be much appreciated.

Matt

Hi Matt,
first edit your video in 3gp and upload to your sever.
then I think you should send it via your mobile phone as a mms. so if your recipient does not have mms enabled their operator would keep the file in their servers and sends them link to click from the mobile phone or from the URL through their web site.
size of the file you should make it to 30k but depends how long is your video.
another way is to make a mobile web site and do it in XHTML.
and from this web site you can place a link so your clients can click and see the video. obviously you have to have your web site done for mobile phone and the small screen.
see a example http://www.globalsoftware.co.uk
homi

1) upload 3gp clip to webserver.
2) set correct mime/type
3) use sms aggregator to send the link as a text / mms / wap push
4) user downloads

don't pay over the odds for this, find a good aggregator with direct connections into the networks, try and avoid small players reselling posibly another resellers services.

if you can't deal direct with the networks deal with someone who does.

Hi Homi & Andy,

firstly thanks very much for taking the time to reply.

Pardon my ignorance (I'm a TV producer who's making first inroads into wap) but how do I find out the correct mime/type?

Also, any recommendations for aggregators?

Finally, can you point me in the right direction of tutorials for making a mobile / small screen site?

Many thanks again for your time.

Matt

Hi Matt,

The mime type issue is just telling the server you're hosting the files on that 3gp is okay.

You can do this in cPanel or in your .htaccess on a Linux box and I think Helm has a similar tool.

This is a line from one of my .htaccess files which instructs the server to treat files with a .3gp extension as video/3gpp

AddType video/3gpp 3gp

The other option is to use a script to open the file contents and echo them to the browser after adding the correct headers to set the mime type.

As for which aggregator to use there are a few good ones and many many bad ones.

MX Telecom - exceptional delivery rates - (Nick if you're reading this you owe me a beer) plus they have direct connections into the networks.

I had a bad experience with 2ergo - they spammed me and a few people have commented that they often do. (Christian if you're reading this you shouldn't have spammed me!)

There's a thread I started on Devshed with a load of links to aggregators: http://forums.devshed.com/t178113/s.html

As for tutorials, there's a load of stuff over at w3schools.com that might help: http://www.w3schools.com/wap/wml_reference.asp

There's also http://www.waptutor.org.uk which is run by somsone I know, it needs updating but might help.

Failing that, if you want to throw your life into mobile development I'd suggest really going for it and getting to grips with the wurlf. http://wurfl.sourceforge.net/

Or you could give me a call and we'll host the content and give you access to our ready to roll deployment solution...... My contact details have been sent in a PM.

Cheers

Hi Andy,

thanks for that very comprehensive reply.

I will give you a call, probably early next week.

cheers

Matt