It seems that Android and Droid are everywhere these days, and that’s no wonder given an estimated $100M advertisement budget committed by Verizon for the Droid campaign alone. On top of that, we just love new gadgets and the buzz and excitement that go with it. Who doesn’t want to join the party?

Yet, with all that media noise it gets harder to objectively decide what features and functionality really matter the most before committing to a new smart-phone and the obligatory carrier contract. No question, the new Android phones and the Moto Droid are fantastic and give you just a glimpse of things to come, but the Blackberry Storm is in many ways an equal contender on a more mature platform. The launch of the original Storm last year was a bit of a flop – mainly because the software was just not ready for prime time and subsequent patches were slow to market. Here are 5 reasons why you should still look at the Storm when shopping for your next smart-phone.

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Cage Fighter – Bruce
(flickr)

IBM Lotus Vice President of Unified Communications and Collaboration, Bruce Morse called out Microsoft at the Enterprise 2.0 (E2) conference in San Francisco earlier this week. The Demo Gods weren’t with IBM that day.  After suffering through a very glitchy demo presumably caused by an overloaded conference network (hey, we’ve all been there), he declared:

“Trust me, this stuff works. We use it every day in business and we have a lot of customers who’ve deployed it,” he said. “But obviously we’re having a bit of difficulty I presume with the network today.”

“I’m here today to tell you I’m not afraid to get in the cage with Microsoft – in their closed cage,” said Morse. “And so, I’d like to issue a challenge today for Microsoft at VoiceCon in the spring, to put up or shut up. I’ll be willing to match up our capabilities against Microsoft and let the audience judge.”

In order to differentiate itself from Microsoft, IBM Lotus is enabling its customers to leverage their existing communication infrastructure by integrating with Lotus Notes and Sametime. It is great to see IBM taking the offensive and I can’t wait for VoiceCon 2010 to witness the public solution shootout – cage or no cage.

Microsoft, are you biting…?

Cisco announced today at its Collaboration Summit the launch of new enterprise collaboration products that further round out its already strong portfolio of IP telephony, real-time collaboration and media server solutions.  The new products include hosted email and social networking for the enterprise and puts Cisco in direct competition with Microsoft, IBM, Google and many other start-ups.

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I have been using voice mail transcription from Simulscribe/PhoneTag for over two years and couldn’t image life without it. The premise is simple: Instead of listening to lengthy voice messages, having to jot down phone numbers etc., I quickly scan through a SMS or email and get the information I need, or simply hit delete on things I don’t.  PhoneTag’s transcription works very well, but can cost up to $30/month if you get a lot of voice mails.

The lure of  “free” made me check out Google Voice and its built-in transcription.

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Just as certain as the change of seasons is the recurring prediction of the end of email.  The Wallstreet Journal published an article yesterday, titled:  “Why Email No Longer Rules… …And what that means for the way we communicate”.

It seems that email is pronounced dead every time a new communication technology gets user traction. The last time around, IM and SMS were replacing email. Now Twitter and Facebook are taking over. Perhaps this is simply driven by our love-hate relationship with email and the fact that our inboxes have gotten so cluttered with useless and sometimes even harmful junk that we are all wishing for alternatives.

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After months of speculation about Google’s entry into the mobile space, T-Mobile is introducing the first Android-powered mobile phone aptly named the G1, today.  The launch event is scheduled to begin at 10:30am EDT and will be webcasted here.

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