This turned into a bad move as it’s just so unusable, the device just reboots itself every couple of hours. You can watch it on the desk, during conference calls, the screen just goes blocky and then the Nokia boot up screen appears, a few seconds later the phone comes back.

The end came when the phone started to ring and it went bang and the Nokia logo screen appeared. That’s the final straw, any phone or smartphone has to work as a phone first and foremost. If it can’t work as a phone then forget it.

So the E71 has gone back in the basket and the E61i is back in service. I looking at the companies ActiveSync set up that some of the guys are using with their iPhones (in countries where we sell the iPhone) (BTW I heard there are 20,000 iPhones on the Orange network, an interesting stat if it’s true)

We know that Nokia is moving out of the corporate email market and focusing on the consumer market with it’s Nokia Email Service (which is built on Intellisync). But to just mess up the firmware of the E71 so badly that it won’t even work with the latest Intellisync client is a disaster. I know it’s not me too, other work colleagues are having the same issue.

But it didn’t work out like that, the stitching on the pocket started to come undone, not through any extreme use, but normal day to day use which was a tad disappointing.

But a check on the web and the jacket was covered by a 2 year warranty, so I dropped Barbour an email and Gill responded within 24 hours. Gill from Barbour sent out a large pack with prepaid postage for me to return the jacket to Barbour.

I packet the jacket up and sent it back and within a few days it came back all fixed and good as new, all at no cost to me and excellent service. So if you’re looking to pick up a jacket that is backed by great customer support then look no further than Barbour.

A couple of days latter @janole tweets back;

Now that’s what I call a service. The reason behind the idea was that there were a few really funny tweets from @genehunt that I thought would be appreciated by a few friends who weren’t on twitter. As tweets are 140 characters they fit right into SMS 160 characters just fine.

So this is @janole’s handy work, as you can see there’s a “FWD” option, Reply, retweet, favourite and then Forward.

The “FWD” option allows you to forward either as an SMS, an Email or copy to the clipboard. The Email options requires you to have an email account set up obviously. The copy to clipboard allows you to do what you like with it.

And here it is, the tweet dumped straight into the message window, allowing users to pick the recipient from the contact list and send away.

It’s a bit ironic that here in the UK, where twitter stopped it’s SMS alerts we’ve found a way back to text…

What people are looking to do is disconnect their number from their sim card. People are keen to have a number that’s theirs but not tied to a specific handset (voip, fixed or mobile) and are looking to Google voice to give them that functionality. The extra benefit being they don’t have to carry or use the same device they are device independent.

Google voice will only give you half of that functionality, the voice portion, the text portion is still left on your handset. So you’re left holding multiple devices again, if you want to receive SMS or MMS.

This is where Truphone trumps Google Voice, Truphone disconnects your number from the device, you can install Truphone onto most mobile devices and then insert any sim, local or roaming and it’ll just adopt that network as the transport, but using your truphone number as the ‘from’ number for both voice and text. So your Truphone number can deal with both Voice and Text. But you’ve spotted the tiny issue, it only works for mobile devices.

A little while back (august 2008) I wrote to the guys at Truphone with the following message, with the relevant one here being point 4 enter the Grand Central space (Grand Central is now Google Voice)

1. Number choice - The ability to choose a number from those available and or buy a ‘gold’ (and silver?) number.
Some carriers used to have the concept of Gold and Silver numbers, where you paid for a more memorable number.  If you don’t want to buy a number, you’re given the ability to select a number from the db. For example, my (GSM) number is XXXX 7887898, but my truphone number is +44XXX8804483, so I’d maybe try for  07978 887898 or 887899 for example.

2. Number portability - port my GSM number to Truphone.
James mentioned this in our short and bad line quality call the other day. I think this would be great as I could port my number to truphone and then use any carrier pre-pay sim card behind it for gsm coverage. Assuming truphone anywhere would still provide my Truphone CLI so it wouldn’t matter which sim you used. This I’m sure could cut my personal phone bill from a grand a year to a few hundred. The ability to disconnect your well known phone number from the carrier and allow you to move around carriers, both national and international would be a great benefit and provide a huge amount of freedom.

3. CLI choice - The ability to select.
I think there’s been some issues in this area with fraud, but the ability to choose either the GSM or Truphone CLI to be presented shouldn’t be a problem. People could put Truphone on their whatever phone and use it where there wasn’t any GSM coverage, but I would want to present my GSM CLI which my contacts can identify. (assuming you haven’t ported your number)

4. Enter the Grand Central space?
We don’t get Grand central in the UK and it’s had problems because it doesn’t do SMS, (no sms forward so resorting to sms to voice!). Could Truphone step into this space, by allowing users to register several numbers which are called in simultaneously or in order. The ability to define when certain numbers can get through or go to voicemail. The SMS capability of Truphone gives you a huge advatange over Grand Central here.

We know Truphone bought Sim4Travel and are working on their own sim for roaming, but I think some work on the back end of the voice routing, which could then allow users to tweak call routing via a portal would allow a much richer functionality to be gained and provide users with what they want, a number that’s not connected to a specific device that handles both voice and text.

Just watched CNET Asia’s ‘prize fight’ between the iPhone 3G, 3GS and the Pre and I was shocked as to how long the Pre and the iPhone 3G takes to boot up. My N95 takes about 25 seconds including entering my Pin. But 1 minute and 46 seconds to boot that’s just nuts, 48 seconds for the iPhone too, ain’t too clever.

The Pre did go on to win the next two tests, web browsing and taking a photo and emailing it. The second test is a little useless here with MMS already available.

Watch the video here. [via intomobile]

I set up a Linux box running Ubuntu 12 - 18 months back and it had come on leaps and bounds, it was easy to install and get onto the network, but it still had some major hang ups. In stalling software was still a chore, CHMOD and LS’ing around try to find stuff.

I’ve been running eebuntu on my eepc for the last couple of days and I’m extremely impressed, it took a couple of goes to get it installed but that was my fault not it, the USB stick i/o wasn’t fast enough.

The big test for me was installing new apps, so far I’ve managed to install a blogging tool, upgraded flash, installed Tweetdeck all without having to open a terminal window. That’s a huge leap forward, it makes Linux much more usable for the average person, much more of a product that could go mainstream.

I’m going to give this install a lot more time to see how it handles in the long term, but so far I’m over the moon.

I got this video emailed me to as a clue at 4pm on the 30th..a few hours before the really mobile project (if my EST to GMT conversions are correct)

Anyway, you’ve already seen the video and figured out the answer it’s here

Keep an eye on the Nseries Blog (blogs.nokia.com/nseries) during the afternoon of Tuesday 2nd June, and the 5th clue will appear before your eyes…

ps. I promise to check gmail a little more frequently until this is over.

a short interview around social technologies and the chances of a more open culture evolving in the telco space and what this means for how suppliers should in future communicate with operators. And of course for a view on how it is affecting the industry generally - for example the developer community around Ribbit and the growing use of open communities

A more open culture;

There is definitely a greater prospect of a more open culture within the telco space as Orange is not alone in adopting social media both internally and externally and trying to both start conversations and join existing conversations related to the industry.

I think telco’s need to become more transparent and more human in how we operate, we have to demonstrate that there are lot’s of great people within Orange working hard to ensure that all our customers get a great service and that they are real people with a passion trying hard to help people succeed. We can improve how we communicate both with our customers but also with our business partners to benefit everyone in the telco ecosystem, and social media offers that platform.

Orange is actively encouraging employees to blog and join the orange blogging team to demonstrate that we’ve got great people doing great things and launching innovative services. We’ve launched our own TV channel, again showcasing the great people within the Orange organisation, but also the good work they are doing improve orange and satisify our customers too.

We’re working on blogging guidelines and have talked about how we move that forward which should help people find their voice. However, we’ve already a Orange bloggers club, were news items are exposed to us, as they are to journalists, prior to official launches via a blog. This demostrates that the PR teams see how bloggers can have a positive impact and help, it also puts the social media tools on a level playing field with traditional media.

I don’t think we’ve reached the point of grasping the benefits of the social media explosion across the entire organisation just yet, but key groups are starting to understand the benefits of an open and transparent conversation. I think we’ve got some way to go still but Orange Business is moving in the right direction, check out people like ConorFromOrange on twitter for example.

Social media technologies;

In terms of social media technologies in use both internally and externally I think Orange is again heading in the right direction. Internally, we’ve a growing Yammer community that’s developing across the entire Orange-Ftgroup.com domain. We’re also sandboxing a version of the Jaiku micro-blogging platform internally as well, now that Google have made it opensource.

Externally we’re really trying to get involved in the conversation, we’ve a both an official and un-offical Facebook group, we’re also on Linkedin. There’s the Orange Business Live blog (here) and also the TV channel too. We’ve also a got a couple of twitter accounts and a widget on Netvibes to boot.

We’re going to be putting a lot of these social media tools to the test early in June of this year at the Orange Business Live 09 event in London. There’s going to be a team of Orange Business bloggers at the event, hash tagging all the content with #orangelive09. So watch out for pictures and video on Flickr, Ovi, posterous and the blog itself and our tweets too.

Communicating in the future and impact on the industry.

In terms of using social media and the associated platforms for communication in the future, I’m pretty sure the industry and enterprises as a whole will adopt social media and it’s going to have a positive impact on the business in general. I’d love to see some of our suppliers adopt social media tools and engage in a conversation for sure, I think it’d be great if our telecoms suppliers had a twitter account for their Network Operations centre, so it’s a quick way to see if there’s an issue and get regular updates without having to chase (AT&T uses twitter).

In terms of impact, we’re already seeing new software development companies use social media to talk to their customers, fine tune requirements and features and release products that are exactly what the users want. I think we need to see that happen within the more established enterprises, to see them become more transparent and communicate with their user bases. There’s got to be massive benefits, shorter product development times, an improvement in speed to market with the right products that have been built with the support from a community of loyal users.

also posted on the Orange Business Live Blog