Jongla global messaging service gets even better

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About the company

Jongla Ltd is a Finnish technology company with a mission to solve the problem with existing mobile messaging. We wanted to create a seamless and customer friendly mobile messaging experience that is not limited by SMS capabilities and allows its users to send high quality multimedia messages to each other, free of charge. The company consists of a group of professionals with previous experience in telco, media and ITC sectors. With the help of our users and advertisers, we have developed a unique mobile-communication platform and service. Jongla is owned by a group of private investors, partner companies and management. Now, with the help of new investors, we are developing the mobile messaging to the next level – Instant and Group Messaging.

Jongla service in the nutshell

Jongla allows you to send unlimited amount of mobile messages to any mobile device in the world for free. Jongla messages can contain an unlimited amount of images, videos and text. In order to provide our users with the new level of mobile messaging capabilities, we built our own infrastructure that is not limited to any specific mobile device or platform. This allows us to deliver a new level of experience to mobile devices and desktops. In order to use our service, your friends don’t need to install any additional software. The only requirements are that they can receive SMS messages and have a working mobile browser. We wanted to take the best of SMS messaging and add additional killer features:
  • Ability to send multiple high quality multimedia files
  • No costs for sending or receiving messages, provided the user has unlimited mobile broadband
  • Letting users view messages no matter what device they’re using
  • Allowing users to view Jongla messages without installing any additional software
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Jongla service lets you message from your preferred device. If you want to message from Facebook, you can. If you prefer to do it from your browser without installing additional software on your device, you can do so with our web client. In order to provide high quality service and cover our costs, we put a small ad that recipients see when they open Jongla messages. It’s non-intrusive and is only shown for a few seconds before your message. You can also rate ads (like/dislike), and because of that we hope to offer you relevant ads in the future. As of this date, Jongla has native applications on iPhone, Android, Windows Phone and Symbian platforms. We want to bring you the highest level of user experience that you can only get with native apps. We truly believe in our vision of creating a mobile messaging experience without boundaries for everybody in the world, and we’re delivering it one step at a time.

Mobile applications - new features

In October 2011 we released our first Windows Phone application and a new generation of Android and iOS apps. With the latest version update of Jongla service we’ve released several new features that will make the messaging more fun. Our flagship applications on Android and iPhone platform support realtime chatting with your friends (realtime chat support also coming to other native applications soon). If your friends don’t have a Jongla application installed, they will still get the message which they can view using their phone’s mobile browser. We have also overhauled the interface of already existing applications and streamlined our registration process, making our apps even easier to use. Push notifications for iPhone client is another feature that should make chatting with your friends even more accessible. This allows you to receive chat messages in real-time, even if Jongla application is closed. We currently support following platforms natively: Our applications have been downloaded thousands of times, which gives us energy to keep investing more time to make them better.

Jongla’s future looks bright

Thanks to the latest client updates, our growth in regards to new users and sent messages has exploded. Asian market especially has been a source of amazing growth for Jongla service. Company’s future looks bright, as more and more people choose to message using Jongla service. Our next release will include tight integration with social networks as well as new features for mobile apps. We’d love to hear your feedback, so connect with us on Facebook and Twitter. Happy messaging!

Next generation iPhone and Android apps launched

Jongla proudly presents. We have just launched the new 2nd edition apps for Android and iPhones. The new versions have several unique new features. We have not only updated the user interface and fixed all bugs we had in the previous versions. New Jongla iPhone and Android apps bring the whole messaging experience into the new level. Here’s what we have done. New Android app The most cool new thing with the Android app is that it allows you to chat with your friends in real-time. It supports two-way super fast conversations between Jongla users. It doesn’t matter where your friends are – Jongla works globally. And here’s the other cool thing. You can start to use Jongla immediately. Since Jongla is an open mobile messaging solution, your friends don’t need to install any applications in order to receive your messages. The new userinterface makes also the sharing of your high quality videos and pictures easier and more fun.
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What’s new in the 2nd edition Jongla Android app:
  • Cool new user interface
  • Two-way super fast conversations between Jongla users
  • Ability to share multiple files: videos, photos, unlimited text
  • Easier registration process
Download Jongla Android app and forget the SMS and MMS costs.   New iPhone app New iPhone app includes all the same functions as Android app. On top of that new iPhone comes with some extra. The most cool new thing is that the iPhone app supports push notifications and mobile instant messaging. It allows you to chat with your friends in real-time and have two-way super fast conversations between Jongla users.
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What’s new in the 2nd edition Jongla iPhone app:
  • Cool new user interface
  • Support push notifications
  • Support mobile instant messaging
  • Two-way super fast conversations between Jongla users
  • Ability to share multiple files: videos, photos, unlimited text
  • Easier registration process
Both apps have also all the basic Jongla features:
  • Free, unlimited
  • Ability to share videos and photos in high quality
  • Open solution. The receiver DOES NOT need to be a Jongla user
  • Integrates seamlessly with your address book
  • Global service with no international charges
  • Jongla uses your internet connection: Wi-Fi, 3G or EDGE
Download Jongla iPhone app and forget the SMS and MMS costs. Help us to improve We work hard to make Jongla better. All feedback is more than welcome.    

Jongla for Windows Phones

Jongla proudly presents. Our first Windows Phone 7 version is ready and live! We have just opened up the Jongla service also for Windows Phone users. Jongla is a global mobile messaging service for smartphones and browsers. You can start sending messages immediately. Your friends don’t need to install any applications in order to receive your messages. With Jongla you are free to share your high quality videos and pictures of any size. Mobile messaging, such as MMS, SMS and even the newly released iMessage, all have a common problem – you can’t send large attachments. Send as many messages you want – where ever you want. Forget the SMS and MMS costs. Download the app and take your mobile messaging to another level. Jongla Windows Phone app is free.
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Some of other cool Jongla features are:
  • Device and platform independent service
  • Free and unlimited. No hidden costs
  • Ability to share videos and photos in high quality
  • Integrates seamlessly with your address book
  • Open solution. The receiver DOES NOT need to be a Jongla user
  • Global service with no international charges
  • Jongla uses your internet connection: Wi-Fi, 3G or EDGE
Download the application from Windows Phone Marketplace:
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We appreciate all the feedback about the app. Customer support: http://www.jongla.com/help-support/

How we optimize Jongla messages for your mobile phone

We put a lot of effort into making our service platform and device independent so we decided to write a blog post highlighting a lot of cool stuff we do behind the scenes.

Not all mobiles are created equally

There are a LOT of mobile phones available on the market, ranging from $10 low-end devices to top of the line smart phones which will cost you an arm and a leg. At Jongla we wanted to support as many as possible, if not all devices, but we had a problem. What do we do when a user sends an HD video to a friend, whose mobile device only supports low-end video formats like 3GP? The screen size is another issue altogether. There are a lot of different screen sizes when it comes to mobiles, so if you want to optimize visual experience for every single device, you have a lot of work ahead of you.

Tackling the problem head on

Many smart phone chat solutions decided to ignore this issue altogether letting device handle the situation the best it can. This in many cases results in unplayable videos. Other software vendors also make their lives a lot easier by only supporting high-end smart phones capable of playing back almost any format. Video has always been Achilles’ heel for many chatting/messaging applications. Allowing clients to send large video files requires a lot of bandwidth and hard drive space. Another issue is supporting many devices, which requires you to re-encode the video in many different formats. This in turn requires you to have a lot of processing power at your disposal. If you decide to only support smart phones and only deliver messages via native application then you don't have to worry about optimizing experience for many different screen sizes. Of course in return you force your users to install your application in order to view the message.

How we do it

Right from the get go, we had two objectives: supporting as many devices as humanly possible, and not forcing our users into installing anything in order to view messages.
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We chose to deliver Jongla messages using SMS because it's the best supported messaging system across all devices. How do we deliver multimedia content via SMS, you ask? Well, we don't. When you receive a Jongla message it comes by SMS, but includes a URL. When you click it, your mobile device will open the default browser. Before you see any web page on the screen, some really cool magic happens behind the scenes (in mere milliseconds).
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Before our server sends you any response, we try to detect your mobile device. All mobile devices supply a small piece of information to web servers, identifying the maker and/or other device information. We use that information and, using our huge device database, we select the optimal resolution, supported video and image formats. After this we create a custom version of the message HTML page containing images, links and videos that will work best on your device.
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Simple example would be somebody sending a regular DVD quality video to his friends using Jongla service. Let's, for the sake of example, assume one of the friends has a low-end device and another has an iPhone. Once the video arrives on our servers, we start the process of converting it to many different formats. As soon as the encoding is over (which usually takes very little time) we send out SMS messages to recipients with link to the message. The low-end device owner will see a message that looks good on his device (size of thumbnails, etc) and when he presses "Download video", he will get the video in 3GP format. The iPhone user, on the other hand, will see a message that looks good on his device and the video will be presented to him in MP4 format with higher resolution and better sound quality. This is why we believe we deliver true platform independent experience on mobile devices.

Testing

We take testing very seriously and periodically we test our service on endless amounts of devices, in order to create workarounds sometimes required due to manufacturer bugs and other "hidden features". Testing takes days, but the big payoff is that your messages will look beautiful and work effortlessly on any device! Our main objective is to create the best mobile messaging experience possible. If you have any suggestions on how we can improve don't hesitate to contact us.

Many different ways to send Jongla messages

In this post we'll dive into ways you can send Jongla messages and platforms we support. We get asked a lot about number of platforms we support so we decided to write a blog post about it. Jongla is true device and platform independent, Application-to-Person (A2P) mobile messaging service. That's a lot of words which basically means we support many platforms :) Jongla was designed from ground up to be a device- and platform-independent service. You can send Jongla messages via mobile devices, web browsers, Facebook and so on. Receiving messages happens via SMS which should work on any phone in the world. SMS carries a link that opens your mobile phone’s browser where you can see Jongla message sent to you. A lot of work went into making Jongla messages work on basically any mobile device in the world. Jongla service architecture allows us to take advantage of pretty much any platform and provide native integration. In this post we’ll dive into different ways of sending  Jongla messages.

iPhone / iPad

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You can send Jongla messages from an iPhone or an iPad device. Using Jongla on your iOS device (iPad support coming) allows you to send Jongla messages to your friends and attach files already located on your device. Probably one of the coolest things you can do is to send Jongla messages to a group of people. We will also release an iPad version of our client soon. This will allow you to take full advantage of that beautiful screen and large keyboard. Using Jongla on your iOS device allows you to take advantage of your address book, so sending messages is a breeze. Download Jongla iPhone client

Android

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Android client is is practically identical to the iPhone client. Android now outsells iPhones and we’re committed to supporting Android platform in the future. Android is our most popular client so you can be sure we'll pouring resources into making it even better. Download Android client

Symbian / Java

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We’re also proud of our support of low-end devices powered by Java (J2ME) and Symbian operating systems. Our native clients allow you to take full advantage of your device. In the future we plan to focus more on modern platforms, but we’ll always try to support Symbian/Java platforms the best we can. Client’s functionality on these platforms are identical to our other mobile clients. Get our client for Symbian / Java phones

MyJongla

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This is probably the easiest way to send Jongla messages if you prefer a real keyboard. You can register on our homepage and start sending messages in 5 minutes or less. Our web client was created to also function on mobile devices, so you can send Jongla messages on the go without installing anything. One unfortunate limitation (due to restriction by Apple) is that you can not add attachments to Jongla messages when using the web client. Another cool thing you can use web client for, is replying Jongla messages right there in your browser. We’re planning to expand this a lot more and maybe add support for conversations, threads and more. You can use web client to send Jongla messages containing attachments on your local computer. Yet another great use for Jongla messages is sending high resolution pictures and videos found on your desktop machine and sending it to a group of friends.

Jongla Mobile Web

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What if you want send a message to your friends, but your phone model is not supported or you don't want to install any software for whatever reason? Well we got you covered. Just direct your mobile browser to m.jf.fi and send unlimited Jongla images anywhere in the world. You can send messages to many recipients, add attachments and use our Address Book system which allows you to carry your contacts with you across devices. Login to our web client and start sending those free messages!

Facebook

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New member in our family is our Facebook client. There are a lot of Facebook addicts (we mean this in a positive sense), and social network seems to be growing and growing. We decided to add support for Facebook for 2 reasons: You probably have a lot of friends on Facebook; You’re already sharing content with your friends on Facebook. Now you can easily message your Facebook friends without ever leaving your favorite social network. One thing that makes our Facebook client special is the ability to send multimedia content you already posted on Facebook. You can read more about our Facebook client here.

The future looks promising

We plan to support even more platforms and devices in near future, so stay tuned by subscribing to our newsletter and RSS feed and you are the first to hear about our new releases.

Jongla goes Facebook

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Lately Facebook has been a constant subject of rumors, praises and there was even a feature film made about it. There is no denying that Facebook is huge, and many consider it their preferred way to stay in touch with people they care about. There are over 500 million active users on Facebook and  over 250 million people access it via their mobile devices. This is why we're so excited to bring Jongla service to all Facebook users around the world. In a nutshell, you get all the benefits of Jongla service, but without the need for a mobile device and right within Facebook. Jongla Facebook application allows you to send multimedia content (images and videos) located on your computer as well as Facebook images and videos to mobile devices anywhere in the world for FREE. There are tons of ways you can utilize Jongla service on Facebook so let's get started!

Registration

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First things first. When you're logged in to Facebook, go to Jongla Facebook application. When asked whether you're willing to provide the application with information, answer yes (we just need it so you can link your Facebook account with your Jongla account). Next ,you need to register if you're new to Jongla service or login using your existing Jongla credentials. Our registration process is really simple and we only require a username, password and your mobile number (in International format). We need your phone number so we can verify that you're a real person (prevents spam). We never sell your personal information to anybody and we will never send you advertisements of any kind. The reason why you need to create a Jongla account is because you can the use Jongla service on many different devices as soon as you log in. Once you have registered, you will receive an SMS message with an attached link. Just click on that link on your mobile device in order to verify your account. Now you're all set.

Sending messages

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Every Jongla message can contain text, images and videos. Unlike many other mobile services, we don't limit the number of files you can send or their size. This opens a whole new world of possibilities.
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In order to send a message you need to know the recipient's mobile phone number. You can maintain your personal address book within Jongla service so you can access people that matter to you in mere seconds! Unfortunately, due to technical limitations placed by Facebook, we're not able to retrieve your Facebook friend's phone numbers. This means that you need to manually add phone numbers of people who are already your friends on Facebook. You can also directly write a phone number as a recipient. Just don't forget that you need to have the phone number in the International format (example: +18292922828). You can send Jongla messages to multiple recipients, which makes it ideal when you need to distribute multimedia content to many people at once (sending your latest office party images to everybody involved in seconds).

Attachments

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We're not going to cover text field as it's pretty standard and boring. Attachment is where it gets cool and interesting. You can add unlimited amount of videos and pictures to your Jongla message, but get this...you can add images and videos you have already uploaded to Facebook. You can also mix and match (local files and files from Facebook). In order to add attachments to your message just click "add video" or "add picture". You will then be asked if you want to add content from your local computer or from Facebook. Choose Facebook, and you will be able to send pictures and videos you have already uploaded to Facebook. Once you're ready, just press "Send" and your message will be off on it's way.

Message history

You can click "Message history" and see messages you have already sent in the past. It also makes re-sending old messages really easy.

Why Facebook

You might wonder why we brought Jongla service to Facebook. We thought that running our application within Facebook opens new ways to use our service:
  • Facebook doesn't allow you to upload very large video files. Their limitation is 1024MB and maximum 15 minutes in length. We don't have those limits, so you can send large files to your Facebook friends without ever worrying about hitting file size limitation.
  • Sometimes you want to send content you have on Facebook to people you don't necessary want to add as friends on Facebook (your co-worker, your ex or your father in law). You can use Jongla to send that content without ever needing to add them as friends on Facebook.
  • If some of your friends are not on Facebook you can easily send them content you have already uploaded to Facebook with ease. You can for example send your summer pictures to everybody in your extended family with one click.
  • You can use our application to safely backup content you uploaded to Facebook with Jongla. You can select entire albums along with videos and safely send them to yourself.
  • If you uploaded something really awesome and know your friends will appreciate it, but you can't wait for them to login to Facebook to see it, just send it as Jongla message and they will receive it right on the mobile device.
Those are just some use cases for our application on Facebook. I am sure you will find tons of ways to make use of Jongla service. Don't be shy and let us know in the comments!

Future plans

We're planning to expand our Facebook support across our entire service. There are cool and exciting features coming up like receiving Jongla messages right there on Facebook, sending messages to people who's number you don't know, but who are your friends on Facebook and much more. Stay tuned for much more Facebook awesomeness to come in near future!

Jongla 101: What is Jongla?

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People wanted to communicate since the dawn of time. Nowadays we have a magical tool called mobile phone and now it's impossible to imagine living without one. Jongla aims to take your mobile messaging experience to another level. In upcoming weeks we'll be posting more information regarding our service without sparing any details. Please leave us a comment and let us know what you think! Jongla service was born when Jongla Oy founders realized that Internet adoption on the mobile phone will only accelerate. With all the fancy stuff we could do on our mobile devices thanks to mobile broadband Internet, we were still using primarily SMS (Short Message Service) for mobile messaging. Fast forward a few years. Almost every single smart phone is capable of sending email messages along with SMS and MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) messages. MMS was meant to be something between email and SMS, allowing you to send multimedia files. The beauty of MMS is that recipient receives the message instantly. Unfortunately MMS service was plagued with countless issues starting from being expensive, to inability to reliably send messages to recipient in a different country. Why not use email instead, you ask. Email is great, but it's not reliable and not instant. When I send you an email message, I can not be sure that you received it on your mobile device. You might have not configured your phone to "pull" new messages frequently enough, or maybe you're in a roaming area and don't want to receive a cellphone bill that will put you in a permanent shock. The only thing I can rely on is that you will receive the message when you check your email next time. In many situations it's not a problem, but you can't consider email true mobile messaging.
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Another issue that is present in MMS and email is maximum file size. MMS maximum file size for videos and images seems to vary depending on the device and cell phone provider, ranging from crappy to acceptable. Email is restricted by maximum file size for the email message ranging from a few megabytes to 25MB (for example in the case of Gmail). If you use Gmail you should be able to send high quality images over email with no problem, but what about video? With optics on mobile devices getting better and better every day, image and video file sizes grow almost exponentially. If you wanted to send an HD video recorded on your mobile phone to your grand mom, how would you do it? To make things worse, format war maybe over for high definition disks (hooray for Blu-Ray), but not for mobile devices. 3GP is certainly dying, but there are plenty of devices out there that still produce and consume only 3GP. If your top of the line device produces h.264 encoded HD video and you send it to a few year old device (not everybody in the world owns an iPhone or Android), the chances of the recipient being able to play it are pretty slim. Last but not least, there is expense at being able to send messages globally. Try sending MMS message to your friend abroad. It will most likely never arrive and will be obscenely expensive, considering the amount of data that got transferred. Jongla was created to overcome all these issues. It allows users to message each other absolutely for free, as long as they have mobile broadband connection. Below you will find more information on how Jongla overcomes all issues mentioned above.
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Cost As long as both the sender and the recipient have mobile broadband, the service is totally free. There are no premium features or any other catches you might have to pay for down the road. Quality There are no limits on file size, amount of attachments and length of videos. Jongla can handle whatever your device can dish out. It's a perfect companion for your mobile videos. Jongla message can also contain any number of videos and pictures, so you can send everything in a single message. How cool is that? Portability When you send multimedia files using Jongla mobile service they are automatically encoded to many different formats, so no matter what device your recipient has, we'll be able to serve him a format his device can playback. Our system is totally automatic and doesn't need any actions on sender's or recipient's behalf. You can send Jongla messages using our web client from your desktop or using our mobile applications available on all major mobile platforms. The receiver only needs a mobile device capable of receiving SMS messages with a mobile browser. International messaging Jongla messages are URLs delivered via SMS. Thanks to the beauty of this simple design, our users are able to send messages anywhere in the world with confidence and for free. Delivery time Jongla messages are sent right after conversion process is done for multimedia files. In many cases it only takes a minute or so for a Jongla message to arrive on the other side of the globe. Where is the catch? You might be wondering if it's too good to be true. Jongla is able to offer this service totally for free, because we include a small ad in your messages. This means that the more you use our application the better it is for us. So don't worry and keep on sending! P.S. In our next blog post we'll go into detail regarding different clients we offer. Stay tuned and use comments to give us feedback!

Jongla now also on Android phones

The first version of Jongla is now available for Android devices. Download Jongla from the Android Market for free. Discover how fun it is to use, and how easy it makes it to share your life with your loved ones. The Jongla Android app is an open-to-all mobile messaging solution. With Jongla, you are free to share videos and pictures of any size. You can send as many mobile messages as you want – wherever you want. Share your experiences with the new Jongla Android app and discover how Jongla will change your world. Some of the Jongla Android app’s features are: • Ability to share multimedia – high quality videos and photos • Ability to share multiple files • Works with regular phone numbers and integrates seamlessly with your address book • Global service – Jongla delivers your messages all over the world: no international charges • No hidden costs – once you’ve signed up for Jongla, you can send an unlimited number of free mobile messages • Open solution – the recipients do not need to be Jongla users • Device-independent service that can be used on multiple platforms • Jongla uses your internet connection: Wi-Fi, 3G or EDGE
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As this is the first version of our application, we are aware of some minor issues. All feedback and comments on the application are welcome, and we will take all suggestions into consideration when we improve and roll out future versions of the application. Please submit your questions and feedback on our Jongla support forum. With Jongla, you are Free to Share. Jongla Android app is compatible with all devices that run Android version 2.2 or later. Android is widely used on, for example, Samsung, Motorola, Ericsson, LG and HTC devices.