GreatCall and Samsung jointly recalled 160,000 easy-to-use Jitterbug cell phones after the phones carrier discovered the units could not make 911 calls in a small rural carriers coverage area.

We spoke exclusively to Alex Rampell at TrialPay, an innovate software sales service that's seen a lot of growth over the last few years.

1. What's the concept behind TrialPay?

In a previous life, I founded a software company and ran into the problem that every software company encounters: though millions of customers may download free or trial editions, only a very small percentage of customers upgrade to the full version. I ran a few promotions where customers could get his company’s software for free by signing up for a music subscription or DVD rental service—and sales more than doubled, as revenue from these transactions paid for the software.
The success of this promotion provided the inspiration for TrialPay: a bad customer for one brand may be the ideal customer for another company. The key was figuring out which customers were good candidates for which offers. TrialPay’s proprietary optimization engine connects shoppers with ideal offers and pays the merchant out of advertising revenue. Everyone benefits from this arrangement. Merchants make more sales from their current traffic, advertisers acquire new customers on a pay-for-performance basis and shoppers get a free product with every online transaction.

2. How long as TrialPay been going?

Since 2006

3. Give us some numbers, are people really using TrialPay?

More than 7,500 online merchants use our e-commerce solutions, including AVG, McAfee, Lavasoft, Trillian and more. We also work with more than 2,000 blue-chip advertisers, such as Gap, FTD, Netflix and Discover Card. More than 30 million users from around the world have registered with TrialPay.

4. TrialPay is being used for other things beside software sales, such as subscriptions to magazines. Do you see software as your focus, or just a piece in the puzzle?

We got our start in software, which will always be an important part of our business, but we’ve since expanded to serve nearly every industry. TrialPay is an effective sales and promotions tool for any type of digital good sold online, from software to dating site subscriptions to online gaming subscriptions. We’ve also worked well in the food industry—Restaurant.com and Papa John’s have both seen great results with TrialPay.

5. Are small software vendors seeing success with TrialPay, or is it just for the big players?

It’s not the size of the software company that determines success with TrialPay, but how aggressively and creatively the TrialPay payment option is implemented. For example, we have very successful software vendors of all sizes that offer TrialPay as a payment option to anyone who attempts to download a free version from their site. On the other hand, we have much less successful software vendors—large and small—that only offer TrialPay via e-mail to small groups of expired users. So it ultimately depends on where the software vendor is displaying the TrialPay option (i.e. on their homepage, in a download interstitial, as an in-product upgrade) and the amount and quality of traffic the TrialPay option is displayed to (i.e. to all Web site traffic or to a small e-mail list).

In particular, the “Download Interstitial” touchpoint has done exceptionally well. For example, go to www.lavasoft.com and click on the large green “Download Ad-Aware Free” button at the top right. This action will take you to the “download interstitial” touchpoint. TrialPay helps Lavasoft convert customers before they have a chance to download the free version of Ad-Aware by offering a compelling way to get a full, free upgrade. Lavasoft was the originator of the download interstitial touchpoint, and pretty much every software company we work with has followed suit. The results speak for themselves! (see the Lavasoft case study)

6. Are you considering integrating your service into existing e-commerce platforms?

TrialPay works with any e-commerce system, from standard online cart solutions to in-house e-commerce systems. Our plug-and-play platform is second to none in scalability and performance.
In addition to our ability to work with any e-commerce platform, TrialPay has direct relationships with Kagi, asknet AG, Mercantec, E-junkie and more, which enables simple integration for all clients on these platforms.

7. What new innovations can we expect from TrialPay?

We will continue to introduce payment and promotional tools that help any online seller increase the probability of conversion and maximize the profit of each transaction. Our new Purchase Incentives Platform is a good example of a new initiative.

8. Will you be changing your system to move into non US and European markets?

We are already in non-U.S. and European markets. We provide local, relevant offers in more than 100 countries, and localize the checkout process in ten different languages. Also, we allow our merchants to set different price points for any region of the world without showing those price discrepancies to their customers

9. How has the economic downturn impacted software sales from your point of view?

I think the economic downturn has caused customers to look for more affordable solutions for everything they buy, including software. And through TrialPay, shoppers can get a free product with every purchase. TrialPay had its highest sales day and most profitable quarter in the midst of a holiday shopping season with the worst sales drop in four decades—which validates this claim.

10. How do you see the software sales landscape changing over the next five years?

It’s becoming increasingly hard to convince shoppers to pay for digital content. As more of these products become free (from free software included on a new computer to free content available through online media outlets), shoppers’ demand for free digital content will continue to rise.

About the Author:
Alex Rampell is co-founder and CEO of TrialPay

Gov. Martin OMalley said Monday he would consider going against federal law to hold a cell-phone jamming demonstration at a Maryland prison to help stop illegal cell phone use by prison inmates, but he hopes that won't be necessary.

O'Malleys spokesman, Rick Abbruzzese, said the administration plans to send a request to the Federal Communications Commission for permission to hold a demonstration, but has not yet. The FCC has said the Communications Act of 1934 doesn't allow state and local agencies to use the technology, which prevents cell tower transmissions from reaching phones.

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We have just added some new tutorials for using NotePager Pro text messaging software. There is a setup and installation tutorial, adding carriers tutorial, and adding recipients tutorial.

If you want an iPhone but are turned off by the high monthly service fees, some good news may be on the horizon. According to BusinessWeek, AT&T Wireless may offer lower-priced plans as early as late May. If the report is true, the starter iPhone plan would cost about $60 a month.

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When Annamarie Saarinen needed to soothe her ailing daughter, she used a rattle — downloaded to her iPhone.

Jeff Hilimire uses a white noise application on his phone to make shushing noises for his infant daughter. And Tracie Stier-Johnson lets her young daughters answer trivia questions on her phone while waiting in the doctors office or at parent-teacher conferences.

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US Cellular is poised to become the first carrier in the States to offer a free battery swap program for customers that are loyal enough to hold on to their handset.

Starting last week, customers with dead or dying batteries can walk into any US Cellular store and receive a fully-charged replacement for free.

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Transit officials in Massachusetts are banning train, trolley and bus drivers from carrying cell phones while they are behind the wheel after one operator crashed a street car while text-messaging his girlfriend.

From time to time, we get so caught up in the technical details of software development that we forget that potential customers, seeing the application for the very first time, may not have the same level of understanding and familiarity as we do. Seeing your build in action, debugging it, and running through the program again and again, for days and weeks on end, brings a certain level of knowledge and intimacy to your thought process. It’s natural for a developer to become somewhat detached from the typical new user experience. It's even possible for a group of like-minded individuals to completely miss a design flaw or bug that is obvious to someone who looks at the program with new eyes.

It’s beneficial, then, to occasionally test your software interface using folks who have absolutely no idea what your application is supposed to do. Without a proper introduction, run the program for someone, put their hand on the mouse, and then sit back and watch what happens. Observe how they interact with your program, listen to their questions, and pay particularly close attention to anything that frustrates or confuses them.

Does the layout of your user interface allow your user to find functions intuitively? Do the field names on your screens make sense to non-technical people? Did you start calling a form name by the name of the variable that’s populated by it, and continue to do so today, even when a plain english label would make more sense? Does the person intuitively understand how to perform basic functions without asking you how it’s done, and do those basic functions invite the user to explore more advanced ways of using your program?

Listen to the feedback provided by your testers. You may not think that a particular feature was sufficiently important to include in your build, but if its absence is repeatedly mentioned by several different testers, you can bet that potential customers will also want to see it. Be prepared to swallow your pride and implement a feature that you, personally, may not see as useful, but that your target audience wants. Consider the impact of not including it - you get your way, sure, but who knows how many potential customers will elect to use a competing software product that is similar to yours, but has this one additional feature that they really want?

You may not always need to completely overhaul the design of your user interface. Based on the feedback you receive from non-technical user testing, you may be able to address some issues adequately just by clearly explaining a process, feature, or technique in your end-user documentation or embedded application help.

The European Commission launched a new assault on what it considers to be rip-off costs in mobile telephony Thursday, this time setting its sights on mobile termination rates.

Unlike earlier moves against mobile roaming charges, which involved setting price caps, the latest initiative recommends that national telecom regulators in the 27 European Union member countries take action.