Srcasm

So you’ve got your Android Phone (your G1 for now) and you are showing it off to all of your friends and all of a sudden someone with an iPhone walks up and starts showing off their on-screen keyboard.  Does that make you depressed?  I hope not because your phone rocks anyway!  But seriously, below are a few applications that give you an on-screen keyboard for your G1 pre-Google releasing the ability for OSKs to be integrated system-wide.

• For SMS
  • ChompSMS - This application is one of the best designed apps I’ve used on the G1.  It offers a clean SMS interface (almost identical to the iPhone app), takes over for the integrated app and offers large-font support for ease of reading.  One downside is it does not currently flip to landscape mode.  But still, definitely worth a look.
  • SoftKey/A7 SMS - While I love Chomp, A7 was first and so it needs a place on the list.  Many people have complained about A7 not working properly although when it was first released it worked fine for me.  The keyboard is awkward to type on and when I used it, it was landscape only.  This kind of defeated the purpose of the OSK for me.
• For the Web
  • QSearch - This app can be hard to find on the web, a search in the Android market can bring you to it.  It’s a cleanly designed app that enables an OSK that can launch Maps, YouTube, Google, Amazon, a dictionary search and allows a URL to be entered.  These are all helpful while trying to use the G1 with the keyboard closed.  The problem is, these have to be launched from within QSearch, not the normal browser or applications.  For frequent searching, it should be in the G1 owners must-have toolkit.
  • Steel for Android - I’ve wrote about Steel on my blog before.  It’s a replacement to the built-in web browser and it’s fantastic.  It’s fast, supports landscape and portrait mode and now supports tabbed browsing.  In addition, searching from the address bar and adding bookmarks right from there makes Steel look more like a mobile version of Chrome.  Very nice.
• For the Phone
  • SpellDial - SpellDial can be a replacement to the current dialer/contact application.  It allows dialing and locating of names through a T9 input method.  Simply tap the key that corresponds to the name once and you’re off to the races.  If you have a large number of contacts on your G1, SpellDial can be a lifesaver.

I have recently been playing with Google Sites quite a bit more than I previously had.  This is due to both curiosity (as to its uses) and the need from a few clients.  As I said before, at first glance it looks pretty lame but under the hood it could become your next Sharepoint system.

From customizing the look and feel to importing videos and photos, Google Sites allows users to quickly bring media to their personal sites and potentially to their internal company sites if used like a wiki.

Google allows its users to setup sharing preferences — Who can view, edit and control sharing are all available to all Google Sites users.  Some of the tips and tricks I’ve found that could be helpful follow:

• Changing colors - Google allows the customization of almost all of the colors within a site.  From background to text and borders and columns, you can choose almost any color of the rainbow with their easy-to-use color chooser.
• Importing Google Calendars - So you’ve got your site setup and now you want to share your internal company events?  No problem with Google Sites.  Setup a Google Calendar, list the events you want and then pop it right into your site.  No coding, just a simple link copy-and-paste.
• Mapping subdomains - Subdomains are the ability to put something before the top level domain.  ”www” in www.srcasm.com is a subdomain and that could be anything I want.  So if you have a few internal company sites that you’d like setup, just choose a different subdomain to keep the links short and people coming back.
• Mapping domains - Now that you’ve setup a simple test site, why not map a full domain to it?  If I wanted, I could move srcasm.com over to Google and allow people to view my site there instead of http://sites.google.com/a/srcasm.com/test.  Seems simpler, right?
• Granular sharing - As I stated before, Google allows you to choose who can view and edit your pages.  If it’s an internal site, let your whole team modify the page but if it’s client facing, maybe external text is better left for the PR people.
• Contact forms using Google Docs - Lastly, which I just found, is that Google Forms (a separate area in Google Docs) can allow you to setup a survey or a contact form in under 5 minutes.  These can then be placed onto your Google Site with a few clicks of the mouse or almost anywhere else on the web with a simple copy-and-paste.

These are just a few of the neat things that Google Sites allows users to do.  I keep finding new things to add to sites and new ways of making people and groups more efficient while using Google as both a wiki or an external company site.

I don’t know about all of you but I’ve been a Blackberry, full QWERTY fan for a long time.  Over the last four or five years, I’ve been through 8700s, 8100s, 8800 series and even the older 7290s on the Blackberry platform and I loved them all…  Then I got hold of the TMobile G1 with Android.  I found another phone that not only fit the bill but the OS took the cake as it was simple, expandable and open source (all three of which, I love).

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I recently started at my new company, CRM manager, LLC based in Malvern.  So far (yeah, its only been two weeks) I’m more excited about a job than I have been in a long time.  Besides being excited for the fact that the people who work there are genuine, smart and driven, I’m excited about the work we do.  I’m a Senior Consultant (I’m not a fan of titles) and this is what I do (I am a fan of this):

I connect products of the the Software as a Service (SaaS) world, monthly recurring, awesome products to the traditional systems that exist in most businesses today.  Tools like Salesforce.com and Google Apps can provide huge value to companies both small and large by providing a secure, low-cost and expandable system that can help a group go from spending a large portion of their time keeping their systems online to a group that can grow their business the way it should be — Without the hassles of hardware maintenance and Windows patching.

Why am I so excited about working in this world?  There are three major reasons in my mind to go SaaS:

• Saving money — This is what every business wants to hear and in the SaaS world it’s true.  By using software as a service products, you no longer spend money on server hardware, HVAC, redundant networking and internal IT staff to keep those servers online.  This is a win-win for both the SaaS provider and the business that’s using it.
• Saving time — Money isn’t everything.  With SaaS solutions, companies can save time by reorganizing their resources.  No longer does every system need an IT guy.  Now one IT guy can support a multitude of systems since they’re no longer on premises.  In addition, the SaaS provider should have the resources and know-how to fix their systems when they have issues.
• Going Green — This reason can be easily overlooked but it’s important in today’s world.  We are very quickly depleting our natural resources and killing our world.  I’m not a green-nut, I don’t preach about how we should all walk 4 miles to work, uphill both ways, but I am a fan of doing things that make sense.  Combining the first two reasons I listed with this one means that companies not only save money and time but they save the planet as well.

So why am I so excited to be working in the job I am?  This one is easy.  I get to take my knowledge from working in the traditional IT world with large data centers, redundant networks, late-night cut-overs and endless patches and combine it with my passion for the cloud/web world.  I get to connect these traditional systems (SAP, Oracle, Lotus Domino, Microsoft Exchange) together with the SaaS products of today (Google, Passpack, Salesforce) and provide a solution that everyone can be happy with.  That in turn makes me excited to do my job.

What do you think of the SaaS world?  Is it the future of IT?  Can it help to fix the environment?  Can it provide more up time in your business and more bang for your buck?

I know I sound like a broken record recently but I wanted to share yet another story about how customer service should work and does work with TMobile.

When I signed up for my account, I asked to have my Rohm and Haas corporate discount added.  I wasn’t sure it actually got done during the sign up process so I went online in search of the answer.

I looked at their My T-Moble site (which can be a bit confusing at times) and couldn’t locate the information.  I then went on and attempted to send them an email.  To my surprise, the site offered Live Chat with a rep.  I wish this would have popped up before I wrote them an email but that’s okay.

After a quick chat with the online representative, they gave me the number to the Personal Corporate Discount Migrations Department (their number is 877-453-8824 in case you were wondering).  There were no menu options and I got right through to Elizabeth H.  Within 10 minutes (most of which was spent talking about TMobile’s terms and conditions) she had added the discount, refunded my activation fees and credited me a $5 good-faith credit since I had to call in to have it added!

I know, $5 isn’t much but it’s the attention to detail and helpful nature of all the staff I’ve talked to that will keep me coming back for more.

P.S. - As a side note, I’m still loving the G1.  It’s handy, fast and just works.  Thanks Google, HTC and TMobile.  I would however liked to have waiting till Nov 19th where they are now offering free companion flight tickets to new sign ups.  It’s a neat promotion.