Tags: account research, Alerts, Google, RSS, RSS aggregators, web search

 

 Selling Geek 013-Best web browsers for sales pros [41:00m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

In this episode of the Selling Geek podcast, we review the top five most popular web browsers, and evaluate them in terms of their utility to sales professionals.  We also provide specific web browser recommendations to salespeople using Macs, Linux-based systems, or Windows-based computers.

Links to resources mentioned in this show:

• List of available web browser applications
• Flock
• SeaMonkey
• Microsoft Internet Explorer
• Mozilla Firefox
• Google Chrome
• Apple Safari
• Opera

Please give us your comments and feedback on our U.S. toll-free message line: 877-345-7763, or from anywhere in the world at: +1 404-418-4970, or leave your comment below.  In each podcast episode, we award US$20 to the best voice mail, email or blog comment we receive.

Tags: Apple, Chrome, Firefox, Google, Internet Explorer, Microsoft, Mozilla, Opera, Safari, web browser

Google made a pre-release version of its newopen source Internet web browser, Chrome, publicly available for Windows XP and Vista users.  Curious web surfers can try out the new browser by downloading it here.   Designed for reliability and speed, Chrome poses a potential threat to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, which currently enjoys about a 75% market share of personal computer desktops, and also to Mozilla Firefox, which has made rapid strides after releasing a new version earlier this summer.

Early reviews of the initial version of Chrome has been positive. For example, TechCrunch’s Don Reisinger reported:

Google Chrome is not only one of the fastest browsers I’ve ever used, it’s easily one of the best. The install was quick and easy. In a matter of seconds (literally), I downloaded the application from the company’s site and installed it on my PC. Once up, Chrome asked to import the data from Firefox and I was off.

The first thing that will strike you about Chrome is its soft, yet elegant interface. Unlike other browsers, which sport clutter, Chrome doesn’t do anything of the sort. Instead, it makes tabs the primary element of the software, which can be dragged around and moved as needed on the fly. You can already do that in Safari, but in Chrome, it’s simply much easier.

But perhaps more than anything, you’ll notice just how fast Chrome is immediately. After just ten minutes of jumping from site to site, I was amazed by how quickly I was able to get around. And unlike some browsers (I won’t mention any names), opening a slew of tabs doesn’t matter — it’s just as fast with or without tabs.

Google released an overview of Chrome - in comic book form, no less - which describes the new browser’s features and architecture.  In summary, the browser’s advantages include:

• A design that protects multiple simultaneous web browsing sessions, each managed in a separate tab in the browser interface.  If one session fails, then only that tab closes down, while the other browsing sessions continue.  This architecture promises to manage memory more efficiently, and therefore improve performance.
• The “Omnibox”, which lets you input a web address or search the web in the address bar - one appears in each tabbed web session. This is similar to the “Awesome Bar” now found in Firefox 3.0, but with some additional refinements such as more intelligent storage of web browsing history.
• User-driven initial homepage, which stores snapshots of your most commonly visited sites, so that you can access them with a single click.  This is similar to favorite site bookmarks, but more visually appealing and easier to access.
• A more user-friendly security architecture, which should provide better protection against malware and phishing sites.
• Better processing of Javascript, which promises faster web site browsing speeds.
• An “incognito” mode, which provides more privacy by eliminating the recording of personal web browsing data.

Should salespeople use Chrome?

Google’s new browser has a lot going for it - a theoretically strong architecture that promises faster processing speed and more efficient use of memory, a simple and easy-to-use interface, the backing of a giant in web application development, and many other potential advantages.  Microsoft and Mozilla are right to take notice.  But they shouldn’t panic just yet.

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer owns a very dominant market share now, and their upcoming IE8 version (now also in beta release), due later this year, should provide enough performance and feature improvements to slow down any large-scale migration to a new browser.  Mozilla’s Firefox 3.0, released earlier this year, already provides lightning-fast performance, better memory management, a clean user interface, and many features planned for Chrome.  Firefox’s planned 3.1 upgrade, due before the end of the year, should also provide very significant performance improvement for Javascript, among other new features.

So, what’s a sales professional to do? Go ahead and try out the early version of Chrome, if you’re curious, but there’s no immediate need to switch from your current browser.  Although Chrome has a lot of potential, Firefox has something Chrome doesn’t have: a huge array of free plug-ins and extensions that allow users to customize and tailor their web browsing experience.  Chrome is being released as open source software, just like Firefox, so it could attract a library of add-ons eventually.  On the other hand, because Chrome is open source, there’s no reason why Mozilla couldn’t incorporate Chrome functionality into Firefox, and provide the best of both worlds.

There’s little doubt that Google’s Chrome browser is going to make an impact.  But it won’t take over the market overnight.

Tags: Chrome, Firefox web browser, Google, Internet Explorer, Microsoft, Mozilla

LinkedIn, the popular business networking website, released new improvements to its Groups feature, making this function easier to use and more helpful to sales professionals looking to forge connections with customers and potential prospects.

In addition to fixing some previously annoying application errors, the latest Groups update now provides a centralized hub page for every group, so that members can interact more easily in one convenient location within the LinkedIn system. In addition, users can now search a roster of group members. And there are a number of other group management enhancements, making it easier to administrate a group in LinkedIn.

These new features will make it much simpler to establish meaningful communities of LinkedIn users, and will encourage more interactive social networking on the site.

Sales professionals can use the new Groups features to find new ways to find potential connections in their own business networks, making it easier to develop “warm leads” for new opportunities, to research relationships within accounts, and to arrange introductions to target prospects.

Tags: groups, LinkedIn

The two leading web browser applications, Mozilla’s Firefox and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, independently announced plans to improve their products before the end of 2008.

Mozilla reported that they will introduce a significant performance enhancement to Firefox, which will be part of the anticipated 3.1 upgrade to be released before the end of the year.  This new enhancement, called “TraceMonkey”, will enable Firefox 3.1 to boost execution of Javascript on web pages “by an order of magnitude or more.”  Many web pages use Javacript programs to present content, but many web browser programs manage Javascript content relatively slowly.  TraceMonkey will enable Firefox 3.1 to compile Javascript as much as 30 times faster than current browsers, in some circumstances, making for a much smoother and more user-friendly experience.

Microsoft’s program manager for Internet Explorer version 8 (IE8), Andy Zeigler, announced that the next version of the browser, expected by the end of the year, will provide a new feature, called InPrivate, which will enable users to use the web anonymously.  With InPrivate turned on, users will be able to control the recording of browsing history, cookies, and other personal Internet usage data.

We think that salespeople should plan to use both web browsers on their computers.  Firefox offers great speed and very efficient use of memory resources, as well as one of the easiest to use browser interfaces.  Internet Explorer 8, when released, promises to be fast, too - but it also should provide a safe backup for browsing some sites that require IE compatibility.  And the ability to browse anonymously could also be very useful in some situations - such as when conducting competitive intelligence, for example.

Tags: anonymous web surfing, Firefox, IE8, InPrivate, Internet Explorer, Mozilla, TraceMonkey

The popular voice-to-text service, Jott, which heretofore was completely free, announced that they are now “out of beta”, and they have introduced a tiered services pricing plan.  In other words, most users will now have to pay monthly fees to get Jott’s most desirable features.  (See our earlier review of Jott, posted here, for a full description of the handy transcription service.)

Users can still use Jott for free, but only in a very limited form, and only if they are willing to see advertisements on their Jott.com page.  The “Jott Basic” option allows unlimited voice-to-text note and reminder recordings of up to 15 seconds each.  However, Jott Basic will not support management of notes and lists via email - users will have to go to the Jott.com site to access their lists and notes directly, and they will see ads displayed there. Further, Jott Basic does not support sending emails or text messages to other people - users must upgrade to higher-tier services for this popular feature.

According to Doug Aley, Jott Networks’ VP of Marketing and Business Development, “While we may serve ads in Jott Feeds (the service that reads RSS feeds back to you) eventually on the phone, we will likely not mess with the voice user interface, even on the free service. We plan to serve ads on our web site.”

Also, Jott Basic will support only a limited number of external links to other web services, which are:

• Micro-blog messaging platforms: Twitter, Jaiku and Tumblr
• Blogging content management systems: Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad and WordPress
• Third-party information sources: Amazon.com and Zillow

The regular Jott service tier is now US$3.95 per month, and includes:

• No advertising
• Unlimited 15-second messages (just like Jott Basic)
• Management of notes and lists either online at Jott.com or through e-mail
• The ability to send e-mail or text messages through Jott to other people
• Links to many more web services for calendar management, task management, and additional web-enabled information sources
• Automated voice-to-text transcription of tasks and appointments into Microsoft Outlook

The highest tier of service, Jott Pro, costs US$12.95 per month and includes all the features of the regular Jott service tier, plus:

• 30-second messages (instead of 15 seconds)
• The ability to reply to email on a BlackBerry device using Jott voice recordings

All tiers have access to Jott Feeds - which will read blog feeds to you over the phone - and they all also include Jott Express - an Adobe AIR-based desktop application that provides client-side management of Jott messages and reminders, and Jott for iPhone - a similar application for the Apple iPhone.  Users may cancel or change their Jott plans at any time without penalty.

What does this mean to sales professionals?

As we said in our earlier review, Jott is a very handy utility for salespeople on the go.  The ability to leave reminders and to-do items with a quick phone call, and then receive those messages in text form, almost immediately, is great for sales pros that need to keep track of myriad details without touching a keyboard.  Further, the ability to send emails or instant text messages to other users by leaving a quick voice recording on Jott is a godsend to mobile sales pros.

When the service was free, Jott was a no-brainer addition to any busy salesperson’s toolkit.  We think the free Jott Basic tier is now almost worthless - in other words, you get what you pay for.  However, getting all the functionality of the previously freebie Jott service for less than four bucks a month ain’t bad - in fact, we still think it’s a great bargain, and we still recommend it.

We only wish we didn’t have to pay more than three times the standard service fee, just to get BlackBerry integration.  That seems too big a step in Jott’s tiered pricing plan to recommend it, especially since BlackBerry users (and we are one of those) can get virtually all the voice-to-text functionality they need from the regular Jott service anyway.

We previously awarded the free Jott service a Sales Pro Value Score of 4.5 out of a possible 5.  With their recent change to a “for fee” service, and considering the enhancements they’ve made to Jott functionality, we’re downgrading that rating, but only slightly - to a 4 out of 5.

UPDATE: TechCrunch reports Jott has over 420,000 customers

Tags: Jott, Jott Basic, Jott Express, Jott Pro

 

 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

According to the All About Microsoft blog, the software giant has confirmed that a new version of its web browser application, Internet Explorer 8 (IE8), will be released to general availability before the end of 2008. Microsoft’s Senior Vice President of Online Services and Windows, Bill Veghte, mentioned to a gathering of financial industry analysts that Microsoft will release IE8 “later this year.”

An early version of IE8 was made available for testing by software developers in beta form earlier this year, and a second beta release is set to be provided in August. The new version is reported to include significant performance improvements, and more compliance with Internet website standards.

By far, still the most widely used Internet web browser application, Internet Explorer is also the most widely supported by website and software application developers.  Even though Firefox 3.0 may still be faster, salespeople should also plan to have a copy of IE8 on their computers, when it becomes available, for those rare websites that do not perform adequately in Firefox.

UPDATE: IE8 to support anonymous web surfing

Tags: All About Microsoft, IE8, Internet Explorer 8

To operate efficiently, business organizations must be able to synchronize email, calendars and contact information between their users’ computers and mobile devices.  RIM built an entire business on this vital requirement with their BlackBerry line.  This is why Apple included Microsoft Exchange support and other enterprise synchronization features in its latest version of the iPhone, the 3G model.

To their credit, Apple also recognized that individual users who aren’t tied to a corporate network have never been able to automatically and reliably synchronize data between their computers and phones, quickly and easily.  So, when Apple also introduced their MobileMe service with their new iPhone, many people got excited, including many remote-office salespeople and independent sales representatives.

MobileMe promises automatic synchronization of email, calendars and contacts to anyone using an iPhone or an iPod touch — whether they use a Macintosh or Windows computer.  MobileMe also provides up to 20 gigabytes of online storage, an online photo-sharing facility, synchronized Internet browser bookmarks, and some other handy Web applications — all for just US$100 a year.

Unfortunately, MobileMe’s launch has been a rough one.  The new service has gone down intermittently ever since its launch with the new iPhone 3G.  Apple claims that these issues affect only a very small number of users, but the reports of outages continue to echo in the blogosphere.  Windows users are also upset about Apple’s method of forcing a new preferences control panel through the iTunes installation of MobileMe.

And then, prominent tech journalist Walt Mossberg slammed MobileMe in the Wall Street Journal, asserting flatly that it was “far too flawed to be reliable”.  He cited several problems that plagued his testing, including significant synchronization delays, slow response times, failure to load calendar data, errors in the online storage service, poor integration with Microsoft Outlook, missing data, inability to synch bookmarks, and a generally poor user experience overall. “If Apple does get MobileMe working smoothly, it could be a terrific service. But it’s way too ragged now,” Mossberg concluded.

The New York Times’ technology columnist David Pogue also criticized MobileMe, calling it a “MobileMess”.  Pogue said, “This is [like] an airplane that’s stuck on the runway for hours with no food or working bathroom.”  Harsh criticism indeed.

At the other end of the spectrum, the usually conservative PC Magazine gave MobileMe a four star rating, citing the service’s simplicity and integration, especially for Mac users.

What does MobileMe mean for sales pros?

Most sales professionals will never use MobileMe. Rather, they will continue to synchronize their data through their corporate networks, who use Microsoft Exchange and integrated devices such as RIM’s BlackBerry.

But some salespeople operate independently from a corporate network, who would benefit greatly from a fast, reliable data synchronization capability — not to mention simple online backup and data sharing services.  For them, MobileMe presents a potentially cost-effective solution — and one that makes an iPhone an attractive smartphone for field computing as well as for communications.

Unfortunately, until Apple can make MobileMe more stable and reliable, and until they can address all of the user interface glitches, in particularly on Windows machines, MobileMe is “not ready for prime time.” Our advice: watch and wait, and hope that the next version works as promised.

UPDATE: Apple acknowledges MobileMe problems, issues status report

UPDATE: Apple says MobileMe e-mail issues solved

UPDATE: MobileMe gets new leader, Apple’s CEO admits problems

Tags: Apple, David Pogue, MobileMe, Walt Mossberg