Pat Phelan: Bits, bytes and telecomsMobile, Roaming and Social Media

I couldnt let this go without writting about it. Tony Fadell, the man who oversaw 18 generations of the iPod, announced the first product of his stealth startup Nest Labs  on Tuesday: a  thermostat

I read this story on my iPhone yesterday morning and was thinking “a flippin thermostat” . then I did a little research and found out there are 250 million of them and every one more useless than the other.

How many of you have woke up freezing in that American hotel room?

Nest solves this and there’s an Irish angle, hello to my friend Johnny Gilmore.

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I wrote a blog last Christmas “SMS is dead, long live IM” where I lamented the death of SMS, I really believed over the next few years that SMS would come under intense pressure from a number of sources like KIK, Ping Chat and many others. All of these have now been completly overtaken by Apple’s iMessage.

Not even one week after the release of IOS 5 I have received iMessage’s from both my sons iPod’s,they love this as it costs them nothing, plenty of messages backwards and forwards between friends Ipad’s and hundreds of iMessage’s from local and global friends, on my tests so far using MAXROAM I think you can have 250 messages for 1 MB of data and with carriers like Meteor charging 2c per MB for local usage in Ireland, well, thats a lot of messages.

The real key difference on the iPhone  that has been upgraded to IOS 5 is the user doesn’t even have to think about it, the operating system does all the hard work, it knows that my contact is a fellow IOS5 user and sends the SMS using iMessage, this is huge, no thinking just transfer my message using the best method possible.

Just as a final tip, all iMessage’s will show up in blue in your iPhone.

Happy texting or not

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I am a judge on the upcoming Vodafone Clicks awards, Vodafone Mobile Clicks is open to seven markets. Any start-up in Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, the Republic of Ireland, Spain, Turkey or the United Kingdom that has a mobile site, service or application can compete for the €225,000 prize fund
Today is the last day for entries, I hope you have your entry in.
Get you entry in here now

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Today’s the day
A guy called Jody Scheckter with Wolf-Ford won a race on my birthday 22nd of May in 1977 and thus begun a 34 year love affair with Formula 1. It was Scheckter in the 70′s, Prost “The Professor” in the 80′s, Mansell and Damon Hill in the 90′s with a dry patch for a long time for me due to Schumacher style procession racing and now for the last few years Hamilton, there have also been the villains, Schumacher and Lauda for me.
I have never been to Monaco nor any other F1 GP, I decided in the 80′s that I would never attend a race until I could afford to spend a week in Monaco and watch the race there. Its been a long time coming and I still don’t know when it will happen.
Anyways as I settle down I think of Hunt and Senna (RIP) two of the originals, hope you’re watching guys.

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I am putting my head on the block by picking this in May but having spent a day with the Samsung Galaxy S II I think its the safest blog I will ever write. This machine is absolutely incredible, the flow and speed of movement between applications is faster than anything I have seen and with its predecessor being the biggest selling Android device ever I think its future is assured. The screen with its 4.3″ super AMOLED is far beyond anything I have seen (comes with gorilla glass, see demo below), the clarity is that of hi def TV to be honest and the dual core processor makes a visible change in opening and switching apps, I have the Nexus One and Nexus S here and both of these aren’t a patch on this device.

And the best part?

Batteries, I can now carry around a spare battery, my days travelling aren’t solely about finding power sockets.

Anyways, I really like the device, its fast, powerful and ultralight, it will be stocked by all the Irish carriers including Meteor from June 1st.

Now to figure out how to get my hands on one.

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I decided to sit back and watch the reactions to Microsoft’s purchase of Skype before I made any comment, well done Om for gazumping everyone.

Firstly, a couple of interesting points

1. Microsoft paid around $1000 per customer (imagine Facebook at that kind of valuation)

2. A lot of sites reported that Google and Facebook were in the ring, I for one have no confidence in that, I believe that Microsoft were there and were convinced that they had to outbid a ghost.

3. Its a second huge win (around a billion)  for Zennstrom and Friis and you know what, the best of luck to them, if eBay had idiots for lawyers thats their problem.

4.  According to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission only 7 percent of the company’s connected members actually pay (please dont mention “Freemium here”)

So the real big issue for Microsoft is how to get more people to pay?

This is actual quite simple and staring Microsoft in the face, Go PREPAID

The people who want to use Skype the most have no credit cards and have no ability to pay Skype for Skype out, as you can imagine the number of people with no credit cards in developing markets is enourmous with only .4% penetration in India for credit card ownership which as the worlds second largest mobile market must be a huge opportunity for Skype, lots of people really want to pay to use Skype but they cant and after what seemed like a good trial at Walmart prepaid Skype appears to be canned.

So thats it, Skype should partner with the largest retail chain in each Asian/African country it should be pretty easy as they already have Microsoft distribution channels, establish a proper prepaid distribution and cash will flow, that I guarantee.

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Its been quite a while since the last blog and much as I love writting, its difficult to get one finished.

Anyways I am beginning a health kick and since you guys helped me kick the filthy weed I thought I might try the same with weight. Strange as it may seem to all of you I have always been fairly skinny but put on a lot in my first few years sober, lost in all in my late thirties/early forties where I was down around 162lbs or 73KG, I threw in a few pictures from 2005 in case you dont believe me

For the last four years I have been constantly travelling and shoveling whatever kind of crap I can down my throat especially in the last 18 months since the last cigarette, its now got to a stage where its embarrassing, I have become a human vacuum, its not good for the soul or the spirit and I have wanted to do something about it for over a year.

I went into my friend Tony on the 30th for a weigh-in (dreading it and extremely embarassed at revealing it here) the news wasn’t good 224lbs or 102kg, I nearly fainted but decided to get stuck in, I stuck to an extremely rigid diet despite travelling, walked morning/night and worked out when in Cork.

Today was weigh in and 5.9KG (13lbs) is gone, its a good start and its going to be a tough year but its got to done, I am sick to my back teeth of being physically tired all the time and buying XXL in Penny’s. I am going to get the Withings scale fired up next week now the first bit is gone, it will post my weight to twitter and Facebook, so theres no hiding.

I will be trying some other bits of hi tech equipment too and hopefully the encuragement from Facebook, twitter and friends will get me back to where I want to be.

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Vodafone Sure Signal arrived last week but with travel and time issues I haven’t had time to test until tonight, before we begin Vodafone gave me this device which honestly is nether here nor there because if they took it back I would go straight out and buy one. Sure Signal uses your broadband line to give you strong mobile phone coverage throughout your building.

In my Dublin apartment I have appalling coverage practically the same as  most apartment buildings, I have spent a year running for the balcony the instant the phone rings, I took a screen shot above tonight before I switched Sure Signal on.

Then I switched on the Sure Signal (see image below), its bloody incredible, full five bars, calls made and recieved from everywhere in the apartment with clean crisp quality.

I cant really say anymore, well done Vodafone and well done John Quinn from Vodafone who gave them a hand with an install issue. 100% a winner here lads

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I have never been a huge Skype fan believing that people speak on phones rather than computers and that 5 billion is a much more interesting number than 28 million. I am though a fan of a new application called Viber which appears to be taking the world of telephony by storm. Friends who would be unsure of how to install an app are calling me on Viber and are calling me to discuss it, so whats Viber?

Its an application thats only available for iPhone but coming soon for Android, its always on so you dont have to go online, it integrates with your phone-book so there is no looking for peoples username, they are already in there plus when someone from your phone-book joins Viber you get a pop-up message informing your of their arrival. There is no registration and it uses your phone number as the unique identifier. Quality is a the high end with a slight dolby air about it.

This is one which has caught Skype on the hop in my opinion and the guys at Skype should be thinking about giving Talmon Marco a call and maybe getting out their chequebook, even the early Skype guys seem to think so.

Have you tried it?

you can add me on Viber for a chat +353872049121

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A plumber who leaves a leaking pipe doesn’t annoy you as much as one that turns up late and doesn’t return your phone calls. A dentist that is concerned at the pain he is causing you is more acceptable than a dentist who isn’t causing you pain but doesn’t care. Being told your flight is cancelled in advance is better than the stress of waiting around with no official communication, unsure whether you’re going to be flying or not.

So why have so many businesses ended up with their priorities the wrong way round? Many of them seem to think that the job they do is more important than the customer service they offer. This is simply wrong. Customer service should always come first because great customer service leads to great products and services, not the other way round.

As customers we all want to feel valued and poor customer care makes us feel that our custom is neither wanted nor valued. It really doesn’t matter how good your service is; if your customer service doesn’t make me feel like the most important person in the room then you’re going to piss me off.

Here’s an example of how a company destroyed any goodwill I had towards them through poor customer service even though they delivered exactly what they promised. I’m a subscriber to UPC’s broadband service, which has always been reliable and everything it promised to be. Last week they sent me a text message telling me that they’d increased my broadband speed from 4Mbs to 8Mbs for free. The problem was that when I checked, it hadn’t been upgraded. The speed test needle was firmly pointed at 4Mbs. So I sent them off an email and two days later I got a response telling me the text was sent in error and I hadn’t been upgraded.I got the impression that they already knew about the problem before I sent my email but hadn’t bothered to proactively inform me of the mistake. As a result all customer goodwill has been lost and when I move house I’m unlikely to use them as my provider.

Surprisingly the corollary to this is also true. You can screw up something awful and if your customer service is top notch you can win a customer for life. For example, 37 Signals (of Basecamp fame) recently double billed me. Now in the grand scheme of things taking someone’s money without their permission is a major screw up and I had every right to be pissed off with them. However, their excellent customer service immediately rescued the situation and turned a negative experience into a position one. How?

Two hours after the double billing event they proactively contacted me. At this point I had seen the double billing but I hadn’t gotten around to complaining yet. The email admitted fault, apologised and remedied the problem. It was simple, to the point, and I felt like they cared and that was all that I needed. As a result I’m now even more loyal to them as a company than I was before.

As a consumer we will forgive nearly anything as long as we aren’t left feeling like we’ve been taken for granted. Value me as a customer and treat me with respect and you’ll have a customer for life.

About The Author

Caelen King is founder and CEO of WhatClinic.com, a seach engine for health clinics worldwide

that has recently expanded into UK Dentist & UK Plastic Surgery markets.

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