I have to admit I'm not surprised. As a competitor, I did quite a bit of research into them - I found out some pretty shocking stuff. I won't air it all here because I don't think that is in anyone's best interests but I will say this:

If you deal with Empower/Mobylo, you are dealing with a group of people who have been repeatedly deceitful.

Anyway, let's get back to creating software

Cheers,
eZainny.

Way to generalize before you have all the facts. Cry more, please.

Wow...

I don't think I'll be buying any of your software strictly out of principle.

Type http://220.225.2.107 into your web browser. It gives
"This site is blocked by Squidguard of relproxy.iitk.ac.in. If this is wrong, contact "

It's a proxy server. All it really says is that these users are probably from the same country.

Am I the only one who wonders whether you're a little biased to be a moderator?

Hmmmmm....I'd also like to know, what the point of giving away 10k copies is? Besides trying to hurt the other email viewer?

<flame suit on>

Word. Just because they all share the same ip, that doesn't mean they're all the same person. Seems to me, a certain moderator should've contacted ani via pm before he came public with this.

I think the point in posting the IP addresses was to protect users here from possible deception. Do a search for maximax's previous posts - I think you'll see a definite trend in which threads he posts in (even eZainny's threads, suggesting people try Empower, go figure). But hey, perhaps he's just a big-time fanboy that happens to be posting from behind the same university proxy (this is plausible) and a second connection in India (hmm) that another few people known to be associated with this company are posting from, right?

Others to do post history searches on: jocelyn, nancyvera, ashiitk

I could be wrong about these four users, and I'd be the first to admit it, but I'm just saying...

P.S. - When it comes to biased opinions, FWIW, John Clark was the one who pointed me (and the rest of the moderation team) to try Empower's email viewer. I highly doubt he's the one to call biased. If you want to call me that, so be it, but JC is hardly the definition of that word.

I believe Ani will not come back to this forum to give any further update on his program anymore, even to those beta tester who doesnt mind about their business strategy.

Even though I do agree that they might step over the line in here, but no doubt that they are a bunch of guys who are trying to offer more option for us bb users.

It is sad to see all this bashing going on, which it shouldnt have happened as both of these program are just slightly similar, but they are actually not the same. One offers folder, rule filter, spell-check and another doesnt. One offers Calender and task and another doesnt.

i wish them the best (they still post on pinstack, fwiw). if ani does not want to post on here due to the confrontation caused by his own colleagues championing their product as consumers, then that is truly a shame to both his company and the people on here who have helped aide in the improvement of their product. i apologize for what has transpired, and i hope you (and others in your situation) understand the intentions behind our actions. they have behaved in a highly unethical manner in a very public forum (and some things you don't even know) and it needed to be dealt with in like fashion (in my opinion). if a company comes on to this forum and attempts to deceive our members, then i feel it in our best interest to protect those of you would otherwise be misled. honestly, what if Empower was actually charging money for their product - would it be any different at that point?

There is a lot more to this story also that many people don't know. I could go on listing numerous cases of foul play but instead I'll just cite another example of this that I just learned about.

We had someone contact us a while ago claiming to be in marketing, wanting to re-sell our product onto companies. We played ball, creating marketing material, engaging in long discussions, etc. They pretended they were going to conferences advertising our product, writing up big long emails about how things went, etc.

Well, as we've just come to find out today, that was Empower/Mobylo. Wasting our time, getting free marketing material that they'll re-brand to their own thing, who knows...

I've only been on these forums a short while, but in that time I've come to meet people I think I would consider friends and form friendships that will probably well outlast any of this software stuff. And it is in that context that I write this next sentence.

You do yourself no good dealing with people of such low moral fiber and it is sad that the people of these forums who only wanted to help out bear the brunt of this.

Wow... this is so low...

Thanks for the clarifications and now I can finally decide which program to go to without waiting for a longer time.

oO(digging out my credit card)

These punks are just sad. Hopefully when they grow, they'll mature.

Hi All,

I see a lot of discussion regarding relation between Empower and Mobylo. I could not post this earlier as I had to get some clearence from Mobylo ppl.

I guess everyone knows by now that Empower is a development effort by a group of university students. We learnt our bb programming at sessions conducted by Mobylo, which happens to be a hot startup by an alumni and is incubated within the same campus. Hope this clarifies the relation.

We started Empower project with a dream. A dream to create software that can replace the stone age software that come preloaded on blackberry. And keep it free. forever. As soon as we come out and offer our free product, we find strange things happening.

People ridicule us by saying things like "they are a bunch of kids", "if you use their software, who will support it", and "see where you put your money'?

People compared feature by feature an alpha version of our free product with the final version of paid product and suggested why buying that product is a better decision.

I could not understand why people would pay for something when they can get it for free. But we were stepping on someone's chances of becoming a millionaire.

I can now understand all that has happened, in retrospect.

With all this happening, we felt that a free Empower will not go anywhere, and we finally gave in to Misha's pestering about making it commercial. If people want to pay for software, so be it. But now our offer to give out free licenses seems to have gotton on someone's nerves. I guess they are viewing it in the wrong light. Empower will only be free for the first 10,000 users and not everyone. This should be a cause for them to cheer up and not feel threatened.

At this moment, I feel very lonely. Mobylo ppl are upset with us for creating this mess which is hurting their image. And whatever support I had on BBF would have been taken away by some vocal people who care so much for products they own and like, that they can't see anyone else bring out a similiar product.

As the day dawns on Monday, we will start working on the final version. And we will keep our promise of giving a free license to everyone on BBF who cares for our software.

Lastly, the Empower dream is older than what some people think. Please read the following dated 2nd March, 2007.

http://www.blackberryforums.com/afte...tml#post468451

Thank you all.
Ani.

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0) BlackBerry8300/4.2.2 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/102)

ani, I appreciate you coming on here and clearing up some things. I don't think ANYONE discredits you for your product - I think the interest generated for it speaks for itself. However, what is being questioned are the antics of maximax, jocelyn, and nancyvera (assuming these are real people). You can never beat honest business practices.

Thanks jibi. There is lot of interest among my batchmates about what we are developing and the kind of response we are getting. And some of them have gone overboard thinking they are helping us. I know I could have done better to stop them.

I will request everyone to evaluate products not by posts, but by their individual experience of using it.

Thanks.
Ani.

To be honest, I don't have enough facts to judge anyone. All I have to go on is the merit of the applications themselves. Personally, I like Empower a lot more, and it's what I am going to continue to use.

Sometimes things happen, sometimes people screw up. I used to be a developer and I know that sometimes all the scrutiny can be killer. People enjoy conspiracy theories much more than hard, honest facts.

Don't get discouraged about what has transpired here. I think you (ani) probably share the same belief as I that if you make good, quality software -- people will use it.

I'm going to be using Empower.

This gets stranger and stranger.....

I just ran a WHOIS query on Mobylo.com....

Can you explain this???? Looks like you ARE Mobylo.... BUSTED!!!!

Registrant:
Animesh Srivastava
19/571, Indiranagar
Lucknow, UP 226016
India

Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (Internet Domain Name Registration, Domain Transfers. Your domain name search starts here.)
Domain Name: MOBYLO.COM
Created on: 12-Nov-06
Expires on: 12-Nov-07
Last Updated on:

Administrative Contact:
Srivastava, Animesh
19/571, Indiranagar
Lucknow, UP 226016
India


Technical Contact:
Srivastava, Animesh
19/571, Indiranagar
Lucknow, UP 226016
India


And now for empower.....

Registrant:
Animesh Srivastava
19/571, Indiranagar
Lucknow, UP 226016
India

Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (Internet Domain Name Registration, Domain Transfers. Your domain name search starts here.)
Domain Name: GETEMPOWER.COM
Created on: 14-Feb-07
Expires on: 14-Feb-08
Last Updated on:

Administrative Contact:
Srivastava, Animesh
19/571, Indiranagar
Lucknow, UP 226016
India
919452240375

Technical Contact:
Srivastava, Animesh
19/571, Indiranagar
Lucknow, UP 226016
India
919452240375

In the interests of fair play:

Domain name: BLACKBERRYSMART.COM

Registrant Contact:
BlackBerrySmart
Neil Sainsbury (neil.sainsbury@gmail.com)
+61.434517443
Fax: none
3/5 Norman st
Annerley, QLD 4103
AU

Administrative Contact:
BlackBerrySmart
Neil Sainsbury (neil.sainsbury@gmail.com)
+61.434517443
Fax: none
3/5 Norman st
Annerley, QLD 4103
AU

Technical Contact:
Quadra Hosting Australia
Systems Administrator (administrator@quadrahosting.com.au)
+61.1300766288
Fax: none
ABN: 25 105 430 644
PO BOX 10475
Southport BC, NA 4215
AU

Status: Locked

Name Servers:
ns3.quadrahosting.com
ns4.quadrahosting.com
ns5.quadrahosting.com

Creation date: 24 Apr 2007 11:49:29
Expiration date: 24 Apr 2008 11:49:29

Hmmm ... do a search on John Clark's postings regarding these email viewers.

Okay, and 90% of his posts on here AREN'T about these email viewers. Your point is? ani already came on here and said that his batchmates were being a bit eager in their postings. Take that for what it's worth.

And 66% of your 3 posts are attacking me. Hmmm.

So 10% are not? How many posts is that?

My point is that this particular moderator seems to have taken sides. In a fair system, the moderators facilitate, they don't opinionate.

Please do the search yourself. I think many people don't like the possibility that moderators are biased.

In terms of the competing software offerings, I don't think all that many people care about making email look pretty. The BlackBerry already has all the functionality. They are very good at what they do.

I haven't posted thousands of messages, of which (according to your colleague) apparently 10% were on this email viewer.

Frankly, I don't care what you do. I thought other people might care what this forum supports and doesn't. It doesn't appear to be fair play.

By the way, do you actually know what a proxy server is? What motivated that strange message about IP addresses?

Umm, I'd beg to differ that statement. Do you think we'd even be here if our sole purpose is to moderate? No. We are consumers. We are enthusiasts. Some of our jobs are centered around BlackBerry. To say that we don't have the right to our opinions is absolutely stupid. If you think John is biased, so be it. I don't personally think he is and neither do quite a few other people who have been on here for quite some time. Our first priorities on this forum is to provide assistance when we can, to provide value to the forum (as we did prior to being made moderators; afterall, that's why most of us are in our position now - we had something to offer), and to be users just like everyone else ...my last priority as a moderator of this forum is to moderate our users, as it's an open community. When someone steps out of line or if a post/user is reported or I'm PM'd about someone being a troublesome dimwit, then I'll step in and use the powers I have. Otherwise, people are people and they should interact accordingly.

You may disagree with my opinions, and that's your opinion to do so, but I've been doing this for a long time (almost 3 years on here and many more years on other forums that I run), so I think I know the ropes when it comes to using the powers of moderation/administration of online communities.

I knew that was coming. And I am not surprised. Anyone who has been in India you knows two things -

1. Credit Cards are a privilege for elites here. Even people with full-time jobs are not able to get credit cards easily. If you are a student you have to take someones help.

2. This is not implied yet, but since I know that will be your next question - I will put that here as well. Animesh is a fairly common name. Even my chemistry lab partner in first year was Animesh Kumar. And there are two Animesh in my department itself.

If I really had to hide it I would have asked them to buy me a private domain registration instead of leaving it open to everyone on the internet.

Thankfully I wasn't named Amit by my parents, or I would have been left explaining my whole life to a 'group of people here' how am I different from every other Amit as that happens to be an even more common name in India.

Ani.

My god!! My GOD!!!

okay before someone now looks up on manchengo, I must say - I honestly don't know who he is !!! Anyone who has been to college knows that college connections runs strong, and not being a God I honestly have absolutely no way to find out which of the 10,500 residents on this campus is an ardent supporter of Empower. I just hope he is not one of them, or else I am going to have to pay for that again !!!

CAN WE NOW PLEEEAASE GET THE THREAD BACK TO WHAT I MEANT IT FOR? PRODUCT FEEDBACK ANYONE ??

As far as the mods. We all have opinions and biases. Heck. there are reviewers and critics of every product. (e.g. Movie critics) We, as subscribers have the choice to take their information and information of others.

Not that this is the case, I have no issue with anyone in a mod role supporting or criticicizing any item, as long as there is no conflict of interest. Enough said.

Are you saying that you ARE NOT Animesh Srivastava?

Odd...how the "about us" section of your website dissapeared where it listed your names.

Answered before.

This is one of the most scary things I have ever heard from a moderator. You have the power to decide what is on this board and isn't. We don't.

This is one reason why.

No...you still haven't answered it.

Are you Animesh Srivastava? The same person who registered both domains.

You're evading the question. A simple yes or no is what's being asked.

Are you Animesh Srivastava...and did you register both domains?

My guess is that what he meant by he replied, is that he explained that because he didn't have a credit card, the domain name was registered for him by Mobylo using their credit card.

I answered that before you asked. Henceforth ignored.

this stuff should be on tv! its like im reading a soap opera. from the outside reading in; it looks like the new members that are attacking john clark might be a part of empower. i don't know for sure but it really looks like it. they are very defensive.

Maybe they are a "part of Empower". Maybe they are not. I have on way of knowing and if mods will want, they can certainly find that out using IP.

Finally, I am responsible for my products. I really have no say over thoughts and opinions of people who using it, loving it or championing it. You are free to download it, use it and hate or like it and then voice your opinion as well.

Thanks.

As with anyone with power, it's to be used responsibly. I'm sure I can get my moderation history and show it to you, if you really want me to do so - I rarely, if ever, delete anything from this forum. I take the approach of least-enforced moderation. Again, if you don't agree with the way I do things here, so be it. No one is forcing you to visit this website or forum, to be perfectly honest. I would say that I have an impeccable reputation within this community.

They aren't. Seems more like the people from *******, to be honest - same neck of the woods.