Betavine is an open community & resource website, created and managed by Vodafone Group R&D, whose mission is to support the wider development community in stimulating ideas, developing, testing and launching great new applications for mobile and Internet communications.
back to topFirstly because Betavine is an initiative of Vodafone Group R&D, in order to have a closer involvement with the mobile & Internet development community and to support the development of great apps and services for the total communications space.
But also because labs are a place to experiment in an environment that actively furthers the invention and discovery process. Just like in a lab, Betavine is working on providing useful tools to measure the uptake, usability, and other quantifiable results of alpha-stage and beta-stage prototypes.
back to topOver time, we hope to provide more and more useful information for people who are interested in becoming partners with Vodafone or suppliers to Vodafone. But those are all completely separate processes within the Vodafone organisation. In the meantime, here are some signposts:
Betavine is built, managed and run by Vodafone Group R&D, based in Newbury, UK.
back to topWe have two dedicated Forums where you can leave us feedback or ask us questions regarding the Betavine website or the Resources section. For any other matter, you can contact us directly by e-mailing the Webmaster at webmaster@betavine.net
back to topEveryone is welcome to register as a member, download and play with applications, contribute to discussion threads and create or comment on blog entries. (But please do read our Website Terms of Use.) Betavine is not just for developers or Vodafone customers, it is open to all.
back to topThere are no fees for membership or participation on Betavine (although our legal department does remind us to reserve the right to introduce paid levels of membership at any time in the future).
At the moment, Betavine does not provide any services for which there is a charge. We do have a credit system however, which can be used towards our SMS messaging API. Every new member receives 100 credits, and can contact the Webmaster at webmaster@betavine.net to find out how to get more.
back to topYes, like just about any website these days, we also have Terms and Conditions that we require any visitor to the website or Member of Betavine to be aware of and abide by.
back to topMembers of Betavine can download any of the applications and related files that they discover on the site, post comments, and share know-how in the resources section.
Students are able to enter competitions and apply for internship and externship opportunities.
Please note that there are two levels of membership -the second level involves registering your mobile phone details and provides you with access to the developer tools. The Betavine Developer membership level allows you to create your own application profiles, upload your apps for others to download and provide feedback on, and to keep a Developer's Log about your apps, to which others can post comments. (What's a Developer's Log?)
back to topTo become a member simply click on the Join link on the top right of any webpage and follow the instructions.
back to topTo become a Betavine Developer, which provides you with access to the developer tools, simply provide us with your mobile phone number during the registration process, or if you have already registered as a basic Member you can provide us with your mobile phone number in the My Phone Number section of My Account.
back to topBetavine Members have completed the basic registration process, providing them with access to application & file downloads, and basic interaction tools. Betavine Developers have additionally provided their mobile phone details in order to gain access to the Application Profile tools and Developer's Log tools.
back to topIf you prefer not to go through the registration process you will still be able to see which applications have been uploaded and profiled on Betavine, but you will not be able to download them or comment on them.
You will also be able to read the information in the Resources section and the discussions in the Forum. However, you will not be able to comment or join the discussions yourself.
back to topIn order to gain access to the Application Profile tools and Developer's Log (What's a Developer's Log?) tools, we require the provision of a valid mobile phone number. This provides us with a second level of confirmation that you are not a spam engine, and will allow you to download applications directly to your mobile phone by way of a link sent by SMS.
Providing us with your mobile phone number will also allow us to offer you interesting services in the future such as SMS alerts. When we introduce such services, we will explicitly offer you the opportunity to opt-in so that you don't unexpectedly start receiving text messages from Betavine.
back to topWe promise that we will never contact you on your mobile phone, send you information or messages that you have not explicitly chosen to receive, or pass on your details to any third party.
The only time you will receive text messages from Betavine is if you choose to download an application directly to your mobile phone, in which case you will receive a download link by SMS. (See our Privacy Policy )
In the future we hope to offer various SMS alert services, but we will explicitly offer you the opportunity to opt-in so that you don't unexpectedly start receiving text messages from Betavine.
back to topWe have quite a strict Privacy Policy, where we promise not to share your private information with anybody. We will occasionally send you e-mails with information about updates to the website or our services, but promise that if we start to do that more than once a month, we will provide you with an explicit opt-in to receive newsletters from us. Otherwise you will only receive membership information from us.
back to topOnce you have become a registered member of Betavine, the My Account area provides you with the ability to edit your profile details, change your password, update your mobile phone number, edit and create application profiles so you can upload your own apps, and keep track of your credits.
You will only have access to this section of the website if you have registered as a member and are logged in.
back to topThe My Personal Profile section allows you to edit the personal details that you provided to us during the registration process. Some of these details, such as your nickname and company will be made public on the website alongside your posts and comments. You can also change the photo that is shown alongside your public profile and update your e-mail address at any time.
back to topIf you are registered as a Betavine Developer, you have access to the developer's tools which allow you to upload your own apps and create an application profile for them. This section provides you with an overview of all of your apps on Betavine, the tools to create new application profiles, and the tools to edit your existing application profiles.
If you have not yet provided us with your mobile phone number, you will need to go to the My Phone Number tab under My Account in order to complete the registration process for the Developer level of membership. This will allow you to access the developer tools, which include the uploading of your own apps.
back to topWhen you register to become a member of Betavine, we will confirm your e-mail address by sending you an e-mail which also contains a password that we have generated for you. Because this password is essentially gobbledy-gook, we recommend that you change it to one that you can remember easily. The My Password section of My Account allows you to do that at any time.
back to topIf you are registered as a basic member of Betavine, you can return to this section of your account at any time in order to become a Betavine Developer and gain access to the developer tools, which requires the provision of your mobile phone number.
If you are already registered as a Betavine Developer, this section of your account allows you to update your mobile phone number if it changes, or switch accounts??? if you wish to use a different mobile phone to receive application download links by SMS.
back to topWe provide all new members with 100 credits upon registration, which can be used towards the Betavine SMS messaging API. You can find out more about the Betavine API in the Resources section of the website.
Your credits will be used at the rate of 1 credit per message, unless otherwise stated. If you would like to top-up your credits, please contact the webmaster at webmaster@betavine.net.
back to topApplications can be defined as software created to perform a specific task for a user. On Betavine we host mainly mobile apps, which is software designed specifically for mobile operating systems that often use the unique features and capabilities of the mobile phone. Mobile applications must be downloaded to the phone itself in order to work.
We also host web apps or mashups that can be used with our mashup framework.
Throughout the website, we often refer to applications as apps. We're not just being lazy; most of the mobile industry calls them apps as well.
back to topIf you are a registered Member of Betavine, there are no charges for downloading applications or their related files. However, those applications are usually subject to licence and are the property of the developer who uploaded them. The licensing information will be provided to you when you are going through the process of downloading an app. (See our Software Download License for non-Vodafone Apps )
back to topYou must first be a registered member of Betavine to download applications. As a member, any time that you see an application that catches your eye, either on the home page, in the Applications section, or in the Resources, simply click on it to open the Application Profile.
The process then goes as follows:
If you have downloaded a mobile application to your PC, you will need to transfer it to your mobile phone via USB port, Bluetooth, infrared or other transfer method. You must then find the file on your mobile phone (so pay attention to where you save it) and launch the application from there.
If you have opted to have the application sent to your mobile phone, you will receive an SMS with a link to the application. Click on this link to download the application to your mobile phone. Pay attention to where you save it, as you will need to launch the application from there.
Most developers provide a ReadMe file with their application, which will give you more detailed information about the installation process for that app. Often the application profile will contain this information as well.
back to topWhen you download an application to your PC, you will go through a process that is hopefully familiar to you already - a pop-up will appear asking you whether you would like to open the file or save it to your hard drive or disc. Most applications will be downloaded as a compressed file (e.g. a zip file) or as a ready to run installation (e.g. an .exe file). If the download is a compressed file then simply double click to uncompress. If you save an .exe file to your hard drive, you will need to find it and run it from there.
Most developers provide a ReadMe file with their application, which will give you more detailed information about the installation process for that app. Often the application profile will contain this information as well.
back to topThe application profile contains information which the Developer has provided about their application and the related files. It will contain technical information so that you can check for compatibility with your mobile phone, provide you with a download section for files and some basic information about what the application does.
Most developers will also provide information about how to download and install their application, as well as user instructions about how the app works. We encourage developers to provide as much information as possible, to make their application easy to use, and to make the feedback they receive more relevant to the development process of the next version of their app.
back to topBasically, the Developer's Log is a blogging tool that we provide to the developer who has uploaded their application to tell you more about the development process, provide you with information about the files that they have made available for you to download, and describe the changes that they have made in the latest versions of that app.
We're quite confident that they will come up with all sorts of other interesting information to share with you, but the idea is that it is more of a development-process log, than a personal blog.
back to topThe majority of mobile applications that are uploaded to Betavine are at the alpha-stage or beta-stage of development, which means that they are works-in-progress still. As a result, some of them won't work. The developer's who took their time to share their application with you, would really like to know that the application didn't work on your phone, and to get any of the error message details (or other useful info) that might help them improve their application.
back to topIf you go to the Application Profile of the app that you downloaded, you will see a couple of ways to share your comments with the developers by writing a new post to the dedicated discussion forum for that app, using the Latest Posts portlet, or by replying to a comment on the Developer's Log.
back to topTo upload your own application to Betavine, go to the My Apps link on the top right menu that is available throughout the whole website.
From My Apps, you are provided with a tool to create an application profile and upload application files. The My Apps section also provides you with an overview of the applications you have already uploaded, and provides you with the ability to edit and update those profiles.
The process is as follows:
Remember that you must first be a registered Betavine Developer before you can upload your own application to Betavine.
back to topYou can join the discussions in the Forums by following any of the posts in the Latest Posts portlet throughout the website and replying, or by going to the Forums section and selecting the Category, Sub-category, and Thread to which you would like to contribute a post, a reply, or create a new Thread.
If you would like to see a new Category or Sub-Category added, please contact the Webmaster at webmaster@betavine.net.
back to topAt the moment, the only API we feature on the website is the Betavine API, but this will change, and then there will be more Sub-categories to match. Please provide us with suggestions about other relevant APIs in the Resources Forum.
back to topEvery time a new Application is uploaded and a profile written for it, we automatically generate a discussion Forum to capture any comments, feedback and collaborations with the developer of that app. Until a comment is made using the Forums tool, these Sub-categories remain empty.
It is also possible to access those discussion Forums from the Application Profile page for those apps.
back to topWe would really like to provide all sorts of resources on Betavine that our members find useful to the mobile application development process, so we are really relying on our members to tell us what they need.
At the moment we have a number of technical themed areas which we call Hot Topics , a Betavine API for SMS text messaging, Vodafone Blogs where various internal Vodafone Departments are engaging with the wider development community regarding the work that they do, a Betavine Forge for sharing code and collaborating on open source software projects, and a Student Zone which features various opportunities for students around the world. When we find other external resource sites that we think might be useful to our members, we add them to our Other Resource Links list.
back to topThe Resource section of the website is our biggest work-in-progress, and there are a lot of things that we still want to do - such as introduce good search tools and provide document sharing tools. We would really welcome all of your ideas about how we could make the Betavine Resources section truly useful and valuable to the development of mobile applications. Please let us know if you have any suggestions, or have some examples of other resources sites that we could be inspired by.
back to topHot Topics are specialist technical themes that relate to mobile, and contain information, links blogs and discussions on those topics. If you have any ideas about functionality that we can add to these areas, or new topics that we should be introducing, please let us know.
back to topWe would like to offer a whole range of APIs that are relevant to mobile, and we've started with a Betavine API which supports SMS text messaging. We could offer access to SMS, MMS and Location for development purposes and in future other APIs. As always, we welcome your suggestions about other APIs that we can be adding to our list.
back to topAn application programming interface (API) is a source code interface that an operating system or library provides to support requests for services to be made of it by computer programs, or in our case, by mobile phones. (Definition provided by Wikipedia)
back to topOur own website was built using open source components so we are definitely big supporters of all things open. We would like to promote the development of more open source software in the area of mobile and internet communications, so we created the Betavine Forge where developers can share code snippets, post projects, and collaborate on projects. You can find the very popular Vodafone Mobile Connect Card Driver for Linux here , for example.
back to topVodafone would like to encourage universities and students to innovate around mobile and internet communications, so we often come up with clever ways on Betavine to encourage students to take an active part, such as through competitions, internships and externships.
back to topAny student who is registered with an academic institute, anywhere in the world, can take part in the Betavine competitions, internships and externships. After you have become a registered member of Betavine, simply complete the student details form which provide for entering competitions or other registering for other opportunities. You can find out more information in our Student Competition Terms. Be sure to check the Competitions page to see if we have any competitions running right now!
back to topThere are so many great resources for mobile developers, we thought we would collect all of the external links we know of on this page.
By all means! We are eager to continue to improve the Resources section, and would love to hear about any suggestions you have about any of the Resources areas. Please drop us a line at any time.
back to topWe have been working hard at making Betavine easier to use and more valuable to our members, and have therefore made quite a few structural changes which were published in the 1.7 version of Betavine on the 19th of October, 2007.
Most of these changes are in response to your suggestions and feedback, and if there is anything that we?ve broken along the way, then we would really love to hear from you.
back to topWe've started making improvements to the Resources section, and we now have a special Resources menu that we think works much better than the Quick Links. That menu can be found on the Resources page. If this is the section of Betavine that you use the most, then we recommend that you bookmark that page.
back to topMany of you told us that it wasn't very clear what the Downloads were about when you first came to the Betavine website, so we have renamed the Downloads section Applications and that's exactly what you can find there, mobile & PC applications.
back to topMany of you told us that naming the area where you can upload and profile your apps Projects didn't make much sense, so we have now re-named them Applications and Application Profiles.
back to topSeeing as you can't yet find any individual developer information on Betavine, we decided it made more sense to rename the Developers section Resources. After all, the goal of the Developers section was to provide resources to developers - so why not just call it that?
(By the way, we are planning on introducing developer profiles and communication tools in the next release of Betavine, so if you have any ideas about what you'd like to see and do, please let us know!)
back to topMany of you asked for an easier way of keeping track of the various discussions and conversations on Betavine, so one of our clever developers has designed a portlet which shows you the latest posts to the Forums and Blogs. Sometimes these portlets only show the latest posts to the forums or blogs that are relevant to the content and context of the page that you're on.
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