Finally Send MMS! Flutter.app

[Eric.]

We kind of tried the second solution with our other main product, JuiceCaster. Your idea is interesting, though when we look out our userbase, people really don't know what carriers their friends are on. You have a great memory!

As for Flutter, one thing peeps are overlooking is ability to send your location along with your pic, or just the location alone. Your friends click on "View on Map" and see your location on Google Maps - right on their phone. Try it out, it's free - you sound like a knowledgable guy. Would love your feedback.

Well, Verizon is overwhelmingly dominant here, followed by Alltel. I only know of a couple of other people on AT&T.

I'd love to provide feedback with that, but none of my good friends are nerdy enough for data plans.

 

[lindsayanng]

personally, id rather NOT have anything post a map of where i am when i send things. I just dont like that information out there. I know lots of people do, and its beyond me why thats ok.. I mean, i did it ONCE on a picasa and it shows people where i was DOWN TO THE STREET! scarey in my eyes

Anyways, as far as the paid thing goes, you are right about high volume and low volume, but the thing is, those things USUALLY even out.

There will be people like me, who will pay $25 for an app and MAYBE use it 50 times in a YEAR, and thats HIGH, but i will want it just because i LIKE to have it.. So in my eyes, that WILL even out.. The thing is, $25 is a decent amount of money if you can get a REALLY good app, and if you sell as many as some of those IM clients have sold, then you should be more than ok as far as maintaining servers. i have a feeling it might be MORE because everyone and their mother has been dying for THAT app.

It is just how it is..

I have done the calculations on things like this - high volume/low volume usage vs. pricing vs. cost and it almost ALWAYS comes out even BECAUSE the low volume will even it out..

 

[mavis]

I would hardly call this "OFFICIALLY"... Far from it. I think the OP got a little over excited for nothing.

Well, with a name like "the SPAZ" ...

 

[flutter]

personally, id rather NOT have anything post a map of where i am when i send things. I just dont like that information out there. I know lots of people do, and its beyond me why thats ok.. I mean, i did it ONCE on a picasa and it shows people where i was DOWN TO THE STREET! scarey in my eyes

When you start composing a Flutter message, it asks you if you want to attach location or not. If you select 'No' then you can send a picture just by itself.

Interesting thoughts about how everything balances out volume wise. I'm not sure whether that will work out or not with a service that has a 'per use' cost. Based on our JuiceCaster experience, high volume users put greatest strain on the service (cost wise). It's a bit like how ISPs cap their entire service, simply because a few individuals hog the bandwidth for everyone else.

Still you raise a very interesting point.

 

[Daremo]

@Daremo That really, really makes me You should only get ONE SMS. It's our silly SMS provider again (won't name names ... yet ... but they're one of the biggest providers in the world!). When they get a backlog, they just spurt out multiple copies of the same message. We'll look into it on Monday. So yes, let's put it down to opening day bugs. As for the image size, what phone do you have? We try to optimize the image depending on phone screen resolution (it could be our phone database is not recognizing your phone when you view the page). Let me know. And thank you for your encouragement! We think of it as a 'better than nothing solution' and it's free, right?

We are both using the 16GB iPhone 3G. I'll try it again tomorrow, and see how the images look when sent, and post here again.

As far as TRUE MMS, I would pay for the app for that. It's not something I would use all the time, but I've missed out on some great photos, and videos I could not receive. Sending isn't bad with the carrier address work around, but for a true MMS solution I'd be happy to pay. I'm not against the idea of ads either, but maybe you could offer two versions? A free of low cost version with ads, and a premium version without ads? Just a thought.

 

[jmmo20]

Links required.

However, MMS has always been on iPhone, just give people your email address, and you'll get pictures, and then you email it back to them to their email address to their phone. I don't know why the confusion.

because the replying part doesn't work at all in most countries where the iphone is sold.

 

[jmmo20]

Hello,
I did get the SMS but when I enter my details to log in it says the username/password are incorrect.

Not sure how to enter my phone number. I think i put 346... when I registered...

Hello Folks,

I'm Amir and I head the team that made Flutter. First of all, let me say you guys are great! Because you're the first ones I've seen to talk about the app ... this is exciting, because we didn't even expect Apple to approve the app today. It was meant to happen on Monday ... so we're all caught a bit off guard. Which explains some of the issues you've been having. So please allow me to explain:

If you are outside the US, you must register with international dial code before your number, and the contacts in your phone book must also have international dial codes before their numbers. Sorry about this, but the app isn't supposed to be available outside the US yet! When we do internationalize it, you won't have to change everything into international format!

Check out http://www.flutterpic.com soon which has a FAQ. Not live yet. Will be my Monday. In meantime, you can check out a short FAQ at http://flutterpic.blogspot.com

@scousebarry hello mate (are you a red or a blue? ) ... the reason you didn't get the SMS is because 1) Apple made a mistake and published the app to the WORLDWIDE app store and it's only available for US right now ... and you entered your normal UK number as 07XXX-XXX-XXX in which case it won't work. You need to enter it as 00447 or +447. That should do it. 2) Our system wasn't expecting a rush today ... so we're running around fixing the SMS backlog. Sorry about the delay.

@peanut48 See my reply to scousebarry ... theoretically you shouldn't be able to use it in India. Just sign up with international dial codes and make sure your contacts also have international dial codes saved in their numbers. Good luck!


@tha80sbrat You can't receive MMS in this version. It's theoretically possible using a work around (just as we use a work around to send messages). If there's enough demand, we'll do it. Check out the FAQ at the blog.

@iblastoff It's not true MMS. It's kind of like MMS. The recipient gets a text message with a link. If they have a web-capable phone, they can click the link and view your message in their mobile browser. It's better than nothing right now ... ie. at least you can send a picture to another mobile number (instead of having to use email)

@CKtoph Sorry! http://www.flutterpic.com is not available yet. Check on Monday. Meantime, there's the blog and also http://twitter.com/flutterpic

@sneeks It does work in the UK. I'm in London right now

@peanut48 Hmm, someone else reported this. Can you please email flutter at juicecaster dot com with your operator e.g. Orange, O2 etc. One of my colleagues had this problem. It could be a specific operator is blocking the messages. Would really appreciate your help. Please email.

@jeremy1026 Lol. Yes, our lawyers not happy about that. Went up to early. That was just placeholder copy. Don't worry, you haven't signed up to sell your soul to the devil! Full terms will go up on Monday. Rest assured, we will not sell your details, no hidden costs, we won't spam your contacts. There is no catch right now. See a post about this on the blog.

@jeremy1026 You are a clever man and absolutely correct. It would be outside the sandbox. But there is a work around and 'official' ie. would pass App Store test, way of doing it. Stay tuned.

@jsuared An iPhone

@redgaz26 Sorry ... problem with the SMS queue. Fixing. You'll get it soon.

@vandy1997 Out of interest, what other app does this? Pls PM me. Also, no plans to charge for it yet. May be ads on the message page. Gotta pay the bills somehow!

@jds4300 Sorry you had bad luck with it. What phones did you use it with? It's worked with over 200 phones we've tested with. Please PM me if you get a 'mo. Cheers!

@Daremo It's not official! No idea why Apple don't enable MMS on iPhone. But right now, this is an 'emulation' and closes thing to sending a pic to any mobile number. Key here is mobile number NOT email address. Any app can send a picture to an email address ie. the native email app!

@Rojo you are 1000% correct.

@179202 I'm with you. I want real MMS. But in the meantime, my friends are getting my Flutters ... with my location on Google Maps ... on their phones ... and well, it's more than I can do otherwise, right?

Anyways folks. Sorry for the long post. Hope that's useful to everyone. If you gots questions, drop me a line.

Cheers!

 

[jmmo20]

Amir, is there anything that would prevent an "MMS" application from simply doing the email workaround for us? If it could just automate the process of attaching an image to an email and placing the correct carrier's email address (@vzwpix.com etc) to the end of a contacts number, that would be excellent. That way the recipient would receive what appeared to be a standard MMS message instead of a text message with a link. I'm sure Flutter works great for those with internet access, but I know very, very few people who also have a data plan on a phone.

I'd be more than happy to help test such an application and I bet a ton of users here would pay a couple bucks for one that worked well (and was stable). PM me if you think any of that would be possible.

again people should not try to promote that work-around, since most mobile phone operators around the world don't like the email-to-MMS gateways (who are they gonna charge for those incoming messages? only the US and a few other countries charge for incoming sms/mms/calls. Most countries - all europeans - only charge for making a call or sending a sms/mms hence the inability to use email gateways)

 

[moloukhya]

Flutter,

I agree with others that this should be true MMS; this is hardly a step up from our current viewmymessage situation. I would be willing to pay as I understand that involves certain costs, but $25 is excessive.

As mentioned earlier, reevaluate it all as things usually even out. You could launch it at a promotional price, build up a userbase, and then raise the price if you want. But at $25, this will not appeal to many.

Thanks for the effort and your quick responses

 

[Quincy9219]

Well, the best way to do this in my mind is to add a low price for the app, 5 dollars probably. And then add in ads for the iPhone user, not the person receiving the MMS. If there are what, say 9-10 million iPhones sold so far, and a tenth of them download and pay for your app (since it was such a big oversight on Apple's part), that's what, 1 million phones or so. But for all this to work, and for you to get numbers like this, you would need to provide true MMS. Not the workarounds, the kind of MMS every other phone under the sun, but the iPhone has.

 

[jmmo20]

I wouldn't mind paying for each mms alone.

You could keep the app the way it is. But add a preference on the web or on the app itself whereby you send actual MMS. Then you can choose to be billed per mms, or buy a bundle with a number of messages and then be billed thru paypal....

that way you don't get things overly complicated on your end (you would only need a server to handle free vs. real mms customers. You already have an account system so it would only need some adaptation to make this work.

don't relaease a 20$ app. For example, we Spaniards are known for our tendency to over do things. If you offer unlimited mms for 20$ then you would get an army of spaniards sending 200 mms per hour just for the sake of it

 

[TonyHoyle]

Guys - when are you going to realize there is never going to be a TRUE 3rd-party MMS app? The only time that true MMS is going to come to the iPhone is when Apple and their providers allow it. So far, it doesn't look like they plan to ever have it....

It's possible - I'm told that the O2 servers support the MM7 protocol, so with a reasonable SOAP library and some experience you could produce an MMS sending app that really did what it claimed.

However it's a big task... someone with a lot more time than me would have to tacke it.

 

[lindsayanng]

i am AMAZED that people would not pay a one time fee of $25 but would rather pay for EACH message sent? That is the most backwards thing i have ever hear. $25 is NOT a lot of money when you think of how long you will own the app and use it. And its good for the developer because its less maintenence and coding to create the per message charge than just a one time fee.

Do some market research and find out. I;m just one person telling you what I think and I would prefer.

 

[Quincy9219]

i am AMAZED that people would not pay a one time fee of $25 but would rather pay for EACH message sent? That is the most backwards thing i have ever hear. $25 is NOT a lot of money when you think of how long you will own the app and use it. And its good for the developer because its less maintenence and coding to create the per message charge than just a one time fee.

Do some market research and find out. I;m just one person telling you what I think and I would prefer.

I am AMAZED that anyone would pay 25 dollars for an app for anything. Considering how many apps I could get for 25 dollars, I would rather grab 4 or 5 other apps I want and simply use the workaround. It's free (the workaround that is), for now, and it does the job well enough

 

[beate]

Take for instance PageOnce. AWFUL!! they were a free app, but still.. their app is insanely useless (even though it COULD be awesome) and they get requests for a certain feature from all users and havent dont ANYTHING in ways up upgrades.

A bit off-topic but please don't generalize. I use PageOnce and love it, finding it very useful and certainly have not requested whatever feature you say "all users" have requested.

 

[Daremo]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5F136 Safari/525.20)

flutter,

Same issue with the images today. When visiting the link from the iPhone, the image is low res, and distorted in a square. This is sending from either phone.

 

[jmmo20]

i am AMAZED that people would not pay a one time fee of $25 but would rather pay for EACH message sent? That is the most backwards thing i have ever hear. $25 is NOT a lot of money when you think of how long you will own the app and use it. And its good for the developer because its less maintenence and coding to create the per message charge than just a one time fee.

Do some market research and find out. I;m just one person telling you what I think and I would prefer.

believe me, it wouldn't be sensible for Flutter to have a one time-off 25$ fee for unlimited MMS, even more so considering they pay their provider per each message alone.

read my post above: in spain if they release a 25$ app, people would send 100's of messages per day just for the sake of using their unlimited quota.

plus.. how do you tell people who bought the app from people who pirated the software apart? a server-side subscription or pay per mms (or message bundle) would make a lot more sense.

 

[razorianfly]

It looks like a great application, with potential, but currently with it only sending a 'link' to a low res picture, even at Juice Wireless' own cost, it's not really a viable option.

For anyone interested, I just published a lengthy review here

R-Fly