rmbrME blog

beamME 3.3 goes to Cupertino

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 09:34:56 -0500

Yesterday, we submitted beamME 3.3 to Apple for approval. An update that will impact both beamME and beamME Pro, beamME 3.3 will bring exciting major upgrades to both apps. We’ll share news of the new features with you here when the apps are approved!

One of the changes we can tell you about is that beamME and beamME pro now share the same functionality - and are both free to download and use. No need to switch apps to get the power of beamME pro - just keep using the beamME app you already have.

beamME 3.2 Submitted

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 16:11:32 -0500

beamME 3.2 has been submitted to Apple! Both beamME Pro and beamME standard are being updated in this release.

The biggest change you’ll notice in beamME Pro is that beaming is now substantially faster. Based on your feedback, we’ve refactored the way beams are sent to improve speed by as much as 5x. You will need to reconfirm your geo-location settings, but that’s a minor inconvenience for the improved speed, we think. :)

And beamME standard users - we have an amazing upgrade in store for you. Stay tuned - you’ll be notified automatically by Apple when the update is posted. There are some big big improvements you’re guaranteed to appreciate.

NEW beamME and beamME Pro 3.0

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 17:37:56 -0400

NEW beamME and beamME Pro 3.0:

In keeping with the iPhone OS 3.0 update, we’re pleased to announce NEW beamME and beamME Pro 3.0, now with updated capabilities, including Bluetooth Contact Sharing. Woot! Woot!

As always, your recipient doesn’t need any special hardware, software or registration to get your card, and beamME continues to be the only solution that reliably works between iPhones and every other kind of phone. Bluetooth only works between iPhones, but it’s a really fun way to share your contact information, and complements our seamless transfer design nicely.

Now, you can download beamME Pro 3.0 for only $1.99, including a free month’s service. You get multiple cards (personal, business, third party), history/feeds, and geo-location. Find out why it’s the favorite of Fortune 500 Execs, Senior Administration Officials and Startup CEOs.

Download beamME Pro 3.0 Today.

We’ve launched a beautiful, new beamME website, and we...

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 10:30:00 -0400

We’ve launched a beautiful, new beamME website, and we hope you enjoy it.

beamME Pro 3.0 is right around the corner. Stay tuned!

NY Tech Meetup - May 5

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 18:03:43 -0400

We’ll be presenting an entirely new beamME app at the New York Tech Meetup on May 5. If you happen to be in NYC, come by and check it out in person!!

NY Tech Meetup (New York, NY) - Meetup.com

If you can’t make it, don’t worry - we’ll be announcing it that day as well!

As part of a presentation we’re giving later this week to...

Sat, 18 Apr 2009 12:31:00 -0400

As part of a presentation we’re giving later this week to some professionals in career transition, we built this slideshow that covers some strategies and techniques for using social networks and mobile technology for job search. Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and the iPhone are all powerful job search tools, but the strategies and tactics required to make them work aren’t always obvious. This presentation is an introduction to those topics and a catalyst for tactical job search in this new era.

Let us know what you think!

It’s alive! beamME pro has arrived, and it’s...

Mon, 02 Mar 2009 13:41:00 -0500

It’s alive!

beamME pro has arrived, and it’s everything you (our users) asked for.

Building on the strength of beamME for iPhone/iPod Touch, we’ve gone and extended the solution substantially, adding key features and capabilities that will make your networking experience even more professional than you ever thought possible.

Some of the improvements in beamME Pro include:

Beam Any Card: including personal, business or third-party
Map Your Meetups: automatically record your location and map it
Remember With Feeds: see your contact history for easy recall
Connect Without Ads: minimized beamME branding
Enjoy Our New Look: keeps recipient’s focus on you
Leverage Priority Support: includes a new community forum, fast response

And everything else (such as keeping your native address book, global SMS and universal device support) that makes beamME the most popular Mobile Contact Exchange app in the world.

Pickup a copy of beamME Pro today on the iTunes store. For only $4.99, and backed by our 30 Day Money Back Guarantee, beamME Pro offers unparalleled control, flexibility and elegance for your business mobile networking.

Something genuinely exciting is coming to beamME. :)

Fri, 13 Feb 2009 17:14:22 -0500

Something genuinely exciting is coming to beamME. :)

Nominated to Mobile Monday Peer Awards

Wed, 21 Jan 2009 10:08:16 -0500

rmbrME and beamME have been nominated to the prestigiuous Mobile Peer Awards - which is a very exciting honor for us.

You can see the complete list of nominees at the Mobile Peer Awards website.

Inauguration Celebration: Win a Trip For 2 from beamME

Sat, 17 Jan 2009 15:17:00 -0500

To celebrate the inauguration, we’re giving you the chance to win a trip for 2 anywhere in the US that American Airlines flies.

All you have to do is use beamME from now through the 24th of January. Every person you beam is an entry into the sweepstakes, and you can earn bonuses for fun stuff - like beaming someone named Michelle, or Barack Obama himself.

You should check out the sweeps page and carefully review the rules and regulations.You could be off to the beaches of Hawaii or the slopes of Colorado before you know it.

So get out there and meet people with the world’s most popular beaming app for the iPhone: beamME!

Here’s a nifty little video we made walking you through...

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 00:49:18 -0500

Here’s a nifty little video we made walking you through the beamME 1.1 experience!

You Spoke: beamME 1.1 Launches

Thu, 04 Dec 2008 12:39:00 -0500

In the 6 short weeks since we launched beamME for the iPhone, tens of thousands of people from around the world are regularly sharing their electronic business cards with others, independent of phone, carrier or social network limitations. This has made beamME the most popular app of its kind.

In the process, we actively solicited – and frequently received unsolicited – feedback from our users on every conceivable topic. We heard things that were good and bad, thoughtful and off-the-cuff, and from CEOs and CSRs. The hundreds of people who took the time to write us were pretty consistent however, laying out a crystal clear plan of how they want beamME to evolve to better meet their needs.

So we’re pleased to announce the launch of beamME 1.1 on the iTunes store (with a free update available to existing users). It’s packed full of the features you requested – and comes without the various bugs you helped find. Although we didn’t have time to put everything into this release, we’re sure you’ll appreciate the changes we’ve made – and there’s more to come!

What’s New in beamME 1.1

Control Your Professional Message: Now you decide what message is displayed with your business card – in your own words. You can choose a default and/or customize each one if you choose.
Send From Address Book: Choose an existing contact to send your card to with ease.
Full Headshot Support: Choose and update your headshot anytime you like.
Faster Beam Screen & Improved Account Options: We optimized the beam screen to give you a faster beaming experience and improved your access to account management options.
iPod Touch Support
Bug Fixes: We listened and fixed dozens of minor issues affecting our users

Download beamME 1.1 Today and join our community of electronic business card senders. Sending your vCard to someone’s phone has never been easier.

A Digital Business Card Design Manifesto

Sun, 30 Nov 2008 22:21:04 -0500

Many people have asked about the philosophy behind beamME’s universal business card exchangedesign. While some business card exchange applications (especially for the iPhone) have focused on “gimmicky” features, like shaking devices in midair or using WiFi to exchange contact info, we’ve taken a vastly different approach. beamME relies on SMS, email and the web to ensure delivery of exchanged cards. While our process does insert an extra step for some users, it eliminates significant hurdles for the vast majority to adopt digital cards.

Although we often discuss this design philosophy in our industry presentations, we though it would be interesting to share it with the broader community and have a dialogue about it.

Here then is a design manifesto for digital business card exchange that we’d summarize as:

No Recipient Downloads/Logins
No Device Restrictions
No Carrier, Social Network Limitations

Or, put another way – Support Sender Ignorance

*A brief note: throughout this design discussion, we’ll use the word “sender” to refer to someone who sends a digital business card, and “recipient” for someone who receives the sender’s card.

1. No Recipient Software Downloads
When we set out to design rmbrME and beamME we realized that for the first few years of use, the majority of people in the world would have no idea who we were, or how to use a digital business card. By extension, digital card recipients would be unlikely to have our software on their phone the first time they were beamed a card by one of our senders. We also realized that if recipients needed to have software or an account before they could use a card, it would severely discourage the distribution of digital cards.

So our first rule became pretty obvious – both for usability and viral distribution reasons: recipients need no software downloads or account/login details to retrieve a card.

2. No Device Restrictions
While many beaming solutions have existed in recent memory – not the least of which was the Palm’s – they have all suffered from one seemingly insurmountable problem: external incompatibility. Since the advent of the iPhone, this problem has only gotten worse, with nearly a dozen applications for “sharing”, but almost all of them restricted to iPhone-iPhone transfers. With RIM’s huge lead in smartphones, Motorola/Nokia’s in traditional phones (dumbphones?), and an ever-increasing range of viable entrants (Apple, Google, Microsoft, Palm 4.0) you can’t build a solution that only works on a single platform and expect it to be usable.

From a standards viewpoint, it seems that email + vCard should be a sufficient panacea. After all, smartphones all have email – most can export, and most people have an account – even if offline. However, vCard has not been implemented uniformly, resulting in a huge failure rate for device-device transfers, and most of the traditional phone user base has no email access on their device.

This analysis became the origin of our second rule: a viable solution must work between any two devices.

3. No Carrier/Social Network Limitations
While it’s possible to add someone to Facebook directly from your iPhone or to send them a LinkedIn invitation from m.linkedin.com in realtime, the process is fundamentally clunky. Not only do you need to fire up the respective application or (gulp!) WAP page over EDGE, but you then need to authenticate, navigate, and obtain a contact point from the user that corresponds to one already in their profile. Moreover, it requires you to negotiate a social network up front – putting people at odds if they don’t like to use Facebook for business or LinkedIn for social contacts…worse yet if it’s Orkut you prefer. It goes without saying that limiting users to a specific carrier would be crazy – but just in case someone from Verizon or Sprint is listening – I thought it worthwhile to make the point more clearly: don’t do it.

Bringing us to rule #3: If you need to negotiate the social network or carrier before being able to use a business card beaming solution, it’s DOA.

And when taken together, it became obvious that we could unify our perspective on designing an effective electronic business card solution under a single golden rule:

The sender of an electronic business card must never have to think about the device, carrier, social network or software status of his/her recipient.

That is to say, like a paper business card – if you can read it, you can parse and add it to your address book. After all, paper card buyers rarely have to worry about fundamental legibility; whether M or C represents the mobile number is a minor concern compared to the digital compatibility gauntlet.

While reaching a similar bar is a challenge for a digital business card solution like beamME, it’s one we take seriously.

beamME for iPhone Launches - NYTimes and Apple/Start

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 20:13:00 -0400

It has been a whirlwind few days!

As many of you know, we launched beamME for iPhone and iPod Touch over the weekend, and the response has been nothing short of astonishing. Literally, thousands of people are joining us every day; one person a second, sometimes more. This powerful, free, beautifully designed app has taken folks by storm.

And, we’ve been deluged with positive feedback - some of it on the iTunes store, some sent directly to our customer service department. We’re going to try our best to compile the feedback and make it available on the site.

In the meantime, however, we wanted to share a couple of other fun moments in rmbrME. We were profiled in the New York Times through VentureBeat - a fairly rare occurence for an iPhone app.

And - in another short-succession coup, Apple itself put beamME on its startpage. You can see an archived version of it in the photo below (as it will probably not be there for long) or click here to view it in full glory.

In the meantime, thanks for making beamME such a runaway success - we continue to focus on making this experience as seamless and exciting as possible.

If you have any support questions for beamME, please visit our beamME FAQ and support pages.

Bootstrapp(er)ing, Winning an Award

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 16:40:20 -0400

A couple of weeks ago, we were fortunate to be selected by the Bootstrapper folks to present at their inaugural NYC startup venture event.

Richie Hecker, the event’s helmsman did a great job of assembling an interesting group of presenting startups and funders. We got up, did a 7 minute pitch, and got some great feedback/questions and interest from the folks assembled there.

Even more importantly, it gave us a chance to meet a group of funders, interesting folks and startup founders that we otherwise might not have been exposed to.

Winning a Prize was also awesome, as we were chosen the favorite of the mobile track and the Producers’ themselves. Pretty cool, huh?

They are doing another event next April, which will undoubtedly feature even more exciting and dynamic startups from the region and beyond. Although we’re likely to be past this point by then, I hope to stay involved.

Congrats, Richie et al!

Last week, the folks at TechMeetup were gracious enough to let...

Mon, 13 Oct 2008 19:22:00 -0400

Last week, the folks at TechMeetup were gracious enough to let us present rmbrME - and it was a great time. We did our 5 minute slot to the max, and despite getting nudged (gently) to *get to our demo*, the presentation went over super well. I was conversing with 12+ people for 2 hours after our talk, discussing the past, present and future of rmbrME and contact exchange. It was intellectually stimulating and a great time.

The event was well covered by bloggers and a special shout-out goes to Allen at Centernetworks for doing a great job recording our short, short talk.

Allen also ran an interesting article that talked about the insularity of the Meetup - you might find it interesting.

rmbrME for Conferences Announced

Mon, 22 Sep 2008 12:34:00 -0400

Today marks the official unveiling of a program we’ve been working on for some time: rmbrME for Conferences. You can read our press release here. We’re starting off publicly with four great events as partners, and we’ll have plenty more to announce in the coming weeks - so stay tuned.

As anyone who has gone to a conference can tell you, there are many ways that events could be greener and more mobile-friendly than they are now. In particular, we’re keen to see the elimination of giant piles of business cards - and the ridiculous post-conference effort that scanning them takes.

Moreover, our conference pals are super excited to leverage the work we’ve done and the extremely powerful force of rmbrME. That’s both a great validation of our work and an exciting way forward.

If you want to get more information about how rmbrME can help your event, check out our burgeoning rmbrME for Events Page.

This is why we built rmbrME. Here’s a photo uploaded by...

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 12:43:54 -0400

This is why we built rmbrME. Here’s a photo uploaded by Michael Arrington in response to a poster’s question yesterday on why we need electronic business cards in the article about us on TechCrunch. A desk full of cards, indeed. :)

I Guess rmbrME is Controversial..at Techcrunch

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 22:43:00 -0400

Jason Kincaid at TechCrunch today posted a fun article on the topic of why the business card needs to die, and how rmbrME is leading the charge for a paper-free, socially-connected bzCard-y future. Jason certainly agrees with our basic premise, makes some minor factual errors, but generally gets the story right. We’ll be waiting for the cell manufacturers to agree on a standard. :)

In the meantime, do you have an opinion? If so, check out the article and leave your comments - or write them in here.

Pay especially close attention to the photo of Mike Arrington’s drawer. He gets it. :)

-G

FriendBook Delays - Mike Lee out at Tapulous

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 18:37:45 -0400

FriendBook Delays - Mike Lee out at Tapulous:

TechCrunch wrote an interesting article today about the departure of Mike Lee from Tapulous - the makers of amazing iPhone games like Tap Tap Revenge and Twinkle. The company has been working on a replacement for the iPhone’s address book called “Friend Book” for some time. The app was supposed to have an exciting feature in it called “handshake” that would allow you to exchange vCards by shaking 2 iphones together (and, ostensibly, running the software at the same time).

I love their work, and really admire the exciting “gimmicky” side of FriendBook, but I have to say that I’ve never been a fan of any contact exchange system that requires device-specific interactions (and, worse yet, the installation of third-party software to just begin). After all, we’ve had “beam my card” since the beginning of the palm platform, and look how far we got.

The truth is that paper business cards are pretty universal, as long as you can read. :) You don’t need to worry about what system the recipient has if you give them a business card.

That’s the standard we held ourselves to with rmbrME: you shouldn’t have to think twice about whether or not the person getting your card can receive, process and use it. We enabled email or mobile delivery, and made the app run on SMS and the mobile web. That way, every single device that can send or receive a text message can use rmbrME, and you don’t have to worry that your target can’t connect with you.

I wish Mike all the best in his next endeavor - and the guys at Tapulous good fortune. In the meantime, I’m super stoked about the promise of interoperable, digital contact management through rmbrME. W00t!