New Version of Mobile Enterprise GPS Service TeleNav Track(TM) Helps Companies Control Labor Costs

Posted by Mauricio on Sep 23, 2008 at 9:47 PM | Comments

SUNNYVALE, CA, Sep 23, 2008 (MARKET WIRE via COMTEX) — Companies can now better control labor costs with the latest version of TeleNav Track, a GPS-enabled mobile resource management (MRM) service that provides real-time information for managing field operations and remote communications. New capabilities — such as Team Timecard, overtime controls, signature and image capture, and Hot Key Alert — help managers improve worker time and attendance compliance, limit unnecessary overtime costs, boost employee satisfaction, and increase overall efficiency.

With Team Timecard, landscapers, roofers, movers and other crew-based contractors can electronically manage the work and break time of their teams, clocking individuals or entire teams in and out directly from a supervisor’s BlackBerry(R) smartphone or other mobile device. The service incorporates timecard controls that limit clocking in and out to time periods near assigned shift times in order to better manage time card data and use of overtime. This also helps to better control job costs associated with each project. Employees can also record timecard punches using voice commands with the Voice Timecards feature. In addition to accurately keeping time and attendance records, Team Timecard features a geofence functionality, automatically updating employees’ timecards when they pass through preset boundaries.*

Read the whole article at MarketWatch.com.

Filed Under: Apps & Games, Articles & Editorials

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Mapping Service Lets BlackBerry Users Locate Cheapest Fuel

Posted by Mauricio on Sep 22, 2008 at 9:48 AM | Comments

With location-based services remaining largely untapped in Asia Pacific, mobile operators in the region are increasingly looking at different ways to tap the opportunities.

In Australia, Vodafone in conjunction with local mapping company Yapp Mobile, a global position system-based navigation service, has launched Vodafone Compass for its BlackBerry users.Unlike traditional GPS services available in the market, which come with pre-loaded maps, Vodafone Compass users do not have to periodically upgrade their mapping database as maps are sent directly to the BlackBerry device over the airwaves and updated automatically on a regular basis to reflect any changes on the ground, such as road closures. This allows Vodafone Compass users – who pay either A$2.50 ($2.20) per day, A$8 ($6.80) per week or A$79 ($68) per month for the service – to download mapping data significant to a current journey.

Another compelling feature, according to Marc Einstein, senior industry analyst for wireless at Frost & Sullivan Asia Pacific, is that Vodafone synchronizes the navigation service with the government databases of all the gasoline prices in the country. For users this means that they not only can find the closest gas station along the route but can also search for the cheapest petrol in the area.

In addition, they can also be automatically directed to the closest paid parking facilities if they are heading to an inner-city destination.

Although Vodafone Australia would not disclose the subscriber numbers using the service, Einstein said the operator claims that this is one of its most popular services among enterprise users.

“There are many LBS services that do these kinds of things, but this service provides a win-win situation for both Vodafone and its users, especially given the fact that gasoline prices are so expensive,” he said.

While LBS is still in its early stage in most of Asia Pacific and operators are initially going after the high-end segment, Einstein suggests that the service is expected to show promising growth in the coming years, with the wider availability of mobile phones with built-in, precise location-sensing capabilities as well as the hefty investment in the navigation space from heavyweights such as Nokia and Google.

LBS will eventually move from the enterprise to mass consumers, and this is already happening in Japan and Korea – the most developed LBS markets in the region due to the advanced data market, high penetration of GPS-enabled handsets and the availability of reasonable LBS plans with flat rates in both markets, he said.

According to Frost & Sullivan, revenues for mobile LBS in Asia Pacific will grow from $486 million in 2008 to $2.9 billion in 2013.

Gartner, meanwhile, predicts that global mobile LBS subscribers will rise from 16 million in 2007 to 43.2 million in 2008 and hit 300 million in 2011, with revenue jumping from $485.1 million in 2007 to $1.3 billion in 2008, topping $8 billion in 2011.

(via PinStack)

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Timico Launches Stockstream Application

Posted by Mauricio on Sep 22, 2008 at 9:13 AM | Comments

A service for streaming financial market data to BlackBerrys is being launched by Newark-based service provider Timico.

Timico Stockstream (pictured) allows users to view market changes and financial news from Thomson Reuters on their BlackBerry.

Timico chief executive Chris Tombs said: “Real-time market information has been notoriously expensive, as well as slow and unwieldy to access when on the move.

“We’re delighted to provide our customers with a simple, cost effective solution that delivers the information they need wherever they are.”

The service comes in two versions, with prices starting at £17.50 per month plus exchange fees.

Timico’s Stockstream Mobile provides local market data every 30 seconds, while Stockstream Mobile Pro gives access to more than 40 international exchanges and can check data every second.

(via MobileNewsCWP.co.uk)

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MedShare’s Advanced BlackBerry Solution Helps Therapy Partners Inc. Revolutionize Home Care Delivery

Posted by Mauricio on Sep 22, 2008 at 9:09 AM | Comments

Home Health Care workers have enthusiastically received MedShare’s advanced mobile health information application for the BlackBerry. Following a successful 6 month pilot project sponsored by Research In Motion, Therapy Partners was able to reduce the administrative burden on their office staff and therapists while improving coordination of care. Christine Reno, Business Director at Therapy Partner’s says, “The Therapists love it. They can send secure emails to get more information before a patient visit instead of playing telephone tag. They get faster answers from our office or from other therapists on email and that helps them do their jobs better.”

Home care workers spend up to 31% of their time performing administrative tasks either at their own home or in the office. These tasks include hand writing notes, filling in charts, and faxing this information back to the office. Hours spent by the home care worker are matched equally by the administration staff at the agency. MedShare for BlackBerry provides immediate access to scheduling and client records and includes remote data capture automatically updating central databases and reducing duplication of effort.

Read the whole article at PRWeb.com.

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Next-generation Mobile Is All About the Cloud

Posted by Mauricio on Sep 22, 2008 at 8:50 AM | Comments

“Cloud” has a special place in my hit parade of despised neo-techno-vernacular. Unlike Web 2.0, my all-time favorite, at least “cloud” is somewhat self-descriptive: Formless, vaporous, and a semi-reliable indicator of climatic conditions. If you point at a round, puffy cloud and declare that it looks like a pitchfork, and someone with you nods and says, “Cool, I can see that,” the forecast is mostly patronizing with zero vision and periodic sucking up. You’re in trustworthy company if that person says, “Are you blind?” If someone in a meeting refers to a cloud, or worse still, the cloud, don’t nod just to keep the conversation going. Consider it your duty to ask them to define the term.

Whenever I can, I tackle buzzwords head on by unilaterally issuing a concrete definition. I’ve decided that a cloud is a hosted data store equipped with omniscience and omnipresence, aware of every movement and able to land anything from a stream to a droplet of data on a moving target with faultless precision and efficiency. A cloud assures guaranteed intact delivery of arbitrary payloads, autonomous, simultaneous, and network-agnostic synchronization of an unlimited number of clients, immediate sensing of a client’s presence after a period of non-availability, real-time notification of new data, intelligent handling of fragmented and out-of-order payloads, optimal use of low-speed and unreliable connections, continuous retry persistence, periodic reports of delivery failures, and end-to-end acknowledgement of successful delivery.

When I send information to this cloud I’ve defined from my desktop or mobile device, either explicitly by sending e-mail or implicitly by making a change to my schedule, I get a real-time acknowledgement that the cloud has received the data. I can then take for granted that the cloud will blanket the globe to find all client devices interested in that information, push the data to them simultaneously, and verify that it reached them intact. If the cloud can’t locate a client, it obsesses until that client pops up on radar. When it does, the cloud assumes that connectivity to the client is fickle and fragile (with mobile connections, it often is). It hurriedly delivers at least a fragment of everything in the queue, because if I’m only in sight of the cloud for a few seconds, I’d rather see the first 50 words of all the messages waiting for me than one message with a 1MB attachment, and nothing else until that message is fully transferred. It takes a cloud to do that.

If someone tries to sell you a cloud that doesn’t meet most or all of these requirements, tell them for me that they’ll have to call it something else. If someone designs a cloud to my specifications, tell them that I screwed up their shot at a patent.

I haven’t seen anything meeting that description made available to commercial users as a packaged service from anyone but RIM. The BlackBerry delivery, presence, and notification infrastructure is not regarded by its users to be a cloud. It’s just BlackBerry; the capabilities of the infrastructure define the device. A BlackBerry handset is a proprietary terminal for a commercial cloud. Take away RIM’s cloud, and a BlackBerry becomes a PDA with a very slow browser.

Read the whole article at Techworld.com.

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Palin email hacker to get little to no jail time?

Posted by Mauricio on Sep 22, 2008 at 8:43 AM | Comments

I thought this was pretty interesting. It seems like the hacker who got into Palin’s email account might get off on an interpretation technicality.

It might seem obvious to most people that the hacker who gained unauthorized access to the private e-mail account of Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin violated the Stored Communications Act.

Under that law, a violation is committed by anyone who “(1) intentionally accesses without authorization a facility through which an electronic communication service is provided;” or “(2) intentionally exceeds an authorization to access that facility; and thereby obtains…[an] electronic communication while it is in electronic storage in such system.”

But Kurt Opsahl, senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, says not so fast.

Although the law seems clear on such a matter, the Department of Justice has taken a position on the law that could thwart its own prosecution of the hack under the SCA.

Read the whole article at Wired.com.

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CallWave Demonstrates Mobile Video Collaboration for BlackBerry Bold at Interop New York and Web 2.0 Expo

Posted by Mauricio on Sep 16, 2008 at 5:12 PM | Comments

NEW YORK & SAN FRANCISCO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–CallWave, Inc. (NASDAQ:CALL), a leading global provider of mobile and Web-based unified communications solutions, will demonstrate at Interop New York 2008 and Web 2.0 Expo mobile video collaboration on the new BlackBerry Bold. FUZE on the BlackBerry Bold will be available later this year and will enable mobile real-time collaboration with synchronization of media, including video, on the device.

FUZE on BlackBerry and other devices currently enables users to initiate and manage conference calls directly from their phones. This includes fetching attendees into meetings and as well as being able to IM with meeting attendees in real-time during conference calls. Slated for release later this year are image capabilities, which will enable users to present high resolution video and other media on their mobile devices.

Now available in beta, FUZE is a new hosted service that enables high-impact online meetings anytime-anywhere, bringing advanced collaboration capabilities to Web conferencing. FUZE can be used with any computer or smartphone, and provides synchronized high definition video collaboration with high quality audio conferencing, secure instant messaging with managed presence, local and international Internet calling and a unique “Fetch” feature that allows the FUZE moderator to bring attendees directly into meetings on-the-fly.

Read the whole article at Businesswire.com.

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BlackBerry A Favorite Bed Buddy

Posted by Mauricio on Sep 15, 2008 at 9:31 AM | Comments

A new survey says 87 percent of PDA-owning professionals bring the devices into their bedrooms, and 84 percent check them before going to bed and as soon as soon they wake up in the morning.

Eighty-five percent of business travelers say they sneak a quick peek at their personal digital assistants if they happen to wake in the middle of the night, and 80 percent check their e-mail before they’ve had their morning coffee, the new study by Sheraton Hotels found.

The survey of 6,500 professionals who make more than $50,000 a year, take two or more annual business trips and have a BlackBerry or mobile e-mail device, found that 81 percent say they’re working harder now than five years ago – and many are enjoying it.

More than a third of those surveyed – 35 percent – said if forced to make a choice, they’d stick with their PDA over their spouse, and 62 percent said that they love their little high-tech companions.

(via NYPost)

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College Begins Certified Training for BlackBerry Specialists

Posted by Mauricio on Sep 12, 2008 at 11:05 AM | Comments

So this is what it has finally come to.

Our smartphones have become so complicated, that there’s a new college course designed to help us use them.

Earlier this week, Trios College announced it will offer BlackBerry certification training.

Trios, which has a campus in London, offers more than 20 courses in business, technology, health care and law.

Its BlackBerry course, available this fall, is “designed to offer students real-world skills and knowledge used in planning, administering and supporting BlackBerry product deployments,” according to a college news release.

Frank Gerencser, chief executive of Trios, says the course will train students to manage large-scale BlackBerry smartphone use in any business.

Read the whole article at LFPress.ca.

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ZAGG Inc. Introduces invisibleSHIELD for BlackBerry Bold

Posted by Mauricio on Sep 12, 2008 at 9:28 AM | Comments

Features

Scratch-Proof, patented film
Military Grade
Lifetime Guarantee
No added bulk
Improves grip
Invisible protection

Full Body Coverage: $24.95

Screen Coverage: $11.95

“BlackBerry devices have become vitally important business tools for many people, and as such, they need the best possible protection to maintain their appeal and appearance,” said Robert G. Pedersen II, President and CEO of ZAGG. “We are excited to offer the real, original, premier scratch-proof protection — the invisibleSHIELD — for RIM’s BlackBerry Bold.”