Category: Brosix

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Brosix

Portable Messaging and More.

Portable Messaging

It is becoming quite apparent that smart phones are the wave of the future – at least smart-er phones that is. Portable messaging has almost taken the place of voice chatting for many young folks. Almost every messaging program now has a portable version – Brosix Enterprise Messaging is no exception!

Check out Brosix.com for more.

The great thing about Brosix is that it offers excellent security options, collaborative features, and the like. Check it out and see if you prefer Brosix Portable Messaging to portable versions of gChat, AIM, and others.

Brosix Free Trial

Brosix also offers a free trial if you go to Brosix.com which is priceless for businesses. One of the reasons I would suggest using out the Brosix free trial for your business is that it can help test out the client for your older folks who sometimes oppose new technology more than they should.

With my parents, for example, they opposed email for years. Then last year my Mother had me set her up with an email account now we email daily, it has brought us closer together. I imagine many older folks who might resist enterprise messaging would change their tunes if they tried it out!

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Apple Brosix Twitter

Tweetie for Mac!

One of the problems that people have with Twitter is that User Interface (UI) is just not that appealing to a lot of folks. It also doesn’t make keeping up with conversations particularly easy. Luckily for Mac users, at least, Tweetie recently launched. It is the latest in a long line of third party app’s for Twitter which improve upon the user experience of the fast growing service.

Wired probably put it best when they said, “Developed by AteBits, Tweetie’s interface is so clean you would think it came straight out of Apple headquarters.”

I highly recommend checking it out.

One of the questions that I have for Twitter is when they are going to take a page from the third party developers and improve upon the UI themselves. Their are a number of changes that they could make which would make the learning curve less stout for new users. My great fear is that they’ll rely on their explosive growth to the detriment of the service – ie: they’ll let the experience stagnate because users are joining.

Having done work for Brosix I know that people want a clean looking UI. Thankfully the Brosix Enterprise Messaging team is hard at work on future editions that will not only work better, but they’ll look better too!

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Apple Brosix General Twitter

Apple to Buy Twitter? Why?

According to TechCrunch Apple might be in the process of negotiating with Twitter to purchase the service. This is the hot tech rumor of the day, generating serious buzz. Twitter, of course, being the most buzz worthy service of the moment online. This, as always, has lead to serious discussions about who might purchase the service since buzz worthy services online usually end up being sold – with the notable recent exception of Facebook.

Apple and Twitter joining together would be the stuff of online fan boys dreams. The two companies that internet/computer geeks love the most joined together? The stuff of their dreams.

The question is why would Apple purchase Twitter?

Twitter offers buzz, sure, but Apple always has buzz. It could be that they want to purchase Twitter to generate a little renewed hype in case of Steve Jobs stepping down permanently – but that seems a little far fetched, especially since Twitter would allegedly cost Apple $750,00,000.

Twitter does not offer revenue to Apple although it does offer a large and growing user base.

The question is how will Twitter find revenue? It won’t be in the enterprise field, at least not in terms of enterprise internal communications. Rumored sources of revenue are sentiment engines – aka a complex search offered by Twitter to companies to see who is saying what – and sponsored corporate accounts.

Enterprise communications are often slow to make the leap after all. Email has made the transition but instant messaging still lags behind even though enterprise messaging services such as Brosix offer encryption, collaborative tools, and the like. It will be interesting to see how Twitter unfolds.

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Brosix General

The Enterprise

Why does enterprise messaging matter?

In 1960 when you showed up at a new office for your first day of work you would probably get a typewriter or a Secretary with a typewriter, notepads and pens, and perhaps a telephone.

In 1995 you might have received a computer, in 2000 you almost certainly would have. You would probably received an extension number or direct line for your phone and an email address by 2000.

It is now 2009 and we haven’t gone far beyond that.

In an age when nearly everyone is using instant messaging at home – why hasn’t it become more popular in the workplace?

Some people view it as a time waster, some IT departments do not want to set up another server or add an Instant Messaging client to their server, other companies view it as too expensive or do not see the need.

I personally believe that their thinking is wrong. Brosix Enterprise Messaging allows you to control your network, they host the server for their clients, and it is very cost effective. Check out the Brosix Blog and Brosix website for more.

It is high past time that new employees begin receiving IM screen names as well!

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Aardvark Brosix Real Time Search Twitter

Trying Aardvark

I received a vark.com invitation today – Vark being short for Aardvark which is the hot new startup in the search field. The concept is simple, yet it is something that the big boys of search have yet to tap into – that being real time search within your network of friends. Services such as Twitter offer a similar opportunity and could very well take off and leave Vark in the dust – but the problem with Twitter is that those searches can be impacted by spammers as they begin to become more common in the service.

I tried out Aardvark for a while today and it is a cool service – it will become even more useful if my friends join, which is kind of the point, but the other cool feature of Aardvark is that they farm out the questions to other users as well.

Aardvark represents one of the reasons that Brosix Enterprise Messaging is something that I recommend to my friends and colleagues. I use Brosix regularly because it offers real time features and capabilities that email doesn’t offer and it one-up’s telephones because it offers a number of features including multi-tasking (ie-talking to more than one person), screen sharing, whiteboard, etc.

Check out http://www.brosix.com and also keep an eye on Aardvark when it goes public!

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Brosix

Controlling Networks

In life we can not always exert control over our social network. You can have a private phone number, yes, but telemarketers can still get the number often times. You can allow calls to go to your answering machine or not answer but you will still have to hear the phone ring.

You can have spam filters and such set up on an email address but you can not necessarily control who emails you. Email lists are often sold, despite what anyone might say about “not selling the list”. Further unless you are a better person than I and can avoid responding to emails you can not control who emails you when.

In social networks you can typically choose who friends you and who doesn’t – but with services like Twitter you can’t pick who follows you and who doesn’t unless you private your account which often leads to few following you at all.

The great advantage to having your own instant messaging network – from a service such as Brosix (check out http://www.brosix.com for more information on the service) – is that you can pick and choose who is on your network and therefore pick and choose who can contact you.

That is why I recommend products like Brosix to businesses!