Tribair sponsors Longueuil's soccer team in international tournament

An international soccer tournament is held every year in Spain: the Mediterranean International Cup. Teams from all over the world compete, among others: Manchester United (UK), FC Barcelona (Spain), Korean YFA, Ajax Amsterdam (NL), KACM Marrakech (Morocco), FCBescola (Hong Kong), Liverpool FC (UK), FC Bayern Munich (Germany), Talentos Franco Rizzi (Venezuela) and our own Soccer Longueuil. Needless to say, we weren't the favourites.

The teams were divided into 7 pools containing 4 teams. Each team plays against the other 3. The best two of every pool move on as does the best 3 place finisher. Longueuil drew a very tough pool with Ajax (last year's winner) and Alboraya UD (last year's bronze). Longueuil was clearly there for the experience. They lost the first match 3-0 against Alboraya. A good match for Longueuil as they were able to attack quite a few times and weren't totally out of their league. The next match was against Ajax. They certainly got a good experience out of that match. They even scored a goal. At the half, it was only 2-1 for Ajax. Ajax finally won 4-1. Just scoring a goal was certainly a victory for our team.

Finally, they were up against a local team. They quickly took a 3-0 lead and never looked back. Longueuil's coach pushed them to the limit and the goals kept coming. By the time it was all over, they had won 9-0! Who would believe a team from Canada could completely dominate a team from Spain. So Longueuil was not that unlucky in their draw after all. By getting to play against one weaker team, they scored enough goals to make it as the best third place finisher and move on to the next round. Making it to the next round was clearly unexpected and also very rewarding as they played nothing less than FC Barcelona. Clearly, FC Barcelona had the better team and again Longueuil lost only 3-0. At that age, the average of goals scored per game is around 6. So 3-0 is very honourable. Playing against the best teams in the world is an experience that will not only make the team so much better but also remain in their memories for a life time.

In the final of the tournament, Madrid beat Barcelona 2-0 in a classic matchup.

Congratulations to the whole team!

Eric

Snow Ball Effect

As a small company, our marketing budget is limited. We cannot compete with the big telcos and we can't come even close to Skype. We need to rely on our faithful users, on word of mouth and on a few lucky breaks. We got a few breaks when our competition crashed for a day or two. Every time there is a crash, our downloads go up significantly. Users are quick to find another solution when something goes wrong.

On the other hand, we need to make sure our own solution works perfectly. Our users are using Tribair on over 100 different types of Android phones. There is no way we can buy and test them all, but we are testing on the most popular ones. Even if Android should be standard, it isn't. As an example, we had major problems with the Galaxy from Samsung because it was bypassing Android to handle sound. Every time a user has a bad experience, he's not telling his friends about us. The snow ball doesn't get bigger. Even worse, he might make a bad review and the snow ball might actually get smaller.

On iPhone, we have finally fixed the echo problem. It will work on all iPhone and iPod 4, iPads and on iPhone 3 with iOS 4 or more. Even if it's simpler to test on iPhone, there are still a lot of different variations as they release new updates of their iOS frequently. As users are experiencing better and better calls, we can see their numbers getting bigger and bigger. But as soon as we make a bad release, their numbers drop instantaneously and it takes a very long time to get back up. A snowball is very hard to get rolling and very easy to break.

Are you ready to pay for something that is free?

"Of course not!" I hear.

Now remember the last time you lost your credit card under the passenger seat of you car and had to call your bank with your cellphone.

Remember the last time you called your airline to reschedule a return flight.

Remember the last time you reserved a taxi.

Everytime you call a toll-free number from your cell - and you and I know that those calls can be pretty long - you use your precious and costly airtime minutes. Fair?

This is why, we came up with a new convenience app: "Free Airlines Caller", that let you make those long calls over your WiFi, free of any charges, including airtime.

Try it out: https://market.android.com/details?id=com.tribair.freeairlinescaller&feature=search_result

Airlines enrolled:
Aer Lingus, Aeroflot, Aeromexico, Air Canada, Air China, Air France, Air Jamaica, Air Mauritius, Air Pacific, Air Tahiti Nui, AirTran, Alitalia, All Nippon Airways, American Airlines, Asiana Airlines, Austrian Airlines, Avianca, Bangkok Airways, China Airlines, China Eastern Airlines, Condor, Continental Airlines, Copa Airlines, Czech Airlines, EVA Airways, Finnair, Frontier Airlines, Garuda Indonesia, Hawaiian Airlines, Iberia Airlines, Icelandair, Japan Airlines, JetBlue, Kuwait Airways, Lufthansa, Philippine Airlines, Qantas Airways, SAS Scandinavian Airlines, Saudi Arabian Airlines, Singapore Airlines, South African Airways, Southwest Airlines, Spanair, Spirit Airlines, Sun Country Airlines, Swiss International Airline, TAM Brazilian Airlines, TAP Air Portugal, Thai Airways, Turkish Airlines, United Airlines, US Airways, Virgin Atlantic

New Languages

As our app gets used all over the world, we get several requests to support more languages. Being from Canada with a multi-cultural history, it is obvious to support as many languages as possible. By an incredible amount of circumstances, we had a 1960 world map at our office with all the languages spoken. Looking at the number of smartphones and our number of users in every country, we have decide to add as soon as possible the following languages: Italian, German, Russian, Japanese, Deutsch and Arabic.

Having myself lived in Tunisia for a year, I feel I also needed to do something for all my friends back there. The problem with Arabic is that it is read right to left. Some interfaces will have to be re-designed, but we have so many users in Arabic countries that we have to support them with an app in their own language. Finally, in some countries, Tribair calls go through where Skype are blocked. So lets help everyone communicate.