Contacts Cleaner V2.0

March 27th, 2010

We are pleased to announce the release of version 2.0 of Contacts Cleaner.  The two major improvements made in this version are faster processing of the address book and improved matching of duplicate contacts.

Since releasing Contacts Cleaner I have been surprised by the number of address books that have 10,000 or more contacts in them, often with the majority of the contacts being duplicates.  It has been a challenge to find and merge duplicates in a reasonable amount of time given the modest processing power of a phone.  I’m on the 4th version of the find and merge algorithm, and this version seems to be pretty darn good.   The customer feedback on processing speed for version 2.0 has been overwhelmingly positive.

With respect to duplicate matching, one constant source of duplicates is Google Sync.  To make matters worse, Google Sync tend to put the first and last name in the last name field of a contact.  With version 2.0,  we have changed the duplicate match algorithm to correctly recognize these cases of duplicates.

Enjoy!

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Contacts Cleaner Support Page

March 3rd, 2010

If you are having issues with Contacts Cleaner, or just want to know more about how it works, please visit our users guide at:

http://beavercreekconsulting.com/contacts-cleaner/user-guide.html

We recently made several updates to the FAQ and you will find answers for the most common questions.

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Contacts Cleaner Matching Algorithm

March 2nd, 2010

One of the key ingredients of Contacts Cleaner is identification of duplicate contacts.  We have put a lot of effort into the algorithm, and concluded that less is more.

Most folks love Contacts Cleaner.  There are  a lot of really messed up address books out there.  I heard from a customer today who had 13,000 contacts, of which 10,000 were duplicates.  Bummer Dude!  This person needs a simple solution which will fix the mess that is their address book.  Contacts Cleaner to the rescue!

We have settled on a lights out, robust, and repeatable algorithm that will tame the chaos which is your address book.  Contacts Cleaner “just works”.  It will make you address book better without bothering you.  Contacts Cleaner is not perfect, but it is better!

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Contacts Cleaner FAQ

March 1st, 2010

I just updated the FAQ for Contacts Cleaner.  I went back through the customer support tickets and extracted common issues to create the new FAQ entries.  If you are having issues with Contacts Cleaner, do check out the FAQ.  Chances are good you’ll find an answer.

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Contacts Cleaner 1.0

February 7th, 2010

Beaver Creek Consulting is pleased to announce the release of their new product, Contacts Cleaner.  Contacts Cleaner is a BlackBerry App that removes duplicate contacts from your address book.  Contacts Cleaner is available from BlackBerry App World, as well as popular BlackBerry sites such as CrackBerry and BBGeeks.

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Duplicate Blackberry Entries

January 22nd, 2010

Where was life without the Blackberry phone?  Now, we can check or send email messages while bored at a meeting, at a game, or in a class.  In other words, our ability to connect has become so mobile that our lifestyles have truly changed.

All of this started when I came home with my exciting package which contained my new toy within.  I followed the instructions so that I could get my email addresses from my accounts onto the Blackberry.  This would give me the freedom to be away from a desk and still have the flexibility to connect.  I, now had all of my email addresses of my friends downloaded onto my Smartphone.

There was a glitch, however.  I noticed that I suddenly had five entries for my friend “Dimitri Gumm”.  I had put in her home phone number into the SIM card four years ago.  When she called me on her cell phone, I captured  this into the same SIM card into another entry. Without realizing it, I also put in her work phone number when she sneaked in a break to tell me about upcoming layoffs.  Thus far, I had three entries for Dimitri without really realizing it. I transferred this information to my new Blackberry.

Now that I had this cool new device and had downloaded my addresses from Yahoo and Gmail, my Blackberry told me that I now knew five Dimitri Gumm’s , yet I only have met one!  I figured that I had no choice but to live with this headache.  With five entries, I could just hit the scroll button on my Blackberry, then hit enter and then view the content five times over before I hit what I needed, right?

Wrong!  I just discovered Contacts Cleaner.  Blackberry now sells this app for $2.99 that consolidates your contacts into one entry.  So, now I have one entry for my friend Dimitri Gumm and all of her phone numbers and email addresses are merged into this one entry.  The hassels of using my phone are finally gone.

I highly recommend this solution for the modern day Blackberry user.  I was so excited about this application that I felt the need to write about it and share my find.  Thanks Blackberry App World!  Keep up the good work.

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Take Your Business Online – Use a Checklist

January 22nd, 2010

It’s a great time to have an online business.  Internet costs are low and the time to have an online company set up is short.  Whether or not you currently have a business or have thoughts about great business ideas, you can be online in less than a few days.  As you probably know, online shopping continues to grow as more and more people around the world are using the Internet.  During the 2009 holiday season, U.S. consumers spent $27.1 billion through online shopping.  Despite the recession, this was a 5% increase when compared to 2008.

All of this points to people’s acceptance of ecommerce and why having a presence on the Internet is so important.  You business should be where the shoppers are:  online.  There are many resources that you can tap into that will cover how to get started.  You can visit your Chamber of Commerce, find articles o the Internet, hire an outside firm or purchase a variety of books. If you are looking for a simple e-book which covers all of the basics and has a checklist at the back of book, however, I would recommend Take Your Business Online:  A Checklist to Success.

This book covers everything that a beginner needs to know in order to get started.  Without having to purchase an SEO book, a design book, a how to blog book, etc…, you will find a nice overview in this short and easy to read product.  While it is selling for the Kindle on Amazon, you can simply download it for $9.50 and have it by your side as you go through the steps of getting your company set up.  Good luck with your company and remember to have fun with it!

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Adding Mobile Marketing to your Marketing Strategy

August 27th, 2009

If you already didn’t have enough on your plate, it’s time to add one more “to-do” to your marketing mix: mobile marketing. Mobile Marketing involves advertising to your customer through mobile devices. You can either send your audience a marketing message or send a link which takes your audience to your mobile site. The benefit of marketing to people’s smart phones is that you can target your audience with more precision than television, radio or print advertising.

Specifically, mobile marketing allows promoters to send out inexpensive customized campaigns to well-defined people where they can respond immediately. This form of advertising is real time and goes anywhere the consumer goes. In other words, the prospect doesn’t need to be in front of his/her computer or television set.

Also, the ad can be hone in on a particular demographic based on age, gender, profession, location. There is the potential for your message to be passed along to others with ease. Finally, when an individual clicks on the ad, you are able to measure the success rate of the ad that you placed.

When studies show that 51% of U.S. mobile users responded to mobile advertising in 2008, it indicates that this is a medium that should not be ignored. Also, over 60% of the world’s population use mobile phones which translates into tremendous growth opportunities for reaching your audience.
Companies can integrate the mobile phone into their existing marketing mix and have a strategy that can include mobile coupons, special promotions, real time information about events, etc… However the ads are used, it is important to make sure that they can be downloaded quickly and are on clean pages. There should be clear and well-defined objectives with easy navigation for the customer to get to your goal. We know that getting more customers from anywhere and anytime to reach your goal, leads to successful marketing programs.

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PHP PEAR on GoDaddy

May 3rd, 2009

Today I moved the server side components of SimplySchedules.com to my hosting service for the first time.  Yahoo — the launch is getting closer!

The sever side is done in PHP due to the extreme cost effectiveness of hosted LAMP.  I used a few modules from the most excellent PEAR collection.  All good, except when I installed the code at GoDaddy.com, I was missing the PEAR modules.

The PEAR modules are a lot of code, so I was very happy to find this clear and concise blog posting that explained how to install PEAR at GoDaddy.  Basically, you install an installer on your web account and then use a web based front end to install your selected PEAR components.

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Scripting Approaches For Java Application Test Automation

April 2nd, 2009

Next week I’m presenting at the Northern Virginia Test Automation Interest Group.  The group’s focus is test automation and I’m talking about how to automate scripting of Java applications with an eye towards testing.

Full, disclosure, I’m a scripting FanBoy; this is an opportunity to talk about exposing scripting interfaces for Java applications so I’m jumping on the opportunity to do so.  It just happens that doing so is a a great route to test automation and I get to talk on and on about scripting.

I’m covering groovy, Rhino, and JavaCC.  The meeting announcement is here.

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