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Tag Archives: smartphone

Verizon Has Made My Head—And Likely YOUR Wallet—Hurt. A LOT

Posted on June 13, 2012 by --Jeff Yablon/The Answer Guy-- Influency & Integrated Marketing Strategist • 0 Comments

Your phone calls just became free. So did your text messages. Sounds great, right?

Guess again. If you’re a Verizon Wireless customer, your prices, under the guise of Verizon Wireless making plans that are theoretically less expensive, just went up. WAY up. If we hadn’t already christened The Verizon Wireless Customer Service Wall of Shame for them, this sleight of hand would have been enough to earn Big Red that honor.

... READ MORE of Verizon Has Made My Head—And Likely YOUR Wallet—Hurt. A LOT at Answer Guy Central, your Influency and Integrated Marketing Source By Clicking Here (501 words, 2 images, estimated 2:00 mins reading time)

Filed Under: Business Change

Big Changes Happen . . . Right At This Site

Posted on March 26, 2012 by --Jeff Yablon/The Answer Guy-- Influency & Integrated Marketing Strategist • 6 Comments

What the heck have we done to Answer Guy Central?

Unless you’ve never visited us before, you’re rubbing your eyes right now, wondering what happened to the design of this web site. What happened to that simple design and the handful of buttons?

Well, we drink our own Kool-Aid, and today we’ve rolled out a business change that doesn’t make me completely happy, but was the right choice. Relax, Jeff . . . relax . . . relax . . . ... READ MORE of Big Changes Happen . . . Right At This Site at Answer Guy Central, your Influency and Integrated Marketing Source By Clicking Here (453 words, 1 image, estimated 1:49 mins reading time)

Filed Under: Business Change, Customer Service, Design

Tin Foil Hat Paranoia: Your SmartPhone is Ratting You Out

Posted on December 1, 2011 by --Jeff Yablon/The Answer Guy-- Influency & Integrated Marketing Strategist • 3 Comments

They’re watching you . . .

You know that very cool, does-everything but-bathe-you SmartPhone you carry around? I’ll bet that somewhere deep in the recesses of your mind you were wondering whether it was tracking you, leaving a trail.

It’s worse: Your SmartPhone is reporting everything (EVERYTHING!) you do back to your wireless phone carrier.

Wait, it gets better worse still. Even when you use your SmartPhone over Wi-Fi, every move you make is being shared with your carrier. Every keystroke. Every site you visit. EVERYTHING.

Please understand who’s writing this. ... READ MORE of Tin Foil Hat Paranoia: Your SmartPhone is Ratting You Out at Answer Guy Central, your Influency and Integrated Marketing Source By Clicking Here (496 words, estimated 1:59 mins reading time)

Filed Under: Business Change

Cheaper International Calls! AT&T Makes Real Business Change

Posted on November 11, 2011 by --Jeff Yablon/The Answer Guy-- Influency & Integrated Marketing Strategist • 0 Comments

When AT&T makes your long distance phone calls cheaper, you know there’s real business change happening. When AT&T makes international calls placed from your cell phone a lot cheaper, business change has EXPLODED.

And that’s exactly what’s happened. AT&T has released a SmartPhone app that gives you international phone calls for as little as four cents per minute.

This may not matter all that much to all that many people; sure, there are about a gazillion international phone calls placed every day, but I’d say with some confidence that most of the calls placed by most Americans are to other people in the USA. Nevertheless, AT&T was charging a tremendous amount of money for these calls, and now they’ve thrown that revenue away. ... READ MORE of Cheaper International Calls! AT&T Makes Real Business Change at Answer Guy Central, your Influency and Integrated Marketing Source By Clicking Here (325 words, estimated 1:18 mins reading time)

Filed Under: Business Change

HTC Sense Android Screen Grab Gets More Evil

Posted on October 4, 2011 by --Jeff Yablon/The Answer Guy-- Influency & Integrated Marketing Strategist • 0 Comments

When I talk evil business practice, it’s generally Apple or Google that’s in my cross-hairs. Apple does so many things disguised as features but really designed to dominate markets at its users’ expense that the “Apple is Evil” conversation can go on and on. And Google? I’m still in the search giant’s corner on technical and technicality-based grounds, but for a company that formerly used “Don’t Be Evil” as their unofficial motto there sure is a lot of questionable stuff going on.

Got an HTC-designed Android SmartPhone in your pocket? Heads Up, please; HTC and your phone carrier are watching you. ... READ MORE of HTC Sense Android Screen Grab Gets More Evil at Answer Guy Central, your Influency and Integrated Marketing Source By Clicking Here (454 words, 2 images, estimated 1:49 mins reading time)

Filed Under: Business Change, Design

Android Screen Capture Redux: Why It Can Be Done, But Hasn’t

Posted on September 29, 2011 by --Jeff Yablon/The Answer Guy-- Influency & Integrated Marketing Strategist • 1 Comment

Android Screen Capture and Android Screen Grab

I’m throwing down the gauntlet: if you’re an Android Developer, I challenge you to build a screen-capture App that will work on Android SmartPhones that aren’t rooted. Build it, and I’ll buy it from you.

Or better yet, build it and let’s make a fortune together.

One of the most-commented posts here at Answer Guy Central is one I wrote over a year ago about Android Screen Capture (and the HTC Sense Interface). As with many of the things I write here that post was designed to get you thinking about business change and business process. ... READ MORE of Android Screen Capture Redux: Why It Can Be Done, But Hasn’t at Answer Guy Central, your Influency and Integrated Marketing Source By Clicking Here (558 words, 1 image, estimated 2:14 mins reading time)

Filed Under: Business Change, Development

You Need an App For That! (More on The Daily Deal)

Posted on June 30, 2011 by --Jeff Yablon/The Answer Guy-- Influency & Integrated Marketing Strategist • 2 Comments

As useful as I find my Smartphone, one thing I’ve been aware of ever since I drank the Verizon Droid Kool-Aid is that I need to pay attention to how it works (that is, what Apps I have installed and what they do) in order to get the most out of it. Which is too much work, even if you’re a geek and stay on top of this stuff naturally. ... READ MORE of You Need an App For That! (More on The Daily Deal) at Answer Guy Central, your Influency and Integrated Marketing Source By Clicking Here (405 words, estimated 1:37 mins reading time)

Filed Under: Business Change

Google To Reign In Android Fragmentation—Maybe

Posted on April 7, 2011 by --Jeff Yablon/The Answer Guy-- Influency & Integrated Marketing Strategist • 1 Comment

I’ve been an Android user since Verizon, Motorola, and Google got together and released the original Droid. While my SmartPhone has begun feeling slow and bloated as it’s aged and I’ve added app after app to my mobile arsenal of tools, I love my Droid, and I’m a real Android fan.

The problem with Android, though, is that there are too many versions of the operating system in use. Android comes pre-installed on SmartPhones, and while the geeky among us can make changes, the version you get from your carrier is what you’re stuck with. ... READ MORE of Google To Reign In Android Fragmentation—Maybe at Answer Guy Central, your Influency and Integrated Marketing Source By Clicking Here (469 words, estimated 1:53 mins reading time)

Filed Under: Business Change

QR and Bar Codes, Scanners, and Supermarket Customer Service

Posted on March 28, 2011 by --Jeff Yablon/The Answer Guy-- Influency & Integrated Marketing Strategist • 4 Comments

I spend a lot of time thinking about customer service. If you read these words regularly, you know that customer service is so important an idea around here that we’ve gone so far as to erect The Answer Guy’s Customer Service Wall of Shame … a wall you don’t want to find your picture hanging on.

So here’s a customer service question: why aren’t bar-code scanners used to improve customer service? ... READ MORE of QR and Bar Codes, Scanners, and Supermarket Customer Service at Answer Guy Central, your Influency and Integrated Marketing Source By Clicking Here (1104 words, 1 image, estimated 4:25 mins reading time)

Filed Under: Business Change, Customer Service, Search Engine Optimization SEO

Business Change, Fifteen Pennies At a Time [Square Deal]

Posted on February 24, 2011 by --Jeff Yablon/The Answer Guy-- Influency & Integrated Marketing Strategist • 5 Comments

I have this little device in my bag of tricks. It’s called a Square, both because that’s its shape and because Square is the name of the company that manufactures The Square.

Oddly, although there’s no web site to be found at square.com, Square the company is at squareup.com.

The Square lets me accept credit cards. In and of itself that isn’t such a big deal; the days when you needed a special merchant account to take credit cards are long passed, with anyone being able get get paid via credit card just by directing people who owe you money to PayPal. What’s great about the Square, though, is that it plugs into the headphone jack on your SmartPhone (Android or iPhone), and with the help of a simple app lets you scan a credit card, anywhere. ... READ MORE of Business Change, Fifteen Pennies At a Time [Square Deal] at Answer Guy Central, your Influency and Integrated Marketing Source By Clicking Here (543 words, estimated 2:10 mins reading time)

Filed Under: Business Change, Media

Angry Birds’ Business Change: The Next Amazon.com?

Posted on December 16, 2010 by --Jeff Yablon/The Answer Guy-- Influency & Integrated Marketing Strategist • 4 Comments

Angry Birds Create Business Change

Those Angry Birds are back, but they aren’t so angry any more. See what a few gazillion dollars and a business change model will do for a guy?

As of about a week ago, Angry Birds had been downloaded fifty million times. All by itself that’s an amazing number, and forget about the fact that Angry Birds sells for all of one dollar on iPhone and is free on Android smartphones. Fifty million people playing your game? Nice. ... READ MORE of Angry Birds’ Business Change: The Next Amazon.com? at Answer Guy Central, your Influency and Integrated Marketing Source By Clicking Here (288 words, 1 image, estimated 1:09 mins reading time)

Filed Under: Business Change, Media

Who Needs a SmartPhone? RIM CEO Makes Blackberry a DumbPhone

Posted on November 17, 2010 by --Jeff Yablon/The Answer Guy-- Influency & Integrated Marketing Strategist • 3 Comments

You know how you can tell you’re in trouble? When business change is happening all around you, even TO you, and your response is to pretend it doesn’t matter.

The CEO of Blackberry maker RIM has gone on the record as believing that Apps don’t matter. And literally he’s correct; most of the things we do with our SmartPhones on the Internet could be done inside a browser.

Is this guy ever missing the point. ... READ MORE of Who Needs a SmartPhone? RIM CEO Makes Blackberry a DumbPhone at Answer Guy Central, your Influency and Integrated Marketing Source By Clicking Here (348 words, estimated 1:24 mins reading time)

Filed Under: Business Change, Content, Design

Google Makes The Internet More Secure…If You Pay Them

Posted on October 8, 2010 by --Jeff Yablon/The Answer Guy-- Influency & Integrated Marketing Strategist • 2 Comments

You can stop worrying about Internet security, because Google has a fix for your problem! If you pay them for it.

Actually, you don’t pay Google for the security measure, you pay them for a “better” Google Apps account and the extra security layer is bundled in.

OK, actually, that might not be precisely correct, either. Paid Google Apps users are getting the feature first, and Google plans to roll it out to everyone “in a few months”. ... READ MORE of Google Makes The Internet More Secure…If You Pay Them at Answer Guy Central, your Influency and Integrated Marketing Source By Clicking Here (264 words, estimated 1:03 mins reading time)

Filed Under: Business Change

SmartPhone Paralysis: You Won’t Buy a New One!

Posted on September 28, 2010 by --Jeff Yablon/The Answer Guy-- Influency & Integrated Marketing Strategist • 2 Comments

By now you’re using a SmartPhone. Or not, you big hold-out, but everyone around you is clutching either an  iPhone, a Blackberry, or an Android SmartPhone.

The sales figures say that these devices are being adapted at unprecedented rates. Everybody has decided to Tweet on the go, babble about where they are via Foursquare, and buy stuff on eBay while driving to Aunt Sadie’s house.

Unexpected side effect: we’re actually buying new phones less frequently. This from a study by J.D. Power. ... READ MORE of SmartPhone Paralysis: You Won’t Buy a New One! at Answer Guy Central, your Influency and Integrated Marketing Source By Clicking Here (536 words, estimated 2:09 mins reading time)

Filed Under: Business Change

You Can and You Should Aren’t the Same: LogMeIn Android

Posted on June 24, 2010 by --Jeff Yablon/The Answer Guy-- Influency & Integrated Marketing Strategist • 7 Comments

One of the beautiful things about using SmartPhones like the iPhone, or my Android-based Droid is that I can now access my computer from literally anywhere, and I don’t even need to carry a notebook computer to do it.

Of course, that’s one of the ugly things too; being connected all the time means either that you let your work take over your life or you create rules to prevent that. ... READ MORE of You Can and You Should Aren’t the Same: LogMeIn Android at Answer Guy Central, your Influency and Integrated Marketing Source By Clicking Here (560 words, estimated 2:14 mins reading time)

Filed Under: Uncategorized




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