The Nexus One has a slew of new features (like the new Android 2.1 OS, phone wide voice search, incredible multitasking support, and a full multitouch display) that a lot of other Android devices on the market don’t have and, in terms of speed and capability, really stands up against the iPhone’s (the 3GS and iPhone 3G included) on the market today.

Now, I’ve only had the device for a few days, but I can definitely say that my mobile productivity has increased greatly since switching from the iPhone already! The Nexus One is one of (if not) the fastest mobile phones available for purchase, with 512 MB of RAM and ROM and a 1 Ghz processor powering it, and because of this, and the Google Android OS’s ability to run multiple applications at at time, I’ve been able to scream through emails while surfing the web, listening to music, staying up to date on Facebook and Twitter, and taking notes in class, all at the same time, whereas on the iPhone I would have to jump from one app to the next individually, thus slowing down my work pace greatly (especially only on an iPhone 3G).

Another thing I will say is that the Google ecosystem just really seems to open up once you connect an Android device to your Google Account – suddenly things like Picasa, Google Voice and Maps, and so many other apps have new functionality and plug right into apps you’d already be using anyways. Its just a really easy and fun experience overall, and the way Android automatically backs up everything you do on the web for you, without any action on your behalf at all, is really convenient and great for when your always on the go.

I’ll leave you with a quick video of the Nexus One, and once I’ve spent a good amount of time with the phone I’ll definitely let you know if this device could truly be the toe-to-toe competitor of the iPhone we’ve all been waiting for!

The Google Nexus One – Unboxing And Quick Hands On Video

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First, let me point you to the following Engadget article: http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/10/editorial-taking-the-iphone-3gs-off-the-job-market/

Now that you’ve read this, you may understand what this blog post is about. For the past 9 months I’ve been a fairly satisfied iPhone user, and I’ve always plugged the iPhone as being a business-centric device.

Now, let’s refer back to that Engadget article. Mr. Topolsky, in his post, brings to light the most upsetting flaw in the iPhone: it’s inability to multitask. Now, with the release of the iPhone 3.0 firmware Apple has tried to diminish the lack of this feature by adding it’s Push Notification system. Unfortunately, what is even more upsetting to me here is that developers are either having an incredibly hard time utilizing this Push system or they aren’t.

Or they can’t. There are just too many things that cannot work in a Push environment. What are Push Notifications? Basically, whenever an internet based application like an IM client or newsreader gets a new update or message, it pushes the message to you (for example, you’d recieve a message whenever you got a new IM).

But, say, how does an Internet radio application use this push method to continue playing music? Or a blogging application to keep your draft open while you refer to an email?

What it comes down to in the end is the apps that can have their background tasks pushed, and those that can’t. And there are a lot of applications that can’t, and that is one of the key reasons I’m beginning to doubt the iPhones business capibility as well.

Especially during the summer, when I’ve been working 10+ hour dayshifts at work, coming home, eating and heading out again, I’ve been finding it incredibly infuriating to use the iPhone as a business device.

For example, I wrote a blog post about the social mediasphere a little while back for my personal blog that I will soon be posting here on this blog, and, as I was on my break at work and sitting outside enjoying a cup of coffee, I was naturally on my phone, in iBlogger, typing away. About 5 or 6 paragraphs into the post my girlfriend sent me a rather important text message, but iBlogger doesn’t have a draft save option (bad design choice by them, but Apples folly nonetheless in this case). In order to reply to her text, I’d either have to finish the post or delete it and start again. I took a half and half way out and copied the entire post into the built-in Notes application so I could work on it at anytime now, but again, this was very irritating. Had the iPhone been multitask-capable, I simply would’ve been able to leave iBlogger open, jump into Messages, text my girlfriend back, and go back to my writing.

Another example just occured today: my client and I were conferring over Facebook and I was out of the house. It was of the essence I stay in contact with him throughout the day, and I had emailed myself notes to pass along to him during our discussions. I began typing a message to the client in the Facebook mobile app but forgot one of the points I had to send him, so I copied and pasted the whole thing into Notes and continued working there, flipping between Notes and Mail. But then I needed to refer back to his message, but I can’t copy and paste his message at all. And everytime I wanted to look back at his long message, I’d have to relaunch the app, watch it hang for a minute, then reload the message, read, hop out, go back into Notes, back into Mail, repeat. This process of application surfing, believe me, is a very painful one.

This is, by far, and all firmware bugs aside, Apples greatest mistake and the iPhones greatest weakness. Unfortunately for the end user, the iPhone is the only phone out there with the applications to truly enable mobile businesses. I honestly don’t think I could live without the ability to access the apps I have on my iPhone, but the way in which I use them together doesn’t make sense.

The Palm Pre, the most reknowned iPhone competitor, has an app store similar to Apples, a weaker developer base, but multitasking. If multitasking doesn’t end up on the iPhone soon, the Pre will inevitably overcome the iPhone with it’s easy and seamless multitasking system, but until it’s developer community grows exponentially, the iPhone’s app base is a thousandfold stronger then Palms.

So it really comes down to what your willing to deal with; those that want multitasking but are willing to give more to do less can get the Pre, and those that are willing to endure lots of headaches to accomplish their business on the go can choose the iPhone.

For now I’m sticking with the iPhone, but when it comes time to get another phone in 2 years time, I’m not so sure I’ll be taking that well designed and all so prestigious Apple path again.

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Evernote is the solution to this fatal flaw. Evernote is a simple to use yet extremely detailed and in depth application available for free in the App Store. Evernote allows you to take notes, jot down thoughts and memos, take and tag photos of anything you want to record, and even record audio memos – and the best part is that its all synced back to Evernote’s website for sharing and later access. There’s even a desktop application so you can read and compose new notes right on your laptop or desktop machine and then take all your memos and schedules along with you on your iPhone.

Evernote’s mobile interface for the iPhone is clean and simplistic – after logging in with your free account your greeted with handy and sometimes nifty tips to help make the most of the app, and a simple initial interface to get started with note taking. From this menu you can choose to compose a text note, take a snapshot or upload a photo already on your phone, or record a voice note.

Composing notes is simple and straightforward – you enter your text, a title, and then you can tag the note. Evernote allows everything you upload to be tagged so that you can search it later using its very powerful note search – you’ll never be too far away from the note your looking for, even with lots of them in your “Notebook” (Evernote’s way of storing notes).

Evernote is simply the best way to store your notes – with options like the ability to post notes to Evernote from Twitter and clip text from any website with a bookmarklet – it can’t be beat when it comes to jotting down whats important to you on the go.

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When you first open Yammer, you’ll be asked to present an email and password, usually provided by the owner of your Yammer network (a network in Yammer is made up of the people you work with, which means your updates are privatized and secure). After logging in, you’ll be presented with the latest updates from the members of your Yammer network, and the ability to update your Yammer status.

On top of being able to update and read other’s updates, you can also see all the members of your network, change your settings, and paginate through older updates.

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The first time you open WordPress for iPhone you’ll be presented with a simple dialog for adding WordPress powered blogs. Blogs hosted by wordpress.com are very simple to set up, whereas you may have to do some tweaking to get your personal WordPress hosted blog setup and working.

Blogging with WordPress for iPhone is simple and easy. Clicking the familiar looking Compose icon (the same as the one in Apple’s Mail app for iPhone) will create a new blank blog post.

The layout of the new post screen is clear and allows you to create a title, tags, and even select the catagories on your blog to add the post to. You can also change the publishing status of the post, and choose either local draft (on your iPhone, doesn’t work too well right now though), draft (on WordPress), Pending Review, Private or Published.

Typing your blog post (despite lacking an easy way to format your text) is simple, and in addition to that, you can also upload Photos that can be easily added to your post, password protect your published post, change the posting date, and even do a live preview of your new post, including your blogs theme.

My Thoughts: Despite being easy to use, clear and concise, the app does have some flaws. First, without being able to easily select and/or format text, if you want your blog posts to have some style, you’ll have to go back and edit with a computer (not a huge deal though). Also, not all of the themes supported by the WordPress engine and WordPress.com load in the live preview, which is a downer because you can’t get a real idea what the post will look like. Saving files as local drafts pretty much has a 1 in 10 chance of working the next time you go to edit the file, and thats a real downer since the chances of you having an internet connection all the time in order to connect and get your drafts is not always a certainty.

Overall, I give this app an 8 out of 10 – it could be the best way to update your blog on the go right now, but its bugs definitely hinder what this really great app could be.

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Well, for starters, there are some things the iPhone can do that the Blackberry can’t. The biggest of these is the 3rd party apps; coding for the Blackberry is done in Java, a complex and difficult language to use, whereas the iPhone has a simple Software Development Kit (SDK) available to anyone for free that nearly anyone can pick up and learn in a couple hours (note that while the SDK is free, a fee of $99 must be paid to be added to the list of App Store developers and to actually submit your app to the app store). This allows for great programs, such as Evernote, Oracle, etc to the ported for the iPhone in a short amount of time. The app store gives the iPhone a huge heads up over the Blackberry, simply because apps to boost productivity and simplify your mobile workflow can be designed for the iPhone in much less time and a lot less money.

Despite the positive qualities of the iPhone and the massive potential locked in the app store, the Blackberry simply does some things better or faster then the iPhone currently can. One of these things is email. All small business owners know that email is one of your primary forms of communication with clients and employees in this day and age, and the Blackberry, for years now, has simply been able to manage your inboxes in more powerful ways then the iPhone can. Regardless of the fact that the iPhone can display full HTML emails, whereas the Blackberry can’t in some cases, the Blackberry’s inbox management tools completely trump those of the iPhone, which is a huge downside.

Another thing the Blackberry has always been good with is stability. Simply because their apps are painstakingly written in a difficult language by professional coders and scaled specifically for the Blackberry, the apps running on that platform are infinitely faster and less crash or hang prone then iPhone apps tend to be. Even key components of the iPhone, such as SMS and Safari, cause the unit to crash or lag for long periods of time before they can be used, which raises the question of how these apps have been passed for official use on the device. Along with the instability of core applications built into the iPhone OS, most 3rd party apps are prone to lag and crashes as well. I speak from experience when I say you’ll be lucky to survive a single day on the iPhone without seeing an app crash.

The reasons for these problems is still unknown, but it is rumored Apple is working on a fix slotted for a September release, that will also bring more new features such as background notifications to the OS.

One last point I would like to discuss is security. The Blackberry has always been a corporate standard and therefore, its security systems are much stronger and built to last. The iPhone, despite its security mechanisms, such as the unlock code and autolock timer, has recently been bashed with numerous security flaws that allow a malicious user to bypass the unlock code system entirely and gain complete access to Safari, your Mail, and your entire Address Book, simply by pressing the Emergency Call button and tapping Home twice. Issues like this are almost unheard of on the Blackberry, and some of these issues are massive letdowns for small business owners looking to utilize some amazing 3rd party apps for their business.

My conclusion, however biased I am about Apple products, is a clear one: the Blackberry is still the best and the most secure means of being productive on the go. The iPhone may look cool and have the app store, but its constant bugs, lag, crashes and security flaws turn me off of using this device to keep in contact with clients and other business contacts or for working on the go. Hopefully Apple’s future Software Updates, which they are good at providing to fix issues like this, will fix some of the iPhone’s big problems, but until the security vulnerabilities and slow device performance is fixed, the Blackberry will still be my number 1 choice for small business mobility.

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With the release of the new iPhone 3G and, along with it, the new iPhone & iPod Touch Firmware 2.0, running your small business on the go just became easier. So, instead of just carrying that flashy iPhone around with you, why not put it to good use? This blog hopes to show you some of the most useful apps available from Apples App Store that are sure to maximize your mobile productivity.

1. Mocha VNC Lite (free): This application, despite your field of business, is a surefire timesaver. Mocha VNC let’s you remotely access and control any configured PC or Mac, allowing you to check a file you might have forgotten, print a document on the run, make changes to a spreadsheet or database from a clients place, etc. The uses of an app such as Mocha are nearly limitless because it effectivity places you behind your computer, even if you miles away. Despite a limited keyboard and the ever constant need to pan around your desktop using your finger, this app is a must have for the on-the-go business owner in my books.

2.Nexonia Expenses (free): Nexonia’s iPhone app let’s you manage expenses, take photos of receipts, submit them for approval, and track your businesses funds. Note that while the app is free, the service requires an account with Nexonia, which is available from their site along with free trials. Nexonias app makes it easy for the small business owner or his/her employees to keep a universally synced record of where funds are going and when, in a clever and useful way. Hands down, this is probably the best expense management application available to date, and serious business owners should definitely consider a subscription for their group.

3. Stagehand ($7.99): This app, despite not being a free one, is definitely handy to have. Stagehand allows full control of any Keynote ’08 presentation. During presentations, the slide notes are displayed on your iPhone or iPod Touchs screen in large font for easy viewing. Turning the device on it’s side displays the current slide onscreen, allowing you to flip to another slide or use various graphics and highlighting methods to interact with the audience. This app, despite sometimes responding slowly to highlight gestures, is the perfect companion for a business owner with a Mac looking to pitch a product or idea with a nice, clean Keynote presentation, and is easily worth the $8 for the simplicity it brings to the presentation process.

4. Evernote (free): Evernote is the only way to take notes, memos, voiceclips, and snapshots on the iPhone and iPod Touch. Evernote is a free app and a free service which allows you to instantly sync all your notes, memos, voiceclips and pictures across all your computers (Mac and PC) and mobile devices. Notes and memos can be edited on your device immiediately after creation and any text available within your pictures is interpreted by the program and can then be searched through. Evernote makes everything from keeping track of upcoming events to remembering to finish a project super easy and super fast. Business owners will love Evernote; I know I do!

5. WordPress (free): Of course, the one and only WordPress is available for the iPhone and iPod Touch as well. The mobile WordPress app allows access to wordpress.com blogs as well as custom installs on your own servers and websites, and is easy to setup. Simply enter your blogs URL, your username and password, and your done; you’ll be blogging in seconds! WordPress for iPhone has all of the essential blogging tools you’ll need, from local draft saves, to post previews, to picture uploads from your photo library or your iPhone’s camera. Definitely a must have for the small business owner with a corperate blog, or the blog happy employee in us all.

Well, that’s it for now! I hope these tips help you to get the most from your shiny Apple beauty, just like I am.

Until next time!

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