aBrilliantBlog

I got this off of Atmasphere.net, I’m happy to see a popular retailer making an attempt at a pretty good one I must say at mobile advertising in a very popular magazine, namely New York Magazine. Ralph Lauren seems to be way ahead of the game here in the United States, I can’t remember the last time I saw a QR code on a retailers advertisement, let alone such a prominent one.

Jonathan is reporting he was contacted by Ralph Lauren and was told this will be the first ad of it’s kind here and the most substantial. Here is a link to their mobile site.

Thanks Jonathan and props to Ralph Lauren for 2 things, mostly the ad but also for reaching out to a blogger.

So this morning started like any other morning except when my wife got in the car with my daughter it wouldn’t start. Being suburban living big city Americans the first thing we did was call AAA. They came out and diagnosed the problem as a bad battery (Joe was extremely courteous and helpful) so it got jumped. So instead of going to work like I usually would in my home office I had to take the car in to get a new battery, while I was there we decided it needs new tires, brakes, a brake flush, and an oil change. So what does a self employed mobile evangelist (I’m really an event planner) do??? You guessed it, I brought my trusty Apple MacBook and started working. Remember though, we jumped the car and I couldn’t just leave it for a half hour while I made sure everything was charged and ready to go, no I had to close the lid on my laptop, stuff it in my Crumpler bag (thanks Nokia) and go. Since this morning I have done all kinds of regular work related things, like making calls sending email and lots more. Gone are the days where spending time at the mechanic is time wasted. I have been working for about 5 hours until the MacBook battery gave out and now I’m typing this on my IGo Stowaway BT keyboard and the most amaizing Nokia E71. Today was not as productive as it could have been if I had my regular truly highspeed internet, duel screen set up and mouse, but working on a 13 inch MacBook with less then optimal wifi isn’t as bad as it could have been. I’m actually enjoying typing on this tiny bluetooth keyboard creating this post but wouldn’t want to do it every day. I must say though, being ready at a moments notice is a way of life and in this case very useful. I suggest everyone, especially you take a few minutes and make sure their laptop bag is packed or you have a little “go bag” packed.

Here’s a list of what I always, have ready to go either in my laptop bag which is for everyday life or in my go bag which is for emergencies or for longer then a day or 2 out of the office.

• Chargers for phone, bluetooth headset, laptop and other powered accessories
• Spare batteries
  
• Electrical currency converters for traveling outside my home country
  
• My Boingo log in information
• Log in and pass words all incoded for important sites
  
• A Cat 5 cable for the laptop
• A spare set of contact lenses
• The sim cards I have for other countries
• My MaxRoam sim card
• Ear phones
• Business Cards
• Pen and a pad of paper
• A Proporta charger
• Note: Leave a copy of your credit cards, drivers license, health insurance card, and passport with a trustworthy friend

Now as I wait for the Firestone guys to finish working on my wifes car I’m glad I won’t be working like this again tomorrow, but I could make this a lifestyle with a little more preparation. Take a look here at the Working Anywhere blog for tips on being a global nomad.

Wow, one of my favorite companies, that I think has enormous potential just took a huge step. I think it’s a good direction, maybe not where I was hoping but still a good direction.

Truphone just launched 1.5cents to the US and Canada. They are offering a monthly plan of $15/month for 1,000 minutes. This is really great for world travelers and people just wanting to make inexpensive high quality phone calls from their mobile phone. I get the feeling that this does not include free incoming minutes (I hope I’m wrong) which is quite disappointing but still movement going the way I would like to see it go. Small baby steps are still step. EDIT, I am happy to be wrong this time. I must be jaded by the big US telcos, I figured, of course they’re going to charge for anything they can. I’m very happy to report I was 100% wrong. In true Truphone class and style, they are keeping with their standards and not charging any differently on this new plan then they have in the past.

If you don’t know what Truphone is, it’s a mobile VOIP service provider. They run off of Nokia N and E series devices over wifi and 3G and on the iPhone over wifi only (let’s not get into Apples/AT&Ts stupidity now). Truphone recently purchased a global roaming sim card company and is selling that service to now.

Truphone keep up the good work and please continue to progress with your plans. I would personally like to see free incoming calls and SMS to start. EDIT, MY MISTAKE, Truphone is so sophisticated and forward thinking they NEVER charge for incoming calls or SMS (except on the iPhone).

I was just reading one of my favorite blogs GigaOM and Stacey Higginbotham compiled the jist of the Q2 US mobile provider results. I find it very interesting that it seems like T-Mobile is just barely doing ok and that Sprint is not burning out. Not surprising AT&T and Verizon are both making it. Maybe I’m reading this wrong, check it out yourself and let me know how you read this.

AT&T reported Q2 earnings on July 23:

• Wireless revenue: $12 billion
• Wireless operating income: $3.1 billion
• Churn (postpaid only): 1.1 percent
• Net adds: 1.3 million
• Total subscribers: 72.9 million
• Data revenue: $2.5 billion
• Average ARPU: $50.60

Verizon reported Q2 earnings on July 28:

• Wireless revenue: $12.1 million billion
  
• Wireless operating income: N/A
• Blended churn: 1.12 percent, postpaid 0.83 percent
• Net adds: 1.5 million
• Total subscribers: 68.7 million
• Data revenue: $2.6 billion
• Average ARPU: $51.53

Sprint reported Q2 results on August 6:

• Wireless revenue: $7.7 billion
• Wireless operating loss: $142 million
• Churn (postpaid only): “just under” 2 percent
• Net loss: 901,000
• Total subscribers: 51.9 million
• Data revenue: N/A
• Average ARPU: $53.47 (excludes wholesale customers)

T-Mobile reported Q2 earnings today:

• Wireless revenue: $4.85 billion
• Wireless net income: $452 million
• Blended churn: 2.7 percent, postpaid 1.9 percent
• Net adds: 668,000
• Total subscribers: 31.5 million
• Data revenue: N/A
• Average ARPU: $52

Thanks Stacey for the info, I hope you don’t mind me copying it.

I was lucky enough to meet one of the most prestigious bloggers in the industry when I was in Barcelona a few months ago, Matthew Miller has published a post on ZDNet where he does a good portion of his writing. It’s all about Nokias very new email program. I have been using it for a little while now and have come to really like it, though it was lacking a few things. Well Matthew wrote a very informative post that includes a bunch of shortcuts for Nokia Email which makes it significantly better then I had originally thought. It was good before (with a lot of potential) now it is great (still with room to grow). Below are the shortcuts but make sure to visit Matthews post and watch the video.

For all devices (QWERTY and non-QWERTY), there are a variety of number shortcuts:

• *: Move the focus to the Sort Order drop-down list in the control bar
• #: Mark or unmark the selected message
• Space Key: Mark or unmark the selected message
• 1: Open the message composer to reply to a sender
• 2: In the folder viewer: Moves the focus to the first message in the list. In the message viewer: Moves the focus to the top of the message.
• 3: Screen page up
• 4: In the folder viewer: Display the flag list query. In the message viewer: Open the message viewer and display the previous message in the list.
• 5: In the folder viewer: Toggle the read/unread status of the selected message if there are no marked messages, or toggle the read/unread status of marked messages if at least one
• message is marked. In the message viewer: Toggle the read/unread status of the open message within the viewer.
• 6: Open the message viewer and display the next message in the list
• 7: Open the message composer to reply to a sender and all other recipients.
• 8: In the folder viewer: Move the focus to the last message in the list. In the message viewer: Move the focus to the bottom of the message
• 9: Screen page down
• 0: Open the composer to create a new message

For QWERTY devices like the E71, there are even more useful shortcuts:

• a: Reply All
• b:Go to the bottom
• c: Compose a new email message
• d: Delete
• e: Accept a meeting invitation
• f: Forward
• g: Tentatively accept a meeting invitation
• h: Display the online help
• i: Expand or collapse the list
• j: Up
• k: Down
• l: Flag the list
• m: Move a message to a folder
• n: Displays the next message in the list
• o: Open an email message
• p: Display the previous message in the list
• q: Folder options
• r: Reply to an email message
• s: Search
• t: Top
• u: Mark a message as either read or unread depending the current status
• v: Decline a meeting invitation
• w: Sort options
• x: Unassigned
• y: Display the folder list.
• z: Synchronize

On a side note, Congrats to Matthew and his jkOnTheRun podcast partners for recently being picked up by GigaOM.

I had a nice conversation with my sister in law this morning about her families mobile phone plan.  They have two phones now, Mom and Dad each have a phone and their son let’s call Jr. (all names and dates have been changed to protect the innocent) is going to be getting back from camp soon and starting 7th grade.  He is a responsible boy and going to be doing a bunch of after school activities this year so Mom is considering getting Jr. a phone.  Now the big question is what plan to put him on.  The answer is a family plan from AT&T with his parents and adding the Smart Limits package for Jr.  Now we come to the big dilemma of SMS.  Mom and Dad don’t text much so they don’t need a plan but what to do about Jr.  Kids will be kids and these days that means TEXTING A LOT.  Should they cap his texts or pay to give him unlimited.  My knee jerk reaction was cap him and he should learn to only use so many minutes.  Then I started thinking about it.  This is the most common way for kids to communicate with each other these days, it’s not making a phone call or sending an email, not even instant messaging.  So what’s the point of getting Jr. the phone if he can’t use it for his main means of communication with his friends I ask you?  I don’t know really, times have changed so much from when I was a kid and we had to use those disgusting devices with a rotating dial pad and a spiraling tangle of a cord.  Back then you only made cross country calls when someone died or sometimes for the high holidays.  This morning my sister in law and I talked for almost an hour trans continental.

Back to the question at hand, should parents get their kids unlimited SMS plans or cap it at 200 for example?  What do you think?

I have just started using skyfire, a new mobile web browser, this evening and my first reaction is that it’s really living up to the hype.  Skyfire just started beta testing their first S60 iteration and I’m using it on my Nokia E61i over WiFi.  It loads fast and loads everything I’ve tried already. I was able to watch a movie trailer that was on YouTube, unfortunately it errored (sp?) out but that was after watching it for over a minute. Good work skyfire.

Note: Thanks Symbian-Guru for the invite.

It ROCKS. I took out my E61i so I could try out the new Nokia Email. I haven’t given it a play with yet and I must say I love it. It has a funny flaw it that it won’t show me my sent email, but that aside it’s the best email implementation Nokia has produced. I hope it starts to come standard on upcoming devices. By the way, I still really enjoy my E61i, it’s a powerhouse with the new current firmware. I can’t wait to get my hands on the new Nokia E71 NAM again. From what I hear and the experience I had with one earlyier this year the E71 is going to be “the” phone for the next little while.

Google has released an update to Google Maps on Mobile.  I went from 2.01 to 2.02 I believe.  It looks significantly different and now the middle button is working on highlighted text.  I am enamored with Google Maps and need to find out what other countries it will work in, mainly Israel, Poland, The Czech Republic, Germany and Austria?

To get Google Maps on your Mobile visit www.google.com/gmm from your device.

I am really enjoying this N95-4 more then I ever imagined. It is my first US 3G device and for what it’s worth, it is SOLID. I don’t have to do many restarts unlike other devices in this family and I can multi task like crazy. The slide is solid and the battery life is significantly better then it’s predecessor the N95-1 (though I still usually kill it before lunch).

My favorite thing about the device is being able to use Truphone over 3G wherever I go. Mobile VOIP is great.

I didn’t actually enjoy this phone until I was using the N82. The N95-4 is just more elegant and business friendly plus the US 3G really helps. It’s no E series device but I like it. My only disappointment is the camera flash but hey, it’s only Nokias flagship device (when it was first released).

All in all I would recommend this device to anybody who can drop the cash on it. It’s absolutely a solid device. If you have any questions about it feel free to ask.

Thank you to WOM World for letting me borrow this device.