chris's blog

More on working smarter from 37Signals

chris — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 15:50:07 -0800

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

Symbian Beta Wrap Up

chris — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 14:59:08 -0800

Hello and thank you to all the kind users who gave our Symbian Beta a try and then shared their experiences with us. We used as much of the feedback as we could in the upcoming commercial version and we haven't forgotten the rest. The Symbian Beta phase is now over, making way for the commercial release of our Symbian version next week. Thanks again to all of those who tested our Symbian Beta version, we really appreciate your efforts.

I am also pleased to announce that Darla Mack won the EQO iPod Shuffle for filling out the Symbian Beta Survey. Congratulations Darla, I hope you enjoy your iPod!

The Symbian Beta will still be available for download at the Symbian Beta page and we will still gladly accept all feedback coming our way, but the beta period is officially over. I hope you'll all try our next Symbian version! Please stay tuned.

Chris
EQO Customer Evangelist

Engadget T-Mobile?

chris — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 14:37:00 -0800

This is either a brilliant April Fools joke or a blatant example of carrier idiocy, both of which I appreciate very much. Engadget, possibly the best blog ever, is reporting that T-Mobile sent them a cease and desist for their use of the color magenta in their logo. They are also claiming that this is not an April Fools joke. I'm leaning towards joke considering how ridiculous this is, but either way I find Engadget's actions quite funny. They have changed their background to magenta and are calling themselves Engadget T-Mobile. Secretly, I hope that T-Mobile really is stupid enough to claim the color magenta as their own. Happy April Fools.

Chris
EQO Customer Evangelist

Motorola going down hill...

chris — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 16:43:43 -0800

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

Who won that tasty spectrum?

chris — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 15:41:26 -0800

I've been following the 700MHz spectrum auction for almost a year now, mostly because the potential is huge for the wireless industry to do something amazing with this frequency. It was uplifting to see Google get involved with their petition for openness, and then it was equally depressing when Verizon sued the FCC for taking Google to heart. Now it it is finally over...

We don't know who won yet and I am pretty eager to find out who, but it looks like the FCC have achieved their basest goal of hauling in the cash! I'm really hoping it was Google (good) and not Verizon (evil) who won. Whoever wins, I hope they use this tasty spectrum to enable us wireless consumers to consume lots, quickly, and for not very much money, because I'm pretty sure KoodoMobile isn't going to do it for me.

Read the Engadget and TechCrunch reports for some of the dirty deets.

Update: Verizon won, shoot.

Chris
EQO Customer Evangelist

Seeking the best way to work on the web

chris — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 14:18:07 -0800

I've recently started working with our web team at EQO, which has been quite fun. Web developers and designers tend to be quite interesting people, usually more trendy and social than your typical engineer type (me). At EQO, our web team is dually focused on product development and marketing content pages, which has produced some interesting contentions. No one was hurt, nothing serious! But I've since become interested in how to optimally produce web services and work with web developers and designers.

A friend recently pointed me in the direction of Getting Real, a free 37Signals ebook on the best ways to build web applications. I now consider myself a disciple and recommend that anyone and everyone in the tech field, not just web people, read this book. It's short and simple message is pure gold and is well worth the few hours it might take you to read it. Seriously, every page either taught me something new, prompted change in my behavior, or affirmed some of the good things that I do. Their message in short is keep it small, keep it focused, be honest, and make it simple!

Another precious gem that has caught my eye of late is Brook's law, which states "adding manpower to a late software project makes it later". This is contrary to conventional wisdom, but my experience has generally proven this to be true. I thought this was a great concept to grasp and being mindful of it will surely help me in the future.

Lastly, this Seth Godin post about working with designers was very humbling in a good way. While professional design is not an art contest, designers do like to do their own thing. Micromanaging and constraining designers is a surefire recipe for disaster. The fact that I suck at design is why I'm not the designer; it's all about trust.

Chris
EQO Customer Evangelist

Samsung and LG beta testers needed!

chris — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 16:16:57 -0800

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

Symbian Beta Version 1.2.1

chris — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 13:19:17 -0800

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

Managing Your Sports Team

chris — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 17:03:37 -0800

It is amazing how the simplest of web tools can make life just a little bit easier. I have played on an indoor soccer team for the past five years and it has always been a bit of a headache for the team manager (thankfully never me) to make sure the team is organized for each game. The league has always posted their schedule online and we have a team Facebook Group, but our manager has still always had to individually contact each player to make sure they are coming, a time consuming minor headache.

Lately, I've come across many web tools that shoot to make recreational team organization much easier. Unfortunately, our league has mandated one of my least favorites by only posting the league schedule at Pointstreak.net. I am not a fan, especially considering that I have tried many superior sites. Two of my favorites team organization sites are local Vancouver products, TeamPages and RosterBot. I recommend TeamPages to teams looking for a more involved home on the web with forums, stat tracking, photos, and more. If you are looking for a simple tool that lets you organize your team, find out who's playing, and get people to the game, use RosterBot. TeamPages is really the social networking version of RosterBot and I prefer the latter's simplicity, which is really what makes any web tool standout for me.

When it comes to tools like RosterBot, what I want is something that lets me do what I need to do (not what I might want to do) as easily as possible. I don't need to make friends with other soccer players, chat about the game, post pictures, and whatnot. What I need to do is create a group for my team, add players, schedule games, find out who's coming to the games, and get everyone to the game. RosterBot does all of that with sweet email notifications, maps to the game, and calendar integration. TeamPages is cool, but RosterBot just does it for me without the clutter. Here's hoping for next season...

Chris
EQO Customer Evangelist

The Future of Mobile

chris — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 15:04:43 -0800

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

EQO Symbian Beta Version 1.2 Released

chris — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 12:15:38 -0800

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

EQO's New Facebook Application: Vibrator!

chris — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 15:57:17 -0800

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

Say NO to Junk Mail

chris — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 17:37:35 -0800

Whenever I hear talk of going green or being green, I always think about the giant piles of junk mail I get on a daily basis. Every day, without fail, since I moved into my townhouse two years ago, I get a newspaper Michaels ad wrapped in plastic. This is particularly offensive to me because I have never shopped at Michaels and likely never will. I also find wrapping a newspaper in plastic rather overkill, especially since I get five a week. If they didn't wrap them in plastic, surely at least one would make it to me whole. Also, why are they addressed to me specifically and not my wife who has on occasion shopped at Michaels? I hate junkmail and I want it to stop. I am probably responsible for one tree a year, probably a nice one.

Last week on Facebook I saw that one of my friends had joined this group. Finally, the answer to my prayers: The Red Dot Campaign. I implore you all to join the War on Junkmail, join a group like the Red Dot Campaign, and request that you no longer receive junk mail. It's really just a giant wast of trees, especially considering that most ads are available online these days.

Chris
EQO Customer Evangelist

Good times at Facebook Developer Garage

chris — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 18:35:01 -0800

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

My trouble with new social (video) media, no skimming

chris — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 18:20:36 -0800

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

Pivotal 700MHz auction begins tomorrow!

chris — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 13:02:19 -0800

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

Windows Live Mobile no longer free?

chris — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 15:22:58 -0800

I heard news the other day from a few sources that Microsoft is going to start charging for Windows Live Mobile. This is generally considered bad news in the mobile community. For EQO, it is awesome news.

I understand why users don't like paying for something they got for free. I really don't understand why on earth Microsoft would consider this. It's not like they are running out of money over in Redmond. There are plenty of ways a user can make use of the Windows Live IM network when mobile. I'm guessing and hoping that users will flock to free third party services rather than pay Microsoft.

Come Windows Live Mobile users, enjoy free IM with EQO Mobile.

Chris
EQO Customer Evangelist

EQO Symbian Beta is here!

chris — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 17:17:35 -0800

The EQO Symbian Beta is here! This version differs from our J2ME version in that it is built natively for Symbian Series 60 3rd edition phones. The Symbian version offers many improvements over the J2ME version, but is also still a little rough around the edges being a beta and all. Since you are all my great friends, feel free to use my promo code "chrisr" for some extra sign up credit.

Get started on our Symbian Beta page and learn all about it. If you do decide to give the Symbian Beta a try, check out our Symbian Beta Forum for the latest news and bug reports. Users that fill in our Symbian Beta Survey will have a chance to win an EQO iPod Shuffle!

Supported Models:
3250, 5500, 5700, 6110 Navigator, 6120, 6121 classic, 6290, E50, E51, E60, E61, E61i, E62, E65, E70, E90, N71, N73, N75, N76, N77, N80, N81, N82, N91, N92, N93, N93i, N95

Cheers and thanks for testing!

Chris
EQO Customer Evangelist

EQO Finishes 2007 Strong

chris — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 16:03:52 -0800

It's been a crazy and intense year at EQO, much like the first. As we near our second birthday, things are really looking up. Our traffic has gone through the roof in December, which seems to indicate that our efforts of the past year are starting to pay off. Thousands of people are signing up for EQO everyday now and we are busier than ever! Alexa has a great graph of our wonderful traffic boost, which I blame on our recent bug fixes, increased platform support, and more and more countries being added all the time.

Cheers to a great year and here's hoping for the best in 2008! Thanks to all of our great users who stuck with us through the "challenging" times and helped us with bug reports, beta tests, and feature suggestions. We've got a lot of great stuff planned and already in the works, so please stay tuned.

Chris
EQO Customer Evangelist

Renewed Twittering results in immediate gratification

chris — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 16:53:27 -0800

I have tried Twitter on many occasions in the past and I can even use EQO for Twitter updates, but Twitter has never stuck for me. Today, I was reading the blog of social media guru Chris Brogan (as a customer evangelist ought to do) whose Twitter Revisited post inspired me to give Twitter another shot. Earlier in the day I had even watched this Jeremy Owyang video with Guy Kawasaki (another customer evangelist hero of mine), which made mention of Twitter and its usefulness. It really seemed to me like all the cool nerds were on Twitter, convincing me to give it another shot. I posted a couple of Tweets and then decided to follow Chris Brogan. Turns out I am his three thousands follower, resulting in a personal thanks. Immediately after and likely because of said incident, a few more people decided to follow me. Cool, instant gratification indeed. I'm going to give Twitter a serious shot now, for at least a week:) Anybody interested in Twittering with me, my id is chriseqo. Looking forward to the Tweets!

Chris
EQO Customer Evangelist

Love the bubble video

chris — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 16:50:19 -0800

If you haven't seen the Bubble Video, made famous by TechCrunch and the many lawsuits coming it's way, watch it now. I freaking love this video for many reasons:

It is hilarious.
I can point out to my older khaki pants, blue shirt wearing product management colleagues that they star in this video for being obsolete:)
Web 2.0 is getting a bit ridiculous and this video wouldn't be getting so much attention if this wasn't true. Just look at all the companies listed on Go2Web2.0. Many of these sites exist because they can, not because they should.
The buzzwords are getting out of hand too, although I do giggle whenever someone says "mobile penetration". I encourage more video mockeries be made to make buzzword saying people (mostly MBA's) feel ridiculous. I may start playing Web 2.0 Bingo at conferences...
Hopefully this takes those Rails/Ajax developers and their inflated egos down a peg, restful this...
Blog, blog, blog it all, blog it if it's big or small! You don't have to blog if you don't want to, really, you don't have to.
Pokes fun at people with giant egos who are successful in part due to luck. I hate giant egos.

Don't get me wrong, I love Web 2.0 and all the social sites that have pretty much replaced everything I used to do on the internet. To be successful you do have to have changing the world as your goal and I know first hand how hard it is to build a great product/service that does just that. However, it seems like people are trying to ride the web 2.0 wave to quick riches these days. For this reason, the justified mockery begins. I wish people would make viral video mockeries of more fads, like say for tight jeans, Volkswagen vehicles, and reality TV, as a start.

Chris
EQO Customer Evangelist

Funny Video about Facebook

chris — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 15:43:51 -0800

Saw this on TechCrunch this morning, a funny video about Facebook on Wallstrip with Lindsay Campbell: http://www.wallstrip.com/2007/12/17/12-17-07-facebook/

SuperPoke!

Chris
EQO Customer Evangelist

EQO Supports New Phones, Chocolate, Telus/Bell!

chris — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 16:36:18 -0800

EQO has added support for ten more phones, those being:

LG KE970 Shine
LG KG800 Chocolate
LG KU250
Nokia 8800 Arte
Nokia N82
Sanyo Katana DLX
Sony Ericsson K660
Sony Ericsson W380
Sony Ericsson W890
Palm Treo 500v

We've also upgraded our sign up/download system to allow Canadian users on Bell and Telus to use EQO Mobile. In the past we'd had problems with these carriers not allowing EQO Mobile to be installed because we were not certified. Now we've devised a workaround that will get EQO onto phones from these carriers, but you still might not get the SMS download message. You may need to visit get.eqo.com on your mobile browser to download EQO Mobile. If you still can't get EQO, check out this post for another potential solution.

Chris
EQO Customer Evangelist

Looking for Sagem Beta Testers

chris — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 15:34:14 -0800

We are working on adding Sagem phones to our supported list and are seeking keen beta testers to help us get their Sagem phone supported. The minimum requirement is that your Sagem phone support J2ME MIDP 2.0. If you are interested in using EQO on your Sagem phone, please send an email to chris@eqo.com and we'll get you started. Successful beta testers will be rewarded with $10 of free EQO Credit and chance at the illustrious beta tester of the month prize!

Chris
EQO Customer Evangelist

VoIP Interveiw with Bill Tam

chris — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 11:32:55 -0800

I know what you are thinking, how many podcasts with Bill Tam do you have to listen to? The answer is five, but trust me when I say that this is the best one ever. This one, "Bending the Needle" with VoIPUser, has new stuff about our plans to bring mobile VoIP to the social networks. You should probably check it out and then peruse the Bill Tam podcast archives for your listening pleasure:

Bill on RedHerring.tv
Bill on TechTalk
Bill on Forbes
Bill on CBC

Chris
EQO Customer Evangelist

Canada to open up chunk of spectrum

chris — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 15:09:52 -0800

Maybe it's because our dollar is doing so well or because hockey is a way better sport than baseball, but it seems that Canada really gets wireless. This Engadget Report inspired my bold and ridiculous statement, that and I like making fun of the American dollar and I hate baseball. Canada is planning to open up a good 40MHz chunk of spectrum to newcomers for the purposes of wireless competition and innovation. Compare this with the FCC's plan to auction off spectrum for many billions of dollars, their inability to adopt Google's pleas for openness, and their concessions to monopolistic carriers like Verizon. Props to the Canadian government on this one; here's hoping this will propel the mobile industry in the Great White North, eh.

Chris
EQO Customer Evangelist

Verizon Still Evil

chris — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 11:17:41 -0800

Verizon today announced that they are opening up their wireless network to all compatible CDMA devices, TechCrunch reports. A friend just messaged me citing this as good news, "they are opening up the walled garden, eh?". While this news is encouraging, I tend to think Verizon is still evil.

Firstly, unlike the unlocked GSM phone market, third party sales of CDMA devices aren't exactly flourishing. Where will customers be coming from with their untethered CDMA phones? I'm guessing, and I know Verizon is hoping, that customers will be bringing their Sprint devices right on over. So what appears as a friendly act of openness, could really boil down to a customer grab.

Secondly, I'm guessing that Verizon will be charging some reasonably substantial "service activation" fee to bring devices to their network. Really, they aren't losing anything when compared with selling subsidized phones chock full of Verizon services. What I think this announcement boils down to is a seemingly heroic attempt to sway public opinion towards Verizon with promises of openness. Brilliant, but evil.

Ditch the long contracts, ditch the pricey cancellation fees, and support non-BREW third party software, then I'll be impressed. Long live Googletel!

Chris
EQO Customer Evangelist

Free calls from Europe to the USA this Thanksgiving

chris — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 14:29:29 -0800

EQO is offering free calls from Europe to the United States this Thanksgiving so all you expats out there can call home for the holidays! The promotion runs from 08:00 GMT on Thursday the 22nd to midnight GMT on Sunday the 25th. That gives you Euro-Americans almost four days to call home for free with EQO. Wherever you are and whoever you are calling, happy holidays and enjoy your turkey!

PS> Thanksgiving was six weeks ago: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thanksgiving_(Canada)

Chris
EQO Customer Evangelist

EQO Poll #4: I love Schwag!

chris — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 15:05:11 -0800

By schwag I mean corporate promotional items, not the recreational drug that also goes by this name. Whether you call it schwag, trinkets and trash, or tchotchkes, what really matters is the good times. Recently we've added EQO branded pint glasses, toques, and Nerf footballs to our arsenal that already includes standard fare like pens, coffee mugs, stickers, umbrellas and t-shirts. I know most see schwag as useless trash (besides pens and coffee mugs, which are quite utilitarian), but what it really is is fun and symbolic. Evangelists and loyal users alike often associate these trinkets with the product, brand, or cause and view them as badges or trophies. The stickers that Apple includes in every package go to good use; we can only hope to get there one day with our Nerf footballs (which are awesome). In the mean time, I thought it would be fun to poll our users on what items to add next. What do you think?

Chris
EQO Customer Evangelist

Google not just talking tough

chris — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 16:18:51 -0800

Google has changed the way we live our lives, we being anyone who uses the internet. I now depend on Google Search, Google Maps, and Gmail as part of my daily life. I know there are other services out there that perform the same functions, but Google does them simpler, faster, easier and best (in my opinion of course). I know I am somewhat biased in my love of Google, but I don't think that anyone can really argue Google's great effects. You could even say that Google has enabled much of the internet with Adwords and Adsense, giving lesser lites a monetization path for their personal expression. I haven't even mentioned Blogger, Youtube, or any of the other great services in Google's domain.

I am always surprised at the negative responses by industry heavyweights to the clearly awesome announcements of other industry heavyweights. Remember all the iPhone naysayers? Now that the smoke has cleared on the OpenSocial and Android bombs, the competition is starting to pipe in. I really admire Google and take all of their plans seriously, but Mr. Steve Balmer clearly feels differently. If iPhone could make me never want to touch a Windows Mobile device again, I think Microsoft should fear the threat of another top class player in the mobile space. Still crossing my fingers on Googletel...

Chris
EQO Customer Evangelist