Fortune has covered Forrester Research’s latest report “Making iPhone Work In The Enterprise: Early Lessons Learned”. Whiplash-much? After all, it does come on the heels of previous reports including “The iPhone Is Not Meant For Enterprises”, “The Top 10 Reasons Why We Recommend That IT Not Support It”, and “Harold and Kumar Don’t Want an iPhone at White Castle”. Okay, we made that last one up. Barely.
This time the people who were crafting link-bait before there were any links to bait have seemingly decided the best bang for their buck is to pull a 180 and, instead of trouncing the iPhone in enterprise, actually support it. Sure, Apple’s increasing development of the OS, including iPhone 2.x and the upcoming iPhone 3.0 could have something to do with it, but even in IT it’s generally more about the artist than the tools. So to speak.
What does Forrester claim makes the iPhone so suddenly worthy?
Employees like them. “In this era of Technology Populism, where consumer IT is often better than enterprise IT, it sometimes just makes sense to give employees the freedom to choose the tools they want.”
They make mobile collaboration easier. “As anybody with experience on both iPhones and BlackBerry will tell you, the Internet feels natural on an iPhone and a like a chore on a BlackBerry.”
iPhone users need less hand-holding. “All three firms have set up wikis so that employees can support each other. ‘Our early adopters sometimes teach things we’d rather our iPhone users not know, but overall they provide better support than we can,’ said one person we interviewed.”
They can be cheaper in the long run. “In at least one case, an iPhone adopter found that the data plans for previous mobile devices were more expensive than the consumer plans AT&T is offering for iPhones. This company was able to reset its baseline plan pricing 30% lower for all phones because it supported iPhone.”
For an actual iPhone endorsement, some remaining corporate gotchas, and 3.0 redemptioms, check out Fortune’s coverage or throw $749 at Forrester (if you didn’t just blow that cash on an unlocked iPhone…)
Yahoo Messenger now has an iPhone app (iTunes link). It lets you IM your friends, see their status, share photos, share links, choose emoticons, and see recent conversations. It also lets you send free text messages by choosing a contact’s mobile phone number if they are not online. Replies come back to the app, which could save you a dime each time. When you leave the app to answer a call or do something else on your iPhone, your status is changed to idle. You can also sign out of the app entirely. (This is a workaround to the inability to have multiple apps running at the same time in the background on the iPhone).
New York, NY - Stolen Bases today announces “Postcards”, a new iPhone Application. Postcards is a free download, available now, from Apple’s App Store. Postcards, is an easy to use application that allows anyone to create and mail a physical postcard directly from an iPhone or iPod Touch.
Postcards has a simple elegant interface that allows the user to select-or take-a photo, click a button and have a 6″ x 4.25″ postcard sent via the U.S. mail to any U.S. address in the iPhone’s address book. Optionally a caption can be put on the front and a longer message on the back.
“In this digital age it’s especially touching to receive something tangible. We give each customer two free postcards to show off the high quality printing and finishing” says Michael Angst, CEO of Stolen Bases. “We have kids; our kids have grandparents; we use this app ourselves.”
To get a polished user interface, Stolen Bases teamed up with Big Stone Phone, maker of Twittelator Pro. “Postcards was a fun side-project. Tweets are instantaneous, ephemeral and you never know who is receiving them. Postcards are the perfect complement” says Andrew Stone, founder of Big Stone Phone.
Postcards is the first phone-specific application for the WYWH Postcard service, available to all mobile-phone users.
WYWH is a joint venture between Stolen Bases, LLC and netomat, a leader in mobile community solutions. Copyright 2009 WYWH. All Rights Reserved. Apple, the Apple logo, iPhone and iPod are registered trademarks of Apple Computer in the U.S. and/or other countries.
About Big Stone Phone
Big Stone Phone is the iPhone development branch of Stone Design. Big Stone Phone has shipped seven iPhone apps: Twittelator, Twittelator Pro, SoundBite, TalkingPics, MobileMix, iGraffiti and Gesture.
Dieter briefly interrupted his CTIA coverage to text us pretty much the headline you see above. What combination of Las Vegas and mobile phone pressers zapped iPhone controlled robot dreams into his cerebral cortex we don’t — and don’t want to — know, but the idea itself… Awesome indeed.
With the new iPhone 3.0 SDK, Apple has opened the door to peripheral access via both the 30-pin dock port and Bluetooth with zero-config. The above video is an ingenious work-around for direct control, but with the new functionality promised this summer?
Beaumont, Texas - Pocket Watch Software is proud to announce the release of ActivePrint Traveler for the AppleiPhone and iPod Touch. With the addition of ActivePrint Traveler to the Apple iTunesApp Store, we have now brought a new level of printing capability to iPhone users for just $3.99 (USD).
With ActivePrint Traveler on your iPhone all you need is an internet connection, something to print, and the free ActivePrint Traveler Helper Application (available for free) which can be run from a USB flash drive on any Windows PC. No juggling IP Addresses, port numbers, or network security. Simply print from your iPhone no matter where you go.
Features include printing photos from your photo album or device camera, contacts from the address book, web pages, plain text from a built in notepad screen, support for multiple copies, and both Portrait and Landscape paper orientation. Print via any internet connection no matter where you go to practically any printer.
How does ActivePrint Traveler Help you print from your iPhone or iPod Touch? It is probably the simplest mobile printing solution for your phone. So the short answer to this question is very easily.
Let’s say you’re like most of us who use mobile phones and you take photos everywhere you go using your phone’s built in camera. Wouldn’t it be great if you could easily have that photo printed while away from your home or office? With the ActivePrint Traveler installed on your phone you can. After you’ve taken the photo simply run the ActivePrint Traveler app and choose the “Photo from Album” option. Depending on the phone you’re using you will see a list of the photos currently stored on your phone, including the one you just took.
Just select that photo and then tell ActivePrint Traveler if you want multiple copies, or if you want it to print in portrait or landscape mode, and then send it. Your photo will then be safely and securely sent to our server where it will wait in your free account.
Later that day you return to your home, your office, or the hotel you’re staying at and run the ActivePrint Traveler Helper Application (available for free here) on a desktop or laptop with a printer. This program will then automatically download and print your photo from your account.
So it’s as simple as this:
Step 1: Take a photo
Step 2: Send it to our server to be printed
Step 3: Run the ActivePrint Traveler Helper Application on a PC to have your photo printed
And you’re not limited to just photos. You can print contacts from your address book, office documents (including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.), Adobe Acrobat PDF files, appointments from you calendar, web pages, and more. There are no IP addresses or port numbers to juggle. Just your email address and a password that you choose.
Founded in 2002 as Pocket Watch Software by Charles W. Teel, our company launched what has continued to be our lead product, ActivePrint. Charles developed the idea of ActivePrint as a college student after getting his first Pocket PC. In class he would write pages and pages of notes on his Pocket PC but would have to manually copy those files to his desktop computer and then print them one at a time. Frustrated, he looked for a software alternative to make this process simpler. But the closest thing he could find would require another $400 of hardware and software, and even then it wouldn’t fully automate the process.So Charles set out to develop ActivePrint, the first and only mobile printing application that gives users the ability to print right out of the box at an affordable price (even for college students). Pocket Watch Software continued to develop the ActivePrint technology to make it more effective. After reorganizing Pocket Watch Software to Pocket Watch LLC, we continue the legacy of making technology work for our customers.
