Give me back my BlackBerry!

By Ara Aslanian

BlackBerry 850 - introduced 1999

After experiencing some device problems with my new Verizon BlackBerry Bold 9930, and due to continued media and financial setbacks by RIM, I decided to switch to the iPhone 4s. The timing was perfect... the holiday season would give me enough off-time to get acclimated with the iPhone. Having used a BlackBerry device since the first BlackBerry 850 was introduced in 1999, I knew this was going to be a drastic change for me. Although the first BlackBerry was hardly a smart phone, the e-mail only device which had very limited HTML browsing capabilities, was undoubtedly a revolutionary transition from the beeper.

The transition of moving contacts and e-mails from my Bold to the iPhone was painless and easy, with the exception of my notes. I knew there would be a learning curve for the use of a touch screen only device; luckily, being an iPad and iPod Touch user, I am very familiar with the iOS operating system and know most of the phone's functions.

The iPhone 4s provides lots of eye candy and fun with its amazing camera, all the cool apps and games you can ask for, gorgeous screen resolution and of course Siri, the talking assistant. After a few days of playing with my iPhone and being told how great it was by everyone, I began to really get into it and use it as I would my Blackberry: constant e-mails, notes to myself, to-do lists consisting of client needs, calendar entries and e-mails to my staff and partner for client related matters.

I soon began to realize the great effort it took for me to fulfill these necessary functions. Doing what I did with the BlackBerry on the iPhone required extra time, taps and slides. However, I wrote these off as a part of the learning curve I was overcoming and was sure my efficiency would increase over time and with familiarity. All the same, my experience never improved.

Although the iPhone had many great functions, it fell short of those that really counted for me. The lack of intuitive e-mail, calendar and contact management were my biggest issues with the phone.

Siri was helpful but could only recognize certain names such as Jeff, Mike &John. It had difficulty with Armenian names and required me to repeat the name with different pronunciations before it could bring up the correct persons contact information. For me the most important use if Siri was to help me make calls on the go, but if you have ever used a BlackBerry device with a keyboard, you know that each key can be programmed as a short cut to dial a name from your phone book. I use "I" for Inverselogic to call the office, "J" for Jeff, etc. This to me is much more efficient than clicking and holding the home button on the iPhone, waiting for Siri to wake up, then asking it to dial my office; in most instances it would ask me to repeat again or would tell me it couldn’t help me at the moment.

I also missed the thumb click on the BlackBerry; it is not until you no longer have the feature that you realize what an amazing tool it is. One click and you have everything at your finger tips: reply, forward, attach, delete, etc. With the iPhone, you have to move and slide your finger all over the screen if you are reading an e-mail, and if you wish to call that person, you must scroll all the way up to the top and hit the call button.

Simple things like attaching a photo to your e-mail become a time-consuming task; you must save your e-mail as a draft by hitting cancel, or by exiting the mail application by clicking the home button, go to your photo album, copy the photo, come back into the mail app, and finally paste it! This becomes frustrating when you are trying to get an e-mail out before a meeting or are on the go.

Last Friday, I boarded a Southwest flight to Las Vegas for the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show with a fully charged iPhone. The plan was to walk the show, visit few vendors and board a flight back to Burbank at 7:00PM. I had made a few calls to the office during the morning hours after my arrival into Las Vegas and sent out several e-mails and text messages. I did however also use the amazing camera to take some shots of new OLED and 3D TVs on display at the Samsung and LG booths. Looking down at my iPhone, I realized my battery was down to 45% by noon and 35% by 1PM. I was forced to shut off my WiFi and my phone so it would last me the rest of the day. It was at this point that I made the decision of switching back to my BlackBerry as soon as I got back to the office. With my upcoming trip to New York on the horizon, I realized the iPhone would not last me the day in the big city and would provide aggravation to my life.

As I switched phones once again, I was happy. It was like having my old best friend back! I was reunited with one click access to everything that I needed to do with my phone; there’s no need for apps or games since that’s what the iPad is for. All I could ever ask for is a phone that handles calls, e-mails, contacts and calendars extremely efficiently. It may not have the great screen and browsing capabilities of the iPhone or its amazing digital camera, but it sure beats it in what I think matters most to a business professional who is constantly using their phone for messaging and communications.

To all my long time friends and client who think I'm not an Apple fan, I think you'd be happy know that this entire article was written using my iPad and revised on my iPad at JFK waiting for my flight back to Burbank. I must boast that my BlackBerry’s battery is still at 70% at 5:22 pm EST. I was here to attend a technology leadership conference and noticed most of us were still using the BlackBerry, a few were on the iPhone, some were on the Android and a handful were even carrying both an iPhone and a Blackberry (BlackBerry for their email and phone communicates and the iPhone for their social media apps and other needs). If New York is any indication of what business professionals still use as their main smart phone, there is no doubt that BlackBerry runs this city.

As I was getting ready to post this article news came that RIM co-CEO’s stepped down handing over the control to a new up and coming executive, a move I believe the board should have forced a long time ago. Hopefully the new CEO will be able to restore RIM and BlackBerry to what it was before and is able to keep the company around, as many business professionals such as myself depend heavily on our BlackBerries.

Ara Aslanian is the president and CEO of Inverselogic Inc., a technology solutions company based in Glendale, California.

Nokia - One Last Chance?

Each time I hear about the Nokia Lumia, for some reason it reminds me of the Chevy Lumina. Of course, one's a phone, the other a car...but would Nokia's Lumia share a similar death fate as the Lumina? Probably not...well at least from our observations at CES 2012.

Earlier in 2011, Nokia abandoned its operating system for smartphones - the Symbian. With a continued assault led by Apple's iOS and Google's Android operating systems, the market share of Symbian almost disappeared. Fearing a complete disappearance from the smartphone market, Nokia quickly entered into a strategic partnership with Microsoft, clearing the path for the tech giant to implement its Windows Mobile OS on all Nokia smartphones. Of course Microsoft itself has a very tiny, if not insignificant presence in the smartphone world...but at least this gave Nokia yet another chance to reemerge in the market and focus on hardware and less on developing the core operating system, including the apps, something that has catastrophically bogged down RIM's Blackberry.

Nokia plans on introducing the Lumia 900 within the $100-$200 price range, which would make it by far the least expensive, yet highly functional smartphone on the block. The phone features Microsoft's tile based operating system also known as Mango. Most importantly, the phone is Nokia's first 4G enabled device - making it very suitable for data hungry apps.

The phone comes loaded with Microsoft Office, making it a snap for opening and editing Word, Excel, and Powerpoint files. If you're a diehard gamer, the integration with Xbox LIVET comes ready...couple that with the 4G and you're ready to take off. As with any Microsoft product, dont expect open source coding like the Android and the number of available apps still remains far below Industry giants - Apple and Google. 

CES 2012: Ultrabooks

We’re sure you have been following the headlines from the past week regarding the wonders of the tech world. The 2012 Consumer Electronics Show wrapped up the four day convention last week in Las Vegas.

Last year the show was abuzz with tablets and mobile computing. Inverselogic was in attendance at the show again this year, which attracted more than 150,000 people from all over the globe. We will cover the key highlights of the show, including our thoughts and ideas within the next few blog posts, so please stay tuned for updates.

As stated, last year there was a hysterical hype over tablets in the mobile computer realm….so much that the netbook market experienced a significant drop in computing market share. Taking front stage were Google Android powered tablets offered by Samsung and Motorola.

This year, one of many attention grabbing featured products were Ultrabooks – the successful marriage of tablets, netbooks, and laptops if we have to word it that way. PC manufacturers quickly realized the success of the MacBook Air and decided to adopt a similar product line by offering power, with the latest Intel chips, and superior mobility, notably in weight and design.

Samsung and Toshiba both presented an impressive lineup of Ultrabooks.

Samsung Series 9 Ultrabook

Samsung’s Series 9 model houses a quad core Intel Core i7 processor and a 13.3 SuperBright display. The Series 9 model is a direct competitor of the MacBook Air in terms of hardware – it weight 2.6 pounds and its thickest point is 0.4 inches (yes, 0.4!). Samsung brings performance, design, and mobility under one roof. For die hard Windows users who want superior mobility, this is a computer you must definitely consider.

Toshiba Portege Z835

The Toshiba Portege Z835 is another major competitor in the ultrabook sector. Toshiba by far goes out of its way to make the computer as affordable as possible – pricing its entry models in the range of $699-$949 (the sub $1000 market). The drawback however is that Toshiba packs the Intel Core i3 processor, which lags in performance comparisons with the much faster processors (Core i5 and i7), however for business multitasking users, the Intel Core i3, along with a generous RAM and solid state drive should be just fine.

Stay tuned for more posts along the way…

What is Your Retail Loss Prevention Strategy?

What is Your Loss Prevention Strategy?

By Scott Kreisberg, CEO One Step Retail Solutions

When it comes to security and protecting your assets, you need a good strategy. You will know how good that strategy is when you try to balance the cash register at the end of the day; when you do your physical count; when you are faced with a computer crash; or when too many of your customers start having identity theft on their cards. Do you want to wait until then to find out that your protection was inadequate?

The most effective method to achieve security has always been a layered approach. In other words, instead of just relying on a single solution, you set up a number of protective layers and thus greatly reduce the chances of being a victim.

Airports are an example of a layered approach: there are visual inspection of ID's and tickets before you are allowed beyond a certain point, there are TSA agents observing via cameras, there are metal detection imaging devices that you must go through, and there are personnel at the ramp to the plane who check tickets and ID's again.

We at One Step Retail take a similar approach to protecting you and your business from both external and internal threats. After all, we have been around helping retailers for 25 years and we hear about disasters from unprotected retailers. Consequently, we want to ensure you do not experience the same thing.

What would happen if all the information stored in your computer were suddenly lost? Or you had a hacker or virus or Trojan attack? Could you recreate this information? If so, how much time would it take? How much would it cost? What about dishonest employees? Most importantly, would your business survive?

In today's economic climate, it is vital to protect your assets and one of the most important assets you have is your data. If you lost it, it could possibly close your store. That may be hard to believe, but look at these statistics from Comdisco Vulnerability Index Research Report:

• 82% of companies are not prepared to handle a computer system disaster
• 83% of corporate data recoveries from tape backup FAIL
• Only 6% of companies that suffer from a catastrophic data loss survive

In our own backyard, we've seen it happen. Two different clients thought they were backing up and protected, but then their computers crashed and they discovered otherwise. After a year of manually inputting all the missing data, one retailer still occasionally scans an item that should be in the system but isn't. Another client lost years of data and had to pay for expensive data recovery but not all of it was recoverable.

In the category of dishonest employees, one client after six months of periodic cycle counts being off, finally traced down the problem to an employee taking fictitious “returns” and giving refunds-to herself. Another client had an employee who, as their Systems Administrator, embezzled money from them for five years. Months of sales information in their computer records was missing and she said they had been lost. Where was the backup? This company went out of business two years later.

One Step has researched resources and partnered with experienced, honest vendors to bring you layers of security specific to your needs as a retailer.

With RetailSafe, you have a professional backup service that knows retail and their data backup needs, plus you as our client get a discount for their services.

With sonicWall you get not only an intelligent state-of-the art firewall protecting you from malware, you get PCI compliance integrated into the system protecting your business from another type of disaster. You can buy firewalls including sonicWall at Amazon but none of them will be PCI Compliant out of the box. You must be trained on how to properly configure the firewall in order to meet PCI compliancy. So, buying them from anywhere else would be an utter waste of money.

With Quadrox you have a Network Video Recording system that can, among other things, integrate with your POS. The POS is a primary location for employee theft or mistakes. For example, you could quickly access the time when an employee issued a return and refund (as noted on the POS) and see actually what happened on the video—no cycle counts for six months to discover the dishonest employee.

So, start getting these layers firmly in place. If you have some or all of them already, make sure:

• they are working
• you are verifying on a regular basis that they are working
• they are adequate for your specific needs as a retailer
• you understand them and can use all of their features
• you not only can use their features, you are using them

1.8 Gigapixel Camera on U.S. Army's Drone-Copter

The U.S. Army is set to deploy 3 Boeing A160 Hummingbird drones to Afghanistan beginning in July of 2012.

Contrary to it's predecessor the Predator drone, which is already in combat, the A160 Hummingbird is capable of vertical take-offs and landings.

What's more impressive is the 1.8 gigapixel camera that can track objects from above 20,000 feet.

Furthermore, it can track up to 65 enemies of the state at one time and does not require refueling for 12 hour periods.

Note: 1.8 gigapixels is equivalent to 1,800 megapixels.

310 mph Train Developed by Chinese

The Chinese have done it again with the development of a train that will reach speeds of 310 mph.

The train, which is being developed by CSR Corp Ltd., is designed to look like an ancient sword.

There are several similar projects in the works, one of which is 269 mph maglev train which will run from Anaheim to Las Vegas.

The Chinese have increased their efforts to expand their high speed rail network by investing a trillion dollars into it.