Tango.me uses your Wi/Fi, 3G or 4G connections. The other person you are calling has to have the service in order for it to work. It does work well. Since I have an unlimited data plan through Virgin Mobile, which piggybacks on the Sprint 3G network, I can make calls to those friends that have Tango installed.

Tango.me also just introduced a desktop application for your personal computer.

Another application I haven’t tried but may is written up at android.appstore for a product called Groove IP which connects to Google Voice. It has a $4.99 price tag.

Another application along the lines of Tango is Fring. It allows for video chat, calls and chat on Voice Over IP (VOIP)

I never understood why the only way that I can really find out how they work is to setup a trial account. Actually I can, it’s the puppy dog close but that’s a topic of discussion for another day.

Don’t marketing companies know that my time is limited? Don’t marketing companies know that I’ve signed up for countless trials of all kinds of software that I’ve never spent more than 10 minutes with? It could be because of a clumsy interface and I can’t figure it out with a reasonable period of time how to accomplish even the basic tasks. It could be that I’m not sure where to start, or even on occassion at a quick glance I can tell it’s not going to be a good fit for what I want to do.

I think it would be much more advantageous to watch a demo with live demo data that gives me a feel for it’s capabilities. I can see the overall capabilities much better than to slog through menu after menu trying to figure out what I’m suppose to do.

But then again I’m not a marketing expert, although I did spend a day at a marketing seminar once.

One of the best demonstrations of how a company is doing it right is Trello. Right there on the frontpage is a Youtube demo of their software. In 6 and a half minutes I know exactly what I’m getting. We use them and if they ever charge a fee I’ll be a subscriber.

Marketing automation software can take on many forms depending on who you are asking but most capabilities boil down to a few major areas.

• Social Media and Search Engine Tracking
• Lead Campaign Management including lead generation and follow up
• Customer/Client Management
• Email Management

The original website of the infographic:

© 2011 Capterra, Inc.

I found this post on the Toshiba forums that fixes it. Now I can set the user-agent for the full experience.

Link to Set User Agent on Stock Toshiba Thrive Tablet.

Update: I didn’t read all the way to the bottom of the above post, silly me. It appears that this fix is only temporary because the debug option goes away once you reboot the tablet.

Oh well, maybe they’ll fix it in future updates.

In the meantime, I use the Dolphin browser on my Motorola Triumph and it works well. It’s a little buggy on the tablet as sometimes it hangs.

Other browsers worth noting are mozilla and opera. I also have several other browsers on my cell phone, UC browser, Maxthon, Ninesky, Skyfire and Miron. These are ok browsers but then tend to render pages differently from each other. You may be wondering why I have so many browsers and the simply answer is that I do web development work, so it’s a needed necessity.

I certainly turn to my phone before turning in at night. I want to catch up on what’s happenned news wise for the day, and will often bookmark news stories and things to do the next day based on what I read.

This study of over 5,000 smartphone users also shows what people were willing to give up to keep their smartphones. The source of this informaoin comes from an article from AdAge based on a study by Mobile Movement sponsored by Google and  Ipsos. The original article can be found here.

The complete PDF for the study can be found here

And more information from Google can be found here.

HTML5 when it becomes adopted will bring some really cool features to the web. Here is an infographic to give you an overview.

Here is a infographic from Kissmetrics

++ Click Image to Enlarge ++

Source: The Growing Importance of Mobile Website Optimization Infographic

original graphic http://www.vincos.it/world-map-of-social-networks/

I broke down and purchased a Motorola Triumph offered through Virgin Mobile. I got the phone at Best Buys. I know no big deal, or about time, or you old dinosaur. But what most people don’t know is that I owned one of those Motorola brick cellphones (you know the famous picture of Michael Douglas standing on the beach in Wall Street, “Wake Up Bud”). At that time it was cutting edge and I was selling computer systems to Fortune 1000 companies so I had a real need, and it more than paid for itself month in an month out. But for the past 5 years I’ve been working exclusively out of my home, and less than 5% of our business comes from our local community, so I’m not out and about all that often. Did I tell you I love it that I don’t have to worry about rising at a certain time, showering, shaving and doing the commute? If I didn’t well I do… I  love it.

Anyhow, I’m impressed with it so far. Where I live here in Pueblo West, I was concerned that I wouldn’t get very good reception especially since my office is in the basement. I don’t get the 3G  connection in the basement during the day, but I do at night. Must have something to do with the sun and solar bs, or not.

The Triumph runs the Android 2.2 operating system, it’s not the latest, and at this point, I’m not sure what I’m giving up (bragging rights maybe) and it’s not 4G speeds, but I’m not anticipating watching movies on this little screen, and more than likely I’m not going to be doing any video conferencing, so I’m not sure what the fuss is all about.

My first week I was out and about because the main reason for getting the phone was to get a feel for all this location based stuff. I signed up with FourSquare and Gowalla and I checked into a few places. What I don’t understand is that neither service knew where I was at all times, and yet Google places did. If these companies want to compete, it would seem to me that in order to give users the best experience, they would go out and purchase some listings from the phone book companies so they know where I’m at. Maybe that’s not the model but it seems to me like it should be. Do they really think I’m going to take the time and create their database for them? Maybe I’m missing something I don’t know.

I’ll be posting more notes here as I go along, especially posts and information about the android market and mobile phones in general. Right now I’m loving the fact that I’m not stuck in a 2 year agreement, and I can quite this if I find out I’m not using the phone like I thought. I figure I can always sell the phone on ebay if I want and if I keep it, it pays for itself in about 6 months versus getting a similar phone on Verizon or Sprint and paying their monthly fees.

Fear not, JD Lasica has written 3 articles that should get you started in evaulating the landscape.

The Top 20 Social Media Monitoring Vendors for Business

10 Paid Social Media Monitoring Vendors for Non- Profits

and of course my favorite

14 Free Tools to Measure Your Social Media Influence

That’s not a comprehensive list by any means. My favorite vendor isn’t even listed and that’s Hubspot. They produce a myriad of white papers, hold online training seminars it seems almost weekly and provide a ton of actionable information that you can get for free… even if your not a paid subscriber. They are boasting an installed customer base on over 4,000 clients worldwide.

http://www.mydigitallife.info/windows-7-iso-x86-and-x64-official-direct-download-links-ultimate-professional-and-home-premium/

I’m guessing based on some blog comments I read somewhere, it doesn’t matter that I have an OEM version, as Microsoft quit checking for commercial versus OEM codes.