What is Eccosphere?
Connecting Circles....
Have you ever noticed how there are times you are happy to be reached by one circle of friends, and not by another? How you want to get hold of a whole group as easily as one person to organize a meeting, a drink or an outing? How you would love to call a contact if you knew you weren't going to disturb them? How it would be great if at a glance you could see what those closest to you were up to? How you wish that your best friends Zack and Wendy weren't always at the bottom of your list of contacts? How it could sometimes be a relief, or even fun, to know which of your friends are available around you? How halfway through composing a message you realized it was the wrong "sort" to support the picture or sound-bite you wanted to add.
Have you ever noticed that as the industry has focused on making your phone become better and better at doing all the things you never expected of it, it seems to have to have forgotten to make as much progress in improving the way we all connect.
Eccosphere is a new service that will change all this to enable closer connections. You can manage your contacts, your availability and your communication. It works across mobile handsets and PCs to enable you connect with all the circles of your life, and ensure that you are really available to those that matter, without being polluted by those who don't. Eccosphere lets you place all your friends, family, work colleagues, or even ex-friends, into circles that mirror your real-world relationships, and you can have as many or as few as you like. The way you relate to those different circles depends on how you want to present yourself, and Eccosphere lets you do that too. On top of that, Eccosphere makes it simple to change when you want to be available to calls or messages from each of your circles, even remembering your last choices when you tell Eccosphere where you are or what you're doing.
How do I join?
At the moment, Eccosphere is in a closed Beta programme, so if you want to apply to join the service as we widen our service to more people, then please send us an email at info@eccosphere.com.
Is my mobile phone supported?
The service works with any phone through SMS, WAP or where supported, an application you can download and install on a Symbian handset (Java coming soon). Each way of accessing Eccosphere has been carefully tuned to match the features of your phone, so if you just want to use SMS, the commands are short and simple, and if you want the full-on Symbian experience, then you have the ultimate mobile way to use your Eccosphere account.
Eccosphere is available on mobile phone at m.eccosphere.com, and on the web at www.eccosphere.com.
Is it free?
Eccosphere is completely free to use, whether you go to our web site or use any of the mobile clients. You will need to pay for other costs associated with your connection, such as internet connection and data charges for broadband or mobile networks, SMS and roaming costs.
Do I need to download any software?
Not if you don't want to. You can get started with SMS or WAP and use the Web site. If you do have a Symbian handset and want a richer experience, then please contact us and we'll arrange for you to get the software.
Is my mobile network supported?
Since you can get started using SMS, even the simplest handset can be used on Eccosphere. However if you want to see and do more, you'll need to make sure that your phone is set up for mobile browsing and that you have a good data plan to avoid large charges for accessing the internet.
What are the SMS commands?
The SMS commands are a shorthand way of updating your current situation when you don't have access to the web or a WAP enabled phone, or when you just want to make a quick change without checking out what everyone else is doing. To use them, you need to be aware of a few straightforward Eccosphere concepts; profiles, activities and locations.
A profile is how you appear to your circles or groups of contacts. In general, you'll have several of these, such as one for work, one for friends and another for family contacts. Each profile has a set of contacts associated with it - the circle - and you can customise it with a special name and picture that suits how you want those contacts to see you.
Profiles also let you fine tune how you let people know whether your available or not, and this is done via the Tap. The Tap is a simple, but powerful, way to tell your contacts whether you can talk or not. Each profile has its own Tap and you can control all of them from a master Tap - the general Tap. That means you can be available to work and and family contacts, but not friends, or any combination you like. Plus you can change it in an instant with a quick click of a button or by simply changing one of the ways of describing what your current situation is - activity and location.
You can change the activity and location for any of these profiles, or for all profiles - the general profile. If you change the "general" activity or location, it launches a special Eccosphere feature called "snap-back" that automatically returns all your profile choices back to where they were last time you set it that way. So, for example, if the last time you set your activity to be working, then the next time you change to working from another activity, like partying, Eccosphere will automatically put your profile arrangement back to where you wanted it for that setting.
Here are the currently active SMS commands:
- [Profile] <Anyverb>ing
- Sets my activity for the named profile, or general activity if none as been selected via the "I am" command. Setting general activity will also start a "snap-back" that restores the previous choices for each profile for when that activity was last used.
- In|On|At <Location>
- Sets my location. This will also start a snap-back to previous choices if no profile has been selected previously.
- ? here
- Tell you which of your contacts are around.
- ? [Contact]
- Tells you the status of a specific contact.
- (To) contact|Group
- Sends a message to a contact, or a group of contacts.
- ? Around here
- Tells you who is around and close by.
- I am [Profile]
- Changes the profile to use for subsequent commands.
Before you can use the SMS commands to discover the status of your contacts, you first need to ensure that the reach-point (contact address) for your profile has been validated, and that your contact has validated their reach-point as well. This is done by following the instructions in the message sent to the reach-point after it is first added.
To check the status of a contact you first need to switch to the profile which holds the contact. This is achieved by sending the "I am
