I sometimes think I’m like ‘Jonny 5’, the robot out of the cult 80’s movie ‘Short Circuit‘. Need input.. information, information and more information. That’s why I like Wikipedia – once you’ve done with browsing the usual mobile-tailored news portals you can pass many a dull journey on public transport by typing in something random into Wikipedia and seeing what comes up.
I started using Wapedia the other day. Whilst it’s been around since 2004, I’ve never really stumbled across it. Run by Taptu.com it gives you a nice fast way to access Wikipedia on the go – and, in my humblest opinion, looks nicer than Wikipedia’s native mobile interface.
Anyway, when I clicked on my Wapedia bookmark on my E71 a day or so ago I got the following message:
Blocked? Eh? Maybe I’d bookmarked it wrong, so I typed in wapedia.mobi into the browser. Again, the same message. So I left it a day or so, and tried again. Still blocked.
I’ve been racking my brains trying to think of a reason 3 would block Wapedia. Is it an adult site? Not that I know of – besides, from what I’ve seen there’s a different message for that (if you’ve got a 3 phone try firing up something like www.thepiratebay.org on your browser). Is it dangerous? Well, if you believe everything you read on Wikipedia, maybe. But seriously though, it worked for a few days then BANG! – blocked for no apparent reason.
I’ll fire an email to 3’s PR team and Taptu (the people behind Wapedia) shortly – hopefully it’s a simple mistake and not something more sinister.
UPDATE: Less than 24 hours after I wrote the above, Wapedia mysteriously got unblocked. Chris over at Taptu says they’ve asked 3 to look into it – but doubts they’ll get to the bottom of this little mystery. Still – all’s well that ends well.
Why are 3 UK blocking Wapedia? http://snipr.com/rkxwu
Why are 3 UK blocking Wapedia? http://snipr.com/rkxwu
This may be out of date as I no longer work for them… but I believe if you are using any of the Add Internet Max or similar addons they are filtered using bluecoat technology which is controlled by an external party.
If you are on the older X-Series addons, they don't have any filtering on them. 3 have still not a feature available to bypass this filtering if you are on Add Internet Max.
Thankfully I'm now with vodafone who are a little better in this regards (albeit more stingy with their internet allowance for handsets).
This may be out of date as I no longer work for them… but I believe if you are using any of the Add Internet Max or similar addons they are filtered using bluecoat technology which is controlled by an external party.
If you are on the older X-Series addons, they don't have any filtering on them. 3 have still not got a feature available to bypass this filtering if you are on Add Internet Max.
Thankfully I'm now with vodafone who are a little better in this regards (albeit more stingy with their internet allowance for handsets).