Disqus - Latest Comments for adambird

Re: Thoughts on O2’s iPhone 3GS offering

adambird — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 18:46:02 -0000

Excellent commentary. The notion of a business having to make money, even if they are a big-bad network operator is notably missing from many articles from many 'thought leaders' in this space.

I don't think that the WHO have designated the iPhone as fundamental to living quite yet. So, until they do all those whinging about 'excessive charges' for this and 'outraged at pricing' for that have the oldest option in the free market book, ie don't buy it.

I'm pretty non-plussed about the new phone which is exactly why O2 have decided not to offer me an incentive to prolong my contract. So, I'll make do. Well, actually I'll probably try and convince my wife to ditch her BlackBerry for a iPhone 3GS and then convince her that she wouldn't make use of the extra battery life as much as I would.

Can't help but cast my mind forward to next year now, just so long as the battery lasts out.

Re: ArrivedOK tells your friends/family when you… arrived OK

PatrickatJoshuaPR — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 14:54:53 -0000

Mine did ... and then she would answer after two, kinda defeating the point.

Re: ArrivedOK tells your friends/family when you… arrived OK

adambird — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 13:21:00 -0000

your Mum obviously never asked you to give her '3 rings' when you got there.

Re: Will SMS ever become mainstream for small business?

adambird — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 06:49:57 -0000

I think what you\re seeing is the mainstream adoption of SMS as a business communication tool. The challenge is that on it's own it's not enough to warrant investment in a PC with Internet access.

My local bike shop has the facility to send text messages out from their till system but because the till software vendor has put a crazy price on the messages, hoping I guess to try and make some extra money from the service, they don't use it. Instead the junior mechanic is instructed to type out reminders on his phone if he has any left on his bundle.

I, as you know, am a huge advocate of the reply path. Using virtual mobile numbers pays huge dividends in customer service. It's also a very, very cheap way for call centres to handle customer enquiries,

System receives a message from customer, automatically sends a message back setting their expectations 'Thanks for your message. One of our team will contact you within the hour'. Customer goes about their business. Call centre staff can call or text the customer back when ready to help them.

It smoothes out the call centre traffic spikes and means the customer isn't stuck in hold-music-hell

Re: Nott Tuesday was rocking into the night

adambird — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 06:31:47 -0000

Thanks for coming Ewan, you went down a storm.

It was so well attended and people are gagging for the next one on March 10th. Just need to find another speaker that can match up to you ;)

Re: Twitter Follow Overload

adambird — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 20:39:23 -0000

I am part of it, and will continue to be. I haven't worked this long at it not to see the day when the operators finally give us what we need.

This also precipitated my FoM summary blog post, at last, so thanks: http://www.adambird.com/2008/11/future-of-mobil...

Re: Twitter Follow Overload

jonathanmacdonald — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 19:19:06 -0000

Good question Adam.

I think on one hand we need to appreciate the very significant role the operators play but also see how they best fit in the ACTUAL value chain that isn't tech (or industry) centric.

Please do email me if you would like to feed occasional comments into 'No Way Back From Here' which is Vol.2 of Every Single One Of Us.

Your question is not only valid, its VITAL to answer.....but its going to take a collaborative effort to work out and implement the change.

Hope you are part of it and major thanks for the comment :)

Re: Twitter Follow Overload

adambird — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 19:11:35 -0000

I appear to be one of the crowd, and there was my Mum telling me all these years that I was unique ;)

Thanks for a great presentation at FoM (in spite of your BT Openzone travails) though I think someone else might have said that already.

Question for me is how do the mobile operators relinquish their stranglehold over the value chain which is standing in the way of the vision. I can't blame them looking nervously at their shareholders and what happened to the fixed line ISPs and saying "but of course we wouldn't throw away value like that". Problem for the rest of us, is that's what precipitated the last Internet boom.

But then, it's that kind of challenge that gets entrepreneurs up in the morning.

Looking forward to the new slidedeck.

Re: US aggregators stunned at Verizon’s $0.03 MT transaction fees increase

adambird — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 06:21:51 -0000

There is a positive. This should make spamming people with marketing nonsense less viable.

The success of SMS is founded on it's ability to allow people to communicate. Having people broadcasting indiscriminately, ie not communicating but telling, devalues this service.

I'm comfortable that if someone wants to send me a message it's going to cost them. It makes them consider whether it's really worth both our whiles sending me that information (ultimately I'll be paying). That way when I receive an SMS i can be pretty sure it's going to be useful/of interest to me.

Marketers trumpet the fact the 90%+ of SMS messages are opened and acted on on receipt. Heaven help us if we get to the email situation where 50% of what we receive is junk. People will ignore the new message indicator and response rates will plummet. It'll take years for spam filters to find themselves into operators or onto our phones. By then then customer will have moved on.

IMHO ;)

Re: How to build an SMS notification app in 20 minutes

adambird — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 13:05:01 -0000

Ewan, it's a great example and something we'll certainly be throwing into the mix at our development meetings.

We've recognised that demystifying the whole process for developers is key, though I have to say we do receive plenty of plaudits for the simplicity and performance of our APIs and SDKs already.

Our developer site http://www.esendex.com/developers has been revamped over the last few months and we've made all of our SDKs open source so it's very easy for developers to see exactly how to get the best out of our service.

We'll be launching a new web application in beta to our customers shortly and the great news for developers is that this is using the same API and SDK that any of our customers can use, giving them full access to the power of the Esendex platform.

Re: Esendex team are really, really fit

adambird — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 11:25:14 -0000

Mark, in the right light at a certain time of night... ;)

Re: Perhaps my iPhone 3G’s Exchange is draining the battery?

adambird — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 08:13:52 -0000

It sucks, it's an early adopter requirement rather than being 'the iPhone we've been waiting for'

However, it remains a lovely, lovely thing.

Re: Perhaps my iPhone 3G’s Exchange is draining the battery?

smstextnews — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 08:09:06 -0000

Might need to do the same Adam. I think that is the way ahead!

On 8 Aug 2008, at 13:05, "Disqus" <notifications-

Re: Perhaps my iPhone 3G’s Exchange is draining the battery?

adambird — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 08:04:49 -0000

Exchange push has always been an inefficient process. The problem is that it maintains a TCP connection back to the server, v.expensive as must keep data link open at all times.

BlackBerry have this one nailed, using out-of-band signalling, ie a message is sent to the device over the mobile network telling it to go and get some data. That way BlackBerry just establishes data connection when needed. I suspect that they might do something funky with the data stack as well, though that is pure speculation.

I've resorted to buying a Proporta mobile charger (http://www.proporta.com/F02/PPF02P05.php?t_id=2...). Keep it in my bag and I'm never far away from a top up. It does my Nokia as well.

Re: The SMS Text News newsletter, coming (soon) to an inbox near you.

adambird — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 03:51:44 -0000

Excellent, SMSTextNews the way you want it, feed, email, browser, etc.

Re-reading my comment, I was in danger of sounding like one those accursed valley-types for whom only tweeting will do.

Re: The SMS Text News newsletter, coming (soon) to an inbox near you.

rich_1234 — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 03:51:05 -0000

would be great in a couple of formats html (big for monitors and small for mobiles) and pdf (for printing)

Re: The SMS Text News newsletter, coming (soon) to an inbox near you.

smstextnews — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 03:23:05 -0000

Huge demand, Adam! I keep getting people asking why we don't do a newsletter. Obviously we do, automatically, with Feedburner. But many people aren't recognising that as a proper edited 'newsletter'.

Re: The SMS Text News newsletter, coming (soon) to an inbox near you.

adambird — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 02:56:11 -0000

I'm intrigued, what form will this take? Is email not just sooo 2003?

Re: Advanced SMS forwarding from a handset

adambird — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 06:29:27 -0000

Got something in mind, will be in touch.

BTW this would be easy with SMS Home Routing ;)

Re: Advanced SMS forwarding from a handset

smstextnews — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 04:55:04 -0000

My problem is I've got two numbers -- a 3 number and a T-Mobile number --
that I'd like redirected. I don't think you can do anything other than keep
them on their sim cards with their accounts active?

Re: Advanced SMS forwarding from a handset

adambird — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 04:37:41 -0000

Strikes me that you might be better offer with an intelligent forwarding solution based around one, non-handset based, number.

Something web-based so you can control it centrally and set up rules that Bert and Ernie (or a group called Sesame) go to one number and Donatello, Raphael (TMNT) go to another number. The remainder could go to a catch-all number.

The issue is going to be keeping the contacts in sync, depends on how often your 'want to hear from' list is going to change.

Our Web SMS will do half of what you want currently (ie forwarding from one common, mainland UK, number to another number) and we're underway on a major re-vamp that could easily include the group/contact filtering

As for the contact syncing, might have something up my sleeve. Give me a call/email if you want to discuss this in more detail.

Re: Advanced SMS forwarding from a handset

smstextnews — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 12:40:13 -0000

'cos the numbers people text me on are assigned to various sim cards? Open
to other solutions!

Re: Advanced SMS forwarding from a handset

adambird — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 12:38:00 -0000

Why from the handset?

Re: ‘Does your phone do numbers?’

smstextnews — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 06:35:05 -0000

The barbarians (normobs) are at the gate!

Re: ‘Does your phone do numbers?’

adambird — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 06:21:18 -0000

I read this round about the same time I read this bonkers rubbish http://venturebeat.com/2008/07/02/google-talk-c.... It really demonstrates the disconnect between the geeks and the normobs. As you say, the difficulty of sending and the price wasn't an issue because of the value they placed on that message getting to the recipient.

Normobs out there and they outnumber us greatly. We ignore that fact at our peril.