IM

I am excited to announce that EQO has released a Windows Mobile Beta application!

Take EQO for a test drive on your Windows Mobile device today. If you are new to EQO, when you create an account and select a Windows Mobile phone you will receive some additional bonus credits for testing the Beta version. Please use them up and let me know what you think of the product! Your feedback will help us to improve.

All Windows Mobile 2003 OS and above Smartphone/non-touchscreen/Standard and Pocket PC/touchscreen/Professional devices are supported by this new release.

Peter
EQO Customer Support

Yeah, I know it is July--and that it has been July for a quite some time now--but I can't just blow off June. June was an exciting month at EQO. The first month after launching a new product is always a busy time and June was no exception. This first month is always the month were the most bugs are found on any Beta program. This translates into a lot of work for beta testers. Thanks to the efforts of our users, we have fixed a lot of bugs--thanks for the help everybody!

Speaking of EQO users, Philippe-Henri Bazire of Switzerland is probably the hardest working Beta tester we have ever had. He has tried fruitlessly to get EQO on his Nokia 6170. Every time he tries to download the file he gets an error message that says "invalid file type". Are there any Nokia 6170 users out there in EQOland who have advice for Philippe? He would really like to see this work on his 6170.

On the bright side, Philippe has had success with his Nokia 6234. So he has had a taste of what EQO has to offer. For all his hard work, Philippe will be receiving one of the hottest prizes out there--an EQO Prize Pack! Woot!

Peter
EQO Customer Support

We’ve fixed up EQO Mobile 0.92.1 for the Treo 650 and are releasing it to the world a few days after the main 0.92.1 release. The release for the Treo 650 includes multi-session Skype Chat as well as Unicode support, but not Standby mode. There were just too many bugs with Standby mode, but we are still working on it of course. And for all of you still waiting for CDMA Treo 650 support, please hold on a little while longer. A fix is in the works. I’ll hopefully be contacting my pre-beta testers by the end of next week. If all goes well, release will follow. Thank you to the hundreds of you that volunteered to test the EQO Mobile for CDMA Treo 650 pre-beta. I apologize that I can only offer the pre-beta to a few of you. There you have it: EQO Mobile 0.92.1 for the Palm Treo 650 is out and worth the upgrade.

Chris
EQO Customer Evangelist

EQO 0.92.1, introducing many usability improvements, bug fixes, and new features, was released last night. This one was a bit late as a result of us running into many unexpected problems. Our development team still worked crazy hard to get this one out, cheers to them!

Some bad news first, due to some rather serious bugs EQO 0.92.1 for the Palm Treo 650 was not released. The Treo is still stuck at 0.91.1, but we are working on it and will release shortly. Sit tight Treo users, give us a few more days!

Now for some good news, 0.92.1 fixes the problem some Mac users where having where EQO wouldn’t start on their computer. Also, certain Motorola users of EQO Mobile won't be running into those pesky application errors anymore.

As for what is new in EQO 0.92.1, well a revamped UI for a starters. We've also added Unicode support for Skype Chat in many more languages. Multi-Session Chat is also added, as well as Stanby mode. For a description of what standby mode entails please see Feature of the Week #11.

Chris
EQO Customer Evangelist

As of this morning we've just released an update to the EQO Beta that allows for both Skype™ calling *and* Instant Messaging from your mobile phone. This is an exciting feature that will definitely get the community excited.

Our dev and test teams, after pulling an all-nighter (thanks team!), are presently napping. We're quite ready for the deluge and it's exciting to see all the interest that this feature has garnered. We've also expanded handset support to more than 40 phones!

The EQO Mobile Internet Phone Service for Skype™ is a J2ME-based application that rides on your mobile phone handset and lets you use GPRS to make and receive calls and instant messages on your phone, and track the status of your Skype™ buddies in realtime.

We think this is a cool service and we're proud to keep bringing you improvements.

Thanks also to our thousands of Alpha and Beta testers who are also helping to improve our software immeasurably through your enthusiastic and supportive feedback.

-Ian.

PS - We've received some great early coverage from conversations with Rhonda Ascierto, Om Malik, and Bill machrone.

Technorati Profile

Yahoo! recently announced Yahoo! Go which extends instant text messaging, email, and other online services onto mobile phones. Prominent technology business publications such as Business 2.0 also discussed the web 2.0 evolution of instant text messaging towards instant voice and video messaging. While the trend is clearly towards more and more online services onto mobile devices, one real challenge is how such applications can be adapted to the mobile handset form factor and usage modes while on the go. On the PC, the keyboard is definitely a more natural interface for instant text messaging compared to plugging in a headset for voice. On a mobile phone, the handset is a more natural interface for voice compared to typing long text messages via T9.

For me, instant text messaging is a great way to spontaneously interact with others online. If I am handling multiple tasks, it gives me the flexibility to interact with multiple people simultaneously without the need to make voice calls and avoid the discomfort of voice silence as I pause between tasks. However, voice calls on the other hand provide far richer interactions and get things done far quicker and there is less likelihood of coming across with the wrong tone.