Fiduciary Magazine

Archive for the ‘Tech Tips’ Category

For those of you who are like me, have friends in all the four corners of the planet, you should check out using BlackBerry Messenger. I’m surprised how many of my friends don’t know what it is or that it existed.

What It Is

It’s just like any IM program you might use such as AIM or Google Chat.

Why Should You Care?

When you “message” or “bbm” a friend or colleague who you have connected with, you are not charged texting fees. Moreover, if this same friend or colleague is in another country, there are no International texting fees, which I’ve been nailed with and can be as high as $0.40 per sms.

My guess is that because it does not come pre-installed on your BB device, you might not have heard of it.

You can download it directly from BlackBerry – it’s free.

Kindle DX is as thin as a magazine and holds up to 3,500 books. When you purchase your Kindle, you choose a unique email alias for your device, such as yourname@kindle.com. You can then email your work pdf’s or docs to your device and read them on the go without having to haul out your laptop and then having some PITA looking over your shoulder wondering what you’re working on.

In addition to the new large display format and incredible storage capacity, the Kindle DX also boasts an Auto-Rotating Screenwhich changes from portrait to landscape mode as you turn the device so you can view full-width maps, graphs, tables, and Web pages – like the iPhone and iPod Touch.

You can also read your favorite blogs on the device also. Most cost a whopping $0.99 per month for this convenience, whereas on your laptop, pda, or RSS reader it’s free.

I read 2 monthly magazines on the device: Reason Magazine and The Atlantic. It’s not like I’m reading them for the pictures. I would love to see The Economist join the list of those available. My guess is they have problems with the price point.

The other good news with the DX is that it’s big enough so that your favorite author can autograph it for you. That way, it will retain some extra value when you go to sell it on eBay when you want to get the next-generation device once it’s available.

Here is Jeff Bezos on his Kindle brand. He thinks of the Kindle Store and the hardware business as separate. Sounds like a guy who has thoughts of an IPO…

But that might change once we see Google’s impact on the sale of e-books. Google signaled its intent to introduce a program by that would enable publishers to sell digital versions of their newest books direct to consumers through Google.

What’s your take on e-readers?

If you are on a budget, the built-in OCR engine of Google Search is almost a perfect option for converting scanned PDFs to text – just put all your scanned PDF images onto a public website and wait for Google spiders to convert them into editable digital text.

Obviously there are two drawbacks associated with the original idea. The PDF conversion process is not real time and second, you need access to a public web server where you can upload the PDF images so that Google bots can find them.

If you aren’t willing to wait that long and need to perform instant OCR without downloading any of the software tools, try OCR Terminal – it’s an online Optical Character Recognition service where you can upload scanned images, multi-page PDF documents or even screenshots and convert them into searchable text documents.

The conversion results, as you can noticed in the screenshot above, are pretty accurate and it also preserves the document formatting and layout. You may download the extracted text as RTF or a Word Document. The output is also available as a PDF image though I didn’t find that option very useful.

OCR Terminal is a free service but you are only allowed to convert up to 30 scanned pages in a day and allows for text extraction only from English language documents. They are developing a desktop client that will allow users to convert scanned PDFs or TIFF images and get them back as formatted Word files without the web browser.

Amit Agarwal
Digital Inspiration

Flash Networks provides mobile Internet Quality of Experience (QoE) solutions, which include filtering adult content from the mobile Internet. Their product has been around for some time now, and has evolved into a formidable solution for controlling content on both the traditional mobile web, as well as the more complex web 2.0.

Existing mobile Internet safety solutions, such as “URL Filtering,” rely on pre-classification of the Internet into several categories. Requests are matched to a pre-existing list and access is either granted or blocked accordingly. More advanced solutions are able to address the challenges associated with “Web 2.0”, categorizing content on the fly, thereby enabling filtering of user-generated content websites, such as MySpace, which are beyond the scope of URL Filtering solutions.

With an easy-to-use, Web-based application, parents can control and monitor web content access for each of their children based on his/her unique needs and family’s ethics, customize hours and content types for each child – limiting or preventing access to inappropriate content, and control access after bedtime or during school hours.

Parents can also choose to monitor Internet behavior by receiving immediate notification if access is attempted to dangerous content categories such as suicide, drugs, pornography, anorexia, and more or by receiving a summary of their children’s Internet access behavior. More than just blocking undesired content, this feature gives parents access to information regarding where their children are spending time online, providing parents with the tools to initiate an open dialogue with their children.

For young children, parents can create a “walled garden”/protected environment by giving them access to only a limited number of age-appropriate sites. Furthermore, parents can choose to grant or block access to certain applications, such as chat, video and image exchange.

The Flash Networks solution has been implemented with several carriers including T-Mobile. If you’re looking for a content filtering solution, contact your carrier and ask them what solutions they provide. If they don’t use Flash Networks or a similar solution, consider using this as leverage to get a deal on your rates, or get out of your contract entirely and switch carriers.

Kyle McInnes

This mobile CRM solution offers both offline and online access to all the essential organizational tools needed to effectively manage your business. Use this application to track:

* customers
* leads and sales opportunities
* service cases
* notes and profiles
* document library
* schedule
* follow-up tasks
* call/email logging (including integration with BlackBerry)
* mobile dashboards

Maximizer Software have earned themselves the titles BlackBerry ISV Alliance Member and Microsoft Gold Partner. In addition, Maximizer Mobile CRM is certified on AT&T, Sprint, Rogers, and the company works with other carriers and mobile dealers around the world to bring mobile CRM to global mobile smartphone users.

The traditional field sales rep lugs around file folders or a laptop and makes their face-to-face sales calls. To keep track of their activities requires a customer relationship management (CRM) system to routinely update meetings, forecasts, and prepare for upcoming meetings.

There exists a synergy between mobile CRM solutions and BlackBerry devices. Using Maximizer Mobile CRM on a BlackBerry, field sales reps have access to the customer and sales information they need to build stronger customer relationships, boost productivity, and provide real-time updates – anytime, anywhere.

Companies typically invest in mobile CRM for field sales for one of three reasons: to increase revenue, improve service, or reduce costs. Companies using mobile CRM have achieved a return on investment (ROI) in these areas through the following:

* Improved productivity by 17 – 20% (one additional sales appointment per day).
* Ability to provide seamless client service from in-office and field staff.
* Compliance for financial professionals to track all client interactions and requests.
* Greater visibility into field staff activities for managers to provide better coaching

See the Maximizer Software store for pricing information and sales.

The Dashboard gives you a visual representation of your CRM metrics. As a side note, this feature looks particularly good on the Storm.

Maximizer Mobile CRM offers seamless calendar integration. Again, a key component of CRM.

From BlackBerryCool.com