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tracked.com – great business info, but still asleep at 9:00 this morning

Published 23 October 2009 Product Review Leave a Comment

Ian Leader: I registered on tracked.com this morning, and it’s just what I’ve been looking for – a site that lets me track news, filings, financial data etc on a list of companies I’m interested in (my particular interest is staying up to date with news on clients and prospects). I have a subscription to the Financial Times, and it should be possible to do the same thing there, but it’s just not easy, whereas tracker has a simple, friendly, responsive interface.

They’ve only just come out of stealth mode, so the following may well be a teething problem, but their news feed seems to be a bit behind – there are three articles on companies in my watch list in the FT this morning, one on the front page, and these haven’t showed up in my tracked.com news feed at 9:00 (CET) – even though they will have hit the FT web site before midnight last night.

I’ll see how things improve over the next few weeks, but I already know what I’d really like to see: tracked.com and SalesForce.com integration, so that:

tracked.com will automatically populate a watchlist from the accounts I own on SalesForce.com, and
latest news from tracked.com will appear in a section on the screen when I look at an account or opportunity in SalesForce.com.

Update: Michael Yavonditte from tracked.com got back to me very quickly to say they are sorting out the issue with delays in the feed.

Michael Yavonditte

Tom Tom beats Google maps on road network updates

Published 18 August 2009 Geospatial Technology , Google 1 Comment

Ian Leader: And so they should, as they own Tele Atlas. Here in Zurich, we’ve been frustrated that the Uetliberg tunnel, a major new bypass many years in the making was opened in May 2009, but in mid-August, Google maps still doesn’t show it as a road (although you can see the entrance road-works in the satellite view here)

Tom Tom recently launched a free on-line maps / navigation service, and though overall Google maps is slicker and faster Continue reading ‘Tom Tom beats Google maps on road network updates’

Google Apps support for OpenID is half a step in the right direction

Published 31 July 2009 Google , Kind of technical Leave a Comment
Tags: OpenID, SaaS, SSO

Ian Leader: Today’s announcement that Google apps will be an OpenID authentication provider is a welcome step forward for Open ID. For those not familiar with , it’s like corporate single sign-on for the web: you can use the same user ID / password on multiple sites owned and run by different organisations, provided those sites are OpenID-enabled.

And there’s the rub – unless the sites you actually use are OpenID-enabled (wordpress.com where we host this blog is, the FT subscription-only web site isn’t), it’s not much use. Google’s move increases the pool of users who have OpenIDs, and will generate publicity that may push more sites to support it, but what would really change things is if Google decided to accept other providers’ OpenIDs to access GMail, Google Calendar and so on. If that happened, it would close the circle and make OpenID genuinely useful for a huge number of users.

Continue reading ‘Google Apps support for OpenID is half a step in the right direction’

3 reasons to upgrade to RoadSync 4.0 (for Exchange 2003 users)

Published 18 January 2009 Microsoft , Mobile Working , Product Review Leave a Comment
Tags: S60, Nokia, Mail4Exchange, DataViz, Exchange, email, RoadSync, E51

Ian Leader: DataViz, recently brought out version 4.0 of RoadSync, their MS Exchange client for several Smartphones (but with an emphasis on the S60 platform used by Nokia and others). I used version 3 on an Nokia E51 against Exchange 2003 for most of last year, and was fairly happy with. When I looked at the new feature list for version 4, my first reaction was that there wasn’t much reason to buy the upgrade, as most of the enhancements were only supported on Exchange 2007.

However, there are three good reasons for Exchange 2003 users to shell out the 29.95 USD for the new version, namely:

It’s easier to change connections – this is now a menu item under options->settings. Useful if you want to save money by switching to a WiFi connection when you’re at home / in the office.
It supports task synchronisation – no need to run Mail4Exchange as well, just to do this.
It syncs the body / description of calendar items – this alone is worth the money, as we often put con-call dialin details in the body of calendar items – no more desperate texting to my colleagues to get the number at the last minute!

: The meeting description / body is now synchronised

: Tasks are now synchronised

: The ‘Change Connection’ menu item is now more easily accessible.

Click on the screenshots for more details.

Mr T-Mobile, I want my money back

Published 15 January 2009 Android , Rant 1 Comment

Jon Bradford: I recently bought a T-Mobile G1 phone, only to discover that if I were to use an alternative voicemail provider I would incur an excessive diversion charge.

Ordinarily I would be charged 12 pence per minute for my voicemail calls. Diverting my calls to an innovative voicemail provider such as HulloMail or SpinVox would incur a diversion charge of 17 pence per minute. I would go so far as to suggest that the cost of the diversion to an alternative voicemail service may be considered to be anti-competitive.

Continue reading ‘Mr T-Mobile, I want my money back’

Things to do with DNS

Published 6 January 2009 Kind of technical 1 Comment
Tags: DNS, Search, Wikipedia

Ian Leader: I came across a great entry on the immensely diverse ‘Make’ blog to day:

MAKE: Blog: Wikipedia over DNS.

David Leadbeater created a service that distributes Wikipedia entries over DNS using TXT records. Simply looking up a TXT record for any subdomain of his service will pull a summary of the Wikipedia entry for the title of the same name.

The idea is pretty simple (like all great ideas), and works like this: DNS is basically a giant directory service – normally our computers use it to look up particular kinds of information that make the internet work, the most well known being:

MX records: what server should I connect to, in order to deliver mail for a particular domain (like jayeyesea.com)
ALIAS records: how to find the numeric IP address that is required for your browser to load a web address like http://blog.jayeyesea.com

DNS servers tend to work in much the same way, with much the same features (this is probably a good thing, as the internet would stop working badly if they didn’t all answer standard queries in the same way). But I’ve often wondered if they could be used to do more.

Continue reading ‘Things to do with DNS’

My New Year Wish List

Published 2 January 2009 Geospatial Technology , Google , Microsoft , Mobile Working , Rant 1 Comment

Ian Leader: I’ve done a lousy job of posting lately (no original posts since August – sorry), and I’m even too late to put in a Christmas wish list – so here’s one for the new year…

1. A decent Google mail / calendar client for the Nokia E-series phones.

2. Decent task management functionality on the Nokia E-series.

3. Tasks in Google apps and a decent contact manager.

4. An off-line PC client for mail, calendar, contacts and tasks.

5. A coherent strategy for Picasa web albuns and Panoramio.

6. And finally…a ‘new’ Nokia 6310i.

Continue reading ‘My New Year Wish List’

My Christmas Wish List

Published 24 December 2008 Android , Cloud / Utility Computing , Google , iPhone Leave a Comment

Jon Bradford:

Dear Santa

I have been a “good” boy all year and now it’s payback. I waited patiently for my Android phone – not being tempted by the 3G iPhone (oh I was so tempted). Was it worth the wait? Yes, it does have many drawbacks – but I wouldn’ t give it back. More importantly, what am I hoping for in my stocking this year (in no particular order)?

1. Gdrive

2. Virtual keyboard on Android

3. Android on a netbook

4. An explanation of twitter in less than 500 words

5. New Google Contacts

Continue reading ‘My Christmas Wish List’

Desperate OEMs demand Chrome exit beta

Published 10 December 2008 Google , Microsoft Leave a Comment

Jon Bradford: Marissa Mayer, the Vice President of Search Product and User Experience at Google, announced today at LeWeb 2008 that Google Chrome would leave beta “before the end of the year”. The reason? Because OEMs were unwilling to offer the browser until it is in full release.

There will be those who demand the release of a Mac/Linux version and a version which will allow for the inclusion of extensions similar to Firefox. What I find most striking is that it is the OEMs who appear to have demanded that the roadmap for Chrome to be accelerated to exit beta.

Could OEM PC makers be in such a bad way that receiving large sums of money from Google to install Chrome be the only way to stem their unprofitable businesses. Could Google also be fighting back against the recent agreement between Microsoft and Dell who agreed to pre-install the Live Search Toolbar on the latter’s PCs – scrapping a deal which Dell originally had with Google.

This development demonstrates the far reaching impact Google is having beyond its search business into hardware.

UPDATE: Google Chrome (BETA) has gone live but has it changed? It appears to have gone from 0.4.154.33 to 1.0.154.36 – I eagerly await the changelog!

Opera brings T-Mobile’s G1 to the masses

Published 24 November 2008 Android , Google , iPhone 1 Comment
Tags: Android, iPhone, Opera

Ian Leader: Whilst this might appear to be an overly wild statement I truly believe Android’s open platform has notched one up on the iPhone tonight. Opera has launched Opera Mini 4.2 for Android (see Android Market) – something that iPhone users will have to wait for – and if reports are to be believed it may be a very long time. Recent discussions appear to indicate that Apple is more than a ittle reluctant to let a rival browser on its precious mobile phone.

But this will be Apple’s loss. Why? Because Opera Mini is a very special browser – its not really a browser – it acts as a proxy and Opera’s servers do all the grunt increasing the load speed for web pages – for more details see the Opera site.

But why my excitment? There are two reasons, both of which make the G1 (and iPhone) more accessible to the masses:

1. For those who don’t have 3G access (like me) this makes the user experience much better; thus making the G1 a real alternative on non 3G networks.

2. But more importantly, I can now use Opera Mini as my default browser and switch to “use only 2G networks” thereby extending the battery life of my G1 – which ironically is more important to iPhone users who can’t “hot swap” out their batteries.

Whilst I have had little time to play with the beta version, my previous experience of Opera Mini on a Nokia has been great, I look forward to quicker and more browsing, care of, our Norwegian friends.

UPDATE After a few hours testing, it seems a little slower than expected and the “back” button on the G1 seems to dump you out of the browser more frequently than I would like – but being an early beta I am willing to give it some slack – but I am looking forward to the next beta.

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