We’ve had a couple of questions (and user reports) about how much data traffic Imity actually consumes, and there’s a couple of things I’d like to say about that.
First things first: I’m adding a traffic counter to the mobile application right now - and that will be available this week, so you can tell howmuch data we’re trying to send over the network.
Second: It’s a little bit tricky to “do the right thing” here: The whole purpose of the app is to save your life history to the web, which obviously consumes traffic, so it’s always going to have a traffic cost if you don’t have a flat data plan.
We haven’t in regular use had problems amoung the founder/developers in this regard - but we are no longer our heaviest users.
Third: There’s a conflict of interest here between the quality of the log and the cost of transmission. Some of the reports we get are from users unhappy with holes in their logs.
Fourth: A lot of the traffic issues are outside our control. I realize that stability at our end is an issue and very important. It’s clear from the blog that we could have hoped for more for the first couple of weeks. I’m working to make that as good as I can - but experience tells us that network stability is a huge issue with the mobile internet. It’s not even that we can recommend specific carriers. We have found connectivity to be very different as you move from cell to cell even and that’s across several carriers here in the Copenhagen area.

What I’m looking into now, along side metering, is a good solid way to save observations for later submission and I’m working to make it much more visible in the app how many networking problems we’ve been having for your phone/carrier/location combination and how much of your life history is stuck on your phone for later submission. Stay tuned for an update.

UPDATE: Sorry about the slight delay - I plan/hope to have a client out with a new econo-mode for long term in-pocket use tomorrow.

Sorry to say we’re having a spell of database trouble today (and last night). I’m trying to figure out why the server won’t stay available and will get back to you as soon as possible.

UPDATE:
Seems the server is in deeper trouble than that. I’m working on a fix.

UPDATE II:
Seems we’re back up again. I’m looking into the instability but I can’t really give you a timeline just yet.

Nikolaj was at DLD this week and as a nice consequence of that, this very nice blogpost on Imity and some of the perspectives on experiments like ours. We’re very open indeed to a lot of the perspectives Stephen points out.

Just to clear up any possible confusion: Stephen’s “only be open to registrations for a week or two” is a typo. We’re planning to be here and be as open as humanly possible for a very long time (recent server problems notwithstanding).

And just to be extra special clear: We like everything you say about us. Tell us what you think.

We’ve had a little server instability wednesday and today. I do apologize.

I just wanted to say thanks to those of you who took the time to try out Imity during our first days, and extra special thanks to those of you who gave us all the good feedback, both on the app in general and in particular on the hard stuff - phone compatibility. We want this to work on every phone where it could conceivable work, but that is going to take some effort. Your feedback is truly invaluable.

It feels great to see Imity being used by all of you.

It seems as if the server has been a little temperamental this morning, not too happy to meet all its new friends. I do apologize for that - and will be giving the machine a good talking to over the day if it starts acting up again.

We just wrote the following message to those who signed up that they would like to be invited as beta testers

Welcome to 2007 - and to Imity!
You signed up as an Imity beta tester, and today we’re happy to tell you that we’re ready to create your account.

Sign up here.

We’ve seen this done in less than three minutes.

It’s a beta…

No, really. It is. As you know, that means

• Bugs.
  On some phones, Imity may be acting up. If you experience weird behaviour, please describe it on forum.imity.com. You may also want to try the Generic version of Imity. Find and download it at imity.com/app from your phone’s browser.
• Constant development.
  We’re adding features and correcting bugs by the hour, so - again - please use the forum or your email client.
• It’s free.
  We strongly expect Imity to be free in the future, too. And free in more than one sense of the word, actually: We expect to open source the Java phone application during the first half of 2007.
• Your feedback is golden.
  We love any kind of feedback, really. In the forum, in our mailboxes, any feedback is good feedback. That’s why we’ll probably be getting back in touch in a few weeks to hear your opinions.
  We want to hear from you. Our forum is always open for your suggestions, bug reports and general comments.

Have a lot of fun in real life with Imity in your pocket,

All our best,
The Imity Team

That means you too. Give Imity a whirl. It’s more fun if you talk a few friends into joining too…

It’s just about time to open the doors here at Imity. We’ve had a good look at the project as we were were doing early testing and along the way we have come to a conclusion, that has sort of been lurking in the background all the time: Imity is much better off as a platform that is as open as at all possible in every sense of the word.
So we’re making the platform extensible, we’re going to open source the phone client and we’re completely committed to integrating Imity and our presence data with anything we possibly can.

This also reflects the nature of the project: Imity is an idea we think rocks first and a potential further-down-the-road product second. We think Imity has a better shot at making a difference if we keep our plans as open as possible.
This also means we hope to involve other people - that means you - in developing this concept. Look here for updates no the project to open source the java client and our soon to come integration APIs.