blogs

EQO Traveler is here.

Now when you roam with EQO you can use Travel Mode, so that all of your EQO calls will use your inbound roaming minutes instead of outbound roaming minutes. You can also enter the number of a local prepaid SIM card in Travel Mode so that your calls will be routed and charged to that number. Still confused? Check out this super helpful Travel Mode how-to video—Episode III Revenge of the Chris, the 4^th and final video in our 6 part saga.

Although I know that you don’t need any convincing, there are several reasons to watch this clip. This is the first EQO video to be filmed on Bryan’s fancy new HD video camera (so if you are a friend or family member of Bryan’s or the dude who sold him the camera, you might enjoy this). Also, this is Chris’ final performance for EQO (you’ll either be saying “phew, thank God” or “Why Chris? Why? Say it ain’t so!”). And finally, this is amateur film-making at its worst (which is always good for a few chuckles).

Webster’s dictionary defines innovation as:

in·no·va·tion   ɪn əˈveɪ ʃən/ Pronunciation Key –noun

1. Mobile VoIP, text messaging and FREE IM with EQO.

2. the act of innovating; introduction of new things or methods.

Well #2 is probably the more accurate definition while I await Webster’s response on #1's definition suggestion.

Why is EQO at this year’s Dow Jones Wireless Innovations conference in Redwood City, CA, at the Sofitel, San Francisco Bay, April 22-23, 2008, you ask? Open Opportunity, and Turning Mobility Into Profitably (very clever) – of course!

The website told me that last year brought many changes to the wireless industry that will forever impact how people use their wireless devices. Apple introduced the iPhone; Google announced an open mobile operating system; even carriers and handset makers declared their openness. But how much is hype versus reality? Such changes will ultimately affect not only carriers and device makers but start-ups and investors, opening up increasing possibilities for revenue.

To help both VCs and entrepreneurs get a view of the innovations and opportunities that will emerge in 2008 and beyond, Dow Jones VentureWire is putting together an impressive group of speakers, including individuals from some of the major carriers, CEOs from 70 of the most promising mobile start-ups (most notably our own mobile god, EQO CEO Bill Tam) and, of course, some of the leading investors in the sector (show me the money!).

Come catch Bill Tam April 22, 2008 between 3:05-4:40 PM in Salon 3. That’s right, he only needs just over an hour to tell you about how EQO is one of the fastest growing Mobile VoIP players (and the most AWESOME) in the industry, how we are adding tons of new users everyday, and by this humble blogger’s opinion – how  our monetisation model has the makings of Forbes-type-recognized success.

If you are in town next week soaking up all that Redwood City has to offer (I know, there’s so much to do…) – Wireless Innovations is a must-see!

Since reading and blogging about Getting Real, I've become more interested in what 37Signals has to say. I've started perusing their Signal vs Noise Blog from time to time and have found a couple more gems worth sharing.

The first post that caught my eye was a response to Jason Calacanis' now infamous post on how startups can save money. I had already read what Calacanis has to say and found it to be generally good advice. If you want to get the most out of people, you should indeed set them up for success. But I was irked by the same point that David at 37Signals was, that Calacanis recommended firing non workaholics, and was interested to read the response post Fire the workaholics. Clearly there is a happy medium, but I found that I generally agreed with the 37Signals point of view, that working smarter not longer should be a priority. This is clearly a heated topic near and dear to people's hearts, exemplified by the outrage at the original post. Just read the comment stream to see how sensitive a topic this really is. Clearly there is a need to work hard and put in extra hours from time to time, but some of the studies mentioned in the comments talked of the effect working long hours can have on motivation. It seems that, in the long run, more hours to a point does not equate to increased productivity. It's counter intuitive, but then that's psychology for you.

The second post that I fell in love with was this one about Questioning your work. It lists a series of questions to ask yourself before embarking on a new project or even when starting simpler tasks. If you are really doing the right thing, the answers to these questions will confirm that. But if you are undertaking folly, asking yourself these questions will help you realize it. What are we doing and is it worth it? What else could I do that might be better than this? Is there an easier way to do this? I will surely ask myself these questions and others like them more often in the future.

Chris
EQO Customer Evangelist

Hello and thank you to all the kind users who gave our Symbian Beta a try and then shared their experiences with us. We used as much of the feedback as we could in the upcoming commercial version and we haven't forgotten the rest. The Symbian Beta phase is now over, making way for the commercial release of our Symbian version next week. Thanks again to all of those who tested our Symbian Beta version, we really appreciate your efforts.

I am also pleased to announce that Darla Mack won the EQO iPod Shuffle for filling out the Symbian Beta Survey. Congratulations Darla, I hope you enjoy your iPod!

The Symbian Beta will still be available for download at the Symbian Beta page and we will still gladly accept all feedback coming our way, but the beta period is officially over. I hope you'll all try our next Symbian version! Please stay tuned.

Chris
EQO Customer Evangelist

This is either a brilliant April Fools joke or a blatant example of carrier idiocy, both of which I appreciate very much. Engadget, possibly the best blog ever, is reporting that T-Mobile sent them a cease and desist for their use of the color magenta in their logo. They are also claiming that this is not an April Fools joke. I'm leaning towards joke considering how ridiculous this is, but either way I find Engadget's actions quite funny. They have changed their background to magenta and are calling themselves Engadget T-Mobile. Secretly, I hope that T-Mobile really is stupid enough to claim the color magenta as their own. Happy April Fools.

Chris
EQO Customer Evangelist

Two years ago I was kinda sad when I ended up with a Motorola V635 and not a RAZR as my personal phone. RAZR's were so freaking cool back then, but they generally sucked from the nerdy technical point of view. Just try running EQO on a RAZR V3 and you'll see what I mean, slow... I was really happy with my V635 when I got it. It was way better than my circa 2002 Audiovox (colour screen!) and made calls just fine. It wasn't until I got my hands on some other high end phones from Nokia and Sony Ericsson that I realized just how greatly Motorola phones paled in comparison. Motorola pulled off a marketing coup with their four letter 'almost a word' naming scheme, featuring RAZR, SLVR, PEBL, KRZR, ROKR, RIZR and so on. It seems that the consumer community has gotten over the then cool RAZR form factors and voted with their dollars because Motorola's phone division isn't doing so well. Who'd a thought better qualities products would sell more?

The news today is that Motorola is actually splitting off it's phone division from the rest of its business, a move many see as protecting the successful business from the phone division's inevitable failure. I'm not really surprised by this and I don't recommend that anyone buy into the pending IPO of Motorola Mobile.

UPDATE:  Wow, didn't know it was this bad!

Chris
EQO Customer Evangelist

I've been following the 700MHz spectrum auction for almost a year now, mostly because the potential is huge for the wireless industry to do something amazing with this frequency. It was uplifting to see Google get involved with their petition for openness, and then it was equally depressing when Verizon sued the FCC for taking Google to heart. Now it it is finally over...

We don't know who won yet and I am pretty eager to find out who, but it looks like the FCC have achieved their basest goal of hauling in the cash! I'm really hoping it was Google (good) and not Verizon (evil) who won. Whoever wins, I hope they use this tasty spectrum to enable us wireless consumers to consume lots, quickly, and for not very much money, because I'm pretty sure KoodoMobile isn't going to do it for me.

Read the Engadget and TechCrunch reports for some of the dirty deets.

Update: Verizon won, shoot. 

Chris
EQO Customer Evangelist

I've recently started working with our web team at EQO, which has been quite fun.  Web developers and designers tend to be quite interesting people, usually more trendy and social than your typical engineer type (me).  At EQO, our web team is dually focused on product development and marketing content pages, which has produced some interesting contentions.  No one was hurt, nothing serious!  But I've since become interested in how to optimally produce web services and work with web developers and designers.

A friend recently pointed me in the direction of Getting Real, a free 37Signals ebook on the best ways to build web applications.  I now consider myself a disciple and recommend that anyone and everyone in the tech field, not just web people, read this book.  It's short and simple message is pure gold and is well worth the few hours it might take you to read it.  Seriously, every page either taught me something new, prompted change in my behavior, or affirmed some of the good things that I do.  Their message in short is keep it small, keep it focused, be honest, and make it simple!

Another precious gem that has caught my eye of late is Brook's law, which states "adding manpower to a late software project makes it later".  This is contrary to conventional wisdom, but my experience has generally proven this to be true.  I thought this was a great concept to grasp and being mindful of it will surely help me in the future.

Lastly, this Seth Godin post about working with designers was very humbling in a good way.  While professional design is not an art contest, designers do like to do their own thing.  Micromanaging and constraining designers is a surefire recipe for disaster.  The fact that I suck at design is why I'm not the designer; it's all about trust.

Chris
EQO Customer Evangelist

Well, not exactly... What has Marketing here at EQO been up to for the last couple months? We’ve been making kick a** short films, that’s what – a quadrilogy, in fact. The finished products below promise to enthral viewers young and old alike.

The EQO Legacy Quadrilogy is in no sense of the word "adult" or "mature," so more sophisticated comedy, drama, action and fantasy lovers may be a little disappointed by what it offers. There are however some popular tried, tested and true themes: hot girls in bikinis, a hot guy, a caveman and a trampoline. There are no wizards or goblins, but there is a slightly odd (sorry, “artistic”) announcer guy who does a good job of developing the plots.

To humanize the characters, the films were shot right here in Vancouver on the scenic DTES, amidst an angry landlord demanding we pay him for the use of his badly unkempt backyard. There's not much of a moral here, though, unless one considers it a lesson that, when filming hot girls jumping on trampolines, one should avoid doing so during a 12 year old boys street hockey game, but I digress.

Still not sure what the films are about? They’re about learning how to get the most out of your mobile phone by using EQO, of course. Despite the fact we are all about the mobile social networking and VoIP, we too enjoy some sweet eye candy whilst slaving away (the caveman being an acquired taste, and was my boss’ idea).

Check out Part 1 below entitled, “Hot Girl Jumping on a Trampoline”

You can catch the riveting sequels to the EQO quadrilogy on YouTube at the links below. Feel free to leave favourable ratings and comments, pass them onto your friends or post them to your very own site!

Hot Asian Girl

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtYx7-l6A0g

Hot Guy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2wtAfK2908

Caveman

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0LPIOfxtvU

We at EQO are in a continual pickle when it comes to Samsung and LG phones. We would love to support them all, but there are just too many for us to get our hands on. To make matters worse, neither have developer programs that are of any use. Thank you Nokia and Sony Ericsson for being so helpful!

We currently only support a small percentage of the estimated 47 billion different Samsung and LG models out there and we need our user's help to support more. If you are interested in helping us support your phone, please send us an email to beta@eqo.com providing your phone model, country, and mobile service provider. If we think there is a chance that EQO Mobile will work we'll help you try EQO, which will hopefully lead to us officially supporting your phone. Helpful beta testers will have the chance to win EQO Prize Packs, in addition to the tremendous honor of being the first to use EQO Mobile on a particular model. We thank our users in advance for their kind efforts and hope to hear from you soon!

Cheers,

Chris
EQO Customer Evangelist