EQO Community - skype

EQO Happy to be Skype Independent

chris — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 15:29:58 -0700

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

Dimuthu Attanayake: Beta Tester of the Month--March

peter — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 10:58:25 -0700

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?

Bobby Rohrkemper: Beta tester of the month—February

peter — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 11:30:34 -0800

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!

My Skype List

chris — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 18:05:18 -0800

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

Robert Broze: Beta Tester of the Month--January

peter — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 14:24:17 -0800

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.

EQO Hiring for Grand Designs

chris — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 15:21:02 -0800

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.

Bandcast 2006 signals launch of newest EQO product!

chris — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 20:46:50 -0700

Tomorrow is the big day. I sit here on the eve of launch writing this as the developers and QA rush to put the finishing touches on the latest EQO product, the nature of which I shall not reveal until tomorrow morning. What I will tell you is that it's pretty freaking cool. Does it involve phones? Yes. Does it involve online communities? Yes. Do you need Skype to use it? No.

We know that other online communities will benefit from the online extension to mobile phones that EQO has aptly demonstrated. The EQO for Skype product really showed what we can do in bringing an online buddy list to the mobile phone. Now we're going to show the world how EQO technology can be applied to truly extend online communities such as Myspace, Friendster, and others to the mobile.

Sony PSP and Mylo

colin — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 12:37:12 -0700

I recently received a new Sony PlayStation Portable (PSP) gaming console. To actually use the PSP, I first had to spend about $100 on a memory stick PRO Duo. I then forked out another $75 on two games: Cars and HotShots Golf. For a handheld device, the audio and graphics quality on the PSP is awesome. The two games are not bad - for my kids.

Inbound and outbound calling

colin — Sun, 20 Aug 2006 07:46:59 -0700

VoIP spam or what is commonly referred to as "SPIT" (Spam over Internet Telephony) has been discussed extensively in the press but the problem appears completely contained. If you do a search on Google for "VoIP spam", all of the top ranked articles are of 2004 vintage. Is it simply that there is far greater economic incentive for a spammer to spend a few seconds to spam millions of people using email than to waste several seconds to annoy just one person using VoIP? If that is the case, voice communications has inherent anti-spamming characteristics.

Evolving usage habits on Google and IM networks

colin — Sat, 19 Aug 2006 15:45:05 -0700

For the past six years, if I needed to find anything on the internet, I have always used Google. For news and stock updates, I have consistently used Yahoo! News and Yahoo! Finance. But lately, I noticed that my web surfing habits have evolved.

Data Network Errors Again

chris — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 11:04:39 -0700

The number one support question we get here at EQO always has to do with data network errors. EQO Mobile requires that your phone have a data internet connection that allows tcp connections. For help setting up a connection, check out this forum topic dedicated to the issue:

http://community.eqo.com/forum/data_network_errors_0

Also, these two sites are great for setting up connections on Sony Ericsson and Nokia phones.

More Sony Ericsson Phones Supported!

chris — Fri, 04 Aug 2006 17:32:23 -0700

EQO now supports the Sony Ericsson K300, K790, K800, and Z1010! We'll hopefully be adding more phone support next week thanks to some of the excellent users who responded to my previous post. Thank you to those who helped us get EQO onto these phones. Keep your eye out for new products and more phone support coming from EQO very soon!

Chris
EQO Customer Evangelist

Mobile long distance arbitrage services

colin — Fri, 04 Aug 2006 08:32:41 -0700

While Skype is the undisputed leader in PC-to-PC VoIP services, its service extension onto regular mobile phones thus far has largely been the efforts of its ecosystem partners such as EQO, iSkoot, and SoonR. EQO for Skype focuses on multi-modal communications and extending Skype services onto the mobile phone, allowing users to make and receive voice calls and IM chat messages with their buddies using their Skype online identities. SoonR provides remote access to the users PCs from the mobile phone, and the SoonR Talk feature allows Skype users to initiate Skype voice calls from a mobile phone browser. iSkoot allows users to initiate voice calls from mobile phones to iSkoot's servers which then bridge the calls onto the Skype network. All of these services utilize Skype as the implicit long distance inter-exchange carrier for bridging mobile voice calls as local access calls through the traditional public telephone switch network (PSTN / PLMN).

Skype Cracked, the Value of Open Platforms

jlaporte — Fri, 14 Jul 2006 18:52:29 -0700

The blogosphere is abuzz with talk of the Skype crack by a Chinese firm.

But hold on, a group of French defense industry researchers (at the same company that makes the Airbus family of aircraft) published details of their crack of Skype back in March. In fact, one would assume this more recent crack is simply an implementation guided by the original French paper.

What is new is the fact that the folks at the Chinese company are clearly interested in commercializing the crack. This is where things get interesting. Will users be able to select from third party clients? It really depends how much effort Skype decides to devote to breaking such attempts.

Given that Skype has already had 4 months now to think about revisions to their protocol in the face of the French crack, they undoubtedly have a couple methods in their back pocket should they decide to take on the crackers.

But: The most enlightened path forward is to open the platform. Heck, most companies would kill to be a platform, and Ebay has demonstrated the value of an ecosystem built on an open platform better than anyone.

Do you use Standby Mode with EQO?

chris — Fri, 14 Jul 2006 14:38:04 -0700

EQO users, we want to know if you use Standby Mode with EQO Mobile. If you are unsure as to what Standby Mode is or does, let me explain. When in Standby Mode, EQO Mobile does not maintain the internet connection on your phone, which means that you use less data and less battery power. EQO Mobile goes into Standby Mode after a period of inactivity, the length of which is set via the “Standby Timer” window found in the Settings menu. We want to know if this functionality is important to you. In the month or two that Standby capability has been deployed, no user has ever mentioned standby mode. I’m wondering if anyone uses it. What do you think? Please tell me by commenting in this forum thread.

Chris
EQO Customer Evangelist

Looking for Nokia 8800 and 5500 testers!

chris — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 17:45:30 -0700

We need some help testing EQO on these phones. What’s in it for you? For one, you get to be the first to use EQO on your phone. And in addition to the inherent glory and honor, we are offering EQO T-Shirts and SkypeOut credit to helpful testers.

Nokia 6230i now supported!

chris — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 17:21:28 -0700

Thanks to our fairly new Forum Nokia Pro membership we were able to borrow a Nokia 6230i and get EQO running on it. We've signed up to borrow a few E and N series Nokia phones as well, so hopefully we'll be able to get EQO going on these devices pretty quick here. But getting EQO on to the 6230i will have to be good enough news for today, and great news it is seeing as this is one of our most requested phones. Keep in mind folks that the 6230i is totally different than the 6230, which is another popular one. If you are looking to get EQO onto your 6230, you'll have to wait a bit longer:)

EQO 0.92.3 released!

chris — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 16:29:54 -0700

EQO 0.92.3 for the PC and Mac was released today. You can grab the latest version of EQO for your computer via the upgrade link on the www.eqo.com main page. There are two major changes in EQO 0.92.3, the first being that the Skype 2.5 incoming call problem has been fixed. Second, Skype on your computer will now be started if it’s not running when you begin using EQO. EQO will also restart Skype in the event of a crash, which happens fairly often in Skype 2.5 at the moment. However, you must set Skype to “Sign me in when Skype starts”, which you can do by checking the box of the same name on the Skype startup screen, so that you are signed in when Skype starts, other wise this feature is a bit useless.

EQO has also changed its authentication scheme. We’ve done this because we felt we had to in order to improve our service in the long run. What this means is that you need to change your password if you signed up for EQO on April 10th or earlier. To change your password please go to www.eqo.com and sign in using your EQO ID and current password at the top right corner of the page. Then click on “Change My Password” on the left to update your password. Your new password can be the same as your old password; we just need to have an updated record in our database.

EQO adds support for more phones, including Treo 700p!

chris — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 16:22:23 -0700

EQO has added the following phones to its supported List:

Palm:

Treo 700p

Motorola:

E1000, E1070, L2, L6, Razr V3x, V6, V8, V270, V280, V1150

Nokia:

6125, 6126, 6131, 6136, 6233, 6234, 6282

Check out the full list here!

Chris
EQO Customer Evangelist

Feature of the Week #14: Skype Auto Start

chris — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 16:16:36 -0700

If you want to take EQO on the road for an extended period of time then you aren’t going to have access to your computer. This is why we at EQO have enabled EQO to auto start Skype. When you sign in to EQO Mobile, EQO will start Skype on your computer if it’s not running already. EQO will also restart Skype if it crashes, which happens more often than we’d like in Skype 2.5. One catch is that you must check the box that says “Sign me in when Skype starts” that is shown in the Skype startup window. EQO is now Skype crash proof, letting you take your buddies with you with greater certainty.

Chris
EQO Customer Evangelist

CDMA Treo 650 testers needed!

chris — Tue, 04 Jul 2006 17:03:14 -0700

I need a few testers to give the latest EQO Mobile pre-beta for CDMA Treo 650 a try. I had many a month or two ago and those I've emailed recently haven't replied back to me yet. This is fairly urgent as we'd like to release immediately if our latest attempts proves sucessful. If you have a Treo 650 on the Sprint or Verizon network and you don't mind taking part in a fairly complicated process please let me know as soon as possible. Just to let you know that my requests for testers sometimes result in my receiving an enormous and unmanagable number of responses, so don't be upset if I turn your down. T-shirts, SkypeOut credit, fame and fortune, honour and prestige are the spoils that go to the chosen few testers. Email me, chris@eqo.com, if you are up for the challenge.

Chris
EQO Customer Evangelist

EQO / Skype 2.5 Incoming Call Problem!

chris — Wed, 28 Jun 2006 16:30:56 -0700

Note: Problem solved as of July 7 release of EQO PC 0.92.3!

We’ve recently discovered that incoming calls to EQO using Skype 2.5 do not work. Outgoing calls still work as normally they do, but Skype 2.5 does not allow you to place an outgoing call while there is an incoming call. Skype 2.5 doesn’t let us call your mobile via SkypeOut to link you into the incoming call from your buddy. We’ll be able to find a way around this and will do so as soon as possible. Look out for a new release from EQO coming soon!

Chris
EQO Customer Evangelist

Time wasting is no fad and TagWorld does it best

chris — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 16:51:47 -0700

I vividly remember being overwhelmed the first time I checked out MySpace. The front page was just so cluttered and I didn’t find it to be particularly intuitive. I figured out how to signup and played around a little, never going back unless my email told me I had a message, which was always from a local band wanting me to listen to their likely poor quality music. MySpace didn’t suck me in like it has sucked in millions around the world. I was shocked to hear that Myspace gets about as many hits a day as Google! To be fair, they’ve since improved their interface and continually do so, but the uptake of MySpace still baffles me.

I’m not knocking MySpace here; I’m just not that in to presenting my image to the world. This could be explained by the fact that I’m in the mid twenties phase of my life. MySpace is definitely doing something right, beating out Friendster for the community crown. MySpace packs in many cool features and is clearly a compelling tool to the 15-25 demographic, whom they are hauling in faster than they can overplay Kelly Clarkson songs on the radio. There is no doubt why many more players are emerging in the online community scene for a piece of the MySpace dominated pie.

Chris on Hot or Not

chris — Tue, 13 Jun 2006 16:11:19 -0700

I was just checking out some community/dating sites, purely for the sake of interest, and ran into the classic HotOrNot. Every time I visit I find myself clicking through the pictures until for ten minutes until I catch myself. It's so idiotic and yet so compelling! This time I figured why not sign up and see how hot I am? They even give you some code to throw on your blog, which I'm going to stick into this post below. Check me out and please be kind!

Chris
EQO Customer Evangelist

Looking for Treo 700p Testers

chris — Tue, 13 Jun 2006 10:01:56 -0700

We have received reports that EQO Mobile runs very well on the Treo 700p. It doesn’t appear that the 700p has the same problem that the CDMA Treo 650 has, with incoming calls going to voicemail when the data connection is active. We are still working on the CDMA Treo 650 problem; please be patient, we are doing our best! Anyway, I’m looking for a couple more Treo 700p users to confirm that EQO Mobile works well on your phone. Please email me at chris@eqo.com if you are interested in giving it a go.

Chris
EQO Customer Evangelist

Feature of the week #13: Chat with Unicode Characters

chris — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 17:51:11 -0700

If you don’t speak English then you probably aren’t reading this, but I’m going to describe this feature to you anyway. EQO Mobile 0.92.1 now supports Unicode characters in Skype Chats, which adds language support for many Asian, Scandinavian, and Eastern European Languages. This is a pretty self explanatory feature, so anybody watching the World Cup?

Chris
EQO Customer Evangelist

EQO wins BCTIA Most Promising Startup

chris — Fri, 09 Jun 2006 14:10:12 -0700

EQO was announced the winner of the BCTIA Most Promising Startup award last night at a ritzy awards gala in downtown Vancouver. This Yahoo article provides a few more details if you'd like to know more. This is an honour for our team and really affirms all of the crazy hard work we have put in here as a group. Funny thing, as EQO CEO Bill Tam was accepting the award, they showed a movie composed of pictures yanked from my Flickr page mentioned in this post. It's great to be recognized like this, but we still have a lot of work to do. There are a lot of exciting things still to come from EQO, watch out for us.

Chris
EQO Customer Evangelist

Chris learns the smart way to text with Hotxt

chris — Thu, 08 Jun 2006 16:10:42 -0700

Mr. Bill Tam, esteemed CEO of EQO, recently suggested that I give Hotxt a try. Hotxt is an application that provides free text messaging between Hotxt users and credit based text messaging to non Hotxt users, all via GPRS.

There is one catch to using Hotxt, you must be based in the UK to use it at the moment. Lucky for me, EQO has a few Vodafone prepaid SIMs left over from business trips lying around, weehoo! I'm always delighted to forgo actual work to play with new toys. So I grab a spare phone, a Nokia 6270 to be exact, which is a pretty sweet phone, and throw in a Vodafone SIM. I spend five or so minutes setting up and testing the Vodafone prepaid access point, all is good, off I go...

The Hotxt signup process is web based of course and is pretty slick. You start off by entering your UK phone number, email address and desired Hotxt tag, sadly Spiderman (he's amazing) was taken so I had to go with something a little more generic, like my own name, boring. You are then asked to choose from Fresh, O2, Orange, T-Mobile, Virgin Mobile, and Vodafone as your carrier and from prepaid or contract as your plan type. Then you must select your phone make and model, of which Hotxt supports about 100 made by Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, and Sony Ericsson. Here comes the good part, Hotxt sends you a message that automatically configures your GPRS APN settings! Of course I learn this right after I entered my settings manually. We would love to do this, but of course it would be a logistical nightmare to provide this feature for the hundreds of carriers we support, someday hopefully...

Hotxt then sends you your four digit PIN number via SMS as well as a link to their download in a separate message. They have a flash player that instructs you how to get Hotxt installed and running, which got me going in a snap. Now to use Hotxt... Firist things first, I went onto the Hotxt website to claim my five free daily Hotxt Out credits, which let me send regular SMS messages to non Hotxt users. I tried sending a message to my phone here in Canada, didn't work. I found this weird because I managed to send a Hotxt invite SMS to my cell phone mere minutes earlier.

Okay, so it seems I can only message people in the Uk. Problem, I don't know anyone in the UK, well anyone readily available and using Hotxt. Here is where a normal man might just give up, but this is where a Customer Evangelist makes use of his masculine wiles. I opened up my Skype and searched for a girl in the UK, age 20-23, and in SkypeMe mode. I started to chat with the first girl that came up and explained my situation to her. Maybe it's because of my smoldering new Skype profile picture or just pure luck, but she decided to sign up for Hotxt and try it with me even though she'd never heard of it before. Still got it.

After exchanging a few Hotxt messages with my new friend I came to the conclusion that Hotxt is nothing more than text messaging over GPRS. I'm sorry, I don't know what I expected, but the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow turned out to be grandma's rock collection for me. Beyond the cost savings, only 2.5KB per message, there really isn't that much to it. If you hadn't used the phone before you'd think you were using the built in SMS interface. Oh well, I had fun trying and for people who pay a lot for SMS and have data plans, this is a great cost saving product.

Chris
EQO Customer Evangelist

Feature of the Week #12: Multiple Chat Sessions

chris — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 13:41:05 -0700

When EQO introduced support for Skype Chat on mobile phones, users were limited to one session at a time. One session just isn’t good enough for multitaskers and really popular people. As of EQO 0.92.1 released last week, you can chat with as many people as you want concurrently on your phone. The all new EQO Mobile Events Panel provides an easy and organized means by which to manage your chat sessions. EQO even plays sounds when a new message arrives and posts the time the last message (per session) was received in the list of active chats. As of EQO 0.92.1 you can still take your buddies with you, but now you chat with all of them at once!

Chris
EQO Customer Evangelist

EQO Mobile 0.92.1 for Palm Treo 650 is here!

chris — Fri, 02 Jun 2006 18:36:10 -0700

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