The parliament has never even debated the establishment of the DNA database, so with no good law, the peoples’ privacy is being violated…

Below is a summary of issues, from the business user perspective. I think that anybody who is seriously considering a switch to Android/Google and wants to save some time needs to consider these points. (more…)

What’s funny is how Google has been dealing with the problem. In the beginning, contacts were created automatically, driving people crazy as there was no way to disable this “feature” and no way to view the ones that were added by Gmail. Then, in July 2008, Google realized it was time to fix this, and created two default categories of contacts: My Contacts and Suggested Contacts. Those, that were added by Google would pop up under Suggested Contacts for approval.

Then, Google decided to move Suggested Contacts category so that now it’s displayed under “My Contacts” Personally, I was using Gmail Contacts for a few weeks before I discovered, that there is actually such a thing as “Suggested Contacts”. What’s also interesting is that this migration might have caused either some data loss or just a lot of confusion, since lots of people are complaining on the forums about it.

Time for the positive side. It turnes out, this smartphone can be impressive, even for those like me, who pay most attention to usability improvements & information management features.

And I must say I was shocked after seeing my phone book contacts linked up to Facebook automatically, profile photos downloaded, birth dates pulled down, FB updates showing up in the phonebook, incl. access to friends’ photo albums. Amazing, this all happened automatically and instantly! And what’s important, it didn’t add any new records to the phone without my permission, only extended the existing contacts by adding Facebook info.

I didn’t appreciate this half as much when I read about these things on the Internet. But it’s really hard not to like it, when you see it happen in front of your eyes. This is a an amazing feature!

The best part of it is that if some of your contacts don’t get linked automatically, all you have to do is tweak their names on the phone and next time they will pop up on the list of contacts to be linked upon your approval.

But… fancy looks don’t last for long. As soon as I plugged it in, tried to sync contacts with Gmail. It wouldn’t connect to Google, even though the web worked just fine. Turns out, for anybody who purchases the phone and puts in a different SIM card than the one it originally came with, a reset to factory defaults is required. Otherwise, it won’t connect to Google. It’s a common issue as I found out , but it’s not documented in the manual. At first, I thought that a firmware upgrade was required, but after a short research I was glad I didn’t flash the thing. Looks like the newest firmware, at the time I’m writing this post, is buggy and causes freezes :/

BTW, it’s not as obvious to figure out how to make the phone seen by the desktop. It gets detected immediately, but it’s not seen by the HTC Sync software, neither does it show up as a flash drive. It turned out, that the user has to open a Notifications tab on the phone and then manually enable the USB memory or put the phone into the sync mode.

Upon synchronization of calendar & contacts I spent a few hours playing with the phone and immediately run into a few issues:

- In the Phone application, contacts that only have Organization filled in (no first and last name) show up blank on the list (only phone numbers), you have to open them up to see the company they’re associated with - this has been an ongoing issue for almost a year. Luckily, this issue doesn’t exist in the People app. So every time you want to call a company you have to go to the People app (extended version of the Phone app), open the contact and then initiate the call.

- Search capabilities are very limited - if you do a search from the main screen, then it will search through everything but your phone data. (Meaning it will search the web.) If you initiate a search from the People app, it will only look through the full name and phone number, skipping the other fields, such as Notes. To me, this single “feature” makes this phone unusable. (I was ready to give up and return the phone, luckily found the app the free Star Contact app, that can be a temporary workaround, until they fix it - supposedly this is to happen with the new version of the OS: v1.6 Donut)

- The phone is somewhat slow. It’s supposedly much better with the new firmware upgrade, but since people say it’s buggy, I’m not installing it yet.

What’s also worth a mention is phone’s usability. It feels like often times a few extra taps are required. This blog mentions some of these Android-related problems.

The other thing is, that polluters live in different countries in Europe, for instance, I didn’t notice that Germany would be cleaner than Poland or the other way around ;)  So I was just wondering what the reason for this could be. I think it might be the fact that FB is still new in many European countries. (And growing fast!)  It is becoming more trendy, whereas in the U.S. it is a mature tool used for what it was made for. (Stay in touch with friends.) Anyway, it’s interesting to see that user needs on both continents are different…

So yesterday I thought I’d give Google a try and move my calendar and contacts over the the cloud. I didn’t realize it’d turn into such a nightmare - my assumption was that Google’s online tools such as Gmail and Calendar are well tested, since they have been out there for a while, and that they are well-suited to handle personal information management. What a big surprise.

First of all, I was never enthusiastic about keeping these things online due to security and privacy concerns. BUT, there are practical advantages, too. The most important one is having the same information on a few different devices. (Provided that you use more than 2 terminals - cause if you only use 1 PC and 1 cellphone, then it’s easy to keep them both in sync.) The other advantage is that when you get robbed or when your house burns down, you can still access your data Finally, the one reason that made me pull the trigger is that I just decided to buy an Android-based phone, which in theory should work perfectly with Google services. (It doesn’t, I’ll write about it in a different post soon.)
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If you follow their blog more closely, you’ll know who they hire, why and what his weaknesses are. You’ll learn how their server farm is built, and how they measure the performance of their applications. Finally, you will find out about how many client accounts they have. You’ll even see them on vacation, sort of…

To me, 37signals has clearly been the example of how communication, openness, and the willingness to share your know-how rather than disclose it can elevate your business. A quick look through Google search shows, that the amount buzz they were able to generate is simply astounding. In fact, I don’t think I know any other business with employee count of 3 or 4 (now a few more) that got more coverage in the new media..

We create audience. A lot of companies will have customers and the really lucky ones will have fans, but the really fortunate companies will have audience.

Jason Fried, 37signals’ owner doesn’t seem to believe in traditional marketing. He claims, that advertising in almost any form is simply too expensive for most small businesses, that only incredibly creative and incredibly rich people can afford to constantly reach reach new people. Instead, he believes in sharing:

Think about ways you can educate the people who might ultimately one day become your customers.

Share everything you possibly can and don’t be afraid, like most businesses are way to paranoid. Businesses are terrified of sharing, because they think their competitors are going to take this information and use it against them.

37signals is a small company that blogs, publishes books & e-books, has their show on justin.tv, does workshops where they show how their business was built. Jason also often speaks in conferences…

Business though, always think that somebody is going to steal their ideas […] and and the end of the day, it’s always execution anyway. All these ideas are out there, all these ideas are free, if you know how to do something, somebody else who knows how to do it as well, so you might be the one who shares it as well.

And if that wasn’t enough, here is an eyes-opening speech on the topic from the owner of the company:
http://www.businessinnovationfactory.com/iss/innovators/jason-fried