In 2007, Apple gave us the iPhone, and salespeople saw that it was good.  Hailed by Time magazine as the “Invention of the Year”, the iPhone provided a leap forward in mobile communications and computing, with an extraordinarily intuitive interface, integrated multi-media support, and add-on applications.  However, as a mobile phone for salespeople, the iPhone is still less than perfect, even after taking the more powerful 3G version, introduced last summer, into account.  With exclusive availability in the U.S. only from AT&T, a closed architecture, and a spotty record of network and data synchronization performance, the iPhone is not the obvious choice for sales professionals who must have a powerful, flexible, absolutely reliable smartphone to do their jobs well.

Still, after Apple released their improved 3G version of the iPhone, I strongly considered purchasing one.  The exceptional multi-touch interface virtually oozes with that intangible “cool factor” that technology geeks salivate over, and I was no exception to the device’s appeal.  After playing with a friend’s iPhone for a while, my trusty BlackBerry, with its old fashioned physical keyboard, looked positively medieval in comparison.  In the end, however, I decided not to jump on the iPhone bandwagon, because it meant switching to AT&T (at significant cost), trying to get our highly territorial IT department to accept support of this strange alien device, and accepting Steve Jobs’ insular vision of an all-Apple, all-the-time universe.

And so I waited for my perfect mobile phone - one that would be just as easy to use as the iPhone, would run on my chosen carrier network (Verizon), and would be tailored to the unique needs of sales professionals.  Having used several BlackBerry phones (most recently, an extremely reliable 8830 World Edition), I hoped that RIM would produce a device that capitalized on the BlackBerry’s strong e-mail and messaging capabilities, but with an interface every bit as cool as the iPhone.

So it was great anticipation that I waited for RIM’s first device without a physical keyboard, the BlackBerry Storm 9530.  Now available in the U.S. from the top-rated mobile service provider, Verizon (and also from Vodafone, Telus and Bell Canada elsewhere in the world), I hoped that this new device might challenge the iPhone for ease of use and multi-media support, while also meeting the demanding telephone, e-mail, messaging, and mobile computing needs of sales pros on the go.  Could the BlackBerry Storm be the ideal mobile phone for salespeople?

The good, the bad and the ugly: the Storm’s screen

My hopes were high when I finally got my hands on a Storm.  My first impression was that the device feels great in your hands.  It’s about the same size (at 4.4 x 2.4 x 0.5 inches), but a little heavier (at 5.5 ounces) than the iPhone (which is 4.5 x 2.4 x 0.46 inches and weighs 4.7 ounces).  Like the iPhone, the front of the Storm is almost all touch screen - a large 3.3-inch, 360-by-480-pixel screen that is as slightly smaller than the iPhone 3G (3.5 inches diagonal), but at a higher resolution (the iPhone is 320 x 480 pixels).

The Storm’s touch screen looks great and works well, albeit with some minor annoyances.  First, it is very bright and clear - I had no trouble using it outdoors, even in bright sunlight, unlike my experience with the iPhone’s glassy reflective surface.  And unlike the iPhone, the Storm’s screen gives you some physical feedback when you press virtual buttons or the on-screen keyboard.  On the iPhone, you never really knew if you successfully pressed a key, other than seeing the effect on the screen.  On the Storm, the entire screen taps back at you with a reassuring click when you’ve successfully entered a keystroke - it feels like almost the same experience as using the physical keyboard on my old BlackBerry 8830.  Further, the Storm lets you use either a large QWERTY-style keyboard when you hold it in landscape orientation, or a version of the thinner BlackBerry SureType keyboard when held in portrait mode - and you can switch back and forth between the keyboards, even when in the middle of a message, just by turning the device.  For salespeople that use their mobile phone mostly for e-mail or text messaging, they are going to like the Storm’s virtual keyboards a lot.

However, while I love the Storm’s virtual keyboard, the user interface, which is based on the screen’s two qualities of touch sensitivity and physical feedback, will prove a challenge to most people, at least until they get used to it.  In contrast, the Apple iPhone’s multi-touch interface is based on single-tap selections, mostly - you find what function you want on the screen, tap it with your finger, and it does it.  But if you want to do something on the Storm, you tap the appropriate screen icon or virtual key with your finger, and then have to press down to execute your selection.  It’s an extra step that sometimes makes the Storm feel, for lack of a better word, “stuttery”, and even after a couple days, I never quite got the hang of it.

Below the Storm’s display are four keys: two for picking up and ending calls, a menu key, and one for backing up out of menu or screen selections.   Everything else is controlled by the screen interface, except for muting calls (located on the top of the device), and a function button on the side that adjusts to the context of the program you are running.

The (not quite) “Perfect Storm”

When I occasionally overcome the learning curve for the Storm’s on-screen user interface, I find that this smartphone operates quickly, powered by a 528 MHz processor - that is, when it doesn’t hit an annoying bug.  At first, I thought it was my lack of mastery over the user interface that was the problem, but then I realized that the Storm was hiccuping rudely at me from time to time.

Other reviewers, such as Sascha Segan at PC Magazine, have reported significant problems with the Storm’s sometimes spastic performance.  My experience was a little better than theirs - but not by much.  Three times I had to reboot the phone: once when the home screen vanished, once when it froze when I was using the otherwise excellent built-in camera and another time when trying to run video on the media player.

The Apple iPhone 3G also arrived with a plethora of problems when it was first introduced.  It’s almost impossible to squash all the bugs inherent in a new mobile device as complex as the iPhone or Storm when they are first introduced to the market.  Like new models of automobiles, the first units generally have glitches and problems that are solved as the line settles down after initial launch.  Fortunately, unlike automobiles, and like the iPhone, the Storm can receive updates and software fixes - and, in fact, the first such update has already been issued, and users are reporting some improvements in their new Storms’ performance and reliability.

With the latest fixes, is the Storm perfect yet?  No - but I’m optimistic that it can be, eventually.  More on this later.

But, is the Storm a good phone?

With all this talk of screens, tactile feedback and user interfaces, it’s easy to overlook that fact that the Storm is first and foremost a telephone.  And in this capacity, I find it excellent - although a lot of the credit here has to go to the device’s carrier in the U.S.: Verizon.

The phone sounds great, especially the speakerphone, which I found to be very clear and louder than I expected on such a compact device.  I never experienced a dropped call during my evaluation, and every call was crystal clear.  The Storm includes built-in noise cancellation, although I found it wasn’t as strong as when I used a Aliph New Jawbone Bluetooth headset, which was a snap to configure.

I occasionally travel abroad, which is why I use a BlackBerry 8830 World Edition phone, since it supports GSM networks overseas with an optional SIM card.  The Storm also operates on multiple networks, including Verizon’s EVDO network in the U.S., and on HSDPA networks abroad.

I found I had to charge the Storm nightly.  Other reviewers report between seven and eight hours of talk time on a single charge, and about half that when using the more power-hungry on-screen video player - which is about the same as the Apple iPhone.  During my testing, I used the Storm a lot for browsing the ‘net, and found that also drained the battery faster - enough to think about recharging every four hours or so.

Storming the ‘net

The Storm’s browser is, well, just okay, in my humble opinion.  It seems to run slowly on any site that uses JavaScript.  And the Storm’s web-browsing experience is clearly inferior to the Apple iPhone’s, which is more intuitive to use, thanks to its excellent multi-touch interface.  Some Storm users report better performance using the Opera Mini browser, although I didn’t have a chance to test that.  Still, for a quick search on Google or reviewing the latest news, I found the Storm’s web browsing experience to be acceptable - not great, not bad, just okay.

I tested the Storm as a USB tethered modem to my laptop PC (something the iPhone, as yet, cannot do), and got reasonable download speeds of about 750 kilobits per second.  Unlike the iPhone, the Storm lacks support for wi-fi connections to the ‘net.  I would have loved to see this feature on the device, since it would improve download speeds.  But if you can get to a 3G network - and I never had a problem finding Verizon’s EVDO network available - you can use the Storm as an acceptable connection to the web.

How else does the Storm stack up against the iPhone?

The Storm includes a number of other features that invite further comparison to the Apple iPhone 3G.  Here’s a quick summary of these capabilities:

• Applications support: the Storm includes a number of standard applications, familiar to anyone who has used a BlackBerry device: e-mail, contact management, a Web browser, etc.  It also now includes support for Microsoft Office document editing, although I can’t imagine using the Storm for doing this except in a pinch - you really want to do this on a PC.  The Apple iPhone’s functionality can be extended with the iTunes App Store, and there are now thousands of applications available there at nominal fees, albeit with Apple’s heavy copy protection.  RIM’s answer to the App Store is the BlackBerry Application Center, although for now its shelves are relatively sparse.  I have to give the nod here to the iPhone, but if RIM can get more third-party developers interested in contributing to the Application Center, this could even out over the next year.
• Cut and paste: oddly, this is one simple, oft-requested feature that still isn’t on the Apple iPhone - the ability to cut and paste text across applications.  The Storm clearly wins here - you can select lines of text with a touch of a finger and paste it into other programs.
• Media player: the iPhone clearly wins here, it is essentially a glorified iPod, the best media device in general.  You can drag and drop music and video files on your PC into your Storm, and even transfer music from iTunes (if unprotected).  But I found this to be a clunky experience, compared to using Apple’s iTunes program.  This is one advantage Apple has, thanks to its closed architecture.  But I suspect that most salespeople care little about the Storm’s multi-media abilities anyway, and like me, they will probably just bring along their iPod if they want to listen to music or watch a movie on the plane.  Still, music does sound great on the Storm, and the MP4 video playback quality is excellent.
• Data synchronization: enterprise salespeople need to be able to synch contacts, calendars and messages with their corporate systems, and the Storm clearly wins here.  RIM has a long record of integrating well with Microsoft Exchange servers, and the Storm carries on that tradition.  Apple stumbled badly with their MobileMe synchronization option, and it has not fully recovered from initial problems after release.  The iPhone 3G introduced better support for Microsoft Exchange, although some IT departments are still reluctant to support it.
• GPS: support for global positioning systems for navigation and directions is critical for traveling salespeople, and here the Storm wins over the iPhone handily for several reasons.  First, for another $10 a month, Verizon users can subscribe to VZNavigator, which provides audio turn-by-turn driving directions and maps.  The Storm’s GPS is fast, intuitive to use and very accurate - I found it comparable in performance to my built-in navigation system on my Acura.  Further, the GPS system on the Storm is unlocked, which means that third-party applications can use it to find locations.  The Apple iPhone offers no turn-by-turn navigation (as yet), and it is tied to the closed architecture - in fact, third-party developers are banned from using the iPhone’s GPS for navigation functionality.
• Camera: I’m often surprised how often I want a camera in sales meetings.  The ability to take a quick snapshot of a flip chart after a customer meeting is very useful.  The built-in 3.2 megapixel camera on the Storm, with an LED flash and video recording capability, will be perfect for this purpose - it is clearly superior to the iPhone’s camera, which is just 2 megapixels, and does not include an LED flash or video capture.  Both the iPhone and Storm support geo-tagging, which means that your photos will include location information from the GPS system - helpful for figuring out where you took those shots at that last meeting.

Sales Pro Value Score

The BlackBerry Storm is a great mobile phone, no doubt about that.  It’s well constructed, is packed with state-of-the-art features, and is a very good and highly reliable telephone, e-mail and messaging device.  It builds on RIM’s solid track record and strengths, with better data synchronization than similar offerings, including the venerable iPhone.  It also has a better GPS and camera than the iPhone.

The Storm’s virtual touchscreen interface, however, is a mixed bag.  I love the tactile feedback of the press-to-click screen, especially when entering text on the virtual keyboards.  But it is more difficult to use when selecting and interacting with other applications.  Here, the iPhone multi-touch interface is clearly simpler and easier to operate.

Verizon has priced the Storm attractively, with subsidized pricing and data plans comparable to AT&T’s plans for the iPhone 3G.  So there’s no obvious financial incentive to choose one over the other.

So, should sales pros run out and snatch up a BlackBerry Storm?  No - we would recommend caution, for now. Above all, sales professionals need their mobile phones to be absolutely rock-solid dependable, because they depend on them so much to do useful work.  For this reason, we suggest that salespeople watch and wait until RIM distributes enough online updates to squash the initial bugs.

Our first impression of the Storm is generally positive, and for that reason, we are awarding it a Sales Pro Value Score of 3.5 - but if RIM can get rid of the annoying glitches inherent in most new releases, we’d happily increase that rating to 4.5, and heartily endorse the BlackBerry Storm 9530 as the best all-around mobile device for sales pros.  We’ll continue to watch, and report…

Tags: Apple iPhone 3G, BlackBerry Storm 9530, Verizon

T-Mobile announced their plans to market the first smartphone based on Google’s open source mobile operating system, Android.  The new phone, built by HTC and called the G1, will be generally available by October 22nd in the US (and in the U.K. in November, and the rest of Europe in early 2009), and will cost US$179 with a two-year voice and data service contract.  It includes a number of powerful features, including:

• a touchscreen interface
• a slide-out QWERTY keyboard
• a trackball for application navigation
• a 3-megapixel camera
• GPS
• Wi-Fi connectivity
• 3G (with dual-band UMTS)
• quad-band GSM support
• multimedia messaging
• e-mail support (but not Microsoft Exchange integration yet)
• instant messaging
• a rich HTML web browser
• the ability to run multiple applications simultaneously
• a music player (with automated access to the Amazon MP3 store)
• integrated Bluetooth wireless headset support

Indeed, T-Mobile’s G1 possesses a lot of advanced smartphone functionality, but by far its most interesting feature is the operating system which manages all of these features, the new Android OS.

If Google’s aspirations come true, Android will become a very popular platform for mobile devices - they expect 400,000 Android-based phones to be sold before the end of 2008 alone.  At that rate, Android may very well become one of the most pervasive operating systems for smartphones in 2009, rivaling Symbian and Microsoft’s Windows Mobile, and also increasing competitive pressure on Apple’s iPhone and RIM’s BlackBerry lines.

What does Android mean to salespeople?

Sales professionals should take note of the official market introduction of Android for several reasons:

• Even if you never buy an Android-based device, the new OS should keep the cost of smartphones low.  That means better buys on any smartphone in 2009, no matter what make or model you select.
• Five mobile platforms will vie for your attention over the next year: Apple’s iPhone, Windows Mobile, Google’s Android, Symbian from the Symbian Foundation, and RIM’s BlackBerry OS.  Of these, only Android and Symbian are open source platforms, which means that developers can create applications at significantly lower cost.  That means more choices for you in how you configure and expand the functionality of your smartphone device.
• Android’s open source aspect gives it a significant competitive advantage, at least in the short-term.  Apple is now getting flak from users about their entirely proprietary, walled-garden, iTunes-based AppStore, as they block applications that they very broadly deem competitive with any of their offerings.  Microsoft recently announced that they are delaying the launch of the next version of their proprietary Windows Mobile OS until the “second half of 2009″.  Symbian is still re-organizing as an open source foundation, and will need more time to develop and launch a new version.  This means that we should see a huge influx of new applications available for Android devices in the next few months and well beyond, giving the platform more extensibility and adaptability than any other platform by the middle of 2009.
• Android’s user experience rivals the Apple iPhone’s multi-touch interface - although for pure elegance and simplicity, the nod would have to go to Apple here.  Still, Android is remarkably simple to operate and customize on the G1, making it one of the friendliest devices on the market.  As Sprint and other carriers release their Android phones over the next few months, this ease of use should make Android very attractive to new users in the smartphone market.
• In 2009, Android will be available on virtually every carrier, in a wide variety of configurations, and all at relatively low price points.  Apple is tied exclusively to AT&T in the U.S. market, at least for the next year or so, which will become a significant competitive limitation.  The newest releases of  BlackBerry devices - such as the Bold, Storm and Thunder - should help RIM maintain its growing market share in smartphones, but by the middle of 2009, the number of new Android phones should explode well beyond the limited number of models that RIM will provide.  The next releases of Symbian and Windows Mobile won’t make an impact until the end of 2009, at earliest - and by then, Android’s momentum may be too much to stop.

In short, Android’s impending ubiquity, extensibility, expandability, ease of use and low cost should make it a very formidable competitor in the smartphone market in the next year.

More importantly, these features may make Android the ideal mobile computing platform for sales professionals, as it is designed from the core outward with “cloud computing” in mind.  In addition to making voice calls, Android smartphones should excel in connecting to the Internet for web browsing, data searches (remember: it’s from Google), hosted applications (such as CRM, for example), navigation (using services such as Google Maps), text messaging and e-mail.  As additional functionality becomes available in the Android Marketplace of third-party applications, sales pros will be able to configure their devices to suit their individual requirements at very low cost.

So, should salespeople buy an Android phone now?

If you are in the U.S., and use T-Mobile, you should definitely consider the G1 for your next smartphone.  It does almost everything that a sales professional needs in a mobile phone.  It only lacks Microsoft Exchange integration - but Google expects this to be addressed in the next few weeks as application developers complete work on a solution.  One other potential problem is the limited availability of 3G networks from T-Mobile, although they expect to expand 3G coverage aggressively over the next year - still, check the coverage map for your area before jumping in.

If you are using a carrier other than T-Mobile, or using another smartphone platform (such as Symbian or Windows Mobile) and are locked into a service contract, it’s almost certainly not worth switching just to get the G1.  Instead, just wait for your carrier to introduce their own Android-based phone, and upgrade when your contract expires.  Sprint intends to release an Android device by the end of 2008, and virtually all other carriers will release their own devices in the first half of 2009.

If you are using a BlackBerry or iPhone, and are perfectly happy, don’t panic.  Your own platforms are as useful as when you first bought them, and they will continue to be so, even as Android’s presence in the marketplace expands.  But monitor the progress of Android over the next year or so - you may very well be tempted to switch by 2010.

Tags: Android, T-Mobile G1

 

 Selling Geek 009-PhoneTag [13:26m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

I hate voice mail.

Oh, I remember back in the early 80’s when the software company I was working for first got an automated voice mail system, and we all thought it was cool. You can forward a phone message to group of people, all with a couple keystrokes? Cool. You can retrieve your phone messages anytime, from anywhere, whenever you want? Cool. No more mounds of little “when you were out” notes waiting on your desk when you got back from a trip? Cool.

Oh, yes, back in the 80’s, voice mail was great. We loved it.

But then, somewhere in the 90’s, something happened. Just about everyone started replacing their live operators and receptionists with automated systems, and suddenly, voice mail became voice mail hell. That’s when all of our calls to customers and prospects started to sound like this:

“Hello! Your call is very important to us. That’s why we’ve made it impossible to reach a live human being! Press 1 if you want to buy something, press 2 to leave a message for customer support. Press 3 if you find this mildly annoying. Press 4 if you think this is extremely irritating. Press 5 if you are starting to get angry and frustrated. Press 6 if you’d like to hear all these options over again. Or, just hang up and leave us alone. Have a great day!”

Also, by then, we were all carrying mobile phones, which was great – no more hunting for a pay phone anymore. But it also meant that we had multiple voice mailboxes to check – the mobile voice mail, office voice mail, and sometimes our home number voice mail.

It’s now 2008, and I must sadly confess that I am the proud possessor of no less than six voice mailboxes: my corporate office number, my home office number, my business mobile number, my personal mobile number, the Selling Geek US toll-free line, and our international SkypeIn number. Yep, that’s six numbers, all with their own voice mail system.

It takes me a long time to check six voice mailboxes. I have to dial each number, check status, listen to each message and then act on it. And, of course, all these voice mail systems don’t talk to each other. So if I get a message on my business mobile line, I can’t forward it to my office system, or vice versa. This means that I have to call my office line and leave another voice mail for my colleagues there – which takes even more time.

Like I said, I hate voice mail.

Enter: PhoneTag

So, when I first heard about PhoneTag, I was intrigued. Here’s a service that will pick up your unanswered calls, record messages, transcribes those recordings to text, and then forwards them to you as e-mail or text messages or both.

I was skeptical at first. Could PhoneTag transcribe messages accurately enough to be readable and useful? Would it be outrageously expensive? Would it work with all my different numbers and services? Could it really save me time?

I’ve been using PhoneTag for a few months now, and I’m delighted to report that it works superbly in every respect. If you are a sales professional, and you hate voice mail as much as me, do not delay – go, right now, and get PhoneTag. It is that good.

PhoneTag’s value and quality

Since adopting PhoneTag, I have saved between one and two working hours every week. I don’t have to dial in to six different voice mailboxes anymore – all the messages come to me. And it takes much, much less time to scan a text message than it does to listen to spoken voice. And because all my messages come to my Blackberry as email, I can forward them to anyone in seconds, or just highlight the phone number, and press one button to call the message sender back.

The call transcription quality is very good. It’s not perfect, by any means – sometimes PhoneTag transcribes proper nouns phonetically, and then indicates such with a “(?)” designation. But I’ve never had any trouble figuring out what PhoneTag is trying to tell me. I estimate that it gets about 98% of every message transcribed perfectly, and so far, it has correctly captured 100% of the all-important phone numbers left by my callers.

How does PhoneTag work?

PhoneTag is also easy to set up. I configure my phone services to “call forward / no answer” to a dedicated number that PhoneTag provided when I set up my account. This required some special combinations of phone keypad entries, which can vary according to your mobile service. PhoneTag sent me a detailed list of instructions when I registered, and all the required key sequences were included. With PhoneTag’s help, I set up forwarding from Verizon, Sprint, Skype, my toll-free number service, and my office system – each requiring only a few minutes.

When a caller dials one of my numbers, and if I don’t answer, they hear a typical “please leave a message” recording from me, but also a plea from PhoneTag that says, “Your message will be transcribed by PhoneTag.com – please speak clearly.” You can turn this feature off, but I’ve found it does help to prompt people to enunciate more carefully, and that means fewer transcription errors.

I then receive each message as an e-mail. You can also receive transcribed voice mail as text messages – but if it’s a long voice mail, it may be broken up into several text messages on your device. I’ve found that single e-mails sent to my Blackberry are much more convenient.

Recordings of messages, in WAV, MP3 or GSM format, are also appended to e-mails from PhoneTag, so you can hear the audio if you wish. I rarely need to do this unless I want to make sure I understand specific parts of a transcription.

PhoneTag also keeps copies of all your messages and recordings on their website, which you can access by logging in to your online account.

You can also upload your contacts to PhoneTag from Outlook, Apple Mail, Yahoo Mail, GMail, Hotmail or any application from which you can generate a properly formatted comma-separated value file. PhoneTag will search for each caller’s number in your contact list, and if it finds the matching contact name and/or the company name, it will send you a notification message from that contact name, e-mail and number, instead of from a generic PhoneTag address. This makes it easier to reply to messages.

What does PhoneTag cost?

PhoneTag offers three levels of service: an unlimited number of messages for just under US$30 per month, or up to 40 messages for just under $10 per month (plus 35 cents per message received over the 40^th every month), or a pure per-message charge of 35 cents per message.

(So, if you do the math, you should buy the per-message plan if you receive less than 28 messages a month. Buy the unlimited plan if you receive more than 98 messages per month. Otherwise, buy the 40 messages per month plan.)

There is also a variably priced Enterprise option for organizations that want a company-wide license.

Like mobile phone charges based on a designated number of minutes per month, PhoneTag can get a little pricey if you opt for one of the limited plans and go over those limits. Note that PhoneTag’s plans do not include any fees for data or text messaging that you may also incur from your wireless carrier, so you may want to change your mobile phone plan before investing in PhoneTag.

Other uses for PhoneTag

Besides saving time, I’ve found PhoneTag useful for all sorts of other reasons. For example:

• I can now access my most important messages first. PhoneTag brings “visual voicemail” capabilities to my Blackberry. Now, instead of having to listen to every message sequentially, I can jump immediately to the most critical messages from my customers and prospects.
• My voice mail is now searchable, copyable, pastable, printable and forwardable. Now I can use the Find command on my Blackberry or in Outlook to search my voice messages for specific phrases or keywords. I can also forward voice mails, from all of my voice mailboxes, to colleagues much easier in e-mail. And it’s a lot easier now to save phone numbers into my contact list.
• Ever try to listen to voice mail in a crowded airport or train station? And did you ever find yourself trying to memorize phone numbers left in voice mails because you couldn’t write it down at the moment? I no longer have these kinds of annoyances, thanks to PhoneTag.
• And the best thing of all: I am finally able to tactfully educate some of my co-workers about how to leave a proper voice mail message. Whenever anyone sends me a long, rambling, incoherent voice mail, I just forward the PhoneTag transcription to them in an email, and ask them to interpret the message for me. Nothing works better than seeing your unintelligible babblings in print to make you realize that you need to think first, then speak. It works.

Sales Pro Value Score

So, for liberating salespeople from the chains of voice mail, and for its easy set-up, usability, immediate productivity gains, moderate pricing, and value-added messaging and communication features, Selling Geek gives PhoneTag a Sales Pro Value Score of 4.5 out of a possible 5.

UPDATE: PhoneTag has generously provided a free 30-day trial for Selling Geek blog readers and podcast listeners!  Click this link for your free trial: https://apps.simulscribe.com/signup/a/sellinggeek

Tags: free PhoneTag 30-day trial, PhoneTag, Podcast, Timothy Sullivan, voice mail to text

 

 Selling Geek 006-Mobile Phones for Sales Pros [30:20m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

In this special episode of the Selling Geek podcast, we interview PC Magazine’s mobile phone expert, Sascha Segan, about:

• the best wireless carriers for sales professionals
• the lastest trends in handheld phones
• the future of mobile computing
• what it all means to salespeople

Click here for a complete transcription of this interview.

Links to resources mentioned in the show:

• LinkedIn
• Dave Stein’s blog
• Referralkey.com
• salesconx.com
• Sascha Segan’s latest column
• Sascha on PC Mag Radio podcast
• Sascha’s cell phone reviews
• Verizon
• Sprint
• AT&T Wireless
• T-Mobile
• LTE
• WiMax
• Apple iPhone 3G
• salesforce.com
• RIM BlackBerry Curve
• RIM BlackBerry 8830
• Nokia E-series
• Windows Mobile
• Android
• Symbian
• Celio Redfly

UPDATE: Google may be putting out out its own Android “Gphone”, after all

UPDATE: SK Telecom talking to Sprint re: joint venture, or possible acquisition?

UPDATE: Google being very secretive about Android development kit update

UPDATE: The next hot smartphones

UPDATE: Rumor: a Microsoft Zune phone coming soon? - More ZunePhone rumors here - More likely: Zune content to be part of a Nokia device

UPDATE: Redfly now available for US$499

Tags: cell phones, future of mobile computing, mobile phones for salespeople, Podcast, Sascha Segan, selling geek, wireless carriers

If you are tied to the Sprint mobile network in the US, either by contract or by some weirdly unexplainable emotional bond, and you have iPhone envy bad, then you owe it to yourself to look at Samsung’s new Instinct, released this week at a bargain price of US$129.99 with a 2-year contract and a US$100 mail-in rebate - or get some professional counseling, although that’s probably more expensive. (Just think of the phone as a form of therapy, and save some money.)

Though it’s not quite the “iPhone killer” it was originally touted to be, the Instinct is a darned nice unit, with some useful features for sales pros, including:

• Touch-screen interface — although it’s not multi-touch like the Apple iPhone, and therefore, less cool, it definitely is easy to operate — just point and touch the screen
• Real-time GPS navigation and routing - Unlike the iPhone 3G, the Instinct includes spoken and graphical real-time, turn-by-turn driving directions, and location searches direct from the handset
• Tons of e-mail connectivity options - synchronize mail delivery to your handset from AOL, Yahoo!, Gmail, MSN/Windows Live Hotmail, Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes Domino
• SMS Text Messaging - an absolute requirement for sales teams
• Web browsing - although it’s theoretically not as fast as the new iPhone 3G, it’s definitely faster than the old AT&T EDGE network, which makes the Instinct fast enough for most web search tasks
• 2.0 megapixel camera and video camcorder - ever need to record that flip-chart or whiteboard after a sales meeting? Just snap a picture or a quick video with this high resolution camera. (Also, the iPhone doesn’t record video - I’m just sayin’…)
• Speakerphone - but you probably won’t use it much, because it is…
• Bluetooth® enabled - Including Stereo BT profile, another feature also not available on the iPhone
• Bluetooth spoken caller ID - When connected to a Bluetooth device, caller information for incoming calls is spoken through the Bluetooth device, so you don’t have to look at the handset display
• MicroSD Memory - a 2 gigabyte card is included, and can be upgraded to 8GB

Tags: reasons for salespeople to look at the Samsung Instinct, Samsung Instinct for Sprint

 

 Selling Geek 003-Jott [13:10m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Have you ever been driving to your next sales appointment, when suddenly you hear something on the radio? Realizing that this means a potential sales opportunity, you search frantically for a pen and a scrap of paper. One hand on the wheel, and the other fumbling around in the glove compartment, you take your eyes off the road for only a second… and are surprised when you look back, seeing yourself en route to an impending collision.

Clearly, this is not the best time to be jotting down your ideas.

Jott to the rescue of lost ideas

When do you get your best ideas? For me, it’s usually not when I’m sitting in my office, in front of my trusty computer, or with a pad of paper and writing implement in hand. No, usually it’s when I’m doing something else – driving, walking, eating, showering – it never fails. That’s when inspiration seems to strike me.

And what happens to most of those ideas? If I don’t jot them down, they evaporate away, lost forever. I shudder to think how many of my “million dollar ideas” have wafted away into the ether, never to return.

But now, as long as I have my faithful mobile phone nearby, I never have to worry about losing a good idea. For the last few months, I’ve been using the well-named Jott, the incredibly simple but supremely elegant voice to text service. With Jott, I simply call a toll-free number and dictate a message up to 30 seconds long. The resulting audio file is received by a dedicated call center, transcribed into text, and sent back to me in an e-mail or text message. It’s a very cool thing.

Jott CEO and co-founder John Pollard realized that people have some of their greatest ideas when they’re away from their PCs, and that the only real appliance they have with them almost all the time is their mobile phone. And he’s built a simple but useful system that takes this fact into account.

Jott: more than an idea recorder

Since its inception at the end of 2006, Jott has expanded and enhanced their original concept into a wide variety of links with other popular services, such as a Jott to Twitter link, where short messages are transcribed into a Twitter feed. (Twitter is a microblogging service that is rapidly growing in popularity… but that’s another show.)

Jott has become very popular with professionals on the go – this is especially true for salepeople, who seem to be in transit far more than most.

The best way to illustrate the elegant usefulness of Jott is simply to experience it… (Click on the player button at the top of this article, and you’ll see what I mean.)

You can also send Jott messages to groups of people, provided that you’ve entered them into your account on the Jott.com website. Imagine being able to send a text message about your latest deal to your entire sales team, just by calling Jott, dictating a message, and sending it to “Team” – all without touching a keyboard.

Or, you can Jott a message to yourself, then stand by – Jott will ask you if you want to send that message to yourself as a reminder at a future date and time. Jott will send an email or SMS text message to your phone at that time – it’s almost like having your own personal secretary.

Other Jott links include integration with:

· Internet-based calendars, including Google Calendar and 30 Boxes

· A wide variety of online task management and “to do” lists, including Tumblr, Remember the Milk, IWantSandy, FortyThree Actions, KeepUp, Kwiry, Mentat, Nozbe, Smartsheet, Toodledo, and Vitalist

· Blogging services, including the aforementioned Twitter, Jaiku, WordPress, TypePad, LiveJournal and Blogger

Jott is also becoming a mobile phone gateway for all sorts of other niche applications, including the ability to:

· Get price quotes and information about items on Amazon.com

· Get real estate cost estimates on specific property addresses from Zillow.com

· Leave questions for investigation and response from Mosio’s people-powered research service

· Poll the Recommendr consumer community about favorite products and stores

·Leave alerts about speed traps and get updates on highway police monitoring in your area through the Trapster.com service

· Record business expenses through the Xpenser service

… all this, just using your voice, your mobile phone, and Jott.

As I said, it’s a very cool thing.

Is Jott too good to be true?

So, what’s the catch?

So far, there really isn’t one. Jott’s service is free, at least for now. But Jott’s management team has hinted that eventually, they will probably introduce advertising in some form in it’s free service, or charge fees for access to premium features, or both. For example, Jott recently announced a new service called Jott Feeds, where users can request Jott to read text from syndicated weblog or news sites. Jott intends to insert ads into this text to spoken word service, and share revenues with the publishers.

But today, Jott is no cost and a no-brainer addition to my sales toolkit. It doesn’t require any special software. It’s practically brain-dead simple to operate. And it’s free. What’s not to like?

My only complaint after using the service for a few weeks is that it is not perfect. About one in every ten messages seems to have a mis-spelling of some sort. This usually seems to happen whenever I’m recording the name of a new product or Internet website – and let’s face it, some of those are hard to spell anyway. Now I’ve gotten into the habit of spelling out proper names – bingo, no more mis-spells in my Jott text messages. Having real human beings doing the transcription seems to work exceptionally well. I shudder to think what Jott would be like if its transcription engine was generally automated – that technology has a long way to go before it’s ready for prime time… but that’s another show. I also wonder if the Jott team can keep up with the workload as the application’s popularity rises. And finally, when and how will Jott figure out how to make money – and how intrusive will that become on what is currently a delightfully simple, straightforward service? These questions give me pause, and make me wonder about the future of Jott.

But today, as the summer of 2008 dawns, Jott is just plain cool. And darned useful, too, if you are a busy sales professional. And did I mention that it’s free?

Sales Pro Value Score

So, because of its ease of use, high utility, and (so far) zero cost, Selling Geek gives the Jott service a Sales Pro Value Score of 4.5, out of a possible 5.

UPDATE: Here are some great ideas for using Jott from the Sales 2.0 blog

UPDATE: Jott introduces tiered pricing plans

Tags: Jott, Jott to Twitter, Podcast, Review, sales tool, selling geek, voice to text

While salespeople continue to peck away at their trusty Blackberry devices, or just make calls on their conventional mobile phones of various makes and models, three giant forces quietly accelerate towards a cataclysmic confrontation. These titanic forces shall soon collide, and the cacophony and chaos that this clash creates will stun and stupefy sales pros with a bewildering array of new choices, none of which will be immediately correct. But one will eventually emerge as the victor.

The names of the three forces are: Google, Apple and Microsoft. And the great battle that is about to begin will be known as the War of the Phones. And salespeople will be caught in the crossfire.

It’s gonna be great.

All three companies have begun to unveil pieces of their respective visions of the next great technology: fully functional, hand-held, connected computing platforms. Oh, and they’ll make phone calls, too. In fact, we’ll all call them “phones” — and the three giants will, too — but don’t be fooled. Making calls will be only one useful thing that these new devices will do.

These devices will also contain enough processing power to be genuinely useful client computers, and their interfaces will be swift and intuitive enough to make hand-held document creation and spreadsheet jockeying do-able, if not outright pleasant. Further, these devices will feature fast near-broadband or better Internet connectivity speeds, enabling practical cloud computing and collaboration, all in the palm of your hand. Coupled with the absolute requirements of email, calendar, contact management, messaging and voice telephone, the next generation of mobile devices will become the primary tool in every sales professional’s stock in trade.

Google Android

If you haven’t seen any Android phones yet, don’t worry — that’s because there aren’t any. Android is a software system for mobile devices based on the open source Linux operating system. Google is promoting Android as an open platform for the next generation for mobile computing and telecommunications, and so far, they have been successful in attracting a significant number of technology companies to begin developing and supporting Android-based devices.

Android is a very interesting operating system for mobile devices. Google’s Andy Rubin, who heads up the Android development project, recently demonstrated a prototype at a San Francisco developer’s conference:

Observers of the prototype demonstrations have commented that the initial versions of Android devices offer many of the user-friendly interface functions found in the popular Apple iPhone, with speedy connectivity and computing power.

Apple iPhone

The user interface of the Apple iPhone is revolutionary. If you haven’t experienced it, you can see an overview here: iPhone Guided Tour. The intelligent multi-touch screen and gesture-based commands make the iPhone a truly unique and highly intuitive user experience. There simply isn’t anything else like it on the market today. As a result, Apple has sold nearly 10 million units since the iPhone was first introduced last year.

Microsoft Windows Mobile

Microsoft’s Windows Mobile operating system has been around since 2003, but it has been upgraded and improved steadily over the years. Recently, Microsoft demonstrated a touch screen interface for mobile devices, which included multi-touch and motion-based commands, similar to the popular iPhone interface. Industry analysts speculate that this is part of the next release of Windows Mobile, planned for the latter half of 2009. Microsoft’s leaders, Bill Gates and Steve Balmer, also recently stated that multi-touch screen interface support will be part of the future Windows 7 operating system.

Microsoft is selling a lot of Windows Mobile devices already. In fact, a Microsoft spokesperson projected a 50 percent growth in sales per year over the next two years, which translates to almost 60 million units sold between 2006 and 2009.

Who will win?

We said that we expected one of the three behemoths to emerge victorious from this clash of titans, and we think we know who it will probably be. At least, we are willing to speculate as to who it should be. And we can justify our conclusion based on one simple principle: maximum customer freedom.

With an open architecture, more developers can produce applications and add-ons for a mobile device much more cheaply and easily. As a result, in a mobile device based on an open architecture design, users should have enormous flexibility in configuring that device to their specific requirements and tastes, and at attractive prices — in fact, in many cases, enhancements and add-ons will be free.

But an open architecture can only succeed if it garners enough support from developers and manufacturers to create enough devices with enough options to interest large market segments of potential buyers. As a result, many open architecture initiatives have been relegated to niche markets, or failed outright.

Google, however, is doing everything right, so far, in establishing Android as an open architecture with a broad base of manufacturer and developer support. And they’ve built into that architecture the potential for further extensibility and enhancements, all at an individual user’s option. Further, the demonstrations of the early versions of Android phones have been very impressive — if the final released versions perform this good in real-world use, and if they are priced competitively, they will be very tantalizing indeed. For these reasons, we think Android could eventually be the mobile device platform that everyone, especially sales professionals, will want to have in their hands — when those devices begin to appear “in the second half of 2008″, according to Andy Rubin.

Before the folks at Google start popping the champaign corks, however, a lot of things have to go right. And meanwhile, their competitors are not going to be sitting idle.

First, Android is behind in the race. Apple’s new 3G iPhone will do very well, if it is released early this summer as many experts predict. The new iPhone should include improved Internet connectivity speeds, ability to receive “push email” from Microsoft Exchange servers (a “must have” for corporate acceptance), and support for third-party add-on applications. The iPhone user interface is indeed a leap forward in user friendliness — it’s intuitive nature simply makes the iPhone the most fun device to use. And for these reasons, despite fairly high anticipated introduction prices, the iPhone should quickly capture a respectable share of the market.

Apple has some challenges, however. Although Apple will soon support third-party developed applications, they do so under some heavily controlled conditions — Apple will almost certainly require its approval of all applications and require sale exclusively through it’s iTunes distribution system. To be fair, Apple is trying to protect users from unpleasant experiences with badly written software, which is good. What is less good, however, is that these restrictions could become a significant barrier to many third-party developers, and thereby reduce customer choice — which will look more obvious if Android successfully attracts many more third-party developers. Still, the iPhone should enjoy several months of virtually no comparable competition, and with the new 3G capabilities and a broad array of worldwide carriers supporting the device, the newest edition could capture a huge market share in the summer and fall of 2008.

Microsoft is so far behind that it’s hard to imagine how they might catch up with their more nimble competitors in this race. While Windows Mobile is selling a lot of devices, and there is a lot of speculation that the next version will incorporate a much richer user interface, it will be at least a year before we see any new devices on the market that take advantage of these capabilities. By then, the iPhone and Android phones will have carved out large and highly defensible shares of the next generation mobile device market.

And what of the old reliable Blackberry devices, from RIM? Will they be able to hold off the onslaught of these new platforms? Are salespeople so addicted to their “Crackberries” that they will be unwilling to switch? Certainly it seems that RIM is counting on this, and hoping that all interlopers will stumble and fall. Meanwhile, RIM’s next generation of Blackberry devices appear to be solid, incremental improvements over the previous versions — but while they are faster and have more capacity, they really don’t offer anything radically new in their interface or extensibility — at least, not yet.

Perhaps some other player will emerge in the next generation mobile device market that we haven’t yet identified — perhaps Nokia, who still sells more mobile phones than anyone, with a revamped Symbian-based operating system. Or the once venerable Palm – although that seems very unlikely, given their recent track record of development mis-steps.

We think it likely that one of the three giants now entering the fray will eventually dominate the next generation of advanced mobile devices, although we expect the lead to change at least twice, and perhaps three times, over the next two years.

It will be fun to watch.

Tags: Android, Blackberry, iPhone, mobile devices, mobile phone, Nokia, Palm, sales tool, War of the Phones, Windows 7, Windows Mobile

 

 Selling Geek 001-New Jawbone [9:51m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

I’ve sometimes had to take important calls with customers as I was driving from one sales appointment to another, but I’ve always cringed at the impression I was making – with all the background noise, I’m sure my in-transit calls made less than a completely professional impression. I also remember one teleconference with a hot prospect, which I made from my home office, just when my lawn maintenance guy fired up his mower right outside my office window, turning my call into a “how fast can I hit the mute button?” contest.

But for the past year, I never worried about background noise on mobile phone calls. That’s because I’ve been using a Jawbone noise-canceling Bluetooth headset, from Aliph. This amazing device screens out virtually all background noise, allowing only your voice to pass through. With my Jawbone connected, I confidently make calls from my car, from the street, from the airport terminal, wherever, all with perfect clarity – my call recipients all think I’m calling from my nice, quiet office.

And now, the New Jawbone

Now, Aliph has released its second generation of the Jawbone headset, which they appropriately but uninspiredly named the New Jawbone. I wonder what they will call the third generation someday – the New New Jawbone? Regardless of what you call it, the New Jawbone is indeed a significant improvement over the previously impressive original model, and well worth buying, even at its relatively hefty retail price of just under US$130.

The styling of the old model Jawbone was best described as Borg-like – an approximately one inch by two inch metal mesh rectangle hanging from your ear, it reminded me of that episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation when Captain Picard was assimilated by an evil cyborg race – “I am Locutus, of Borg. Resistance is futile.”

The New Jawbone is half the size of the original model, and half of the weight at less than half an ounce, which makes it much more comfortable to wear. This lighter weight also gives you the option to wear the Jawbone as a purely in-ear headset, or with a flexible attached leather-covered earloop. I wear glasses, so an in-ear option is important to me – and yet I found the New Jawbone comfortable to wear both with or without the earloop. Aliph gives you four different earloop sizes, and three different earbud sizes, so you can find the perfect fit for your particular pinna.

Make no mistake, though – this headset’s styling is still clearly Jawbone-ish, albeit on a smaller rectangle with a new diamond-patterned metallic finish in black, gold or silver. Even better than the original model, this New Jawbone makes as strong a fashion statement as it does about performance.

Performance

And let’s talk about performance – the New Jawbone’s “NoiseAssassin” technology is even more amazing that the original model’s noise canceling capabilities. The best way to describe it is simply to listen to a demonstration. (Click on the player at the top of this article, and you’ll see what we mean.)

How does the New Jawbone cut out all the background noise? It’s all in the design, which features one important difference from other headsets. At the end closest to your mouth is a small plastic nub, which rests against your face. This nub picks up the vibrations from your voice, and the New Jawbone then compares these vibrations to all the sound waves coming through the microphones, and then filters the unwanted background noise in real-time. Aliph perfected this technology for the military, and it’s very impressive in its performance.

I tested the New Jawbone’s Bluetooth pairing capabilities against three different phones, a Blackberry 8830, Motorola Razr, and a Treo 630, and had no trouble connecting with any of them. Further, I found the range of the headset to be about 20 feet before I noticed any significant signal loss.

Any Downsides?

So, are there any downsides in the New Jawbone? Well, it is fairly pricey compared to other Bluetooth wireless headsets, for sure, but given its incredible performance, I think it’s more than worth the premium. I’ve had trouble with the flexible ear loops, too – they are easily bent, and can break off, making it impossible to fix. I now store my New Jawbone in a rigid eyeglass case, just to be safe. Also, the total talk time is now less than the old Jawbone – four hours compared to the original’s six, which still isn’t bad considering that the battery is now less than half the size of the original. Aliph includes a magnetically attached charging cable, which gives you the flexible option of recharging from an AC power adapter or from your USB port on your PC. I found it takes about an hour to fully recharge the New Jawbone, which is pretty fast.

I also don’t fully appreciate the two hidden buttons on the New Jawbone – one at the back of the unit that turns on the noise cancellation capability, and a second button further forward that answers and ends calls. While aesthetically stylish, these buttons are sometimes hard to find, and although the New Jawbone gives you an aural signal that they’ve been engaged, they still are not very intuitive to use. Fortunately, I simply keep the NoiseAssassin feature on all the time, and use my Blackberry 8830 to answer and end calls, so I never have to use the headset buttons. Also, it would be nice to have a volume button – the New Jawbone adjusts volume automatically based on background noise. A nice feature, but not always perfect, so a volume boost would have been welcome.

Sales Pro Value Score

Still, these are minor quibbles for what otherwise is a perfect addition to any sales professional’s arsenal of technology advantages. There are other Bluetooth noise canceling headsets out there that are very good – the Plantronics Voyager 520 and the strangely named nXZEN nX6000 are both cheaper and worth a close look – but in the end, the New Jawbone simply wins out in style and performance. There’s no doubt about it, the New Jawbone will boost your professional image, both in person or over the phone, and those whom you call will definitely appreciate it.

So, in summary, Selling Geek gives the New Jawbone a Sales Pro Value Score of 4.5 out of a possible five.

UPDATE: Another highly-rated noise-cancelling Bluetooth headset worth a look is the BlueAnt Z9i

Tags: Aliph, Bluetooth headset, bluetooth noise cancelling headset, Jawbone, New Jawbone, noise cancelling, Podcast, Review, selling geek, wireless headset