Europe Ireland :

“Bluebook is a highly successful service for O2 and we are excited to be working with NewBay to add more feature rich functionality. NewBay fully understands the mobile user. They continue to develop innovative services that our subscribers want, while staying focused on making the services as easy as possible to use,” said Christine Marsters, Head of Products at O2 UK.

O2 UK licensed NewBay LifeCache technology to add new features to Bluebook including:

• network initiated message copy
• blogging features to allow users to publish and share content with friends, family and internet visitors
• personalisation tools to add skins to bluebook pages
• integration with the O2 portal address book
• moderation tools.

The new functionality in Bluebook allows all messages, both SMS and MMS, to be automatically backed up by the operator (previously the user could only backup messages by sending them to short code 40202). All messages a user sends or receives are automatically copied from the O2 MMSC and SMSC. The integration with the portal address book ensures that all correspondence is assigned the same naming convention that the user associates with that particular phone number.

In order to effectively manage the increase in traffic and significant volume of simultaneous messages that this service generates, NewBay deployed a filtering application that screens messages based on set rules such as black listed numbers, contact details or message type. Built on NewBay’s core technology and robust architecture, Bluebook is uniquely designed to be able to store billions of messages and process petabytes of data.

“This is one of the most practical mobile services around. I use it myself and currently have thousands of messages stored from birthday wishes to Happy New Year messages I received from my friends,” commented Dr Nagappan Arunachalam, CMO at NewBay. “What’s more, from the operator perspective it is also one of the ‘stickiest’ services as subscriber personal messages and content are stored on the network. Operators are uniquely positioned to be able to automatically backup messages over the air. Which means, no applications to be downloaded and no configuration needed, it couldn’t be easier for the user.”

The new deployment of Bluebook also allows users to publish and share their content in public blogs in addition to their private multimedia albums. Now that content can be published to the public, O2 UK also license NewBay’s moderation tool to ensure only appropriate content is displayed.

About NewBay Software

NewBay Software is the global leader in digital lifestyle solutions for operators, enabling subscribers to create, store, view and share user generated content. NewBay LifeCache product suite empowers operators to deliver an integrated set of converged rich-media services across any internet connected device such as mobile, PC and TV. NewBay’s carrier grade product based solutions include photo and video albums/blogs, social networking, handset clients, network address book and messaging services.