mobile skype

If you've been following EQO, you may well know that we moved away from our mobile Skype product and built our own mobile VoIP network, which we launched this past May. Our decision to drop Skype is looking better and better all the time, especially today. When I got to work yesterday morning I was surprised to see that Skype wouldn't sign in to my account, then I read on Techcrunch that Skype was going through a massive outage. They've been down ever since, disappointing VoIPers worldwise no doubt. If you check their website, Skype have cleverly made the page title "Take a deep breath" and they are continually posting updates regarding their status. You can check their heartbeat blog for the latest status. Knowing what my life would be like right now if we were still operating our Skype product, I really feel sorry for the iSkoot guys right now...

Chris
EQO Customer Evangelist

We've been working on a new EQO Mobile for, well, ever since the last EQO Mobile came out in October. This EQO Mobile promises to be a vast improvement over the last EQO Mobile. We've scientifically proven that its is no less than 47 times better and you can't argue with science. It is a similar product in terms of core features and if you are a current EQO fan, I promise you will be a future EQO fan. We are now currently looking for beta testers to join our formal beta program and we welcome all interested parties who meet the requirements, which are:

• You must have a name and you must tell us that name.
• You must reside in Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom or the United States.
• You must have a mobile phone capable of running J2ME MIDP 2.0 applications.

If you are interested in being one of the select few chosen to get their hands on the new EQO Mobile before anyone else, please send an email to beta@eqo.com providing your name, country, mobile service provider, mobile phone number, mobile phone model, EQO ID (if you have one) and a brief description of why we at EQO should select you for the EQO Mobile beta test program.

We greatly appreciate the help of our users and welcome all comers. Thanks in advance for your applications!

Chris
EQO Customer Evangelist

Every Friday, late in the afternoon, we at EQO get together and do something fun. Lately, we've been alternating playing soccer with chilling out in the board room over some beers, playing video games and foosball. Last week we did the latter; we got together at 4:30PM, had a few wobbly pops, fired up the Nintendo Wii and got cranking on the foosball table. I participated in both activities with equally humorous results. First off, I'm horribly embarrassed to admit that I suffered a Nintendo Wii related injury. Whilst swinging voraciously to return a Wii Tennis forehand from EQO staffer Yong Lee, I overextended and ended up launching the Wiimote and attached hand into the board room wall. The Wiimote was fine, my hand hurt, and there is now a big dent in the wall. Make sure this doesn't happen to you by watching the Wii Safety Video courtesy of G4. Secondly, I and EQO CFO Laura Colwill (who had never played foosball before) challenged EQO Chief Architect Jeff Laporte and EQO VP of Product Management Todd Heintz to what was to become an epic foosball match. With Laura in goal and I up front we spanked Todd (up front) and Jeff (in goal) 10-5. Masculinity threatened, Todd and Jeff demanded a rematch and switched positions, to which we responded by again beating them 10-5. Sweet, sweet glorious victory was ours, bitter, shameful, humiliating defeat was theirs. Video of the action.  What will come from all of this? Hopefully more entertaining tales from this Friday's upcoming EQO soccer match and maybe, just maybe, this'll get Jeff blogging again?

It was one year ago today that EQO Mobile made its debut at DEMO, the launchpad for emerging technology. Check out our profile on the DEMO 2006 website. Cool video, eh? EQO CEO Bill Tam still looks that good, by the way. Anyway, it was a crazy time for us here; we were working like fiends to get everything in place for a successful launch. Some of us (not me) worked 24 hours straight to make sure all systems were go and our operations team took shifts to monitor the service at all times, yes all times (12AM to 8AM was my favorite). It was a hard, exciting, and rewarding time for all involved. In addition to the large scale adoption of our service, it has also been great to read the tremendous amount of feedback, both positive and negative, we've received. The fact that the tech world is paying attention is a good sign!

Sometime last year I was reading Skype Journal and came across an article by Stuart Henshall (I think, can't find the article because their search doesn't seem to be working), regarding people with large Skype buddy lists. He was wondering why certain people had massive Skype buddy lists and was also interested in the composition of such lists. Ever since then, I too have been intrigued by the subject. Who uses Skype? Who are they calling? What types of calls are taking place? What do people use Skype for? These questions and others I still ponder. Clearly people use Skype to make all conceivable types of calls, but I'm more interested in the larger trends and I believe I've noticed one in particular.

I use Skype everyday to talk to coworkers and others I have dealings with via EQO. Since I leave my Skype client running on my work computer all day every day, I've had quite the opportunity to rack up an interesting contact list. I have 148 contacts and the breakdown is as such:

5 Friends

9 Random dudes who added me

17 Colleagues, people who don't work at EQO that I converse with pertaining to EQO

18 Demo/Test, for further EQO purposes

23 Work, assorted EQO employees

24 EQO Users

52 Random girls who added me

Which brings me to the revelation (that I've clearly been learning slowly over time, but revelation! sounds much more exciting), 52 random girls added me to Skype last year and called me to talk to me in person without knowing me or having seen a picture of me, merely based on my age, sex, and location statistics! I'm not saying I'm some kind of ladies man, since these girls had no idea who I was (and 9 random dudes added me, what does that tell you?). These ladies were just bored and looking for a Canadian guy to talk to, this blows my mind! They are all between the ages of 17 and 24, save one 44 year old out-lier (what did she have in mind?), and are based randomly throughout the world. In fact, only one is from Canada! It seems that the internet and very large distances have removed the fear from internet savvy, lonely girls world wide. I assume its a two way street, that surely these girls are solicited with Skype add requests by random dudes much more often than I.

Therefore, it seems that one of the primary uses of Skype is international flirting, who knew? I know I don't have the nerve to call random people and strike up a conversation...

You may wonder why I accept these random add requests? Well, it's because I'm curious as to what a random person might have to say to me, notwithstanding that they may be EQO users, which happens. Don't worry bosses, I don't talk to these lonely girls! In fact, I only use Skype at work for work; I wouldn't blog myself into trouble!

Chris
EQO Customer Evangelist

Last Friday, some of the guys from EQO took off from work early and headed up to the beautiful Cypress Mountain for some ski/snowboard good times. It was a gorgeous sunny evening and the view from the top of Cypress was memorizing and fantastic. You could see all of Vancouver, Howe Sound, the Strait of Georgia, and much of Vancouver Island. Despite the gorgeous clarity, the snow conditions were lacking. Good weather makes for icy trails, but we did our best to have a good time. It was my first trip to Cypress, widely regarded as the best "local" mountain, and it was pretty good, although it doesn't hold a candle to greatest mountain in the world Whistler/Blackcomb. I digress, it was a good evening of snowboarding for myself, Kevin, Stan, Greg, and Mike, who were also joined by super lame EQO skiers Nikolay and Calvin. What were they thinking? Everyone knows that all the cool kids snowboard, skiing is for squares. Just kidding guys, check out the pics taken by Greg (below) of us at the peak attempting to capture the glorious Vancouver skyline in the horizon. For now its back to building the next EQO Mobile service, but we are ready to take off on our next trip at a moments notice, you see we're waiting to pounce on some good snow...

EQO Communications has been named as a One to Watch by Ready to Rocket, a business recognition list of BC companies with the most revenue growth potential. Indeed, we've made their annual list of top prospects on the strength of our secret plans, which will become public sometime this Spring. If you are wondering why we didn't make the full list and are only "Ones to Watch", it's because we don't have a commercial revenue generating product out there, yet. Who knows, maybe we'll make the big list next year? I'd bet on it. Check out Ready to Rocket's 2007 report for more info on the years hottest trends.

EQO has some brilliant plans that will blow away the industry when they come to fruition. The thing is, we need people to help us execute our grand schemes of mobile communication domination (alliteration, point for me). I can't say whether or not working here would be the best thing for you people out there, but I will tell you why I enjoy working at EQO:

• Opinions and ideas are respected and considered whoever you are.
• We do fun things every Friday afternoon, stuff like chilling out over beers and snacks, playing soccer, going snowboarding, foosball tournaments, and the like.
• We have a million phones and I like playing with phones.
• The EQO staff are fun, nice people that give the office a friendly atmosphere.
• We have very spacious cubes.
• There are free, all you can eat cookies, plus the coffee never stops flowing.

If that isn't enough to convince you of how awesome working at EQO would be, consider this, you'd get to work with me. Just kidding, focus on the cookies.

Yesterday I wrote about my Nokia E61 and how much I like it. Well, Steve Jobs had to go and use my phone as a bad example (E62 actually, same phone w/out wifi and 3G) in his iPhone demo at Macworld 2007 this morning, check out the Engadget blog about it. Thanks Steve, now me and my E61 have a massive inferiority complex, rightly so mind you. I need an iPhone, it looks freaking cool. Cheers Apple, now to get EQO Mobile on one of those babies...

I am a Nokia E61 user and I quite enjoy my phone. The UI is about 437 times better than that of my previous Motorola V635, the screen is brilliantly sharp, and I love the qwerty keyboard. Don't get me wrong, the E61 is not perfect and has its downsides, irritating S60 3rd edition security prompts and not enough memory amongst them.  I quite often use my E61 to take screen shots, making use of Antony Pranata's Symbian Screenshot program, and I wanted a better way of getting the images to my peers for their viewing pleasure. I don't know if its just me, but I find taking out the miniSD card, sticking it into an adapter, plugging in my card reader and so on quite irritating. That being said, I perceived Shozu to be my answer, brilliant as I've heard they are.