The Vybe Alert was designed with the female user in mind from day one.  While there are certainly men who have problems with call notification, the systemic issues make the pain more common and more acute for women.  Lack of functional pockets in work clothes, cultural resistance and physical impediments to the belt clip option, and the immediate purse availability combine as noise that make it far more likely that a woman will miss an incoming call.

The data from the survey supported this assumption.

Women indicated that the Vybe Alert would be appropriate for themselves far more than men indicated for themselves.  When asked about appropriateness for their spouse, men indicated that the Vybe Alert would be appropriate for their spouse ?far more then women indicated it would be appropriate for their spouse.

The subsequent question about purchasing the Vybe Alert indicated the same pattern.  Women are substantially more likely to purchase Vybe Alert for themselves – Men far more likely to purchase for their spouse.

Yes, of course this result may simply be in the expectations set in the survey.  However, even with the limitations of the survey method and sampling issues, the results support the primary business assumption to focus on solving with problem of call notification for women.

More results coming soon…

If you haven’t seen it in your inbox, the survey can be found here.
We’re planning on drawing a winner of the thank you drawing later this evening – to enter complete the survey in the next 8 hours.

We’ll probably leave the survey open in case you don’t find this before the drawing and would still like to participate.  Summary of the survey will be posted here soon.

Thank you!

In conjunction with the new name there are new websites.  The main product site is moving to VybeAlert.com. Meanwhile the Bing Innovation Blog is now at VybeRation.com… but you already knew that if you are reading this.

All sorts of things happening.  Thrilled to have so much progress and looking forward to sharing more soon!

Monday will mark the next phase for Bing Innovations – several big changes will be announced, including the new name.  Yes, I will post the news here as well.

Thank you!

As you may imagine I’m very excited about this…

Testing the unit with multiple phones and finally moving this business forward.

More on this breaking news as it develops.

Joe wanted to make sure that I caught the latest news out of Redmond.  Apparently the good folks at Microsoft came to the same conclusion that I did.  Bing is a great product name.  Unfortuantely, I don’t have $100 million for an campaign to establish my brand.  So now Bing will be competing with Microsoft’s new search engine for the Bing moniker.

Ouch.

So the plan is to continue R&D working on tweaking the prototype and reopen the naming folder.  My first inclination is to change names.  A significant piece to the business plan is establishing a brand.  That becomes harder to do when there is an active campaign that may cause confusion.  I’m a bit upset about this, but will try to assess the situation dispassionately.  

More on the development of the Bing Personal Alert… or whatever it will be called… as it happens…

The day before my wedding I actually had a functional unit in hand.  In fact, the new wife wore Bing at the reception in her wedding dress!  

Still a lot of work to do, but the fact that we have at least a basic unit is a monumental step.  Delayed by more time that I care to consider, but monumental non-the-less.

More on the testing as we have reportable results…

This is good news for Bing – software work happening now.  Expect revised timeline soon.

Hopeful and trying desperately to not get ahead of myself.

Another month has slipped by with nothing to show for it.  Progress is being made troubleshooting technical issues, but there is nothing to show for it yet.  Deployed prototype is a binary thing – either it is working or it is not.  Still in the not category at the moment.

Thank you to all the continued support.  Revising plan given current situation and will update one and all as soon as there is forward movement.

It is both expected and frustrating to hit delays like this.  For those of you who stumble upon this blog while considering a project of your own, know that things will take longer than you think.  Did you just add time to your expected completion?  Now that you expect it, it will take longer than that.  

I will share a new plan once I have the fully functional unit in hand.  Until then, the timeline keeps moving.

Once I have the device, we will immediately begin user testing!  Exciting times ahead!