Google for Blackberry Gets Better

Google has recently overhauled the two applications I use on my Blackberry the most (Gmail and Google Maps) and introduced a new useful one (Google Mobile Updater) as well as made a few interface changes to the Blackberry Google Talk applet.

The new Gmail upgrade is the least polished of the overhauls. It’s a little more sluggish, although, thankfully, they’ve now included new bandwidth status messages to at least give you a hint of what’s going on and there are reports that the new interface uses less data, and by default sends an annoying “sent by Gmail for mobile” message (which can be removed by changing the settings). It also adds new features such as:

• new keyboard shortcuts which are vastly superior to traditional smartphone interfaces — well, other than the iPhone interface
• contacts interface which allows you to search through your Gmail contacts, call those you have listed phone numbers for (although you still can’t edit contacts details)
• secure connection — you now have the option to use a secure connection for all your Gmail interactions, which unfortunately slows the interface down and is hence not recommended
• drafts are something that I always thought were a no-brainer; unfortunately, these drafts don’t show up in your Gmail draft folder and you can only have one at a time
• notifications are something which make the Gmail update much more useful; before, when new messages were received there was no way for me to know when or how many. New mail messages in my work inbox would result in my Blackberry’s LED flashing, a vibration or tone (depending on what mode I set the device at), and a change in the inbox icon revealing that there were new messages. Gmail’s new applet has finally fixed this allowing one to customize exactly how Gmail will notify your Blackberry that new messages have arrived– by icon, by LED, by tone/vibration, etc.

Much more useful is the Google Maps upgrade which now includes a new feature called “My Location” for those of us too poor to pay for GPS service and a built-in GPS device in our phone (and who can’t stand to re-charge our mobile phone devices super-often as the GPS service drains your battery like crazy). My Location is a feature which allows Google Maps to estimate your location to within ~2000 ft radius (highlighted by a light blue circle surrounding the blue dot in the interface) by locating the cell phone tower that you are closest to. While this doesn’t let you pinpoint your precise location, it makes the app much more useful. Case in point: on my way to our office’s Community Impact Day, I got lost, and instead of having to find some clunky means to estimate my location in Google Map’s interface, I simply used the My Location feature to give me an estimate of where I was so that I could quickly see the local streets. The video below summarizes:

Not particularly useful, but visually more interesting is the Blackberry Google Talk application updating to allow for Google Talk icons to show up, and a restructuring of the menu structure to be a little more usable. Alas, neither the rarely-updated Google Talk desktop application or the Blackberry Google Talk application seem to be able to interface with AIM the way the Gmail client does.

Google also very recently introduced the Google Mobile Updater which now provides one central location from which to install and update Google software (except for the Google Talk applet which appears to be maintained by RIM/Blackberry rather than by Google). This is currently only for Blackberry devices and, taking a page from the new Gmail applet’s icon, also informs the device user of updates and new products by change of icon.

A Week in the Life of a Consultant

• Monday-Wednesday have been fairly difficult work days, as our team has been hard at work preparing for a meeting between our sexy client’s CEO and his top lieutenants — not the easiest way to start up work again after a week abroad in Japan.
• Today was much more laid back. We had an excellent team lunch (great sushi from a local place which I will definitely visit again), made even more excellent by the fact that the firm paid for it. Just before that, I had a pleasant chat with my last manager about my case-end performance review. To maintain work-life balance (Monday was the birthday of my teammate’s wife — which he had to miss because he was in the office until midnight), we were told to leave at 5 PM — an order I very happily carried out.
• Unfortunately, today was a very rainy day, which means that while it usually takes me 40-50 minutes to get home, it took me TWO HOURS to get home.
• Thankfully, tomorrow is our Community Impact Day, where our entire office will visit local non-profit charitable groups to help out — which is pretty incredible given that the firm is allowing those of us with no direct, immediate client needs to do something good for the community on company time. Following the community day, we are having a office-wide charity auction and trivia challenges and even a charity poker game all to raise money for some very worthwhile causes.

Shakespeare as a Consultant would tell it

Consultants are well-known for their love for putting things in slide form, so how would a consultant render Shakespeare’s sonnet “Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?” (Hat tip to S. Wang)

The original text:

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

The consultant version:

from Something Awful:

How slide-umentational!

(Edit: Although E. Suh and Shakespeare Geek both point out that these slides are pretty good — a real consultant would have bullet points all over the place)

Karl Rove as Consultant

Karl Rove would make a very interesting consultant. The man is smart and, no matter what you may think (or even what he may think) of his “clients” or his less savory tactics, he’s good at delivering results to his clients — mainly, getting them elected.

Traditionally, he’s been associated with Republican campaigns, and he’s been attacked enough by the more left-leaning that no self-respecting Democrat would ever take his advice, regardless of how effective it probably could be, but what if he were to say… consult for Obama about how to trounce Hillary?

Well, he might just say:

[S]top acting like a vitamin-deficient Adlai Stevenson. Striking a pose of being high-minded and too pure will not work. Americans want to see you scrapping and fighting for the job, not in a mean or ugly way but in a forceful and straightforward way. Hillary may come over as calculating and shifty but she looks in control. You, on the other hand, often come over as weak and ineffectual. In some debates, you do not even look at her when disagreeing with her, making it look as if you are afraid of her.

And, of course, some more “hard truths”:

Hillary comes across as cold, distant and conspiracy-minded, more like Richard Nixon than her sunny, charming husband. During the Clinton presidency she oversaw a disaster (the effort to sell Hillarycare) and argued hard against welfare reform, one of the promises on which he had campaigned. She is a hard-nosed competitor with a tough and seasoned staff.

But her record is weak, her personality off-putting and her support thin. If she wins the nomination it will be because her rivals – namely you – were weak when you confronted her and could not look her in the eye when you did. She is beatable but you have to raise your game. Iowa is your great chance for a breakthrough. Win it convincingly and you can build on it in the contests that follow. Lose it and victory becomes much more difficult.

And that combination of harsh truth, real advice, and emotionally inspiring message underscores the basic consulting pitch process:

1. Flatter the client
• Karl Rove: “You [Obama] did a smart thing organizing effectively in the early primary states”
• Partner: “Your firm has done great things under its current leadership.”
2. Light harsh truth
• Karl Rove: “Iowa is your chance to best her. If you do not do it there, odds are you never will anywhere. You are way behind her in most national polls.”
• Partner: “Your firm’s future profits are in danger.”
3. Bring back some hope
• Karl Rove: “Your press is improving, with your performance at the Iowa Jefferson-Jackson dinner a big help.”
• Partner: “But, you’ve already taken some good first steps to deal with it.”
4. Hard harsh truth
• Karl Rove: “[S]top acting like a vitamin-deficient Adlai Stevenson.”
• Partner: “Half of your organization is losing money quickly.”
5. Real Advice
• Karl Rove: “[F]ocus on the fact that many Democrats have real doubts about Hillary.”
• Partner (making a pitch): “You need to better segment your customer base.”
• Partner (report to client): “You need to fire X people from Departments A and B, and use these two strategies to target these two customer segments.”
6. Conclude on Emotional Inspiration
• Karl Rove: “Iowa is your great chance for a breakthrough.”
• Partner: “With these strategies we should see a jump in profits for the years to come.”