DUB You still get carded?? | DubMeNow

Manoj met earlier this week with US CTO Aneesh Chopra.  Today he met with DC Mayor Adrian Fenty (blurry BlackBerry photo below)! What are we up to you ask? Stay tuned!!

Geez… the last week has been packed with so many events, I haven’t even had time to write about any of them.  Since last week, I’ve spent a bunch of time at Microsoft’s various building in the Bay Area (on Market St in SF and in Mountain View).  The first event was StartupSF, during which Seesmic CEO, Loic Le Meur talked at length about his experience as an entrepreneur, and cracked a few jokes that I and other members of the startup elite found amusing.

The next event was the following week when the Silicon Valley Association of Startup Entrepreneurs (SVASE) hosted their “Launch: Silicon Valley” shindig.  The Pre-Party was held at the uber cool offices of Cooley Godward in Palo Alto, complete with their own party patio. I was fortunate to meet Bill Reichert and Henry Wong from Garage Technology Ventures.  Bill was especially gracious in taking the time to talk to me as he and I were literally the very last two people at the party (as is my style).  It was also nice to get an assurance from Cromwell Schubarth, Managing Editor of the San Jose Business Journal, that as soon as we have get a bigger office on the west coast, he’ll be happy to do a full write up on DUB.

The following day, though it started at an ungodly hour of the morning, Launch SV was nonetheless an interesting collection of presentations jumpstarted by an intriguing keynote address given by Dan Roam, author of Back of the Napkin, Businessweek’s #1 innovation book of 2008.

After watching his keynote, I sent Dan an email (only half expecting he would really respond) with a link to the DUB Explained Video.  To my surprise, he got right back to me and commented that “based on [my] DUB animation, it’s clear [I am] a great visual thinker.”  Wow, thanks Dan!  So if the guy who wrote BusinessWeek’s #1 Innovation book of 2008 thinks the video is cool, maybe it’s worth your time to go back and rewatch it.

Josh Catone has a great article on the various ways to exchange contact info without using business cards.

“Once you’ve created your business card on DUB’s web site you can then have it sent to other users by email or SMS simply by sending a text message to the DUB site. DUB actually could have fit into almost any of the categories in this section since it supports email, SMS, and they have iPhone, Android, Blackberry, and Windows Mobile applications, as well as a web interface.”

Whoa! Thanks Josh… The part I like about his writeup is that he included the fact that DUB has so much versatility.  That’s no accident.  We made a very conscious decision to build something that would allow people using any device the ability to easily exchange contact info right from their phone, without the software or hardware limitations that exist with most other solutions.

It wasn’t that long ago that Palm (makers of that new phone the Pre in case you haven’t read the news in 6 months) tried their hand at letting people “beam” contact information from their Palm Vx devices to another Palm Vx device using infrared sensors.  The problem with this approach is obvious, “what happens if you don’t have a Palm Vx?”  The answer is you’re S.O.L.  We didn’t want to repeat a mistake made by someone else, so we built DUB to function on a wide range of the most popular smartphones (iPhone, Blackberry, Windows Mobile and Android) and also allowed people to use DUB from any phone that can send and receive text messages.  Just about every phone can text, and that makes it a whole lot easier for people to exchange contact information even if they don’t have the same phones.

We’ve received some great feedback (thanks everyone!) over the last few months and our users will notice some significant improvements and new features coming out in a few weeks .  We often like to quote a great scene from Seinfeld when trying to decide what direction to take the product and someone decided to code the quote into a screen shot (below).  It’s the little things that carry us through!

Sarah Perez has an interesting article today about the need for a more evolved address book on mobile phones and on the web. Her comments come on the eve of the launch of the much anticipated Palm Pre and the much speculated update of the iPhone.  Sarah’s basic question, “Why Hasn’t Anyone Developed a Great Mobile Contact Manager?” is one that is near and dear to our hearts at DUB because that’s precisely what we’re building.

For a long time, we’ve looked at contact managers, address books, and the like as basic software where information is static.  The reality is that people’s address books are in a constant state of change, as certain contacts move locations, change jobs, get new phone numbers, etc.  The dilemna with desktop address book software, both Apple’s Address Book and Microsoft’s Outloook Address Book, is that both are designed primarily for corporate IT environments.  Within a corporate setting, there is the idea of the Global Address List (GAL) that lists all company personnel, and their relevant contact info.  The GAL is created and updated by the IT department, and then updates are pushed out to each person in the company.  An employee’s desktop computer then synchronizes with their mobile devices either wirelessly or when the employee plugs in the phone to the computer, and that’s how contact info makes it to your phone.

Here’s the problem: people have contacts outside of their workplace (I know, who would’ve thunk it?).  Thus, even the most robust corporate contact management software can’t (and shouldn’t) account for people who are not part of the company.  I don’t think my cousin should have to contact my employer’s IT department to ask them to update his contact info and then push it out to me and my mobile device.  I mean, come on, that’s ridiculous.  We need to get away from this idea of hierarchical control of contact information and move to a system where everyone is accountable for their own information, and when they update that information, there is a universally available system that automatically updates their contacts and synchronizes the information with each of them.

On the topic of synchronization, consider this… If we can sync between phone and computer, why can’t we  sync between phone and phone? Specifically, between my phone and your phone?  When I change my contact info, why is there a practice where I take a separate step to send out an email blast to all 859 people in my address book and tell them that my contact info has changed, to which each of those 859 recipients have to take yet another step to update my contact information within their phone?  Why can’t something just alert you that I’ve updated my contact information and automatically make the switch on your end due to the fact that I am one of your contacts.  In 2009, with all the connectivity and technology we have freely available to us, for us to still be updating contact information manually strikes me as so completely ridiculous that I struggle to comprehend why we’re still doing it.  Surely, there’s got to be a better way.

If you’re fired up about this problem then I’ve done something right today.  That’s what I do: I get people fired up, and motivate them to take action.  In this case, the action I want you to take is first and foremost to realize that we can do better then what we currently think of as an address book.  We have the power to enable people to seamlessly update their contact information and have those updates automatically go out to the phones of all their contacts.  We have the power to completely eliminate the task of having to manually manage your address book, and prevent the problem of having dated contact information for a friend, client, family member, or customer.  The only question yet to be answered is if we have the wisdom to effectively challenge the status quo and change people’s habits? Do we have the right message that will allow us to alter people’s perception and make them think big about what’s possible?  I think we do…

To Sarah I would respond this way, “Someone is developing a great mobile contact manager… we are.”

Never a dull moment.  Checked out NY Tech MeetUp on Tuesday during Internet Week. Cool presentations from Centrl, UpNext and LiveStream.

Nate Westheimer gets things started below (they just crossed 10k members!).

Checked out the Mashable event on Wed at 92Y Tribeca (cool venue!). About 300 people came out to see and be seen. Lots of ‘Dubbing’ went on. We gave sneak preview of our new BlackBerry app with LinkedIn invite capability and handed out some hot laptop stickers.

Available whereever Dub is found.

Proof I was there.

Got back to DC in the wee hours of Thursday, took a nap and rushed to Fairfax, VA for breakfast with Robert Scoble.  We talked about everything from aircraft carriers (he was recently on one), to Twitter and of course mobile phones and DUB!

Robert Scoble checking out DUB!