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Getting Disappointed With Sprint's Delay in New Cell Phone Technology
I stopped by a Sprint store in Barton Creek Mall in Austin, Texas on Friday and asked what new BlackBerry phones do they have coming out. The girl proceeds to show me a BlackBerry that had been available for some time already. It's frustrating that the standard response is "we are the last to know when we are getting a new phone." That's just poor marketing.
AT&T got the BlackBerry Bold in Q4 and Verizon got the BlackBerry Storm as well in Q4. Earlier this year AT&T released the iPhone 3G as well. Even T-Mobile released the first Google Phone (G1).
It just seem that over the past several years Sprint has been lacking in new cell phone technology. They seem to be running at least one year behind the competition. This is frustrating for for me since we are moving more into a mobile browsing world. I love how the CEO of Sprint is doing TV commercials now and he is not selling a specific cell phone. Verizon's "can you hear me now" commercials are at least pushing how strong their network is.
Just Released DUI.com's Mobile Site This Week: m.dui.com
We have been working on creating a "true" mobile website for dui.com this year and we finally introduced it to Google this week. It has been a long process, but well worth the investment.
In the first quarter of 2008 we set out to develop a true mobile web site for DUI.com. We didn't want to just add links to a page the says "Click Here for Mobile Version," we wanted our website to detect if the visitor was coming from a mobile phone browser and then automatically redirect the visitor to the mobile site. By doing this we can ensure not to display flash or large pictures that might not be automatically resized on the mobile browser (my BlackBerry 8830 resizes, but my iPhone and G1 don't). The purpose of designing the mobile site was simple, we wanted to make sure that our mobile visitors could convert to sales easily. We had found just because you visit a web site from an iPhone or G1, that doesn't mean you are going to see the website the way it was intended to be viewed. Both of the browsers used on the iPhone and G1 still don't display flash and can frustrate the visitor trying to view a page on 320 pixels wide when the page was probably designed to fit on 1024 pixels wide. The popular mobile devices to visit our websites each day according to our analytics software Omniture Site Catalyst are:
- Apple iPhone
- Apple iPod Touch
- Palm Treo 755p
- Samsung SGH-i617
- T-Mobile's G1 (Google Phone)
- BlackBerry 8310
- BlackBerry 8130
- BlackBerry 8100 (Pearl)
- Danger Sidekick III
- HTC PPC6800
- BlackBerry 8830
Here are a few our customers mobile pages that we released this week:
Los Angeles DUI Attorney Neil Shouse of Souse Law Group has flash, videos and several outbound links for his Los Angeles County, California page on DUI.com that work great on the traditional desktop browsers, but not with mobile browsers. We developed specific mobile pages for Mr. Shoues's Los Angeles County page ( http://m.dui.com/california/los-angeles ) as well as his other counties that he has with us in Southern California and Las Vegas, Nevada. We made sure that the the images that were displayed would render well on the most popular mobile phones that visit our site each day.
- m.dui.com/california/los-angeles
- m.dui.com/california/riverside
- m.dui.com/california/ventura
- m.dui.com/california/orange
- m.dui.com/california/san-bernardino
- m.dui.com/nevada/clark
What does "GU 63" patch mean on the NFL jerseys?
It's opening weekend for the NFL and I'm sitting down with my 12 year old son watching the Dallas Cowboys play their first regular season game against the Cleveland Browns and we notice that all of the players jerseys have a black patch with GU 63. We ask each other what does it mean?
Well after not hearing the announcers Troy Aikman and Joe Buck say anything about it, I pickup my Black Berry 8830 and Google "what does nfl patch gu stand for" on Google. I find the answer on the first result at answers.yahoo.com which said:
NFL players will wear a uniform patch this season to honor NFL Players' Association leader Gene Upshaw, who died Aug. 20.The league announced Monday that the patch will have the initials GU and the number 63, which he wore while playing for the Oakland Raiders.
Upshaw died of pancreatic cancer just three days after he was diagnosed...
It's nice that I found the answer so quickly, but I want to FAULT answers.yahoo.com for not detecting that I was viewing their website with a mobile browser and displaying a page that would be easier to read instead of scrolling through pages of unnecessary links for the mobile visitor to get to the answer to my question. I would think that Yahoo would have better mobile navigation.
I can go to ESPN.com, CNN.com or FOXNEWS.com and they will detect if I'm a mobile browser visitor and then display the appropriate mobile version of the page. For example, if I go to www.espn.com on my iPhone the page title will come up with "ESPN iPhone" and if I go to ESPN from my BlackBerry 8830 I will get "ESPN Mobile" both pages are easy to navigate.
It’s frustrating now when websites won't take the necessary time to put the appropriate mobile style sheets in place. I attended the Search Engine Strategies San Jose conference last month and most of the first day had tracks about mobile websites and what companies are doing to make sure mobile visitors can view their websites easier. We are in the process right now of redoing ALL of our sites with the appropriate mobile/hand held style sheets. I know it can be a pain doing this depending on how the user is suppose to navigate through your site, but you have to do it. It's just like the automakers now having to adjust their factories to make hybrids. It will not be fun at first, but well worth it in the end.
Now back to game. GO COWBOYS!
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LG CU320 Cingular Internet Tethering Powerbook Script
I'm putting this out to my readers and friends of readers. I have a new LG CU320 cell phone which I like but I just don't have the time to figure out how to make it work with my Powerbook via Bluetooth with the phone to tap into the Internet. This is a kind of backup plan for me when I cannot get WIFI service on the Powerbook.
I've spent some time looking through the Cingular forum but only found a solution for a PC laptop. If anyone knows how to make these two guys work together send me an email and I'll reimburse you for your time and expertise. Really! Please pass this along to anyone you think can be of assistance.
Thank you
Tom
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Use Your Cell Phone to Make a PayPal Payment
This is
news you're going to want to test out to learn how it works - because it
could impact your web business. If you have a PayPal account and a
cell phone with some kind of Internet access, then take some time and see
what this means. I plan to do that and write up my impressions and ideas.
I'm suggesting that this is not something where you sit on the
sidelines thinking, "This is goofy and just for kids."
At first it seems bizarre but if you think about it a while you have to
admit this development was inevitable. Being able to pick up your
phone and send money as easily as making a phone call has come about
for reasons we probably don't fully grasp yet. I just got an
Internet-enabled phone from Cingular (ooops AT&T now). As saavy as
I am with computers, I have to admit I haven't figured out how to use all of
its features. One thing I'm extremely pleased with is how easy and
FAST it is to see my GMAIL on the phone. It takes around 12 seconds
total from when I pick up the phone and hit a couple of buttons
... then whammo, there is my GMAIL.
OK, I'm off to my PayPal account to set up this Mobile access and test
it out. I have some thoughts as to how this will impact web-based
businesses, in particular small businesses. I'll be back with that soon.
Please send me your thoughts - what do you think PayPal Mobile would be
ideal for? I'll post the best ideas here.
Tom
PayPal Mobile Enables Anytime, Anywhere Payments, Purchases and Donations
SAN JOSE, Calif., and LAS VEGAS - April 6, 2006 - PayPal today introduced PayPal Mobile, a text message-based service allowing consumers in the US and Canada to send money anytime, from anywhere, using their mobile telephones.
With PayPal Mobile, users can send money, purchase items or donate to charities from their mobile devices. Using PayPal Mobile's Text to Buy service, consumers can buy things instantly, such as CDs, DVDs, shoes and apparel, by sending product codes via text message. Already, companies like 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, Bravo, MTV, and the NBA Store are offering items for purchase with Text to Buy. PayPal Mobile also enables users to Text to Give to charities such as Amnesty International, Starlight Starbright and UNICEF.
"With the overwhelming popularity of mobile phones, the time has never been better for the merging of ecommerce and wireless devices," said PayPal president, Jeff Jordan. "PayPal already has more than 100 million accounts worldwide, and our customers have already entrusted their personal and financial information to PayPal. Now, making payments is as easy as sending a text message anytime, from anywhere for the millions of customers that prefer to use PayPal."
To use PayPal Mobile, customers first activate their telephones by logging into their PayPal accounts at https://www.paypal.com/mobile . After registering their mobile telephone numbers, users must choose a secure Personal Identification Number (PIN) which protects every mobile payment.
PayPal Mobile users make payments by sending a text message to PayPal. PayPal calls the user back to confirm the mobile payment, and then sends the money to the recipient. In the case of a Text to Buy purchase, after the merchant receives the payment, the item is shipped to the address already saved in the user's PayPal account.
Every PayPal Mobile payment is PIN-protected and backed by PayPal's state-of-the-art fraud prevention system. With PayPal Mobile, financial information is never shared with the recipient. Each user's financial information is stored on PayPal's secure servers, not on the mobile telephone, so even if the telephone is lost or stolen, the user's PayPal account remains secure.
PayPal president Jeff Jordan will demonstrate the PayPal Mobile functionality and discuss mobile commerce during the opening keynote address today at 9:30 a.m., at the CTIA Wireless 2006 conference in Las Vegas.
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Enterprise Leadership Show Now Available on Cell Phones!
I have an announcement!!!
I'm delighted that the Enterprise Leadership show I produce and host with Dana Farver (sponsored by BMC Software) is now available on cell phones from www.upsnap.com. Click here to download it. Kimberly Stone and Scott Ebner are part of this team and without them we wouldn't have a Plone site to anchor the show.
We produce a show a week. Its purpose is to provide high-quality, high-interest, and highly useful information to help you succeed in the IT space -- from the mind of a CIO.
Tom
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