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Evernote Celebrates Birthday by Joining the Billion Dollar Club (Really?)

Posted on June 27, 2011 ·
Evernote has recently celebrated their third birthday. I also recently had my 21st birthday – it feels good to be able to legally grab a drink finallySmile.  (Hey, if Evernote can lie about their age, so can I…).   Joke apart, I have no idea why a company would pretend to be half as young as they really are – there are quite a few users, yours truly included who remember the early product, back from 2005-2006.

evernote scrollOK, so back then Evernote was really nothing more than a scrawny little note-taker, with a weird scrolling tape metaphor that was hard to get used to, but it already showed unusual flexibility of mixing typed and handwritten text with imaging. Still, the key benefit was price, compared to Microsoft Onenote.  It’s hard to compete with free.

I was truly surprised by the news of their first funding round. Here’s my offending post from 2006 (hm, before they even existed, if you believe the birthday news…):

EverNote – Love You and Hate You

EverNote is the last company I expected to raise venture funding: has a mature product, a mix of freeware and a $35 version, and I pretty much considered them a good candidate for safe, organic growth. GigaOM just reported it EverNote’s funding to the tune of $6M. Wow…

My Love & Hate relationship? The love part is easy to understand; it’s a handy, easy-to-use notetaker, which I prefer to the comparable Microsoft OneNote, and the $0 price is quite unbeatable. The hate part: it really does not fit into strategy of moving off the desktop into the Cloud.

In fact it’s the only application that breaks my sync efforts between two laptops using FolderShare:

Continue reading here.

(Cross-posted @ CloudAve » Zoli Erdos)

Filed Under: Personal Productivity · Tagged: , , , , , , , , , ,
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The Tethering / Hotspot Debate: No, You’re Not a Thief. But Somebody Else is a Highway Robber.

Posted on April 4, 2011 ·

 

Interesting debate at ZDNet over wireless data plans:  James Kendrick claims that unpaid tethering makes you a thief.   Thankfully his fellow ZDNet-er Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols has the common sense to dispute  this tethering thief nonsense.

Yes, technically if your wireless contract includes an anti-hotspot clause and you turn this feature on, you are in violation. Of the contract, that is.  Your provider has the right to levy additional charges, or terminate your contract. But does that make you a thief?  I’d much rather conclude your provider commits highway robbery.

Remember this device?

Yes, phones used to look like that.  And there was a time when phone companies (actually, “the” phone company, Ma Bell) charged extra when you had more then one outlet in your home….

Remember the early days of cable TV?   You had to ( well, were supposed to) pay extra for each additional cable outlet.

How about the early days of the Internet, before wireless became pervasive?  Yes, ISPs expected you to pay extra for each outlet…

(Cross-posted @ CloudAve » Zoli Erdos)

Filed Under: Business · Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , ,
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Motorola Takes Us a Step Closer to Personal Computing Nirvana–and it’s Not Even a Computer

Posted on January 8, 2011 ·

Motorola Atrix 4GIt took five years, but the personal computing nirvana vision I first heard from Zoho CEO Sridhar Vembu is becoming reality. The concept that I discussed in The Cell-Phone Aware PC May Be a PC-less PC, and other posts is simple.  Instead of a plethora of situational devices with redundant computing capacity, carry around just one powerful mobile device, which:

  • brings connectivity, the browser and personalization, with
  • data and apps in the cloud, while
  • the actual devices we interact with are inexpensive displays and keyboards (and other peripherals) that come in various shapes and sizes, truly focusing on usability, ergonomics and convenience.

The first product that gets quite close to the vision is the Motorola Atrix 4G…

(Cross-posted @ CloudAve » Zoli Erdos)

Filed Under: Technology · Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , ,
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Finally Something Good on the Privacy Front–from Google Latitude

Posted on November 4, 2010 ·

latitudeRecently I’ve been experimenting with Google Latitude: I wanted to see if I could use it to replace the “family locator” function that most mobile carriers offer at a premium price. This would require that your child or elderly parent or whoever’s whereabouts you care about carries  the phone in their pocket with the display off, while it continues to send its location to you.

No can do.  Partly due to Latitude, partly due to the mobile carrier. The problem with Latitude, at least on Android 2.1 is that as soon as the phone goes to sleep, your GPS shuts off – I understand it as default to save battery life, but Latitude should offer the option to continue using GPS, if I so chose.

Without GPS …

(Cross-posted @ CloudAve)

Filed Under: Software · Tagged: , , , , ,
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No More Stinking Data Plans

Posted on September 17, 2010 ·
samsung-galaxy-nomoredataplans-460

Image credit: ZDNet

Ok, I’ve stolen that title from Jason Perlow on ZDNet.  And I’ll steal from myself quite liberally, in just a moment.  That’s because I fully agree with Jason, who makes the point that Samsung’s new Galaxy Tab is an attractive device, but he really wants to just outright buy it, without yet another data plan contract. His logic is simple: the Samsung Tab is a supplementary device, it will not cause extra data usage.  How many times should we pay for the same thing?   And this is where I “steal” from myself:

rotaryphoneRemember this?

Yes, phones looked like that.  And there was a time when phone companies (Ma Bell) charged extra when you had more then one outlet in your home….

(Cross-posted @ CloudAve » Zoli Erdos)

Filed Under: Business · Tagged: , , , , , , ,
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Skype Blocks Fring – Or Not? Fingerpointing… But Where is Skype for Android?

Posted on July 12, 2010 ·

Image courtesy of FringJust two days ago I reported how mobile video call app Fring enabled making video calls on 3G, even to other platforms, say Skype.  That was a huge improvement for iPhone users, since their native Facetime only allows iPhone 4 to iPhone 4 calls, and only over wi-fi.  But the new option proved to be too popular, overwhelming Fring’s servers, so hours after the announcement they had to suspend support for Skype.

Today the story changes again, now it’s no longer up to Fring.  Skype decided to block Fring calls.  Forget openness.. competition is tough, I guess Skype wants to fully “own” video callers. Except they can’t.  Get access to Skype, that is.

Like I said in the earlier post, the real losers are in the Android camp, where Skype made an exclusive deal with Verizon to be the only carrier who can offer the Skype app.  Yes, that’s correct: Sprint, AT&T, T-Mobile..etc are all coming out with high-end Android superphones, but their owners won’t find Skype on the Android App Marketplace. For them, Fring has been the obvious solution – until now.

Update: TechCrunch reports that “Skype also claims the decision to no longer offer Skype
interconnectivity was entirely made by Fring and that they had nothing
to do with it.”

Update:  Skype responds on their blog:

there is no truth to Fring’s claims that Skype has blocked it. Fring made the decision to remove Skype functionality on its own.

Update:  Now I really want Fring, if it hooks me up with Samantha 🙂

(Cross-posted @ CloudAve)

Filed Under: Technology · Tagged: , , , , , , ,
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IPhone’s Cryptic Bars vs. Real Signal on Android

Posted on July 11, 2010 ·

iphone 4 signal bars At one point in the iPhone antenna blunder Apple tried to hide behind smoke-screen, claiming they discovered an error in how they calculated signal strength to be translated to those ever-important bars the iPhone (and all phones) uses.  They would issue a software update, that would fix the problem – or not, as we now know, the culprit being the antenna design, not just the graphical representation.

Now there’s an entire article @ the Wall Street Journal lamenting just how meaningless these bars are, since all handset manufacturers have their own arbitrary interpretation of what is 1 bar or two .. three .. four.  In fact signal indicators vary between different models of the same manufacturer.

But why are we kept in the dark?  Why can’t we get real, standardized, comparable numbers?  Turns out we can.  Just not on the iPhone.   When I recently compared two Android phones the HTC Incredible and EVO, and two carriers, Verizon and Sprint, I did not have to resort to subjective bar settings.  That would have been comparing apples (not Apple!) and oranges.

realsignal All I had to do was download the free Real Signal app from the Android Apps Market.  This app displays the real signal in dBM, and also provides two independent bar displays  – similar to the “stock” bars on your phone, except this one can be calibrated.  For example given the poor reception in my area by any carrier, I only ever see 1-2 bars on the stock display – might as well re-calibrate the display to between –85dBM to –110dBM, which is all I can get. This way I get to compare any phones and all carriers – no more BS, no more dumb bars.

Related posts:

(Cross-posted @ CloudAve)

Filed Under: Technology · Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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Fring’s Popularity BackF(i)ring

Posted on July 10, 2010 ·

FringHooray, iPhone users can now make video calls on 3G, even to other platforms, say Skype, but using the popular Fring app.  Or not…

The new option proved to be too popular, overwhelming Fring’s servers.   This morning Fring announced suspension of support for Skype.

The biggest losers are Android users on all carriers but Verizon, which apparently has an exclusive deal with Skype, preventing all others from offering the Skype app via the Android marketplace.  For them, the workaround has been to use Fring to connect to Skype.  Until now Sad smile

(Cross-posted @ CloudAve)

Filed Under: Misc · Tagged: , , , , , , ,
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HTC EVO vs iPhone 4

Posted on June 30, 2010 ·

You may want to start with iPhone vs HTC EVO first…

Filed Under: Humor · Tagged: , , ,
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iPhone 4 vs HTC EVO

Posted on June 28, 2010 ·

Filed Under: Humor · Tagged: , , ,
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