An unwitting introduction to InTechnology's 'pushToexperience' service

Regularly I get emails with slightly dodgy contents. Indeed a whopping 98% of my incoming email is total spam, or from utter weirdos. Filtering the real from the made up, or mad, does take a bit of time. (One of the reasons I get so much spam is because I choose to publish my email in full here — it makes it easier for people when they want to just click-to-mail.)

Getting weird, strange or offensive real emails is a constant reminder that we have, at Mobile Industry Review, officially and certifiably ‘made it’.

You can’t claim to be one of the most influential mobile publications on the planet unless you get at least one email every day that reads like it’s been typed by a series of drunk chimps bashing away on an internet connected terminal.

If somebody isn’t screaming, somewhere, you’re doing it wrong, right?

I normally never bother but the series of emails I received from Gerrard Cowburn stood out from the usual pack. Gerrard, if you haven’t already come across him in your travels, is Technical Business Manager (Mobile Services) at InTechnology Plc.

Two of Gerrard’s colleagues, Andrew Pitt and Vince Lowe, signed up for Mobile Industry Review email update. (That’s the one on the right-hand-side of this page.) You’re given an choice, but by default, every time we post, we sent out a notification by email.

According to our records, both Andrew and Vince signed up on the same day — 23rd August, this year.

Gerrard, it seems, has been getting one or both of their Mobile Industry Review email notifications. And when he tried unsubscribing, well, the system couldn’t find his email.

The first I knew there was an issue with poor Gerrard was when I got this email tonight at 7pm:

x x x x

Safe to say he wasn’t happy. Then I spotted another mail from him, but with less energy though:

x x x x

The one that pushed me into super-investigative action was his final message…

x x x x

You’ll note, of course, that I haven’t actually published his text as that wouldn’t be appropriate, would it?

Anyway, never fear Gerrard! You’re now unsubscribed.

Well… you are not. I couldn’t find your email in any of our systems.

But I found Vince and I found Andrew — both at the intechnology.com domain — so I can only infer that perhaps one of those chaps has moved on, and you’ve been copied in on their emails automatically? I’m not sure but that could be a good explanation.

This is why, when you tried to unsubscribe from this, it didn’t work, Gerrard.

So I’ve now removed both addresses, just to be sure.

But Gerrard’s emails prompted me to have look around InTechnology’s site.

And this was good news.

I’ve never heard of pushtoexperience.com (“A new mobile service provided by InTechnology which includes several features including Push To Talk and GPS tracking”) or the main company, InTechnology.com (“The UK’s leading Managed IT Services provider”).

Have you come across them before?

I had a click about on the management team. The Rt. Hon. Lord Parkinson is Non-Exec and I most certainly respect him. He’s a good chap to have on your board.

Likewise, I’ve come across some of CEO Peter Wilkinson’s previous ventures and been pretty impressed (never met Peter though). The company’s Finance Director, Andrew Kaberry, was also in the same position at Planet Online — and I remember them back from the dotcom days before they were acquired in, if memory serves, a pretty healthy transaction by Energis. Nice work Andrew!

Push to Talk is a really interesting technology — and I’m rather impressed at the combination of PTT and GPS. For guys working on site, or across large areas, it’s a brilliant medium for sending quick bursts of walkie-talkie like information between individuals and teams. The addition of GPS… well… I’m not sure how that’s being used, but I can imagine some pretty cool use scenarios.

The key handset for this appears to be the Tornado BB3G — and it reminds me a lot of the Sonim Toughphone:

But it seems pushToexperience will also sort you out with PTT service on an N95 and an array of other devices.

I did a little more digging and found out about the GPS service. It’s called Push To Locate (PTL). Have a read:

Push To Locate is the second addition to the Push To Experience suite of services. With GPS-enabled Push To Talk handsets, you have the unique ability of being able to locate and communicate to your remote working staff in an instant.

Push To Locate provides historical information of an employee’s movement so that they can confirm, for example, if a delivery person was at the correct address at the correct time, or which route that the employee took by plotting the location and route on a secure website, which is updated frequently and doesn’t require any additional software.

Using Push To Talk and Push To Locate also helps protect your lone workers as part of compliance with HSE and Corporate Manslaughter regulation. By ensuring that a supervisor can remain in constant touch and knows exactly where lone workers are, they can quickly send assistance in the case of injury or in an emergency.

Very smart. I’d particularly like to see any one working for any emergency or utility service getting PTL facilities, particularly Police Officers. I don’t know if they have this functionality with their existing hardware setup. The Tornado handset I referred to earlier even has an SOS Alert function. Simply press SOS and an operator will be immediately notified of the incident and be sent your precise GPS location. Genius. (More info here.)

If any of this piques your interest, head over to InTechnology.co.uk.