Letters to Santa delayed – BlackBerry Email service to North Pole down…..again

It seems Research in Motion’s Blackberry service had another hiccup yesterday and this morning for the second time in a week; some users are back in service while others still are still in the email black hole.  Could it be too many little Jimmy’s and Jane’s emailing their last-minute Christmas Lists to Santa short circuiting the BlackBerry Network?

Research In Motion Ltd. (RIM) said late Tuesday its technicians were working to resolve e-mail messaging delays on its Blackberry smart phones in North and South America.

The BlackBerry faces increasing competition from devices such as Apple’s iPhone, Palm’s Pre and the Motorola Droid and is the popularity of the ever-present CrackBerry overwhelming RIM?  AT&T, in particular, has had trouble keeping up with wireless data usage of the iPhone, which it carries exclusively in the U.S. Heavy data use by people watching videos and running powerful applications on their devices has led to dropped connections and long waits for users trying to run programs.

Interestingly enough, RIM’s stock shot up last week after strong Q3 earnings while their network is shot down for the second time in a week.

Google’s ‘Nexus One’ smartphone – Biting the hand that feeds?

As I discussed HERE last week, the Nexus One has surfaced and in the excitement of this pure Google Android smartphone hitting the market in the near future, some questions need to be asked.

The Nexus One is reportedly an ‘unlocked’ GSM phone that will be able to put on any U.S. GSM carrier’s network; T-Mobile is first in line for the new device but could potentially be put on AT&T’s network as well.  It’s not clear how wide-ranging Google’s ambitions are for the phone. Unless Google is willing to sell the phone at a loss, the Nexus One is likely to be much more expensive than Apple’s iPhone and similar devices, which receive subsidies from wireless carriers.

Will Google bet on generating enough ad revenue shown on mobile web sites to and applications downloaded to offset the subsidies?  If they don’t subsidize the Nexus One, industry analysts don’t expect it to have much impact on the smartphone market.

The iPhone has been the biggest source of mobile traffic to Google’s mobile services during the past two years, according to Google executives.  If Google decides to sell its own handset, it would intensify its budding rivalry with Apple.  So, since this is a direct competitor to the iPhone, will Google’s attempt at taking a bite out of Apple’s smartphone market share be akin to biting the hand that feeds?

We’ll leave the lights on for you – Wireless and Smart Grid Technology coming soon?

Can wireless make your electric bills shrink?  The effort starts with ‘Smart Meters’ but moves quickly up the grid and while it most likely won’t shrink your existing bill, it may keep costs from escalating in the future. The automation of meter reading is the start of this endeavor that will take decades to achieve, but real progress is underway.

The vision is having devices, some wireless, monitor usage in our homes every 4 seconds instead of once a month and then this data can be used to move power where it is needed in the grid.  This would minimize the brownouts and blackouts that occur because today the grid is dumb is based on estimates and projections and you get too much delivered or not enough which leads to some being left in the dark.

By adding real-time information into the grid, telemetry programs can monitor your water heater and send a signal to shut itself off when not in use and then start back up when it’s needed and people are home.  There are many applications that can and will be used to make our homes smarter and more energy efficient, which will lead to less energy consumption and maybe a bit greener planet.

Smart grids are bound to see a range of deployment strategies. Some small utilities in the United States have already left out the carriers and have gone ahead with rolling out their own devoted WiMAX networks. But what’s right for one area of the country may not work as well or efficiently for another.

It’s still a ways off, but the smart grid is coming to a town near you.

“Happy Holidays!” No No No…Beware of wireless data loss

‘Tis the season to be jolly and buy your loved one (or yourself) that shiny new smartphone you or they have been coveting the last few months!  Oh the joy and excitement over unwrapping that beautiful and sexy iPhone, Droid, Palm, or Cliq; you can’t wait to Facebook your friends and Tweet how awesome it is.

So, you quickly charge its battery, shove your existing phones SIM card into it ( for those SIM-based handsets) and wait….nothing is there in your address book, your photos are gone, and even worse, your Facebook friends aren’t there either.  You scream in horror and curse the smartphones gods for losing your precious mobile data; reality sets in and you start wondering how to get all your ’stuff’ back into it.

Welcome to the world of wireless data loss, but fear not, help is on its way.  Actually, it was always there, you just may not have known about it.  The backing up of address book entries is relatively simple and tell your old phone to save all your contacts onto the SIM card and you are good to go.  Now, the REALLY important stuff; how do I get my pics, videos, etc. onto my shiny new toy.  You can go to your wireless carrier’s retail store and they can assist you in most cases OR you can use a Mobile Data Backup service as I discussed in a previous blog; check HERE for more info.

My suggestion is make sure you backup your data BEFORE you lose it and don’t wait until you are ready to upgrade to the latest hot smartphone on the market.  Imagine if you lost your phone or it met an untimley fate in your local coffee shop when you spilled your Mocha whatchamacallit on it.  ZAP….your life and all the cool stuff are gone!

Backup my friends…..backup!

The Google Phone surfaces….the dogfooding starts

It seems the rumors of an impending Google Phone are true and Google employees have begun dogfooding the new Android smartphone; dogfooding is the process of employees testing and providing feedback (eating your own dogfood).

Google employees were Tweeting about the device Friday night and the story has been confirmed by Google and TechCrunch and Engadget dug up a few photo’s which can be found HERE.

The device, as rumored previously, is being  made by HTC with a lot of input from Google and is running a Snapdragon chip and is ‘very fast’ according to those who have seen it in action.  This will be a pure Google phone and will offer a ‘pure’ Google experience as they envision it.  It has a large, super-high resolution OLED touchscreen, is thinner than the iPhone, and supposedly will over a voice-to-text feature for dictating emails, etc. by speaking directly into the phone.

The kicker is that it is also rumored to be ‘unlocked’ which would allow it on any GSM carrier so T-Mobile will be offering it and possibly AT&T since their iPhone exclusivity is running out.  The scheduled launch is January 2010 which is just around the corner and will be running Android 2.1.  The new Nexus One as it’s called, will be offered directly from Google as well as through the wireless carrier(s).

Social Media for Business – Building a following one Tweet at a time

I was at a networking function this evening and met quite a few experienced entrepreneurs who had a great story to tell but had no one to tell it for them.  I heard about their vision, business plan, and dreams and when I asked how they communicated their business value to others I, for the most part, got blank stares.  These were accomplished, educated, and professional business owners with nary a clue of how to effectively get their message out to potential customers in the new digital age.

There were a few on Facebook personally, but almost to a person hadn’t adopted a Social Media strategy or plan and were left scratching their heads when I started speaking of the virtues of using Social Media as part of a branding, marketing, and revenue generation strategy.  They had ‘heard’ others discuss Blogging, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace, YouTube, Delicious, Digg, StrumbleUpon, Google Alerts, TweetDeck , and so on but had a better chance is explaining the ‘Grassy Knoll Theory’ than they did in how to use the above referenced tools to market their business.

So, what is Social Media all about?  Is about the ‘kids’ talking about their friends, or is there something deeper and more relevant to using it for business?  I present to you some of my thoughts on how to use these wonderful, and for the most part, FREE tools to effectively market your business; oh, by the way, these FREE tools work while you sleep.

First and foremost, you must decide that you will dedicate the time and effort to understanding and using Social Media on a daily basis; I have seem more abandoned Twitter pages that I can shake a stick at.  Secondly, you must then decide what the message you want to communicate to prospects and existing customers.  Thirdly, you must understand the mantra of Social Media marketing which is a ’soft sell’ and value approach.  The latter seems to fall on deaf ears for the newly indoctrinated Social Media adoptee; they do the 1960’s door-to-door Kirby vacuum cleaner approach by throwing proverbial ‘dirt on the floor’ and then demonstrating how effective they can clean up before they know whether the prospect even has an interest.

I did find out this evening that most of these business owners had a website and wanted more traffic to it, but didn’t know what to do except call their ‘web guy’ to optimize their site for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and ‘Hope’ they would get results.  I submit to you that ‘Hope’ is NOT an effective marketing or sales strategy.

I had lengthy discussions on Social Media tonight and realize that while quite a few large businesses have adopted an effective Social Media strategy and have resources allocated to their plan, the entrepreneurs running SMB business either have a overly ’salesy’ approach, or are sitting on the sidelines wondering ‘how the hell do I do this stuff’ – either way, they are missing the opportunity to gain new customers.

The key, in my humble opinion, is to provide VALUE to prospects/customers through helpful information which leads these prospects/customers to like and trust them; no one likes to be sold, but EVERYONE loves to buy.  Do your customers WANT to buy from you?  Social Media isn’t a fad and won’t go away; either jump on board or watch your competitors take your market share and your customers.  The video below tells the story about Social Media…are you telling YOUR story as effectively?

Google’s ‘Favorite Places’ give new meaning to ‘window shopping’ ** UPDATED with Video **

What if every store had a bar-code sticker on its window so that you could pull out your smartphone and wave it in front of the bar code and get all sorts of information about that business?  How cool would it be to get reviews, coupons, hours, or have your smartphone remember it for future use, all by your iPhone, Droid, BlackBerry, etc. taking you directly to that businesses Google Place Page?   Starting on Monday, you’ll be able to do that at up to 190,000 local businesses throughout the U.S.

The decals are part of Google’s “Place Pages” program, which is intended to create a decentralized mobile search environment and is directly aimed at the smartphone crowd which is growing exponentially.   Google has mailed out window stickers with two-dimensional bar codes (aka, QR Codes) to the most-searched for or clicked-on businesses in its local business directory.  Japan is already QR crazy and Google wants the U.S. to be next and with over 1 million businesses claiming their Google local listing, the market is ever burgeoning.

In order to scan the codes, users will need a phone with a camera and an app that can read 2D barcodes. For Android-powered devices, including the Droid by Motorola, Google recommends using the free Barcode Scanner app. For iPhone, Google suggests the QuickMark app from the App Store.

Neustar, the company behind the Common Short Code registry (texting short codes to get coupons, etc.), recently announced an agreement with NeoMedia Technologies to have Neustar act as the exclusive patent licensing agent in the United States for NeoMedia’s intellectual property for two-dimensional (2D) barcodes. The agreement was intended to create a “one stop shop” for consumer brands to use barcodes to deliver rich media and services to mobile consumers.

So, are the days of looking at the menu in the window and peering inside to see if this is a great place to eat or a dive over?  Google is taking mobile advertising to new heights and maybe they should put the PlaceRank on the sticker and a high PlaceRank could become a badge of honor, like a high Zagat’s score.

No Link Between Cell Phones, Cancer says Danish study

The most comprehensive research study to date was released today and the 30-year study showed no linked between cellular phones and brain cancer.  The Danish Cancer Institute study from 1974 in Scandinavia showed a lack of a “trend change in [brain cancer] incidence from 1998 to 2003,” when cell phone usage showed a marked increase in subscribers and usage.

The authors of the report concede that more research is necessary on the topic and suggest that the induction period relating cell phone usage to brain tumors exceeds five to ten years.  The report concludes that “the increased risk in this population is either too small to be observed, the increased risk is restricted to subgroups of brain tumors or mobile phone users, or there is no increased risk.”

While this seems to be a positive outcome, the debate will continue to rage as activists have long decried that previous studies were funded by the wireless handset manufacturers and therefore skewed in their favor.

In August, an international group of electromagnetic field activists offered criticism of an Interphone study on handsets and cancer, a 13-country research effort funded in part by the telecom industry.  The activists argued that the study ignored many types of brain tumors and excluded people who had died or were too ill to be interviewed as a consequence of their brain tumors.

Dr Alison Ross, a senior science information officer for Cancer Research UK agrees with the Danish researchers.

“Overall, the scientific evidence tells us that using mobile phones for less than 10 years does not increase the risk of cancer and this large study supports that conclusion.

“However, brain tumours often take a very long time to develop so we will need to look for any future changes in incidence rates to see if mobile phones could pose any longer term risks” she said.

A point of interest is whether the increased popularity of various types of headsets for cell phones will impact future studies and whether at some point cell phones will carry some sort of warning like cigarettes do from the Surgeon General.

CTIA (Cellular Telephone Industry Association) maintains its position that cell phones do not cause cancer, but we may still not be out of the woods on this.  Stay tuned.

Verizon and AT&T take fight out of court and into your living room

It seems the lawsuits over 3G may have been dropped by Verizon Wireless (VZW) and AT&T Mobility (AT&T) but that hasn’t stopped both of them from keeping their Madison Avenue advertising agencies hard at work cranking out more ads taking shots at the other.

I watching a total of 10 hours of TV over the weekend which included College Football, NFL Football, and Discovery Channel and counted a total of 43 ads by VZW and AT&T alone; I guess they took their bar fight outside and into our living rooms.  WOW – that’s an ad every 15 minutes by VZW and AT&T and that doesn’t even count Sprint’s and T-Mobile’s ads.  I know it’s the holiday season, but between the ‘iDon’t’ spots, Droid Does, “We’ve got a map for that’, and now AT&’s rebuttals about their coverage and the iPhone doing things VZW and the Droid’s can’t, it’s a getting ugly in a comical sort of way.

I have been in the industry long enough to know what in all this is smoke and mirrors, what’s real, and what, if any of this, is really important to the average U.S. mobile customer.  I can imagine the average person who wants their phone to ‘work when they want it and where they want it’ is confused as heck.  What and whom do you believe?

The answer is actually fairly simple; before you but a new device and/or change carriers, make them put their money where their ad dollar is; ask about return/exchange policies that each carrier has and get it in writing.  If they don’t pass muster, bring it back and go somewhere else; if we hold their carriers accountable to a higher service standard, the bar will continually be raised, and everyone wins.

‘Phone love….Network hate’ says Consumer Reports

Well, it isn’t surprising who won kudos from the recently released Consumer Reports annual report on U.S. wireless service and phones.  Verizon Wireless was tops once again, followed by T-Mobile, Sprint-Nextel, and AT&T bringing up the rear; on the flip side, AT&T’s flagship phone, Apple’s iPhone 3GS ran away with the best in class.  The interesting and somewhat perplexing finding is that only 54% of the 50,000 readers surveyed were completely or very satisfied with the quality of their network; two-thirds of respondents had at least one major complaint.

What this seems to shed light on is how important the cellular phone has become on our society and that this popularity has made the networks overloaded and under-built in many areas which leads to this discontent.  The result of 54% has to be seen as a failing grade to the wireless carriers as there is no way to spin a 54 being anything but a big fat ‘F’ – I wonder what the execs at the carriers say when they see their valued subscribers to unsatisfied.  Oh to be a fly on the wall…

It is interesting that the most popular and beloved handset, the iPhone smartphone runs on the lowest rated network; AT&T’s iPhone exclusivity runs out in mid 2010 and it is widely believed that Apple will sell the iPhone to other U.S. wireless carriers to gain additional market share.  The iPhone’s hold on their users is a staggering 98% would but it again, while only 79% of other phone owners said they would but their devices again.

For those who are wondering where all the new Droid devices were in the ratings, they were too new except for the MyTouch which tied for 3rd.  It will be interesting to see if there is any shift a year from now with all the new Android smartphones flooding the market plus the anticipated iPhone sales by other U.S. carriers.

Overall, these results were expected and generally accepted industry-wide as the best carrier and smartphone out there, but it shows room for significant improvement in the industry.