zhiing : blog

Jon’s Report - June Wrap Up

Published

on June 30, 2009

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June’s been a great month for zhiing and for the ZOS team. We have had a great release of zhiing on all the smartphones and are learning about what the users want everyday. We even released the ability to zhiing into twitter on the Android phones (the rest will be coming soon). I am actually zhiinging to twitter (twiinging) a little too much. What will be interesting to see, is, how the world will change, as location becomes more a part of the living twitter stream. Just look what’s happening when someone tweets “help.” Now add a location to that.

We are getting more and more traction from companies looking to use our platform. Companies wanting to build social networks, garner locations for applications, create geo-databases, advertising, emergency routing and notifications, parenting, the works. It’s given zhiing and ZOS a lot of opportunity. Now is the time for us to prioritize as we move forward. Never hesitate to call if you want to build that killer location based application.

Today with the upgrade of Firefox 3.5, we have upgraded the browser plug-in dialogue box. You may need to get it off the zhiing.com website. Coming soon is our new dialogue box and two-way chat from browser to mobile. Here’s your free family friend finder! Many developers have requested the code to put the dialogue box onto addresses within their own sites. If you would like this code, it is available at ww.zoscomm.com at the industry solutions, web developer’s page.

That’s it for now. I am off to run the Santa Barbara Reef and Run with the ZOS Team.
zhiing me!

Jon at zhiing

Jon’s Report

Published

JZiskind

on May 27, 2009

in Uncategorized

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Today we launch zhiing on iPhone, Blackberry, Android, Symbian (Nokia) and Windows Mobile. We have achieved our initial goal of creating our LBS platform and truly offering a cross platform experience. The team is exactly on schedule and I am looking forward to the feedback we will receive. I am very proud of the development team. They have worked tirelessly for more than a year putting all the pieces together. Trying to get accurate and consistent GPS calls across all the major operating systems is not an easy task. We have had some great support from our partners at RIM and Skyhook Wireless.

Please enjoy zhiing and we look forward to user feedback as we push forward into 2.0 and the incorporating dynamic points of interest into the next builds. We also look forward to many of our new partners and interested parties utilizing the zhiing platform. This is why we built it.

“zhiing me!”

Jon at zhiing

Jon’s Report - Fundamentals

Published

JZiskind

on May 3, 2009

in Uncategorized

. 2 Comments

Long drive back from San Francisco Friday night. I went up there from here (Santa Barbara) for several meetings and an entrepreneurial gathering. There is no place like Silicon Valley for entrepreneurs. It’s an amazing community of people with extreme passion and vision. Dave McClure put together a startup2startup event in Palo Alto. This was my first time at this kind of event. I am from outside the area and didn’t really know anyone, except for some bloggers that I read, but only know their writing. Dave organized Steve Blank and Eric Ries to talk about some of the important lessons they have learned throughout their professional lives. Steve, author of “The Four Steps to the Epiphany,” discussed his life experiences and the fundamentals of starting up a company with customer driven product development. What’s funny, is just about every entrepreneur in the room starts their company on a vision and lots of passion. Continue reading ‘Jon’s Report - Fundamentals’

Jon’s Report

Published

JZiskind

on March 9, 2009

in Uncategorized

. 1 Comment

Sorry for such a delay in my reports. We have spent January and February working on building our ZOS Communications website. www.zoscommnications.com. ZOS is the parent company of zhiing and is where we leverage the technology we built for it into the enterprise space.

This focus is allowing us to incorporate the zhiing technology into corporate environments. Many of these customers have smartphones already in use, and with zhiing and some increased functionality, we are able to drop right into the current CRM (Customer Relationship Management) Systems. Without really any hardware or process changes, we can now provide a location communications process to any in-place system. Like we have always believed, we can enable LBS for any person or service and it is proving to be true. The problem really is that spans so many markets and can power so many different systems, that focusing on the first few has been a challenge in itself.

On the zhiing side, we are going to begin the next level of beta programs for Android and Symbian phones over the next few weeks and Windows Moible to follow very soon. The people from Crackberry have been extraordinary in helping with the new Blackberry Storm Beta. I am now a very big believer in power of that group and the level of enthusiam from that forum. Crackberry users have provided amazing feedback and saved us thousands of dollars and more importantly time on a fantastic beta program. We had more than 60 qualified testers in about an hour of posting. Now Storm and Bold are publically realeased (but still in Beta) and are growing nicely.

That’s it for now. I will leave you with a picture of our Sales and Business development team. When I mean team, these guys are unbelievable. They are pretty much attached at the hip with growing our customer base. Note the dress code. They were also born on the same date. Weird.

Dress Code

This gal loves to zhiing

Published

Grant

on January 8, 2009

in Uncategorized

. 1 Comment

Such talent!

Jon’s Report. 2008 – Vision. 2009 – Focus

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JZiskind

on January 2, 2009

in Uncategorized

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In January of 2008 we founded ZOS Communications with a vision of creating the standard for Location Messaging in the Location Based Services (LBS) emerging marketplace. The LBS Industry is in its infancy. It is fairly undefined, especially from a global standpoint. The tipping point for this new industry was the advent of today’s location aware mobile devices. People across the world are now carrying the most popular of these location aware devices in their pockets daily… their mobile phone. This is one of the major reasons the cell phone industry is experiencing one of the largest technology growths in the history of human kind, communication as we know it is changing before our eyes.

Our vision of creating the standard for the next form of communication is currently being leveraged by the fast paced development and worldwide adoption of location aware devices. Cell phones have now become a permanent extension one’s being. Society has created an intimate relationship with these devices. As strange as that sounds, nothing is more personalized than your cell phone.

This new form of communication is simply sending and receiving your location across the globe agnostically. This is the direction mobile technology is headed, and it is unarguable. SMS, MMS and email have all followed similar paths. Zhiing has proven it can be done. Our technology does just that. Continue reading ‘Jon’s Report. 2008 – Vision. 2009 – Focus’

Garmin announces Nuviphone launch this fall!

Published

Victor Lund

on January 2, 2009

in mobile phones

. 1 Comment

Cell phones and GPS phones are on a collision course.

After the iPhone launched and introduced location services on the iPhone with tight integration into google mobile maps - many wondered if that signaled the end to the handheld GPS market.

“Not so fast!” retorts Garmin. If you want a cell phone with GPS, who better than the handheld leader Garmin to deliver the soltuion?

Although the feature set is just beginning to leak out - suffice it to learn that it will have all of the smart phone features that we have grown to love and not live with out - address book, calendar, email, instant message, sms, camera, video camera, and google local search. It is too early to tell if they will have thier own version of the AppStore - but we hope that it will!

The greatest news is that the zhiing ZMS location messaging system is created to work with all third party mapping applications. We look forward to plugging into this new Garmin device.

See more photos Continue reading ‘Garmin announces Nuviphone launch this fall!’

zhiing to the rescue

Published

Alan

on December 31, 2008

in Uncategorized

. 1 Comment

We thought zhiing was a great service, but we never imagined using it to help rescue three head of cattle. We were trail running in Reno in the eastern foothills of the Sierras in early December. My running partner Jacquelyn was ahead of me on a narrow trail that cut through a hidden meadow of dried tall grass, when suddenly she stopped and I almost plowed into her. I asked her what was wrong and she said “cows.” Just ahead of us were three very large beef cattle that must have gotten loose from a ranch in the Verdi area. Noting that one was a bull, we decided it was a good idea to go back the way we came, but just before we did, we sent ourselves a zhiing so we could identify where the cattle were later on. When we got back to the street where our truck was parked, we called the City of Reno and reported the cattle to animal control. Since the cattle were nowhere near a public street, the only way we could describe exactly where they were was to use the map generated from the zhiing we sent ourselves. The cattle were rounded up later that day…

Hey Tim thanks for sharing your story. We at zhiing have spent months brainstorming use case scenarios for our product… Cattle rustling never came to mind. Let us know the unique ways in which you use zhiing in your life.

Jon’s Report, Mobile Media Investor’s Conference

Published

JZiskind

on December 14, 2008

in Uncategorized

. 0 Comments

Another great week. I was able to go up to the Mobile Media Investors Conference in San Francisco. At first I was a little disapointed becasue the turn out was pretty low and it was a rather expensive conference. The goal was to meet more VC’s, understand the ecosystem as we begin to go down that path, and keep on top of the mobile media marketplace and what is coming and what is working. My disappointment quickly turned around, becasue what I learned was that the smaller events offer a lot more engagement and networking. I personally find the very large conferences hard to network and have meaningful conversations. This conference allowed the panelists to get deeper into the conversation of the group.

There was a terrific panel with just Michael Cheng, founder and CEO of Greystripe and Fern Mendelbaum of Monitor Ventures. They explained how their relationship began and how the adventure went for them. It was a very interesting panel, because we are going down the same road right now, looking for that great partner, so it was extremely relevant and interesting. Trying to find the right partnership, not just any investor.

Most of the other panels where on advertising on mobile devices and the trends that are developing. The theme was, if you have a web presence and not great mobile presence, you are doing yourself a disservice. Also, we need to think of mobile devices and web presence as differently as TV and radio. They are completely different mediums and companies need to be aware of structure themselves within this reality.

So, needless to say, the conference was very interesting and I would be more apt to go to smaller events now that I know how great they can be.

We left with meeting a lot of other startups that want to incorporate zhiing and ZMS into their own models. I feel like I have more business cards than the investors may have gotten.

Keep zhiinging and keep sending feedback.

Jon at zhiing