Getting Started With FishPhone

This entry will give you instructions on how to:

• Create, manage and configure your micro website
• Setup your Polycom phone to point to your micro website
• Use your Polycom phone to browse your micro website

1. Create and manage micro pages

After logging in, click on the link “Manage micro pages” to start creating micro pages for you micro website.

Since we don’t have any micro page yet. Click on “Add a new micro page” to create out first page.

The UI is quite straightforward, we need to enter the title and body of the micro page as well as decide whether it is the home page of the micro website or not. Please note that there will be only one home page for the micro website and it is the last one that is specified as home page. If no home page is specified, the system will randomly select one of the pages to be the home page. For user’s convenience, the system also provides a list of  HTML tags that are supported by the micro browser on the right panel.

You can create as many micro pages as you want and they can be managed easily (edit, delete) via the “Manage micro pages”  interface

You can also preview how your micro website will look like by clicking on the “Preview my micro site” link. This will open you micro website in a new tab or window.

Now the content for our micro website is ready. If you can’t wait to see your micro website on the phone, crush to section 3, otherwise, continue on section 2 on how to make some simple configuration options with your micro website.

2. Configure micro website

After logging in, click on the link “Configurations” to configure your micro website.

Here you can:

• Configure the URL of your micro website.You may then want to configure your Polycom phone’s micro browser to point to this URL
• Set the location for Yahoo Weather (a built-in utility of FishPhone) by clicking on the link to Yahoo Weather page and follow the instruction there to get your Yahoo Weather WOEID.
• Select the metric for Yahoo Weather (Celsius or Fahrenheit)

3. Configure Polycom phone to point to your micro website

Follow these steps to configure your Polycom phone’s micro browser:

• Connect your Polycom phone to your ADSL modem/router and then connect your computer to your Polycom phone.
• Press the “Menu” button on the phone, go to “Status” then “Network”, then “TCP/IP Parameters” to get the IP of your Polycom phone. It should be a local IP address, in my case, it is 192.168.1.2
• Open a browser on your computer (which is now connected to the phone) and go the the IP address of your Polycom phone (which is 192.168.1.2 in my case)
• You will be prompted for user name and password. By default, it is “Polycom” and “456″ for my phone. It can be different for different model, please check your model’s document for default user name and password. After login, you will see a welcome screen like this

• Go to “General”, then “Microbrowser”

• Enter the URL of your micro website to the field Main Browser Home. It is optional for you to enter the URL of any of your page (or any other site that can be viewed on the micro browser) to the field Idle Display Home and Idle Display Refresh Period (in seconds, 0 means no refresh at all).
• Click “Submit” button and the phone will be reset. After resetting, you are ready to access your micro website on your Polycom phone.

4. Browse your micro website on the micro browser

After configuring and resetting your Polycom phone, press the “Applications” on the phone to launch the micro browser. By the fault, you will be at the home page of your micro website.

On the home page, the system also automatically generate links to other pages

Each page has link to go back to the Home page

The system also has built-in utilities in the Utilities page

Currently, there are 5 built-in utilities:

• Shows the current Twitter trends
• Shows tweets of a Twitter account (requires login)
• Update Twitter status (requires login)
• Yahoo weather
• Go to URL: type in the URL and you will be redirected to that URL

Some screenshots about the built-in utilities

Fishphone.com: Personalized web content for your Polycom Phone

• Tweet from your Phone?
• Weather and news reports on your phone?
• Pictures and personalized directories on your phone?

1. Introduction

Together with emerging VoIP technology to reduce costs and increase sound quality, the features of VoIP phones are also enhanced: some new models also have a micro web browser such as the Polycom SoundPoint phones. Unfortunately, most Polycom SoundPoint users can not take advantage of the micro browser on their phones.

Microbrowsers support only a very limited set of HTML and most websites can not be viewed properly on them. Recognizing the potential need for web content that can be viewed on a Polycom micro browser, East Agile has developed a web application that helps businesses and users easily build micro websites that can be viewed on their phone’s micro browser. The application is now at the alpha phase of development and has been tested mainly on Polycom SoundPoint phones.

2. Using FishPhone to build micro websites

The application is available at http://fishphone.com and has a “very simple but easy to use” interface. Here are some basic instructions on how to use the application to build your own personalized micro websites that can be viewed on Polycom’s micro browser.

2.1. Register an account

To use FishPhone, user needs to have an account. Registering an account with FishPhone is very fast and simple. A valid email account is all the user needs for registration.

2.2. Manage micro pages

After logging in, user can start creating micro pages for their micro websites via a simple interface as shown below.

A micro website can have multiple pages. If the site has more than one page, the user needs to specify a home page and the system will automatically generate links to other pages from the home page when displaying on the micro browser. Creating and editing a page is done via a simple form with instructions explaining which HTML tags are supported.

2.3. Configuration Options

FishPhone allows users to specify the URL of the micro website or the weather location (using Yahoo Weather).

3. FishPhone Micro Website Example

Here are some pictures showing a sample FishPhone website on a Polycom phone.

Besides content created by users, Fishphone also provides some built-in utilities such as Twitter integration and local Yahoo weather reports.

4. Conclusion

FishPhone is the first free application to help Polycom phone users take control of the micro browser on their phone. There are many cases where a micro website can be helpful such as a personalized or company phone directory. If you or your company has a Polycom phone, you can use FishPhone today to replace your blank screen with rich content.