hookflash for iPad | early access

By Erik Lagerway | December 22, 2011 | apple, hookflash, ipad, Startups, tablet, twitter | Comments Off

Update: Top 60 users selected

Thank to everyone for participating! We saw some great feature suggestions and general comments. We will be sending out a message to those selected by the beginning of February. We will also be updating our progress on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Thanks again!

-Erik

 

For those who signed up for the hookflash for iPad early preview, thank you for signing up!

We have received thousands of early access requests, which we take as a great sign!

But now we are faced with a dilemma.

Considering Apple limits us to 100 test accounts prior to launching in the app store, who gets in!?  We need 40 accounts for our own internal use and testing. That leaves 60 accounts for our early access users.

It seemed clear to us that we should let our users decide who gets in. The process would have to be fair and would need to be publicly monitored so nobody feels jilted. So here’s the deal, if you want in, this is what you need to do…

  1. Follow @hookflash on Twitter.
  2. Tweet about the feature you would like to see most in hookflash for the iPad. Could be a design element, feature, interoperability request etc. Be sure to include @hookflash in your post.
  3. The top 60 people with the most Twitter mentions (must include @hookflash) before January 6 2012, will get a spot in the early preview.

Tweet as many times as you like. We will announce the winners the first week in January. Who knows, maybe your suggestion will make it into the product!

For those who win, see you in hookflash! Good luck to all who decide to participate.

Our very best wishes to everyone this holiday season!

Erik Lagerway
co-founder – hookflash

Written by Erik Lagerway - Visit Website

Build MVP (minimum viable product). Ship now! Bull shit.

By Erik Lagerway | December 14, 2011 | amazon, apple, ipad, iphone, kindle fire, Startups, tablet | Comments Off

We can all learn something from Mr. Jobs, “Make it better, make it simple, make people want it!”. I don’t think he ever said that, but it feels like he is saying that directly to me every time I pick up my iPhone. From what I have read and heard, Steve was a magician designer, motivator, visionary, savior and brilliant marketeer. I seriously doubt anyone ever heard Steve say, “Let’s ship minimum viable product!”.

There is a major difference between MVP and KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid). Building complex products and services that look and feel “simple” is really hard! MVPs are basically alpha builds at hookflash.  I guess it all depends on what you are building and what your goals are but for me, shipping “minimum viable product” always left me feeling a bit weak. If you are going to ship something that you want people to fall in love with and use every day, you will need to spend time reiterating before you even get to market. It will not be easy and it will always end up taking longer than you predicted. I am not saying that the Angry Birds and iFart apps aren’t successful but when it comes to clearing space on my iOS device, they are the first to go.

Wired recently published a great article on their blog, ‘Ship Today, Update Tomorrow’: The Modern Tablet Credo. I won’t spoil the read (and it’s a good one) but for me it identifies a developing trend that undermines value in new products and services. Why ship it if it’s sadly lacking features and functionality? So you can buy yourself some time? Kindle Fire has shaken up the tablet market but only the market will decide if they deserve a second chance.

Seth Godin had a great article that touched on this as well, “When “minimal viable product” doesn’t work“, excerpt below..

One of my favorite ideas in the new wave of programming is the notion of minimal viable product. The thought is that you should spec and build the smallest kernel of your core idea, put it in the world and see how people react to it, then improve from there.

For drill bits and other tools, this makes perfect sense. Put it out there, get it used, improve it. The definition of “minimal” is obvious.

Often, for software we use in public, this definition leads to failure. Why? Two reasons: read more on Seth’s blog.

Remember the old adage, “You never get a second chance to make a first impression.”

Written by Erik Lagerway - Visit Website

Job: VoIP Network / Systems Administrator (remote)

By Erik Lagerway | November 3, 2011 | jobs | 2 Comments

I am looking for a kick ass VoIP Network Admin (remote worker).

Must-haves:
2-4 years of VoIP and Video network admin and development.
2-4 years of Networking background (TCP/IP, NAT Traversal, VoIP protocol, SIP protocol)
5+ years of Linux server experience
2-4 years of experience managing VoIP monitor and test tools
Codec experience in VP8, SILK, G.722, H.264 and H.264 SVC etc.
SIP protocol expertise Day-to-Day.

Email me your resume: erik@sipthat.com

Written by Erik Lagerway - Visit Website

hookflash ~ for the way we work

By Erik Lagerway | September 16, 2011 | Hosted VoIP for SMB | Comments Off

Wow! The last few weeks have been incredibly stressful, and it all paid off at DEMO FAll 2011. Here is the video:

Go to hookflash.com to sign up for the early preview of hookflash for the iPad.

Written by Erik Lagerway - Visit Website

Going Mobile? Have a Strategy!

By elka | August 30, 2011 | Hosted VoIP for SMB | Comments Off

There is no doubt that today’s workforce is much more mobile than it used to be years ago. It’s become even hard to define mobility and mobile workers – do we only refer to people frequently on the road, or also commuters and remote workers? And then where do you draw the line between mobile and deskbound workers – more specifically, how mobile are mobile workers? Are they away from their desks 20 percent of the time, 50 percent of the time, more, less? But strict classifications only matter when you are actually designing a strategy and selecting the most appropriate solutions for your workforce. The fact that everyone is becoming increasingly mobile cannot be denied.

As customer demands evolve, so do vendor strategies and solutions. In fact, one may say that mobile technologies (devices, apps, etc.) are proliferating even faster than mobile workers. With that, choices are harder to make. Which is the right solution for your business and your workforce? With mobility solutions being so diverse, they are even hard to compare, so how do you choose the solution that’s best for you?

A good starting point may be to consider what mobile solutions your employees are bringing into the enterprise. We talk a lot about “consumerization of IT” and most of the time we are referring to professionals using their mobile devices or some consumer apps (such as Skype, Facebook or Twitter) to conduct business more efficiently. In fact, consumerization has redefined mobility. An increasing number of workers are bringing their high-end smartphones and tablets to their workplace and using them for storing company information, leveraging the enterprise WLAN  for communication or Web browsing, using social networking tools to communicate, and accessing embedded multimedia tools. Due to this phenomenon, an increasing number of employees are beginning to request some level of technology and application support from their IT departments. Some facts provide further evidence of the power of this trend. In less than three years, the iPhone became mainstream in 80+ percent of the Fortune 500 companies; in less that two years, Android business users reached three million; in under a year, tablets have gone from newbie to necessity among technologists and mainstream buyers alike. As employees increasingly use their personal iPhones and iPads for business, IT needs to take note.

But the consumerization of  IT and its imact on mobile business communications poses signifcant challenges to IT. A few months back, Melanie Turek, Industry Director with Frost & Sullivan wrote:

“To that end, companies have several options:

  1. Provide (i.e. buy) one standard device in each category (smart phone, tablet) for a growing number of employees. This lets the business own the hardware and software, and maintain security and control over identity, applications and network traffic—as well as what happens to access and data when the employee leaves the organization. The downside, of course, is that it will significantly increase the IT budget, and it limits choice for employees.
  2. Ask employees to use their personal tools for business, but officially support one or more devices with business applications. This keeps the budget in check, and it gives IT nominal control over the business applications employees use on their mobile devices. But it forces users to juggle multiple “identities” on a single device, and it does not give the company true security, since employees can download any applications they like on a smart phone or tablet that they own. It also doesn’t ensure that contact info stays with the business when the employee leaves.
  3. Don’t purchase or support mobile devices for the majority of employees. This keeps IT out of the mobility game, and it is the least expensive option—in the short run. In the long run it could prove costly indeed, as employees either hack their devices to run enterprise apps under the radar, or follow the company’s policy lead and don’t attempt to work from anywhere but their office PC.

Deciding on a mobile policy will be one of the biggest budget and technology-support challenges for companies in the years to come, and it will involve business decisions as much as technology ones.”

My colleagues Alaa Saayed and Francisco Rizzo will provide a perspective on enterprise mobility in an upcoming free webinar. If you are interested in attending, please follow this link to register: http://t.co/RJXEpub

 

Written by Elka Popova - Visit Website

Headsets: Cool, Ergonomic, Effective

By elka | July 22, 2011 | Hosted VoIP for SMB | 3 Comments

Headsets. You probably don’t think of them as a particularly exciting conversation topic for a high-tech cocktail party. But they are quickly becoming a key integral part of a knowledge worker’s communications endpoint set. The newest models look snazzy and they help users work in an ergonomic way, while being more efficient and taking better advantage of their communications tools.

I cannot imagine my life without a headset. I think, going forward, as we become an increasingly services-based society with a larger portion of the workforce spending significant amounts of time communicating and collaborating using various forms of voice communication (desktop phones, web-based or thick clients, mobile devices, etc.), headsets will gain even greater popularity.

Frost & Sullivan’s Alaa Saayed and Francisco Rizzo just finished a study titled World Professional Headset Markets. They found out that the contact center (CC) and office (O) headset market bounced back in 2010 after a few years of negative growth. Global revenue in 2010 was $788.9 million, an impressive 19.5 percent increase from 2009.  They are projecting a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for professional headset revenues over the forecast period (2011-2017) of 10.7 percent. 

It appears that the increasing adoption of Unified Communications (UC) solutions is the main growth driver for headsets in the enterprise space. Headset vendors are beginning to differentiate UC headset sales from traditional headset sales. Frost & Sullivan estimates that approximately 10 percent of contact center and office (CC&O) headset revenue in 2010 came from UC headset sales.

You are probably wondering what a UC headset is. Even the authors of the study admit that “Unified Communications (UC)-enabled headsets are an emerging and evolving type of devices and, with some ambiguity surrounding UC itself, it’s easy to confuse what these devices are really offering to the end user “. Here is how they defined UC headsets:

“Simply put, UC headsets expand the communication eco-system, permitting remote work groups to efficiently collaborate in real time. Also, UC headsets are usually described as advanced endpoints that are used across devices, platforms and applications. Frost & Sullivan believes that these headsets are both fueling growth in the UC market as well as benefiting from the strong adoption of UC in the enterprise space (snow-ball effect). For a headset to be considered UC it must be able to:

·               Interact with a PC via USB dongle, USB adapter or base station.

·               Integrate with different UC communications servers (e.g. Microsoft, IBM, Cisco, Avaya, among others)

While many UC headsets offer superior sound quality, smart sensor technology, battery status notifications, and many other advanced features, these should not to be confused as being UC-only features. For a headset to be considered UC it must include the two aforementioned attributes.

A third criterion, headset-user presence, is also beginning to appear on the newest headset models. While not all UC headsets today include presence, Frost & Sullivan considers that this will become a standard in all UC headsets moving forward.”

The majority of headset vendors have picked up on the UC trend and are developing partnerships with UC solution providers such as Avaya, Cisco, IBM, Microsoft, among others.  They are launching UC-certified headsets that integrate directly into certain UC platforms and offer advanced functionality such as presence. 

First-generation UC deployments tend to use corded headsets and not wireless. The trend, however, has been to purchase wireless headsets once the corded headsets have completed their life cycle.

The UC opportunity is also changing the channel, with system integrators taking a more prominent role. Frost & Sullivan believes that system integrators have the largest future CC&O headset growth potential.

Overall, Frost & Sullivan believes that the UC opportunity is one of the most significant opportunities in the headset market’s history and expects this trend to significantly boost headset sales going forward.

Plantronics’ Savi Office and the newly launched Savi 440 and Savi 700, Voyager PRO UC, as well as their Blackwire 200, 420 and 600 series are examples of advanced, UC headsets, interoperable with various UC technologies.

Look at the Voyager PRO UC.  It’s a Bluetooth headset, which automatically answers calls, transfers calls between the mobile phone and the headset, and when the user is on a mobile or PC call, softphone presence is automatically updated. It also eliminates accidental dialing by locking the call button when the headset is not worn. Users also get voice alerts about remaining talk time, connection status, battery level and mute.

Source: Plantronics: http://www.plantronics.com/us/product/voyager-pro

GN Netcom’s portfolio also features a number of UC headsets in the BIZ, GN, Go and PRO series. Let’s take the Jabra Go 6470 Bluetooth Wireless headset system as an example. It is a multi-purpose headset that works with desktop, mobile and PC phones. It also features a touch screen with a smart setup wizard, automatic microphone tuning and phone compatibility settings, wideband sound (150–6,800 Hz), and the dual-microphone Noise Blackout system.

Source: Jabra: http://www.jabra.com/na-us/headsetsolutions/pages/jabrago6400.aspx

As communications tools proliferate in the workplace, users will be increasingly tempted to seek to consolidate their communications endpoints. Headsets are becoming increasingly intelligent, providing some basic call-control capabilities and a single access to multiple communications devices (desktop, PC and mobile phones). As IT looks to consolidate systems at the back end, users will increasingly demand some consolidation at the front end. And who doesn’t want to be able to communicate hands-free – not just when driving, but also while in the office? Multi-tasking is the knowledge worker’s most common MO (modus operandi) and we are no strangers to typing, filing, viewing web pages or even handling some household chores while on hours-long conference calls. I believe, in the future, headsets will become the most common device among office workers.

Written by Elka Popova - Visit Website
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