What are you doing in my world?

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Many years ago, when our son Connor was acquiring language, he said to one of his brothers “what are you doing in my world?”. What made it funny was that he intended to say “what in the world are you doing?”, but his language was much closer to what I think we really mean when we ask that question…

Yesterday, I had a ‘what are you doing in my world?’ experience with my wife. We were driving from Algoma to Warrenville, IL to celebrate my mom’s 75th birthday. During the course of the trip, she…

Used Google Maps to find a restaurant in Milwaukee and find her way back to pick me up
Commented on my Facebook status from her smartphone
Critiqued a couple of blog posts on my personal blog
Actually tried to sell my mom on the value of having a smartphone!

…all from her HTC Evo!

Now these might sound like normal things to you, but I have always told people that when it comes to technology, my wife and I have a mixed marriage. Not I’m PC and she’s Mac, but rather I live it, she hates it. Until now, the internet has been my own private playground but apparently that’s not the case anymore — my wife is now critiquing my blog posts! I almost fell over when I was sitting in a meeting and saw that she had commented on my Facebook status. I was even more surprised when she made it back to the place where she dropped me off. I was even more surprised than that when the critiques she offered on my posts was actually good feedback and I think I’m going to listen to her more often [in that regard anyway]…

;-)

September 12, 2011 0

Yesterday, I said…

“Speaking of sex and smartphones or maybe sexy smartphones, I’m going to take this opportunity to rant about the iPhone AND Android phones for a moment. Excuse my language, but they both suck — that’s right — they suck! Why the iPhone? Because #1 it’s a closed system — yeah, there’s an app for that but they must all be approved by Big Brother at Apple — and #2 because AT&T is the worst cellular network in the world!” Source: Sex and Smartphones, part 1

…and promised to talk about the Android today…

Over the past two months, I have been experiencing a love/hate relationship with a Samsung Moment running Android. My final take? I went back to my old Blackberry Curve. I was attracted to the Moment for two reasons: it’s Google-created operating system and the appeal of the sliding keyboard on the Samsung Moment. Personally, I think the HTC Hero is one of the most beautiful pieces of industrial engineering I’ve seen in a long time but I hated the software-only keyboard on the iPhone so I thought I’d better try the Samsung Moment first. As it turns out, most critics agreed that the Hero is pretty, but underpowered — kind of like Obama’s healthcare plan, but I digress!

The Samsung Moment was a frustration from day 1 like this author describes…

“So all that being said, I found myself standing in a Sprint store faced with two choices, the Samsung Moment and the HTC Hero. I bought the Moment. Thankfully there was a 30 day trial period!” Source: WTF was SAMSUNG thinking?? Quick Review: Samsung Moment « RichandDaveShow.com

Do go to the source and read his comments if you’re thinking about a Moment. He really nailed it here…

“Wow, the battery on this thing is horrible! There is no possible way this phone, fully charged, could make it past lunchtime if you used it for anything other than a paperweight. ” Source: WTF was SAMSUNG thinking?? Quick Review: Samsung Moment « RichandDaveShow.com

Here are some that he missed…

The screen is horrible. I hate touchscreen devices like iPod touches because I’m really anal about my screens and fingerprints bug me and the Moment is even worse than the iPhone…
Most of the cool new apps for Android are for 2.1, not 2.0 and 2.1 for the Moment isn’t coming out anytime soon…
While I’m at it, Android 2.0 seems pretty half-baked…
Not only is the battery life bad, but memory management sucks too…
Pandora and other streaming apps didn’t work. What’s up with that?

Had enough? I did. I reactivated my old Blackberry Curve! It syncs with Google Apps, does a great job of email and texting, Pandora rocks again, and I’m not missing any calls. Calls are easy to make. All the basics are covered. Life is good again. Basic, but good…

My trial period is over but I’m going to return it to Sprint anyway and they better take it back! If you’re thinking about stopping by your Sprint store and getting a Samsung Moment take a moment and don’t. Get a Moment that is…

May 25, 2011 1

: Image by jimrenaud via Flickr

While the Vikings were sticking it to the Packers on Monday Night Football, Verizon was sticking it to Apple and AT&T in the only way they really could; on the issue of reliability and connectivity…

Recently, I had the chance to use both my BlackBerry Curve and an iPhone 3Gs on a trip from Green Bay to Nebraska and back. My assessment? The iPhone excelled in every area except one: phone calls and connectivity leading me to ponder ‘what does it profit a man if he gains all the apps in the world but suffers the loss of his phone call’ [sorry, Lord!]. The BlackBerry on Sprint outperformed the iPhone on AT&T in phone calling, streaming inbound audio from Pandora, and uploading to the internet. Unfortunately, the quality of photos and videos on the Curve is less satisfactory than the iPhone making IT a less than useful tool for the social media applications I was using. So what’s the answer? There is no answer! The iPhone fails in the one thing a phone is supposed to do; make and hold calls and Verizon stuck it to them good in this new campaign…

Don’t get me wrong — the iPhone is truly amazing — but by partnering with AT&T Apple has left the door open for someone else to dominate in the smartphone space like maybe Google/Verizon. The moral of the story? Think before you buy an iPhone and ask the users where you live what their experience has been. The best advice is still to go with the best network in your area and then get the best phone they have. If you want that slick iPhone capability without the phone, get an iPod Touch — you’ll be happier!

Verizon Ad Slams AT&T Coverage: “There’s a Map for That” (mashable.com)
AT&T Reverses Policy on iPhone Internet Calls (nytimes.com)
Verizon Wireless, Google to hunker down on phones (seattletimes.nwsource.com)

May 9, 2011 0

My “old post promoter” picked a doozy this time! A year ago, I was quite unhappy with my smartphone choices, but don’t worry — there’s a happy ending that I’ll write later this week after you’ve read parts 1 and 2…

“Wow! What does THIS say about us?

“Smartphones tied with sex as the number one thing that business professionals can not live without in a study from cloud-based business phone system provider, RingCentral. In a survey among RingCentral’s small to medium-sized business customers in the U.S., the importance of the smartphone in daily and business life was reiterated over and over again.

The study, which surveyed nearly 400 customers, showed that smartphones are taking on the defacto role in business communication.

Here are some highlights:

Smartphones and intimate relationships tied at 40% for the number one thing respondents can’t live without.

79% of respondents use their smartphones to conduct most business calls, versus an office phone or home phone.

34% use a smartphone more than a computer for business. 7% even said they don’t take their laptops with them when they travel for business if they have a smartphone.

48% of respondents said that at least two-thirds of their phone communication is via smartphone.

None of this data is particularly surprising, except for the shift to using a smartphone as a primary business device. Thanks to platforms like Android (Android) and the iPhone, you really can do a lot of work from your mobile device.” Source: Business Professionals Can’t Live Without Sex or Smartphones [STATS]

Interesting…

Speaking of sex and smartphones or maybe sexy smartphones, I’m going to take this opportunity to rant about the iPhone AND Android phones for a moment. Excuse my language, but they both suck! That’s right — they suck! Why the iPhone? Because #1 it’s a closed system — yeah, there’s an app for that but they must all be approved by Big Brother at Apple — and #2 because AT&T is the worst cellular network in the world!

Android phones, however, are a different issue and I’ll take them up tomorrow…”

Related articles by Zemanta:

Android Wins in the U.S. Smartphone Wars [REPORT] (mashable.com)
Android Phones Surpass iPhone in Web Traffic [Smartphones] (lifehacker.com)
Is Apple Delaying the Release of iPhone 5? (mashable.com)

March 28, 2011 0

A client approached me today and asked whether or not I thought it would be a good thing for her to advertise in the Yellow Pages. I said I dunno — let’s look at the numbers…

Over the past 13 months, her Yellow Pages campaign had generated 5,500 impressions and a little over 60 clicks. In one year. Perhaps the thing that amazes me most about that is that our county tends to lag behind a little technology-wise and you would think the Yellow Pages would still be popular here. Perhaps even our humble county is falling prey to this national trend….

The White Pages, where many of us have found residential phone numbers over the years, are slowly being phased out in a number of states. NPR reported on this in early October, and now New York is part of the movement, too.

There will still be Yellow Pages, for the time being — it’s just the residential listings that phone companies are seeking permission to stop printing, except for customers who specifically request them. Everything from environmental concerns to the ubiquity of online directories to the decline of land lines has added heft to the cause, and in a growing list of states, you already won’t get the White Pages automatically.

But the piece in The Wall Street Journal notes that where AT&T has stopped printing the White Pages automatically, 2 percent of customers still request them. It’s not a lot, but it’s something.

It’s not hard to imagine a day when the Yellow Pages, too, will no longer be able to justify their existence, and the entire concept of a hard-copy phone directory will be something almost nobody remembers and almost nobody can imagine using.

via npr.org

Now let’s take a look at Facebook ads. Here’s the report summary for a little campaign I did a few weeks ago…

In brief, for a cost of $20.92, my ‘facebook ad using’ client got 25 times more impressions, almost the same amount of clicks, in a much more targeted audience than my ‘yellow page using’ client got in the previous 13 months for less than %1 of the cost. Oh — I forgot to mention the first client spent $3,900 to get her 60+ clicks…

I don’t know — you tell me. Should client #1 continue to use Yellow Pages or test the waters on Facebook Ads? I think even I can figure that one out…

March 22, 2011 0

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=357k_8t0QMw

Yeah, the iPhone is all that and a bag of chips as we say in Wisconsin, but what if you don’t use AT&T and don’t want to switch carriers? Or worse yet! You can get AT&T but they won’t sell you an iPhone because they don’t have coverage there [happened to a friend of mine]? Well, all is not lost.

Tech buddy Steve Gallimore pointed out to me that the iPod touch — which I previously thought was worthless because of the small storage space — actually has wifi [duh! How did I miss that?] which makes it the most valuable of personal digital assistants [pdas] in many ways. In my hands on testing the iPod touch does have a lot of “WOW! Factor”. My only major complaint? It’s very hard to type on and there is no stylus option. Can’t type on it with any kind of speed at all! So for most of my needs, I’m still married to my trusty BlackBerry Curve, but I can understand why the iPhone is gaining ground. Now if we could only fix the dysfunctional way that phones are distributed through certain carriers, I’d be a happy camper…

In the next few weeks I’ll be talking a lot about cloud computing, Google Apps, smartphones, pdas, etc. and how they all work together for the busy executive. Stay tuned…