mobile im

Since reading and blogging about Getting Real, I've become more interested in what 37Signals has to say. I've started perusing their Signal vs Noise Blog from time to time and have found a couple more gems worth sharing.

The first post that caught my eye was a response to Jason Calacanis' now infamous post on how startups can save money. I had already read what Calacanis has to say and found it to be generally good advice. If you want to get the most out of people, you should indeed set them up for success. But I was irked by the same point that David at 37Signals was, that Calacanis recommended firing non workaholics, and was interested to read the response post Fire the workaholics. Clearly there is a happy medium, but I found that I generally agreed with the 37Signals point of view, that working smarter not longer should be a priority. This is clearly a heated topic near and dear to people's hearts, exemplified by the outrage at the original post. Just read the comment stream to see how sensitive a topic this really is. Clearly there is a need to work hard and put in extra hours from time to time, but some of the studies mentioned in the comments talked of the effect working long hours can have on motivation. It seems that, in the long run, more hours to a point does not equate to increased productivity. It's counter intuitive, but then that's psychology for you.

The second post that I fell in love with was this one about Questioning your work. It lists a series of questions to ask yourself before embarking on a new project or even when starting simpler tasks. If you are really doing the right thing, the answers to these questions will confirm that. But if you are undertaking folly, asking yourself these questions will help you realize it. What are we doing and is it worth it? What else could I do that might be better than this? Is there an easier way to do this? I will surely ask myself these questions and others like them more often in the future.

Chris
EQO Customer Evangelist

Two years ago I was kinda sad when I ended up with a Motorola V635 and not a RAZR as my personal phone. RAZR's were so freaking cool back then, but they generally sucked from the nerdy technical point of view. Just try running EQO on a RAZR V3 and you'll see what I mean, slow... I was really happy with my V635 when I got it. It was way better than my circa 2002 Audiovox (colour screen!) and made calls just fine. It wasn't until I got my hands on some other high end phones from Nokia and Sony Ericsson that I realized just how greatly Motorola phones paled in comparison. Motorola pulled off a marketing coup with their four letter 'almost a word' naming scheme, featuring RAZR, SLVR, PEBL, KRZR, ROKR, RIZR and so on. It seems that the consumer community has gotten over the then cool RAZR form factors and voted with their dollars because Motorola's phone division isn't doing so well. Who'd a thought better qualities products would sell more?

The news today is that Motorola is actually splitting off it's phone division from the rest of its business, a move many see as protecting the successful business from the phone division's inevitable failure. I'm not really surprised by this and I don't recommend that anyone buy into the pending IPO of Motorola Mobile.

UPDATE:  Wow, didn't know it was this bad!

Chris
EQO Customer Evangelist

We at EQO are in a continual pickle when it comes to Samsung and LG phones. We would love to support them all, but there are just too many for us to get our hands on. To make matters worse, neither have developer programs that are of any use. Thank you Nokia and Sony Ericsson for being so helpful!

We currently only support a small percentage of the estimated 47 billion different Samsung and LG models out there and we need our user's help to support more. If you are interested in helping us support your phone, please send us an email to beta@eqo.com providing your phone model, country, and mobile service provider. If we think there is a chance that EQO Mobile will work we'll help you try EQO, which will hopefully lead to us officially supporting your phone. Helpful beta testers will have the chance to win EQO Prize Packs, in addition to the tremendous honor of being the first to use EQO Mobile on a particular model. We thank our users in advance for their kind efforts and hope to hear from you soon!

Cheers,

Chris
EQO Customer Evangelist

We have released version 1.2.1 of the EQO Symbian Beta for Nokia Series 60 3rd edition phones. This version alleviates many of the "Memory Full" errors that our testers were getting. This problem may not be solved for people with over a thousand contacts, but the general population should be much less afflicted. Problems with the symbol table for text entry persist on some phones. Affected users will surely realize right away. We have addressed this bug, but the fix didn't make it into this release. Version 1.2.1 also contains many other minor bug fixes that make this release faster and more stable.

When upgrading to the latest version of the Symbian Beta it is a good idea to remove the old client first before upgrading to version 1.2.1. There are some issues with upgrading over the old version, be warned. Get the latest version from our Symbian Beta page or by visiting get.eqo.com/symbian on your mobile browser.

Thanks again to all of our testers and please keep the great feedback coming in our Symbian Beta Forum. After this next Beta period, we'll be announcing the winner of the EQO iPod Shuffle!

Chris
EQO Customer Evangelist

Here at EQO we have a giant mobile phone library consisting of just about every type of phone imaginable. Us lucky employees get to try everything and take our pick. My mainstay to date has been the Nokia E61i, a Symbian, wifi enabled, full keyboard super phone that's as functional as it isn't sexy. Lately, I've been carrying the iPhone in my leisure time while still using the E61i at work (EQO doesn't run on the iPhone, yet). I must confess that I now love the iPhone and loathe switching back to the E61i every day. While the iPhone isn't technically more advanced than my E61i, it is supremely better to use. This giant leap in mobile experience got me thinking about the future of mobile in general. Now that calling/texting, mp3 players, cameras, push email and so much more is ubiquitous, what's next?

1. Web on mobile, not mobile web. Thanks to iPhone, I can now use the web, the real web, on my phone. The real web differs from the mobile web (scaled down versions and bad interfaces) in that it doesn't suck. In the future, all phones will be like iPhone in that the web experience will not suck. The proof is in the hits, Google is finding out.

2. GPS will bring us killer location based services. Google Maps Mobile can now tell me roughly where I am and tell me about nearby businesses of the kind I am looking. Soon enough, I'm expecting my phone to tell me stuff without my asking it:
Phone: Hey Chris!
Chris: Yeah, Phone?
Phone: There's a bar 30m ahead then 20m right that your brother-in-law Erik loves. Try the Scottish Ale.
Chris: Thanks phone, I'll check it out.

3. Real Applications. The mobile app market is growing and improving, but is only exploited by the brave few technical souls willing to suffer with installation and connection problems (generally caused by the near sightedness of mobile operators in general). With the advent of open platforms (Android) and the web on mobile (not the mobile web!), developers will be able to easily build and distribute applications to wireless devices. I'm expecting to be able to do all that I do on my PC, much of which is increasingly web based, on my phone, just as easily.

4. Real Usability. The traditional phone interface at its basest level presents a list of contacts with some options. Generally, this is where people spend 90% of their time even though their phones can surf the (mobile) web, play music, take pictures, and then some. The iPhone was a great leap in usability. It's the most discoverable phone I've ever used. Technopeasants can easily figure it out. I believe the iPhone affect on mobile usability perception will enable the majority to take advantage of what phones can technically already do, beyond calling and texting.

5. Media Factories. We are seeing this now. The most potent of phones are media factories, but again only for the technocracy. Currently, it is too challenging and/or costly for most people to shoot video and beam pictures around. This will change. Facebook mobile image uploads are just the beginning. Lifecasting, live reporting, photo diaries, and the like will become easier to produce and distribute.

6. Modu. While I hate pre announcement hype videos that don't tell you what the product is going to be, I must say I was pleasantly surprised to find out about Modu. Modu is essentially a next generation SIM card, a SIM card that makes calls. As a SIM card is to a phone, Modu is to all other electronic devices. I'm eager to see what they have in store for their modular gem.

7. Real VoIP. There are many mobile voip services out there, including a bright shiny orange one from EQO. None are truly the equivalent of Skype on a PC. Services using wifi aren't truly mobile, not until wifi covers the world and handoff is perfected. Services using 3G connections still require a contract with a mobile operator. All other VoIP services provide a cost benefit via other mechanisms. Existing mobile voip services are great, but they are only steps towards pure voip.

iPhone is the best mobile I've used to date that makes powerful mobile services usable. I'm not just saying that as an Apple fanboy, I really believe its the best phone ever. I can't wait to see how the rest of the industry will respond to its brilliance. One thing is for certain, things are looking up for the consumer.

Chris
EQO Customer Evangelist

The eagerly awaited second version of our EQO Symbian beta has arrived.  The first beta yielded much excellent feedback and we thank our kind testers for all their hard work.  We've tried to incorporate as much of what we heard as possible into this next version, although 1.2 is still a beta with issues of its own.  That being said version 1.2 is greatly improved and offers:

• Enhanced stability and performance.
• Predictive text and text input status notification.
• IM stability and bug fixes.
• Contact search filter.
• Other good stuff I can't think of.

When upgrading to the latest version of the Symbian Beta please make sure to remove the old client first before upgrading to version 1.2.  There are some issues with upgrading over the old version, be warned.  Get the latest version from our Symbian Beta page or by visiting get.eqo.com/symbian on your mobile browser.

Also, there is a major bug in version 1.2 that we are aware of and are already fixing for the next release.  On some phones, opening the Symbol table for special character input causes the app to crash.  I imagine you'll find out rather quickly if you are affected or not.

Thanks again to all of our testers and please keep the great feedback coming in our Symbian Beta Forum.

Chris
EQO Customer Evangelist

I am pleased to announce that EQO has recently released its first Facebook application. It probably isn’t what you would expect, but it’s a fun application that will likely appeal to those who like Pokes.

Our app is called Vibrator and it lets you send your friends Vibes. Vibes are like vibrating pokes with fun messages and animations. Vibes can be sent between Facebook users, but EQO users have the option of receiving Vibes on their mobile phone. For example, if I sent you a vibe your phone would vibrate and you would see that “Chris sent you an I told you so Vibe!” We have lots of fun Vibe types, but you need to earn some of them by sending enough Vibes.

Please give it a try and let us know what you think! We are interested in your feedback and would love to know how you think Vibrator could be better and what vibes you might be interested in sending to your friends. And never fear, we have some other Facebook features in mind that are more communicative in nature.  Also, props to Handi Mobility for developing Vibrator with us.  They do great work and I highly recommend them.

Please try Vibrator and, while you are it, you might as well join the EQO Facebook group!

Chris
EQO Customer Evangelist

On Monday night I hit up the local Facebook Developer Garage to demo an as yet unreleased EQO Facebook project called Vibrator. It was good times and really cool to hear the guys behind such widely installed apps as Hockey Pool and Are You Normal? share their knowledge. I definitely took something away from them towards making our app better. I also realized that I have an injured Sidney Crosby on my Hockey Pool roster...

My favorite app presented was Eat-a-Rama, a Yelp-style Google Maps mashup for restaurant ratings. It shows you restaurants within the map you've chosen and also shows ratings and reviews for each restaurant. The killer feature here is the ability to see what restaurants your friends have rated, adding an element of trust. I added the app as soon as I got home. The interface of the app is very slick and user intuitive, which was nice when it came to adding my favorite restaurants to their listings. My three favorite restaurants near my house weren't listed yet, weird. Don't worry folks, I've added the only three good restaurants in Cloverdale. The good news is you now know where to eat if you are ever in the hood. The bad news is that you would be in Cloverdale.

Another interesting presentation was that by Garth Shoemaker. His app, I'm Reading, was pretty sweet. I wasn't really into it because I get enough recommendations from people I talk to in real life that my "to read" pile is substantially large. I also don't need to show everyone how smart I am through books I've read, which is only moderately smart seeing as I count Harry Potter amongst my favorites. What really got me interested in this guy was his "protect the internet" rant urging us to be good netizens. He likened apps like Vampires and Zombies to the scourge of the internet. He urged us to be conscientious when releasing Facebook applications that might annoy him and other self righteous computing science graduate students. I imagine he wasn't a fan of Vibrator either. Personally I get a kick out of simple apps that are really just a bit of fun. Sending a SuperPoke! or biting a chump is a social interaction I liken to a physical nod, smile, or shove. These acts means something and if people want to do digitally do such things to eachother, who is this guy to say they shouldn't?

When it came time to present Vibrator I was rather more nervous than usually I would be in such situations. I generally consider developers to be amongst the smartest people in the world and I find presenting our app to them a bit intimidating. My nerves weren't aided by the error Facebook tossed me the first time I tried to do anything. I'm convinced it was Facebook's fault and not ours... The next action I took was error free, no harm no foul. Vibrator was received with the usual laughs and skepticism, but the proof will be in how many people end up using it. I hope lots.

All in all it was a good night. I learned much from the other presenters and from presenting myself. It was great to see the Handi guys, who helped build Vibrator, and ex EQOer Ash of PeerGlobe out there. Miss604 has a great run down of the whole night on her blog; I also was quite hungry. Looking forward to the next one...

Chris
EQO Customer Evangelist

I love the social media /new media revolution brought about by Web 2.0. I love all the sharing, creating, empowering, filtering, and most of all I love reading blogs. I read mostly mobile and tech blogs, but I'm starting to get into the customer evangelist, marketing type blogs. There are actually customer evangelist blogs. They call it the long tail for a reason, because it reaches the micro niches and minute interests of almost everyone including me. And if you can't find what you are looking for, create it. It's as simple as that, you become the niche, amazing.

Now that I'm out of buzz words, wait, mobile penetration. Now that I'm out of buzzwords, let me share with you a problem I have. Beyond that I can't keep up with my feeds, the trouble I'm having now is with video. Three minutes of my life is quite a commitment for me and, beyond a headline, you really don't get the sense of what a video is all about until you start watching it. With blogs, I can skim to my hearts content, but not so with video. I want to watch all of these videos that could be interesting, but who has the time? The only videos I do watch now come highly recommended. What I need is a video skimming app, or maybe feature of video sites, that labels the good parts. It could have digg style voting on the money shot. We'll call it social editing maybe? Let it be known that I just coined that term.

I did I search for video skimming and came up with mostly research type stuff. I know there is video tagging right now, but it's really for inane comments at this point. What I really want is the climax, the clutch one liner and none of the preamble. Somebody, please build this for me.

Chris
EQO Customer Evangelist

This is a topic near and dear to our hearts here at EQO.  As you may well know, the FCC is auctioning off a chunk of the 700MHz spectrum previously used for analog TV channels 53-59 (those channels will now be digital).  The FCC is doing this so they can make billions of dollars and their interest, as far as I can tell, is purely financial.  The 700MHz spectrum is ideal for wireless in that signals travel further and penetrate obstructions better.  The owner of this spectrum could set up low cost, high service availability, and fast wireless network that could change the face of the American wireless industry, which is generally considered a laughing stock compared to the rest of the modern wireless world.

The front runners to win this tasty bit of frequency are Verizon (evil) and Google (awesome).  Verizon would likely use the spectrum to buoy their own position in the USA by offering services only slightly better than those of their competitors with little to no improvement in usability or feature innovation.  On the other hand, Google is rumored to be planning a free (ad funded) and open wireless network that would turn the wireless industry on its head.

I'm surprised at how little press this is getting considering the magnitude of the implications, but then maybe I'm just a dreamer.  In any case, the auction begins and, sadly, we can't follow it, but Engadget will tell you all you need to know.  We should know the results in a couple of months and favorite to win, based on no personal bias whatsoever, is Google.

Long live Googletel!

Chris
EQO Customer Evangelist