Thursday, June 25, 2009

Success and Dreams

Great little quip from MIC this month

Success is hard and often difficult to understand....

Paul Harvey says "you can tell your on the road to success, it's uphill all the way" So if your successful and you can't figure it out and your going WHEEE HOOOO (having a great old time), then your .....asleep, .. and when your wake up you'll have to go to the bathroom...

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Tuesday, June 23, 2009

iPhone 3.0GS User Agent Detection - Updated

Something not present in the beta's was the user agent string change.

Looks like the new one is

HTTP User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_0 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7A341 Safari/528.16

ZuCom staff will be developing and posting the update.

-ZuCom

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Friday, May 29, 2009

Mike & Harry - A Journey Within a Dream





Mike and Harry
A Journey Within a Dream.




It’s 4am, and the flight to San Francisco leaves in an hour. As I walk through the Airport it dawns on me how recluse the travel experience has become. Stowed away in our world of mobile entertainment most travelers would do better to simply not experience most senses. Airport announcements and creative displays fade into the soundtrack that drives our lives.

Throughout my morning the sense of how many travelers are “tuned out” to their surroundings was palpable, so much so that it made one think of ways we should adapt for the experience. Should we create visual alerts for travelers, perhaps SMS subscriptions’ for alerts at the airport of your choice? The possibilities are endless.

We each have our reasons for escaping into this world while we travel. Whether it’s a relegation to the sweet sounds of our favorite tunes or the avoidance of casual conversation, the comfort is one many enjoy. Today my reason was a book. I had recently picked up “Put Your Dream To The Test” by John Maxwell. In this book John asks you 10 questions that drive you into an introspective look at your own dreams and your motivation to achieve those dreams. It’s truly a great book, and I completely recommend it to all.

Pretty soon I looked up and noticed that the monitor had my flight listed as "boarding". Whoa, I thought!! What would someone with a hearing impairment do? Must they stand in front of that monitor just waiting to see that announcement? It was one of those moments. I boarded the plane (now without my headphones on) and took my seat. Thankfully my preference for a window seat was fulfilled. As I walked down the aisle I noticed that there were two 70 something gentlemen in the outside seats. What luck I thought. As I approached my seat I reached into my bag and grabbed my iPhone and prepared for the 5 hour flight to SFO. Quite, reflection I thought. When I reached the seat the taller of the two introduced himself, “hello, my name is Mike and this is Harry”. Pretty soon we had struck up a conversation. Mike and Harry were WWII veterans, on their way home to their “beautiful brides”. They had stories of being in the Navy and Air Force that were just bubbling to get out. Mike and Harry were on their return trip from a doubles Bowling Tournament where they took 2nd place with a combined score of 227. They had a 3 hour bus ride home from SFO to where they lived and had to hurry to catch the BART because they needed to make that bus ride. The next day the pair were competing in a 5k run and as Mike put it "we need to be well rested". Now I’ve known folks this age who have done things I’d heard on this flight. It’s uncommon but not unheard of to find those of advanced age having partaken in life passions such as high diving (Mike) or even skeet (Harry). Even president Bush went skydiving at the age of 80. There was just something in there attitude that was captivating. Not only did I rebuke the temptation of my iPhone, I actively sought their story for the full 5 hours. See Mike and Harry were blind. Not “partially sighted” as Mike put it but..... blind.

As I listened to their stories the irony of the situation became apparent. Here I was intentionally traveling with out the sense of hearing and identifying with two gentlemen who were disabled themselves. By the way if you ever meet Mike and Harry don’t use the word “disabled”. Mike will tell you that it’s not something they appreciate. These two have been everywhere, and through their travels have undoubtedly touched many lives.

The experience itself is one to inspire even the staunchest traveler to tune in to the rhythms of life over the beat in the headphone. Not that there’s anything wrong with that :-) . Now Mike and Harry continued on to their destination and are undoubtedly living their dream, with or without consideration of their situation. I arrived in SFO to meet a colleague from Denmark. Upon sharing the experience with my colleague he quipped "...if your not careful you can become a passenger of your own life, watching it rather than living it". It was with this I knew my journey was truly complete.

It makes one think………….. have you reached your destination like Mike and Harry?

-RZullo

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Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Alligators and Swamps

"when your up to your rear end in alligators, it's hard to remember your job is to drain the swamp"


--

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Tuesday, April 28, 2009

iPhone OS 3.0 (beta 3) Support

Beta 3 is much better than 1 but wow does it have some quirks. Several are reporting poor battery response and even some loss of charging capability.

-ZuCom

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WWDC SOLD OUT!

WWDC Sold out in just over a month. Apple I think it's time to spin this off into it's own entity...

-ZuCom

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Saturday, April 25, 2009

Maximum Impact Simulcast - Albany

ZuCom is proud to again sponsor the Maximum Impact Simulcast. This year Tony Blair and Jack Nicklaus are the featured guests. Information about the event can be found at http://www.albanyleadership.com.

We have been involved in these simulcasts for the past six years. The value from these events is unprecedented. Attendees get access to a premier collective of brilliant minds intent on communicating the art and science of whole leadership.


-ZuCom

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Sunday, April 12, 2009

Oracle Siebel CRM OnDemand - IPhone App

For the past 30 days or so ZuCom has evaluated the Oracle Mobile Sales Assistant iPhone Application. This application is FREE from the iTunes store but will require that you have access to an On Demand instance to connect.

Well designed, thought out, and priced just right, this application will be a requirement for anyone living in the Oracle application space. While we did find the application more useful than trying to use the web interface, we found that the smooth transmission of data can be an quirky on EDGE/3G networks. This comes into play when the application has to quit and may represent an area where Oracle (like many others) made design concessions due to the pull back of the original "Push" features. Thankfully Apple is offering this feature in the coming 3.0 iPhone OS and many of us will be eager to upgrade to these new capabilities for transmission of data.

Overall the recommendation is "thumbs up" on this application as any ability to connect back to the office from the road is a boon for productivity and convenience.


-ZuCom

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