My friend Andy Abramson just yesterday posted “Staying Connected- Beating The High Cost of Roaming http://ow.ly/18lHO6“. I wanted to bring any attention I could to his article because it highlights one of my favorite companies, Truphone. I’ve been an advocate of theirs for many years now have enjoyed their service for as long as it’s been around. If you are into saving serious money when traveling abroad whether it’s in the US or outside the US I suggest reading Andy’s article and giving Truphone a try.
Ok, I have the absolute greatest wife ever, she got me a white Nokia E72 as a fathers day gift. I am the luckiest guy ever. Well here’s my review, I love it for the most part.
The Nokia E72 has a great number of benefits like the
3.5mm headphone jack
The flashlight
The newer version of Symbian
A VERY quite keyboard when typing on it
Many many other benefits.
But it also has some drawbacks
I don’t like the fact that it doesn’t auto capitalize the letter “I” when typing messages. It is my biggest annoyance with the device
It doesn’t have enough RAM
The build quality isn’t as good as the E71
The battery life isn’t as long as I would like
The center of the D pad should be white on the white version of the handset that I have
My biggest problem with the E72 is that mine is defective. I wasn’t sure I was going to mention this but I figure I should. The left soft key on my handset has to be depressed extra hard to make it work properly.
I am madly in love with the idea of this device but I’m not sure it’s a big enough step up from my previous phone the Nokia E71. If you don’t have an E71 then I think this is a perfect phone but if you have then you may be disappointed.
That being said, I’ll probably get another one anyways. I do love my Nokias!!! And I’m proud of it @Ew4n.
Are you a business traveler who likes to save a few dollars on roaming fees? I definitely am. I’m a self employed consultant who pays all my own bills. I personally hate paying roaming fees to AT&T.
A few months ago I was asked to review a mobile app for Phone.com, nothing unusual there, this is a mobile oriented blog. What happened next was amazing, I fell in love with the app I was reviewing. Phone.com (a client now) created what I have been looking for for years, you can read my thoughts on them here. But come to find out they have an amazing iPhone app that can do VOIP only if you so desire. This can be a god send for someone who doesn’t want to pay exorbitant roaming fees or you’re in a dead zone for reception (but have wifi). In my case, I was in a company apartment in Barcelona a few months ago and wanted to call home to say hi to my wife back in California. I could have used my AT&T phone and been charged through the roof for roaming. I wish I would have known about Phone.com back then. I would have just dialed via Phone.com and it would have been like I was anywhere in the US calling home. There would have been no international roaming fees, I would have had my regular phone and address book. A really nice new feature of Phone.com is that you can send and receive text messages from your phone and they show up from your Phone.com number. So in my case I could text back and forth with my wife at no additional charge.
I can’t wait to travel abroad again and give this a try. From my personal experience I highly recommend Phone.com and have told many people about them. Do you use them? What do you think?
You can reach Phone.com on Twitter at @PhoneDotCom if you have any questions.
This last week has been hellish for some people. Some people actually do do video chat on their mobile phones. My sister does because her husband is on the other side of the world working and getting their new house set up. Her son misses his Dad and so they Skype on her Nokia N78 to my nephew’s Dad as often as possible. Well this was all possbile until this week when Skype and Fring got into “it” and now their love affair is on hold or over.
I have a deep affinity toward Fring, they were the first company I ever got to interview for a blog post. So I’ve kind of taken their side of things. I think Skype should grow up and allow Fring to continue doing it’s thing. At the same time Fring does need to play by Skype’s rules.
My big question here is what’s going to happen to Nimbuzz. I’ve not reached out to my friend Tobias at Nimbuzz but I would imagine if I did he couldn’t say to much. The truth is I have a real liking for Nimbuzz as well, Tobias and I together threw a really great party last year called BuzzWorthy.
So really 2 things matter, Is Nimbuzz breaking the rules set forth by Skype and if so will Skype lash out at Nimbuzz like they have Fring or let it slide?
I don’t know anything about the back end of IM and exactly how it works but I do know that Skype is taking a beating in the public eye lately and they really don’t need any more bad PR.
I hope Skype leaves Nimbuzz alone and I really hope Fring is allowed back in the Skype camp.
I have been a heavy user of phone minutes on and off for many years now. At my peak I believe once I hit 5,000 minutes in one month. That may not be a lot for some but boy was it a lot for me. Anyways I have always been very cautious about giving out my personal mobile number let alone my home phone number, but in the beginning I didn’t have a choice, I traveled a lot and didn’t want to pay the $50 or so a month for a business line. Then over the years I’ve tried different services but none of them fit me perfectly. None of them radiated the feeling of a full blown company, it always came across like I was a one man operation and that was not the way it was or what I wanted.
I came across Phone.com late last year when I met their CEO Ari Rabban (he usually twitters on the company twitter account) at a wine dinner Andy Abramson hosted. Ari told me about their virtual phone service and I was instantly interested. Was this the treasure in my search for telephone gold? So I went home that night and took a look at Phone.com. It was great, for the price of 1 lunch I was able to get business class phone service for a month. Problem was, I travel and rely solely on my mobile phone. I mentioned this to Ari and he said “just hang on for a couple months” so I did. Then about 2 months ago I was invited into a beta group to test Phone.com’s new Android app and walla, my problems were solved. I finally had a business class phone system in my pocket and everywhere I went. I had an automated system with customizable greetings, extensions and the ability to set office hours, so my phone won’t ring in the middle of the night (some people just don’t understand time zones). The best part was, I can have all of it on my Android phone.
Well the day is here and I’m finally able to talk about it publicly (I was under embargo until today). The new Android app is everything I have been wanting. It gives me the ability to make calls from my cell phone which is nothing new, but it shows my work number in the caller ID not my mobile phones’ number. This is one of the biggest selling points for me. I like having ubiquity and not multiple numbers. Along with that same point, I now have a work number that I can receive SMS (text messages) on, I have been testing it and it is flat out fast. What’s nice is I can send SMS from the Phone.com website (as well as my phone of course), keeping me from having to type out messages on my phone.
Some additional points to note about the Phone.com Android app:
Extremely simple set up
Shares address book with phones built in address book
Ability to send SMS from the phone showing your Phone.com number
Very competitive international calling rates (some countries are even free)
Cheaper minute plans then the mobile phone providers offer
Unified inbox for voicemail, sms, and fax where you can read/respond to all of them
Listen to and read (they convert VM to text) voicemail on the phone
Office number is always with me
Doesn’t seem to drain my battery
Set up and initiate conference calls from your phone (this is amazing)
Keep in mind there is a Phone.com iPhone app as well that runs over VOIP, I will try to get my hands on an iPhone to review it.
In closing, I have been using this service for a few months now and really enjoy it. I would personally recommend the Android app from Phone.com to anybody looking to save money on their phone service. From small to medium businesses to someone who may just want a second number but not another phone, this is your answer. I give it my stamp of approval.
Our good friends at WOMWorld/Nokia (part of 1000 Heads) recently completed a campaign to promote their new Nokia CarKit CK-200. It entailed 5 very high power sports cars driving all around England doing all kinds of tasks. Then 5 bicyclists’ finding their way to a park and meeting up with the cars and drivers. This all culminated with a very enjoyable party from what I saw.
This was one of the most entertaining advertising campaigns for me the viewer and I’m positive the drivers. I felt like I was fully involved and really created a great deal of interest for me. I’m now watching a bunch of WOMWorld videos and loving all of them. I’m supposed to be in one of them (James).
Back to the video I’m here writing about. I was so impressed I wanted to share it with you and give WOMWorld/Nokia big props for one of the best thought out and executed campaigns I’ve ever seen. I hope they bring their expertise here and hire me to help them put on a great event or campaign in the US. My side of the Atlantic needs some action, how about a Cannonball Run Style race from NY to LA??? I’ll be Bert Reynolds.
Anyways, enjoy the video they put together when it was all over.
A few months ago I got a Jabra Cruiser to review and boy have I been reviewing the heck out of it and I’m loving it. I have been using it instead of a bluetooth headset since the moment I got it and it’s so much better. I have always wanted to have a bluetooth speaker system built into my car but my car isn’t new enough. So now I have the next best thing.
This Jabra Cruiser has been fantastic, it’s made it so I don’t have to wear one of those ugly bluetooth headset any longer (though I still use one in the home/office sometimes) in the car and I haven’t had to charge it even once. I’ve been using it for over 2 months and haven’t charged it once. This is HUGE, I mean really huge. I don’t talk a lot in the car but that’s still a really long time. By the way, it charges via microUSB charger that came with it.
Most importantly the sound quality is great. I can clearly hear the person on the other end of the call and surprisingly enough they can hear me and they have all said it’s more then just adequate, it’s pretty good. I’m always leery about bluetooth speakerphones because they have never been loud enough for me, but this one is.
It’s also pretty good looking and more importantly it’s light. So clipping it to the sun visor won’t weigh it down. One of the nice things about it is that it will broadcast you conversation over the in car speaker system via the FM radio. I live in Los Angeles with has a very full radio spectrum so there isn’t much space for me to transmit to, so I haven’t used this much.
Lastly the Cruiser will actually act as a conduit to play the music on your phone via BT to the cruiser so you can listen to it over it’s speaker or you can play it then over the FM airwaves and listen to it over your car stereo. There are play/pause, forward and back buttons as well to control the music.
I suggest the Jabra Cruiser HFS001 to anybody who’s looking for an in car bluetooth speaker phone. It’s the best I’ve ever used. It runs from about $50-$100 on Amazon which I think is a really good deal.
I’m getting frustrated with mobile these days. I am really tired of the popular formats of phones and nothing is really changing. I know touchscreen only handsets are popular but I’m personally bored to bits of seeing them everywhere. Everyone and their mother has a touchscreen phone and I see them struggling all the time.
I personally just don’t like the format. I’m a big fan of the Nokia E71 or Blackberry format of phones. Screen and QWERTY keyboard is what I like. Problem is I haven’t seen any new inovation in that form factor since the Palm Pixi was released. Nokia has the new E72, Blackberry has the 9700 and all their other new models but where are the rest of them? Hello HTC??? I really enjoy my Android Nexus One but would like it more with a physical keyboard.
I’ve been using phones with a QWERTY keyboard since I got a Nokia 9500 many many years ago. I have used other formats since then but always go back to the physical kb. So where’s the innovation?
I’m hoping we’ll see an amazing Android phone with a full QWERTY keyboard this year but my expectations are diminishing. I’ve been told Android isn’t really geared to a physical keyboard. WELL ADAPT, please.
HTC are you listening? I think you have the most potential to do this. I don’t mind having a smaller screen just to be 100% clear. It’s fine with me. I need a bi directional communications device and non QWERTY devices are just for receiving information and not responding to it. Not creating, not writing email, sms, Twitter, etc.
What do you all think? Are we going to see a Blackberry style device with Android? Do you even want that?
I just got done reading about DeviceFidelity (in a MobileCrunch post by Greg Kumparak) a company that is producing a micro SD card that will allow your phone to act as a credit card using NFC (Near Field Communication) technology. It’s called In2Pay. I have spoken about this in the past and even got interviewed for a piece about it in a major news magazine (I can’t find the link right now). I am a huge advocate and think this is the best inovation in mobile phone accessories since the car charger. This will finally make it so I can go out and about without my wallet and buy anything I want. I won’t need to worry about carrying credit cards any longer. Personally I hope American Express will support this but if not this is enough to make me switch to what ever credit card company does. Right now it looks like only Visa supports it but I truly hope it will catch on. I know soooo many normobs (normal mobile users) who would use this let alone the huge number of techy folks.
If the mobile service providers like AT&T and T-Mobile or any of them around the world supported this I think it would cause a large boost in roaming as well from people who will just take their phones with them (when roaming abroad) and of course turn them on so they can use the In2Pay service.
What does this mean for the consumer in general? Well most current mobile phones around the world use microSD as the standard memory card format. In2Pay is integrated in a microSD card. So if you pop an In2Pay microSD card into your phone, install any necessary software you should be ready to charge to your hearts content at any cash register that uses contactless payment.
To say the least I’m very excited. If by any chance DeviceFidelity reads this then PLEASE send me one of these microSD cards. If you really care then I also have a lot of thoughts on this and would really like to share them with you.
Are you interested in this kind of thing? Are you willing to put your credit card in your phone? Is security a concern for you? Please comment below to let me know?
I don’t know why but I’m in a “Tell it as it should be” mood, so I’m going to voice my opinion once again. And as usual it’s directed at Nokia, don’t take it personally Nokia, I really like you and want you to succeed and blow away the competition. Now that that’s out of the way here it is.
The Nokia Ovi Store doesn’t always have the most current version of apps so when I download them I’m starting off not being up to date. For example I downloaded Fring from the Ovi Store after a firmware update of my E71 and started to run the app. I realized the app wasn’t up to date so I went to m.fring.com and got the newest version. I also downloaded emoze from the Ovi Store and as soon as I got it set up it automatically checks for new versions and low and behold there was a new one.
Now I’m a bit of what you would call an extremist when it comes to cell phones but I do expect the part of the company that directly interfaces with the consumer on a day in day out basis (the Ovi App Store) should have the absolute newest builds within 24 hours after they are published on the companies own site. It should be part of the agreement of putting your app in the app store that it is updated as the software is updated and in a timely fashion. Otherwise just make the app store a link farm and send me to m.fring.com and m.emoze.com to download the app knowing it will be the freshest from the developers.
To be clear, I’m not laying the blame on the companies but on the Ovi Store itself. This needs to be part of the deal to be allowed to have your app in the Ovi Store. But the companies producing these apps could do a better job as well.
Ok, I’m done giving my constructive criticism for today. Hope everyone has a nice weekend.
My friend Andy Abramson just yesterday posted “Staying Connected- Beating The High Cost of Roaming http://ow.ly/18lHO6“. I wanted to bring any attention I could to his article because it highlights one of my favorite companies, Truphone. I’ve been an advocate of theirs for many years now have enjoyed their service for as long as it’s been around. If you are into saving serious money when traveling abroad whether it’s in the US or outside the US I suggest reading Andy’s article and giving Truphone a try.
