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Jon’s Report

Published

on May 27, 2009

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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

Published

JZiskind

on March 9, 2009

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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

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

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JZiskind

on January 2, 2009

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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’

Jon’s Report, Social Media, Nokia, Blackberry GPS and more….

Published

JZiskind

on December 7, 2008

in Uncategorized

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We have been busy over here at zhiing. We are preparing to launch on Nokia, still finishing up our features and functions and bug fixes for our Version 1.x’s and building our Windows Mobile and Android platforms to be released in January. We are doing all this while putting the marketing pieces together, preparing a PR launch, interviewing social media experts for communications plans and building out our business development team. And all I am focused on is fund raising. Needless to say it has been a very busy couple of weeks and the team is coming together better than I had ever anticipated.

I spent Thanksgiving in New York with my family but also working with our Rochester Team. We have an office there for our Chief Architect and Managing Technology Officer. It no secret that I am not fond of the cold weather up there and as we flew in, it started to snow. Of course, not the light fluffy snow, but the wet damp almost sleeting snow. Yuck.

Given the economic conditions and the times, we are building our company in the best capacity we can. We have a headquarters in Santa Barbara, but we are utilizing resources around the country. This is the world we live in today and we have a great balance, but I always feel the need for face to face with our team, so I try to see them as often as I can. I suspect many entrepreneurs will agree, when you have your vision and it’s in your head, before one character of code is written, you spend most of your time trying to articulate what your idea really is and how to bring it to life. When you build your team and share your vision with them these relationships begin to change and grow. There is nothing better than being in a meeting when you recognize your concept has outgrown you and now your team is adding greater value and growing it. We created a team that believes in our vision. So, the point is, that it is important to keep costs low and bootstrap as hard as possible, but maintain the product development course and keep excitement up and foster team spirit. All that being said, it’s pretty easy when you have a great team and we do.

Continue reading ‘Jon’s Report, Social Media, Nokia, Blackberry GPS and more….’

Apple iPhone owners have downloaded 300 million applications throught the App Store

Published

Victor Lund

on December 6, 2008

in Uncategorized

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Remember when Microsoft, Palm, Blackberry, and others dismissed Apple’s entry as a newcomer into the smart phone space?

Big Mistake! I mean Big!

Apple created a new distribution paradigm with the iTunes store. Unlike all other smartphones, you can get everything you need from the app store. Although developers cannot just throw any junk on the shelf there, the barrier to entry is really quite low and easy. Try getting vendorized at WalMart as a single product software vendor- good luck with that.

We were not stupid when we launched zhiing for Apple right out of the gate. We have seen product adoption that is not a curve, but the famous hockey stick. It would have been nice to be in the store with them at launch, but in the larger perspective of things - a few months late has not hurt us at all. At our current growth and adoption rate, theoretically every human on the planet will be using zhiing within the next 50 years :-). Wouldn’t that be nice for us. Alas I jest.

Continue reading ‘Apple iPhone owners have downloaded 300 million applications throught the App Store’

Why Mobile Carriers and Mobile Device Manufacturers cannot win in mobile app develoment

Published

Victor Lund

on December 4, 2008

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zhiing is developed for all 5 of the top mobile platforms - Blackberry, iPhone, Nokia, Windows Mobile and Android. Blackberry and iPhone are live and the others will be available soon. Today zhiing works on every network except the walled garden of Verizon (we are working to fix this too). Cross platform, and cross network is the key to the evolution of usage of zhiing - it needs to work from every mobile to every mobile in order to become a successful location messaging system

The forces shaping the evolving mobile ecosystem are comprised of multiple carriers and stakeholders, as well as consumer electronics and device OEMs, major online search and independent application software vendors.

Meanwhile, operators are accelerating service and application development to seamlessly work across fixed and wireless networks and devices. An increasingly large number of subscribers will rely on next-generation networks to drive process and service innovations.

These new market dynamics are driving a fundamental shift in business and architectural models for operators. Continue reading ‘Why Mobile Carriers and Mobile Device Manufacturers cannot win in mobile app develoment’

Jon’s End of the Week Report

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JZiskind

on November 16, 2008

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The developers were all in town this week to solidify Version 2 planning and our internationalization approach. These weeks are long and challenging. Lots of discussions of the long term vision make for brainstorming meetings on how we are going to achieve our plan from a development side. It’s great to really see progress with the guys working as a solid team for our future efforts. We are preparing to launch zhiing on Windows Mobile and Android, after our release this week on Nokia. With all this being said, we are going to start releasing in Western Europe, Australia and New Zealand early in the new year. We need to stay where English will work as we build out the language components in the code. One of our biggest assets is our Blackberry lead developer. He has significant accomplishments working with translating applications, with his specialty in Asian languages. So we have the right team, and it is all on the table for the near future.

I just finished a family trip out to the USS Boxer to see my brother, a helicopter pilot, who is one of the men responsible for the all flight and aircraft activity on the ship. This includes ordinance for each of the aircraft. Being out there is a great reminder that we at home can start businesses and immerse ourselves in the everything and anything we want. These guys out there are working hard for us because they believe in the greatness of our country. Please remember to thank the uniformed people you see. I tried the zhiing off the ship, but they mentioned something about national security.

Tonight I am at Northwestern Prep school with more than 60 students between 18-20 years old. I have committed to give a small talk in order to elicit feedback of our website, artwork, functionality and marketing plans. A very good user group and demographic. Perfect focus group work.

Keep zhiiging and keep sending feedback. Much of the feedback we have received will be incoroporated in version 2.

Jon at zhiing

Look out Motorola, here comes the iPhone

Published

Victor Lund

on November 11, 2008

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Yes, thats right. iPhone is now the number 1 selling phone in America! Unbeliveable. We were all so attracted to the device leading up to its launch that we scrapped our development efforts for other smart phones here at zhiing and shifted our paradigm to iphone. It was a great decision because zhiing looks so much better on the iphone than blackberry.

The Apple iPhone overtook the Motorola RAZR to become the number-one selling handset purchased by adults in the U.S., according to a new report by market research firm The NDP Group. The RAZR had lead NDP’s rankings for the previous 12 quarters. “The displacement of the RAZR by the iPhone 3G represents a watershed shift in handset design from fashion to fashionable functionality,” said Ross Rubin, director of industry analysis for NPD. “Four of the five best-selling handsets in the third quarter were optimized for messaging and other advanced Internet features.”

The RIM Blackberry Curve, LG Rumor and LG enV2 rounded out the top five.

Continue reading ‘Look out Motorola, here comes the iPhone’

Jon’s end of the week report

Published

JZiskind

on November 7, 2008

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It has been another great week of trying to change the way people communicate. Paul Glazowski wrote a great blog post on Mashable really articulating our vision. It is important for us to see that someone can look at our app and website and garner what our goals and plans are. Now it is our job to fulfill that vision. What was great to see was the direct volume increase from one blog post.

We also opened discussions with Skyhook Wireless. They provide cell tower triangulation for devices. If you use Google Maps for mobile, they are the “my location” piece to it. What this means to us, is that if you are inside or you can’t get your GPS to find you, the cell towers will. If you have a signal, you can have a zhiing experience. This is fantastic for us and we are really excited. Skyhook is an incredible company that can make a great difference with our product. If you are using a GPS inside, you know what I mean.

Also, we have gotten the green light to get a beta program running with the Santa Barbara County Fire Department. Currently they use the old map book, but now they will use zhiing. This is one of our ultimate goals to land zhiing in emergency services and we now have two emergency beta programs running.

Next week we have our prominent launch. This will be a louder PR release, a new version 1.1 for iPhone and Blackberry, the release of Nokia on the Symbian platform and the release of the browser plug-in for Internet Explorer. I am excited to see what happens. We have taken some of the great feedback from our soft launch and incorporated it into our applications. Users will be able to send multiple zhiings. Everyone will stop receiving phone numbers and start receiving names (taking the anonymity of the SMS notifier away). Speed has been enhanced and stability increased. We are always striving for the app to be perfect, but it takes time and we look at speed being our single most important variable and the application will get faster and faster.

Blackberry has also announced the ability to do a data push, so we are getting closer to not relying on SMS at all to notify users they have a zhiing. Soon, a little box will show up - “Jon has zhiinged you.” We can’t wait!

It was a fun week that ended with an article being written in the Pacific Coast Business Times that will feature next week.

The team is still working hard on windows mobile and android, so let us know if you want to be in the beta program when it is ready to kick off.

That’s it for now. Please keep sending feedback.

Jon at zhiing