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breathing life into your address book

Listening to our users

December 3rd, 2009 · Uncategorized

Today marks a special day for Sensobi Inc - we have readied both our paid and free apps for approval by the BlackBerry App World. Once they give us the green light, all the work we’ve put into the app over the last year will be out there for all to try out. We want to take a moment to thank all our beta testers for their part in making this happen.

(btw, if you can’t wait to download the free version of Sensobi, you can also get it here: http://download.sensobi.com)

We can’t stress this enough: we would not be here today without your support. In the past few months, we’ve learned a lot about the BlackBerry community. We have discovered its vibrancy and diversity, its enthusiasm for the platform and its desire to see BlackBerry technology realized to its fullest potential.

Though we are extending our reach to a broader market, we want to let you know that we will always listen to our earliest users. The feedback you’ve given us has made the product what it is today, and we want to let you know that we are working to reduce the amount of time it takes to deliver on bug fixes and features that you have been asking for.

Now that we have finished building out our free app, we are excited to announce that we are now poised to deliver some things that our users have been asking for since our first beta appeared.  Stay tuned in the coming weeks and months for some pretty exciting things from us.

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How we’re answering Seth Godin’s call-to-action

September 14th, 2009 · Uncategorized

In a recent post on his blog, Seth Godin bemoans the lack of common sense in some of today’s software. And while he’s mainly talking about desktop software, I think his warning shot applies to software running on any kind of device. With mobile software, the stakes are even higher. Less screen space and fewer buttons means your UI has got to be intuitive. At Sensobi, we recognize that the address book is rife with this lack of common sense. And we’re happy to announce that we are addressing some of the points that Seth makes:

When I type in someone’s name, how come it doesn’t know that this is someone I know, correspond with and meet with often? Why isn’t it connected?

With Sensobi, we separate out those you talk to from those you don’t, so that you don’t have to deal with all those contacts that clutter your address book. Also, we organize all those communications by contact, so you can quickly get up to speed with what you’ve been talking about.

I have tens of thousands of people in my address book. Some of these folks were put there ten years ago and, alas, are dead or long gone. Do I really have to go through and delete people manually? Why isn’t my address book smart enough to sort the list in reverse order of use, so I can see records I haven’t encountered in seven years first and start from there? Or, better, why doesn’t this address book hook up with other address books of trusted peers and automatically correct and update?

With our app, you can sort by the last time you contacted someone. Furthermore, you can sort by their importance to you; the ones you have talked to most often will float to the top. Not only is this an effective way to gauge who is close to you, it’s also a good way to see who you ought to be talking to more!

This is only the beginning. We love Seth’s idea of address books that sync with other address books.

Interested? Try Sensobi for free now by signing up here.

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Dunbar’s Number on Gigaom

August 31st, 2009 · business, consumer

There’s an interesting article on gigaom about Dunbar’s number, and that hits close to the core of our project. A few points:

First, I think the number of relationships we categorize as “close” in a familial or near-familial context (e.g. childhood friends) has to be bounded by some constant. It will vary from person to person, but when you get right down to it you’ve only got 24 hours in your day, and your attention span is a limited commodity. That said, we are not close to hitting that limit, and social technologies are helping us push our capabilities. We may not necessarily make more new close friends, but we be able to maintain strong friendships with ones you’ve established through new media of interaction ( and I stress that particular use of the word media).

Secondly, I think that any discussion of the value of expanding your network should also bring to attention the inherent value of weak connections. These are people who are not close to you, but on the borders of your social circle. These are the people you meet at networking events, at work, or even at your country club if that’s your thing. They have real benefit because they can set up introductions to new social circles.

One of the comments mentioned that increased communication would render each piece less significant, but I have to disagree with that. I think that discount factor has always been there, regardless of what new medium you are talking about. I still think handwritten letters have more significance than email, but I nonetheless find emails from my contacts to still be important. And some day, that distinction will cease to exist. After all I don’t receive telegraphs. And some day, a tweet will have as much meaning as an email, inasmuch as it informs your view of someone you know.

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Crazy feature idea

August 25th, 2009 · Uncategorized

It’s Tuesday and we’re feeling a little nutty.  One of us dreamed up this idea and want to see how it sounds:

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And so it begins…

July 16th, 2009 · announcements

So thanks to the guys at BlackBerryCool.com we got a massive spike in traffic yesterday. All I can say is - thanks.  For the last 48 hours, we’ve been getting tons of downloads from people all over the world.  I just want to reprint some of the feedback we’ve been getting:

“Now that I’ve been toying around with @sensobi for a few hours, I have no idea how I ever got by without it. Hope you all got in on the beta”

http://twitter.com/rvolo/statuses/2662990491

“It’s a very cool app and very useful. Having all the different types of contact made with people in one place is very handy. Only had it a day and don’t want not to have it! Big thumbs up from me! Many thanks again for a life simpling app!”

AND our favorite email so far:

“I am not using this app on my blackberry for business yet.  I did  download the beta because I have been looking for an app like this for quite some time.

With out going into a long email….I just wanted to say that there are families like mine that need an app like this because I have a son with autism and I have so much contact with our medical professionals, teachers, social workers, etc that it can get quite daunting to try to keep up and track every thing we do and in some cases an app like this is very handy.

Thank you for issuing the beta I am happy to test this on my blackberry.”

More to come.

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LinkedIn is starting to get it…

June 22nd, 2009 · Uncategorized

Are you an entrepreneur? A software developer? Then you should read this article about building “every-day apps.”  It seems like LinkedIn is “getting it” in terms of what they can do with all that data they are sitting on.  The author of that post, who doesn’t seem affiliated with the company, had a great insight:

LinkedIn seems to weigh social value over personal value. They focus on connecting people more than providing value regardless of connection.

Ah ha! This is precisely the problem we are tackling.  The fact is, LinkedIn, Twitter, FB, et al. are all exacerbating an emergent problem in our increasingly digital lives: congrats you’ve made a contact - now what?

If we can deliver something that addresses this, then who knows? Maybe we just might have everyday app.

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Facebook takes your BlackBerry to a whole new level

June 10th, 2009 · business, consumer

At first glance Facebook and BlackBerry may look like today’s version of the mobile-social odd couple. One developed in our Universities and is now quickly becoming the (Internet-enabled) world’s choice to staying in touch with friends. The other got its start on Wall Street and is now the Smartphone of choice for professionals who need a ubiquitous connection to their clients and coworkers.

But if you put them together, you get pure magic.

We’ve been playing with Facebook for BlackBerry for a few months now and are impressed. But not for the obvious reasons: changing our status message, browsing our friends, looking at pictures, etc., is OK, but what really gets us excited is having more information on our CONTACTS.   

Starting with version 1.5, FB4BB syncs your Facebook friends with your BlackBerry address book, pulling in contact info, company name, and our favorite, up-do-date pictures from FB onto your phone. And, as we discovered yesterday, the latest version 1.6 also identifies new friends on Facebook from your BB contacts list, and invites you to connect with them.

Now, when we get a call from an old friend, we see their latest picture and know more of what’s going on in their life. Or when we browse through our professional contacts, we see their company information and have a better idea of what they do for a living.

We’re still not sure how many professionals connect to their business network on Facebook. It’d be nice if LinkedIn, where we keep most our own business contacts, were to follow suit (LinkedIn, hope you are listening). But we love the prospect of having even more information about our contacts right in the palm of our hands.

Now if only there were a better address book to help us make sense of all that data…

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Pulling back the curtain (aka a big announcement)

June 4th, 2009 · announcements, business

Today we are very excited to pull back the curtain and share with you what we’ve been working on the past few months: a better address book for your mobile phone.

Our mobile phones are increasingly becoming our main connection to our friends, family, and business contacts. But our address book on that phone, where we keep track of all our contacts, is pretty limited. We’re breathing life into the address book and making it smarter, to help you stay in touch with your important contacts. We want to help you turn your contacts into relationships.

Coincidentally, there has been a lot of buzz this week about “The battle for your address book”. We’re happy to see all this excitement. A lot of that talk, however, has focused on using the address book to help consumers save money. We believe that there is a much bigger opportunity here. Imagine if your address book actually helped you grow your business, stay in touch with your clients and friends, and made sure no one felt neglected. We’re excited to bring that to life.

Currently we are in closed beta on the BlackBerry. If you are interested in participating, sign up and we’ll let you know when more invites become available.

Right now that’s all we’re able to share with you publicly. But contact us if you are interested in learning more.

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New logo!

June 1st, 2009 · Uncategorized

Starting off the month with a new logo. What do you think? 

sensobi logo

More changes to come…

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BlackBerry Storm’s Hidden Secret

May 29th, 2009 · business

We hate to admit it - because it had so much potential - but so far the BlackBerry Storm has been written off as the black sheep (yes, pun intended) of the RIM family. The Storm was RIM’s response to the iPhone, its first touchscreen device, its first (gasp) handset without a keyboard - but instead, thanks to early bugginess (which RIM has since fixed), it turned out to be one of RIM’s worst product launches. 

But all is not lost, little Storm. Yesterday at Sensobi HQ we discovered your hidden secret, which we are here to share. The Storm contains both CDMA and GSM wireless radios. In fact, it can even run on the faster EvDO and HSDPA networks (although right now it only runs on the Europe, Africa, Asia, Oceania and Brazil HSDPA frequency bands). What that means is that anyone in the US (and perhaps the world) can pick one up, unlock it, and have their own touch screen BlackBerry. That is quite the engineering feat - and something the iPhone does not currently do. 

(Although if you want full BlackBerry service, you’ll have to install the BlackBerry service books for your carrier - but apparently even this can be done.)

We’re not saying that you should run to your closest Verizon dealer, buy the handset without a contract, unlock it, and install the service books yourself (that’s a lot to type, let alone actually do.) But now that the Storm 2 is around the corner, we wouldn’t be surprised if RIM quickly launched it on multiple US carriers over a short period of time - much as they have with the new BlackBerry Curve 8900 (aka Javelin) on T-Mobile and AT&T - and put their underdog back in the ring against the iPhone.

This all makes it hard to say what the touch screen market will look like in a year. But the BlackBerry Storm is still very much in the fight.

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