YasTech Developments Blog

A semi-regular thing we’ll be doing here: 4 ques­tions about some­thing that inter­ests us that might also inter­est you. This time it’s about cell phones.

What model cell phone do you cur­rently have?

Blaine: Being the card-holding Apple cult mem­ber I am, I have the lat­est ver­sion of Apple’s iPhone — the iPhone 3Gs — my third iPhone in 2 years.

Chris: Sony Eric­s­son W580i (white if you must know).

Michael: How do I check what kind of phone I have again? Actu­ally I have a Black­berry Storm. Can’t live with­out my Blackberry.

What is your favourite feature/ability/thing about that cell phone?

Blaine: It’s got to be the App Store — I have count­less appli­ca­tions on my phone. From a cam­era app that stitches a panoramic photo together for me or a pixel-perfect Twit­ter client that helps me tweet on the go, I’ve got tons of appli­ca­tions that extend the func­tion­al­ity of my phone.

Chris: I don’t really have a spe­cific fea­ture that I could nail down. I think that the way it some­times auto-dials my friends when I for­get to lock it is handy. Also the way it automag­i­cally starts the world’s worst media player when I attempt to dial is super neat. Like I said, so many great fea­tures I couldn’t pick just one. (There’s a heavy dose of sar­casm con­tained in this response. I hope you can pick it up!)

Michael: Viigo app. Keeps me up to date with live news, sports and social net­works. Doing this all in one app is pretty genius.

What is your least favourite feature/ability/thing about the phone?

Blaine: Rogers’ cov­er­age in Saskatchewan — hands down. I’d really like to go to Hum­boldt and be able to make a call or send a text.… but I can’t.

Chris: My least favourite fea­ture is also the fact that Rogers’ cov­er­age sucks in Saskatchewan. Run­ner up would be the fact that I still have a year left on my con­tract with this phone. But I can’t really blame the phone for that, can I?

Michael: Not being able to text while I drive. The press down touch screen makes it awk­ward to hold in one hand and press down the let­ters while I’m driving.

What phone would you upgrade to if you could right now?

Blaine:That’s a really tough ques­tion for me to answer, because at the moment there isn’t a phone to upgrade to — the iPhone is cur­rently the best mobile phone money can buy, in my opin­ion. Google seems to be test­ing a new phone called the Nexus One, which could be the next phone I buy, although that title changes monthly.

Chris: With­out ques­tion, I’d upgrade to an iPhone 3Gs. I’ve got a 1st gen­er­a­tion iPod touch so I know I love the inter­face and apps/app store — just bid­ding my time. If I wait long enough, maybe Apple will come out with a iPhone 3Gs2!

Michael: Not sure. I hear the iPhone is pretty cool and the Black­berry Tour is pretty nice, but I haven’t used either of them so I don’t know if I’d like them or not.

Want to play along?

We’d love to hear your thoughts. Dis­agree with Blaine’s assess­ment of the iPhone being the best mobile? Agree that Michael should dump his Black­berry for an iPhone? Think that I should learn to appre­ci­ate the auto-dialing nature of my mobile? Leave a com­ment or send me an email with your answers to 4 Ques­tions Related To: Cell Phones.

Still not con­vinced that it’s worth hav­ing a video on your website?

“We typ­i­cally get up to a 20 per­cent increase in con­ver­sion rate on prod­ucts that have a video, and also a lower return rate at the same time. It’s hard to put an exact dol­lar amount on it, but I would say that the videos have made a sub­stan­tial dif­fer­ence by increas­ing our traf­fic, our con­ver­sion rate, and our sales.”

Lars Hund­ley, Pres­i­dent of Clean Air Gar­den­ing from this arti­cle.

Video is some­thing that can work on any site that is sell­ing a prod­uct, not just sites about gar­den­ing. Imag­ine that you’re in need of a desk for your new office. You browse through a cat­a­logue from a local store and see pic­tures, dimen­sions and colour options for a vari­ety of desks. After decid­ing on one that you like, you go check out the store’s web­site to see if they have any in stock.

While that site is load­ing, you google the model of desk you’re look­ing at and come across another store’s web­site list­ing that same desk at the same price. They hap­pen to have a quick, 30 sec­ond video tour of that desk. It shows some­one sit­ting down at the desk, open­ing a few draw­ers, reach­ing for a pen, etc. You notice an extra drawer in a spot that you couldn’t see in the pic­tures from the cat­a­logue. This means it won’t fit in your new office. The video gave you a bet­ter idea of how the desk looks and func­tions and pre­vented you from buy­ing a desk you would have had to return.

Would you go back to the orig­i­nal store’s website/catalogue to find another desk? I’d guess most peo­ple would stick with the new site and enjoy the quick videos that help show what the desks are actu­ally like.

Pic­tures tell one story about your prod­uct and are impor­tant to have, but video can help sep­a­rate you from your com­peti­tors. It also opens you up to a whole new mar­ket that might not oth­er­wise find you, but now can on video sites such as Youtube.

Con­tact us for infor­ma­tion on how to get video on your website.

Bar­Camp Saska­toon is hap­pen­ing this Sat­ur­day, Novem­ber 28th from 1:30pm to 7:30pm at Louis’ on the Uni­ver­sity of Saskatchewan cam­pus. What is Bar­Camp? A descrip­tion from the Bar­Camp web­site:

The goal of Bar­Camp­Saska­toon, is to bring together, for an after­noon, peo­ple who love tech­nol­ogy to talk and to learn. Each per­son who attends has to be will­ing to talk about some­thing or vol­un­teer (reg­is­tra­tion, set-up, tear­down, etc.). There will be a num­ber of ses­sions which will be picked by the atten­dees at the start of the day.

YasTech is proud to be spon­sor­ing Bar­Camp Saska­toon this year. We’ll be pro­vid­ing name tags only a geek could love as well as some hardware/software for folks to be able to keep up with what’s hap­pen­ing online.

Reg­is­tra­tion is free so go reg­is­ter and come out and meet with other folks from around Saska­toon that love tech­nol­ogy and where it’s tak­ing us!

YasTech has been work­ing fever­ishly on a new project that we’re proud to be launch­ing today.

Juniors2010.ca is an event list­ing site for any­thing and every­thing going on in Saska­toon and Regina dur­ing the 2010 World Junior Hockey Cham­pi­onships this Christmas.

While the games don’t get under way until late in Decem­ber, you can already start plan­ning what you might want to do dur­ing the tour­na­ment. Or you can add events you or your busi­ness are putting on that you want to list — all for free!

We’ll also be col­lect­ing all the online dis­cus­sion going from Face­book and Twit­ter and pictures/video from Flickr and Youtube.

Be sure to join our Face­book page or fol­low us on Twit­ter.

If you’re inter­ested in adver­tis­ing your busi­ness on the site, visit the adver­tise page for more information.