You are invited to participate in the following quick poll - do you encrypt your computer or mobile device?

Please make your selection below - if you cannot see the poll question please answer the poll here.

Why am I asking this question? I will follow up with my reason plus the results in a week or so, depending on the volume of responses. Thanks for participating, and please pass along to friends and colleagues. Also, feel free to add any additional thoughts in the comments of this post.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni, Founder and President of Web consulting firm Dunkirk Systems, LLC.

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Build • Mobile Technology • Technology • (2) Comments • Permalink

The blue skies and green pastures of Ribbit Mobile are no longer, but if you can’t live without mobile voicemail to text, you can get it from SpinVox through uReach.

(Note the above image of the Ribbit Mobile home page was changed to grayscale by me)

Ribbit Mobile was a service for translating voicemail messages to text and delivering that text message with an audio file of the voicemail message, and those messages would be delivered by email and SMS. For myself, I have used similar services for over 4 years, and having the luxury of reading the text of a voicemail when you don’t have the opportunity to dial in to listen (e.g. when you’re in a meeting), not to mention the ready-access archive of messages, was priceless.

And that was just the case with Ribbit Mobile – they were not charging for “beta” this service for the 2+ years I used it. Near the end of last year I recall getting a survey from them on how much I would be willing to pay for the service. Then in January of this year I got an email saying Ribbit Mobile would be shutting down altogether the end of January, and there was no alternative. Ribbit itself as a company would still be around as they offer other services, like an Android app for voicemail and an add-on to Salesforce.com. The service was still running for a couple of weeks after the announced date, and went down altogether on February 16.

As I said, this was a type of service you could get used to. I also have a similar voicemail to text service through Vonage which I use for my business phone. Prior to Ribbit Mobile I was part of the SpinVox consumer beta program which I talked about previously here at The Hot Iron. Interestingly, around the time SpinVox announced they were dropping their B to C service (they power Vonage’s voicemail to text) Ribbit Mobile came on the scene, and I was able to switch over with very little time without this type of service.

In between SpinVox and Ribbit Mobile I briefly used SpinVox through uReach, a company offering virtual voice, email and office solutions used by many small businesses. When Ribbit Mobile went away, I looked into see if it was still offered, and it took a call to uReach to find the “hidden” URL for the service (they offer it, but it’s not linked from their main Web site), and by visiting ureach.com/spinvox one can sign up for the voicemail to text service for $9.99/month plus usage fees for large volumes of voicemail. The uReach offering is not as robust as Ribbit’s, and for some reason breaks up voicemails when sent by SMS into several messages of 30 second lengths. But you can still get an email with the message text and audio file attached.

Am I the only one who will miss Ribbit Mobile? Am I the only one who uses voicemail to text? Please let me know in this post’s comments, as I know nobody else personally who uses, and loves, this type of service.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni, Founder and President of Web consulting firm Dunkirk Systems, LLC.

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Build • Business • Mobile Technology • Technology • (5) Comments • Permalink

Most of my career has been in a consulting role. Whether working as an independent or for a consulting firm, I have had the great fortune to work with a wide variety of clients across many verticals.

But why have I traveled so far along the consultant path? Many people become consultants by choice, where others either back into it or take it as a second option.

For me, it began in high school.

There is a picture of my high school mug here, not because it is in remarkably great shape after all these years, but it shows when I graduated, and that is solely for the context of the type of technology I was working with when I took on my first consulting gig.

As I had been programming in BASIC since junior high (a story in itself for another post) by my senior year in high school I was not only quite good at it, but I was known as one of the few people with proficiency. This led to the assistant superintendent of my school system, whom I knew and his sons were also classmates, asking me to write a program to collect survey responses and generate a report with the results of the survey. Remember, this was the mid-80’s, and this is what you needed to do to get such a task done. And I used a Digital PDP-11 minicomputer to do it.

His request, however, was not a favor, as I would be paid for it. Sweet! So I went right to work, first writing the program to collect the data, which would be entered by another classmate who was also being paid for her time. Once that was done I went to work on the report itself – I had the desired format, then I mocked up the report with fillers, then added the computations from the survey data in the database. Knowing my work wouldn’t be perfect, I did many manual calculations of the data to ensure the report data was accurate. When all was done, the school committee got a 2-page report with the survey results. (I know I kept a copy of the survey, and if I ever find it, I will post a PDF of it.)

Of course there was a change in ownership of the project – what consulting gig is without that? The project started in the fall, but at the end of the year the assistant superintendent was leaving the school system. As the project was to be completed in the spring, he told me the superintendent would be my point of contact, and the one who would pay me. Where I didn’t think much about it, I did when it was time to collect my pay, as the superintendent, in his first year on the job in this school system, was a shrewd cost-cutter. He did things like take over the school buses and managed them himself, and after I graduated he even reduced the size of the nearly floor-to-ceiling windows by 80% to save energy. I was worried I wouldn’t get anything at all, especially as I had absolutely nothing in writing!

Shortly after the survey was delivered I asked to meet with him about payment. The conversation went something like this… keep in mind it’s a few years later:

Superintendent – “So Mike, you were promised to get paid for creating the survey?”

Me – “Yes.”

S – “ Well, how much do you want to be paid for it?”

M – “$250.00”

S – “Why that much?”

M – “Well, um, the girl who did the data entry got paid $50, and I certainly did 5 times as much as work as she did.”

S – “How about $200.00?”

M – “It’s a deal.”

Now there’s some negotiating, and not too bad for a kid who not only hasn’t ever negotiated anything more than staying up late to watch Saturday Night Live, going up against a man with w PhD.

It would me several years before I used my computer skills for profit again, and that was in college and in exchange for pizza (yet another story for another time). From thereon in, and with a college diploma, it was all about contracts, invoices and payment or salary. We all start someplace, and my place was very close to home.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni, Founder and President of Web consulting firm Dunkirk Systems, LLC.

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Technology • Web Development • (2) Comments • Permalink

On their own, business and sports are great areas of conversation in social media. Mix the two, and as it can be in real-life, it can be a tricky area to be in. Do it well, though, and it can go a long way.

This is what happened with me and a couple of others this past weekend, and related to the NFL’s AFC Divisional Playoff game between the New England Patriots (my team, which you may have gleaned from a post or 2 here on The Hot Iron) and the Denver Broncos. A couple of Broncos fans stepped up and offered bets with payouts via social media, and I jumped at the chance. With the Patriots handily beating the Broncos 45-10, My friend Glenn Letham and Jared from my favorite domain registrar Name.com paid me back this week via their blogs.

Glenn Letham

I met Glenn a few years back at Nokia OpenLab in Helsinki, Finland. Hailing from Vancouver, Canada – and formerly from the Denver area – Glenn is a journalist, speaker and expert in geographic information systems (GIS) and location-based services (LBS) and anything Geo for that matter. Though we have only seen each other in person a couple of times – once at the Nokia E73 Mode Beach Party (as pictured) and when he was in Chicago for a conference, Glenn is a great friend and collaborator, and always has time to answer a question or offer advice and support.

Add to that list a good sport, as he wrote a nice post on his blog, The AnyGeo Blog, about not only the Patriots win but a nice nod to 5 years of this blog. Had I won I had to write a post here about the Broncos. You can read that post on his blog here from this link.

Name.com

The fact that I made a bet on the Patriots/Broncos game with a Denver-based, globally renown domain name registrar is not unusual or surprising to me. From day 1 of my business relationship with Name.com, it has always been about people. I met my initial contact with them years back at a domain conference, and throughout the 4+ years working with them a person was always available to help if I needed one, in addition to them being proactive in offering assistance.

While I was tweeting with Glenn about the game last Friday, Jared the community manager at Name.com chimed in and offered to bet. Had I won, my Patriots fan Web site, GoPats.com, would have to pay homage to the Broncos. As I won, Jared had to go out and get and wear a Tom Brady jersey and post the picture on the Name.com blog. As a fellow bald guy I can say the colors work well for him, though I don’t think he quite sees it that way.

I tip my hat (which happens to be from the Patriots win in Super Bowl XXXVI) to Glenn and Jared and thank them for not only holding up their end of the bet, but in showing great examples of how tastefully done niche engagement on social media can be done well.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni, Founder and President of Web consulting firm Dunkirk Systems, LLC.

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Blogging • Business • Social Media • Thrive • (0) Comments • Permalink

On December 30, 2011, with no fanfare, this blog – thehotiron.com – turned 5.

As I write this it is almost 2 weeks later, and only fits with how the year was for the blog. Where I had high hopes in the beginning of the year 2011 was an interesting year to say the least. Where it had tremendous highs for me, it also presented many challenges that, in the end, affected the quality of The Hot Iron.

For 2012 I will not make such grandiose predictions so not to promise what I can’t deliver. I am taking a more grounded approach, going back to the “roots” of what The Hot Iron has been – tech, business and a few diversions – and using it as a medium to share my background and experience, as a way to let people learn more about me as I go forward in my career.

Will you join me? I hope it’s a fun ride!

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni, Founder and President of Web consulting firm Dunkirk Systems, LLC.

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Announcements • Blogging • Strategize • (0) Comments • Permalink