This freebie may be a big deal or just a splash in a large pond.  The real question is will you consider using iWork on your iPad?  What about for kids, will this be a suitable resource for their school work?

I for one have used SkyDrive which is the free version of Office (in the cloud), Google Docs and iWorks Pages (on iOS), the first two are competent word processors but unless Apple updates Pages and more than likely all of iWork I don’t think it will come even close to being able to play in the big leagues of the other two cloud services.  iWork looks very basic and unpolished at this point.  Granted it is a cloud version still in beta but the iOS app is not though still lacks a great deal of functionality and modern necessities.  Unlike Google Docs you can’t collaborate with others to input data into a spreadsheet or document.  This is 2013 soon to be 2014 and that’s a basic feature and necessity, at least it is to me.

My personal pet peeve in Pages on iOS and in the cloud is not being able to easily add and edit hyperlinks.  I’m writing this post in iWork (beta) on a computer browser and I’m unable to add a hyperlink to an old Phone.com blog post and on my iPad it’s a ridiculous experience to try to create hyperlinks.  I will have to complete writing this blog post by copying and pasting it into Google Docs add the hyperlinks to the post I’ve already written.  This is an injustice to the user and a sad state of affairs IF this is what’s going to be presented to the public this week.

I for one will stick to composing all of my documents in Google Drive and on the rare occurrence I’m not able to edit or email the document to a Microsoft Word user I’ll use my MS Office suite on my computer for this purpose.  I hope Apple will fix Pages because at this point I wasted the $10 I spent buying it on the iPad.  Maybe that will change this week, we will just have to wait and see.  

For more information click here.

With  Phone.com being a small business phone service I have SMB’s on my mind a lot.  What I got from the announcements is that the iPhone 5s is absolutely the most important device of the year for companies in terms of security.  Every week I read or hear another story about how a company lost it’s secret work because some employee left his or her phone at a restaurant or in a cab and inevitably they never thought they would so even though their IT department or boss mandates they utilize the passcode on their phone they thought they knew better and did not.  

To let you in on the news if you haven’t read or seen it yet somewhere, Apple has put a fingerprint scanner on their new flagship device.  This will enable folks to avoid the delay in unlocking their phone associated with using a password.  Now they can just place a finger on the home button and the unlocking magic happens.

What’s important is that now the thought is that users will be much more likely to protect their phone by fingerprint protecting it.  The hope is that now all the employees required to lock their phones (plus the ones that are not) will lock their phones and keep their data safe.  A recent report found that 79 percent of small businesses experienced mobile security incidents much of this can be avoided if your phone is locked, it’s a deterrent for petty crime which is the most common in terms of mobile phone and in turn data theft.

My hope is that many small businesses will realize that when it’s time to update their companies cell phones they’ll purchase iPhone 5s’s and take advantage of this new implementation of security technology and get their employees using is.  Don’t allow your company to become a victim when it’s so easily can be avoided.

On Friday, September 13 at 1pm Eastern, Jenny Dempsey (@jennysuedempsey) and Jeremy Watkin (@jtwatkin) will be hosting a Coffee And Customer Service Hangout with a couple of our awesome customer service representatives to discuss this topic from the perspective of a customer service professional.  You can tune into the hangout live on YouTube or go to CommunicateBetterBlog.com to see it in its entirety.  They will tweet a link to the hangout from @commbetterblog prior to the event.  We hope you can join us!

–

… and if you missed it live… here is the video: 

Younger workers may be fluent in technologies that their older counterparts may have never heard of.  On the other hand according to Mary Jane Copps a phone-use consultant: “For many people, it’s a lack of confidence that they’ll be able to say the right words in the right order in the right amount of time,”.  Those “older” employees are typically more comfortable on the phone. They may be faster on their “feet” in terms of answering questions because they didn’t grow up taking their time to respond to a text message, when someone called they had to talk to them at that moment.

Some small business owners have seen a decline in sales due to their younger Millennial employees sending sales pitches to potential customers instead of making a call.  It’s much harder to build a relationship and rapport with a client via email then it is by phone.  In a Wall Street Journal article last week “Jason Nazar, a 34-year-old Santa Monica, Calif.-based technology entrepreneur, says his company has missed out on potential hires because his 20-something employees schedule interviews by email, rather than phoning applicants” Jason was quoted saying “If you can do something more quickly and more efficiently by using older technology, then do it,”

Dana Brownlee a Corporate trainer explained in the WSJ article that one of her clients “recently had to teach his young employee what a dial tone was and explain that desktop phones don’t require you to press “Send.”  So pick up a phone next time it is beneficial to talk to the recipient.

The event will be sold out and will take place at the Howe Center – Stevens Institute of Technology. For More information click here.

With over 360 attendees TEDxNavesink will host dozens of talks by industry experts in addition to hosting several live cast performances from the TEDxCity2.0 conference taking place at the Times Center in NYC.

Talk highlights include presentations by Bagriella Levine, COO of the robotics company Protei – Cindy Zipf, Executive Director at Clean Ocean Action – Erika Casriel, an investigative jounallist having worked for publications such as Rolling Stone & Vanity Fair – Tereza Nemessanyi who leads Microsoft’s presence with Startups in the East – Avi Karnani CEO and co-founder of Thrive which was acquired by Lending Tree.

For more invormation about TEDxNavesink, schedule, and tickets visit: http://www.tedxnavesink.com/

About TEDx – In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, live speakers combine with TEDTalks video to spark deep discussion and connection. These local events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event.

Join Phone.com as we celebrate at the SBA dinner, October 9th 2013 at the NY Hilton.

For more information, please visit the NY Enterprise Report website or download the 2013 NYER SBA Invitation (pdf).

Startupcamp brings together 4 startups in the communications field that under strict time rules present their company to an audience of hundreds and address some tough (and not so tough) questions from an experienced panel of judges.

Phone.com was also the provider of the polling app that allowed the audience to text and vote for their choice of best of the 4 in real-time and projected onto the big screen.  It’s always nice to see that in action and proud of our team for doing it well.

At Phone.com we work with startups and with entrepreneurs of all kind all the time. We our-self are still a young and energetic company and to feel the spirit and excitement of innovation (in any industry and not only our own) is refreshing and that is what we all felt it in the room at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center.

Plus, when an event has a lot of good wine, beer and hot hors d’oeuvres and also a keynote by an industry leader (this time Yahoo’s senior VP Jeff Bonforte sharing some of Yahoo’s new vision and especially management style do’s and dont’s) StartupCamp  is certainly a cool place to be.

A few words on the startups presenting:

Perch- an “always on” video conferencing screen for offices and mobile workers positioned as the tool for improving culture in organizations. Perch is optimized for user experience,   auto correct outages etc.  It is always two way and has unique IP enabling mic optimization when a person is near it and speaking. In beta now but expected to be in the app store next week – free for teams and value add fee is the biz model.

TextGen- the claim: anything you can do with an IVR you can do with text.  Creating text between you and your customer. TextGen allows any number to receive texts. Will sell as an add-on to voice service.

Perzo – the question Prezo answers is: what is your personal (family and close friends) network? If LinkedIn is for business and Facebook for friends/social;  Where do you feel comfortable to share family private information?? Prezo brought together email, Facebook , presence and voice chat and other existing platforms and built a secure communications network for privacy can best be describes as a client that aggregate existing communication tools with a new slick UI.

Alice receptionist – subsidiary of winTech LLC – great virtual receptionist solution using two way video communications between the lobby of an office and the employees anywhere and in any office.  Uses motion detection or Identification etc. Also offer info like maps etc to the visitor. Market is enterprises and government etc and looking to channel partners.  Already have 60 paying customers worldwide. Price ranges from $5.5k to $8k or $12k much based on the hardware used.

I recommend you check out all of these solutions.

And the winner was… Well, all were winners (but Alice got the most votes)

We look forward to be at Startupcamp#9 in South Beach this coming winter.