Universalis

Monday 13 October 2008
Monday of week 28 of the year

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Universalis on mobile phones via WAP

The new generation of mobile phones can access Web content using WAP (Wireless Application Protocol). We have created some special formats so that you can get Universalis in this way.

The WAP version of Universalis is a miniature version of the full Universalis site. It concentrates purely on the Hours and the Mass, and it omits the fixed and repetitive parts that you will probably know by heart anyway.

How do I connect my phone to Universalis?

1. Make sure you have the right phone.: Ask your supplier whether your phone is WAP-compatible. Most phones sold in the last five years are.
2. Make sure your phone company lets you access other sites.: In the early days of WAP some phone companies tried to restrict access to only the sites that they chose to offer, because that way they could make money by charging content providers to be part of their site. This practice seems to have died out (in many countries it was held to be anti-competitive), but if you have problems accessing Universalis, check with your phone company to see whether they are locking you in to their own sites.
3. Get the Universalis web address into your phone.: Typing a web address into a mobile phone is so tedious and error-prone that many phones won't even allow you to open an arbitrary address. Instead, you have to store the Universalis address into your phone as a bookmark and then open that bookmark whenever you want to use Universalis. The nice thing is that once you've set the bookmark, you never need to re-set it.
The web address for Universalis on mobile phones is different from the standard one. The next section tells you how to construct a suitable address, but if you're in a hurry to see whether Universalis works at all, use
http://wap.universalis.com
- this will always work but may not give you the right time zone and location.

What do I get when I connect to Universalis?

You get the feast and antiphon of the day, and the psalms and readings for Mass, the Office of Readings, Morning Prayer, Evening Prayer, and Night Prayer.

What bookmark do I use?

Here are a few quick examples.

http://wap.universalis.com

uses the General Calendar and calculates days according to Universal Time (GMT).

http://wap.universalis.com/-0500/

uses the General Calendar and calculates days according to Eastern Standard Time (EST).

http://wap.universalis.com/0800/

uses the General Calendar and calculates days according to Singapore time.

http://wap.universalis.com/0100/England.Westminster/

uses the local calendar for Westminster and calculates days according to British Summer Time (BST).

Note: in the above addresses, the slashes at the end of each address really are needed, or Universalis will get confused!

These time zones are needed because Universalis needs to know what day it is. For instance, when it is Thursday morning in Greenwich is may still be Wednesday evening in New York.

1. If you already use a bookmark for the Universalis web site

If you have already set up a bookmark that takes account of your local time zone and your local calendar, you need to modify it slightly to turn it into a WAP bookmark.

For example, suppose that you use the bookmark

http://www.universalis.com/USA/today.htm

to access the "About Today" page, and that you are using Eastern Standard Time, which is 5 hours behind Greenwich. In that case, the WAP bookmark that you need to use for your mobile phone will be

http://wap.universalis.com/USA/-0500/

2. If you don't already use a bookmark