beta tester

Usually our Beta tester of the month does something spectacular for us. For example, it really helps when our users test out EQO on phones that we don't have access to, or when they test out a new feature before it is released to the public. It also helps us when our users find bugs or suggest product enhancements. Constructive feedback is always welcome because it serves to make our product better--something that everyone here at EQO appreciates.

November's Beta Tester of the Month could be termed spectacular based solely on the sheer volume of email that he sent me. Sutha Kamal inundated two of my email inboxes and our support system with questions, suggestions, and a collection of comments, which could be referred to as "tips". Don't get me wrong now, Sutha wasn't just spamming us, he was asking some really good questions. And for that, Sutha has been awarded EQO’s Beta Tester of the Month award for November.

Sutha's inquisitive and thorough nature makes him an ideal candidate for our QA team...but since all of those positions are already ably filled, I offered Sutha the chance to become our very first official "EQO Champ" (and I wasn't surprised that he accepted the prestigious honour). EQO Champs will get the first crack at new EQO features, they will get their opinions heard directly by our elite Product team (more elite than the Red Berets), and they will even have the opportunity to chat with Bill Tam, our CEO. Anyone who would like to join Sutha as an EQO Champ, please contact Chris, our Customer Evangelist and EQO Champ coordinator, at chris@eqo.com.

Once again, congratulations Sutha!

Peter
EQO Customer Support

I am pleased to announce that Bruce Berger has been awarded the Beta tester of the month award for September!

When Bruce tried to start EQO on his brand new Motorola V3xx phone, he was repeatedly prompted for permission to connect to the Internet. These annoying prompts made EQO unusable on his phone. As it turns out, AT&T has added this “security” feature to the V3xx (similar to how they messed around with the Nokia E62) to prevent “untrusted” software from damaging your phone. The only way around this problem is to modify the registry files in your phone. So, following the instructions listed in a post on Howard forums, Bruce managed to get rid of those irritating “security” prompts and use EQO on his new phone. Congratulations Bruce.

For his courage, diligence, and sense of adventure, Bruce will be the first to receive a brand spanking new EQO toque (just in time for winter in the Northern hemisphere)! Watch out for snowballs Bruce...

Cheers,

Peter
EQO Customer Support

July was a pretty good month. For starters, it was National Ice Cream Month, and who doesn’t like ice cream?

I suppose that lactose intolerant people don’t eat much ice cream—or if they do, they really regret it later on. Anyhoo, I like ice cream and so I liked July.

Last month was also exciting for me because July’s battle for Beta Tester of the Month was a particularly intense one. The winner, Tristen Georgiou, was EQO’s first local winner of the prestigious award (Yes, Tristen lives in Vancouver, the glorious city that is also home to EQO World Headquarters). Tristen valiantly alerted us to a problem that he was having when he had forgotten his password. He uses EQO on his Motorola L2 to call Greece, Cyprus, and Smithers. Congratulations Tristen!

Peter
EQO Customer Support

Congratulations to Lars Oliver Dam of Brightwater, New Zealand—EQO Communications latest Beta Tester of the Month!

Lars Oliver Dam has been testing out EQO Mobile on his Sharp GX17. Well, maybe testing isn’t quite the right word. Lars Oliver Dam didn’t make it to the testing stage, as he got stuck trying to get EQO mobile on his phone. First off, the text message never arrived on his phone. Secondly, when he tried http://www.eqo.com/a, he got an error that said that the download was too big. What's more, when he tried to Bluetooth the file over to his Sharp, the .jar file was accepted, but the .jad was rejected. Lars has earned this award by keeping a positive attitude while patiently trying every method known to Man for downloading EQO Mobile onto his phone. In the end, we both decided that his mobile phone model could not be supported by this version of EQO Mobile. Personally, I believe that our next release will work on Lars’ phone (because we are adding new and improved methods of download), but we’ll just have to wait and see!

There are hundreds of phones on the market today. At EQO, we can’t possibly test all of these models ourselves. Although I would like to try out every phone, some devices are not accessible or affordable enough for us to get our hands on. This is where the EQO community plays a huge role in our success. Anytime I get a report from a Beta tester claiming success or failure I can either add it to our growing list of supported phones or I can cross it off our wish list. And even though the failures are disappointing to hear about at the time, they are still valuable for the data that they provide to us for future development.

For the first time ever, the recipient of the EQO Communications Beta tester of the month award is not named Bob.

This month's contest was a closely fought battle with several BlackBerry wielding Bobs (and even a Bill) challenging for the title. However, an EQO user from the Resplendent Isle stood out amongst the crowd of Bobs—Dimuthu Attanayake.

Dimuthu Attanayake of Sri Lanka earned March’s esteemed honour by testing the limits of his Motorola E1000. Dimuthu overcame a plethora of “Data Network Errors” to test EQO Mobile on the Teardrop of India. And although Dimuthu is still dealing with an EQO for Skype plug-in that is not cooperating with our servers, he is resilient in his effort to succeed. And for that, we salute him (and lavish him with free EQO cool stuff). Congratulations Dimuthu!

I am pretty excited that the Beta tester of the month award has made its first appearance on the Indian Ocean. Where will the award travel to next? Madagascar perchance? Maybe Reunion Island, or even Diego Garcia?

This month’s winner of the celebrated Beta tester award and free EQO prize pack is EQO user Bobby Rohrkemper. Bobby Rohrkemper had been trying for nine months to connect to our servers on his Sony-Ericsson k800i. For nine months (that's enough time to have a baby), whenever Bobby tried to start EQO Mobile he got the “EQO Mobile service is temporarily unavailable” error. Despite what this message was claiming, our fantabulous service has been available, continuously, for the last nine months. Incidentally, this is the second most annoying error message of all-time (the “Data Network Error” being the hands-down most annoying error message of all-time). Bobby, who is on the Orange network in Switzerland, tried every possible solution that he could think of and all of the possible solutions that Chris and I could throw at him. It seemed as if nothing was going to work; however, in mid-February Bobby’s persistence paid off. The combination of a helpful how-to post on our forum, the proper APN for Orange Switzerland (‘internet’), and the application of these settings to Bobby’s Java applications seemed to do the trick. For his patience and stick-to-ativeness, Bobby Rohrkemper incontestably deserves EQO’s Beta Tester of the month award for February!

A lot of people in the EQO community don’t even realize that they are Beta testers, so I wouldn’t expect many of them to know that they are eligible for a super-fantastic Beta tester award. That is why I’m announcing here, for the first time ever, the “EQO Communications Beta Tester of the Month” award.

A Beta test’s success relies primarily upon the comments of its Beta testers. Software developers need to hear both positive things, like “EQO Mobile’s IM is totally awesome!”, and constructive things, like “Why don’t you do it this way instead?”, so that they know what to improve upon and what to throw away. Here at EQO, we appreciate all of the valuable feedback that our Beta testers have given us over the last year. The "Beta Tester of the Month" award is just one way for us to show our appreciation.

We are looking for people to try EQO on the Motorola phones listed below:

-          L2/L6

-          V190/V191

-          V230/V235