I think I mentioned before that my ex employer has retained me on a freelance basis to help research and purchase a new phone system for his business. I was always pulled into communications decisions when I was working there, even though I was only the Art Director. I think it was because I understood technology more than most at our company. And, I have a nose for a good deal.

One of our biggest problems in the past was the sheer level of long distance phone charges accrued due to having multiple locations and salespeople working out of home offices. I have no idea why that was such a vexing issue back years ago, but today there are multiple, economic solutions.

Talkswitch, phone system, PBX is just one of the various systems that have gained popularity in the past year or so. TalkSwitch uses VoIP (Voice over IP) technology and works with IP or standard analog telephones. The most useful feature in the case of our particular business is that any phone can be added as a simple extension. Cell phones, home phones, and other office phone systems can become part of your main network. The phones can be located anywhere in the world. It really adds new meaning to the phrase, “it’s a small world.”

Ideally, our packaging company is an international venture and should not have to reply ion being located in Florida. Our salespeople are located all overt the world and are often on the road with their cell phones. Why should a customer have to call the main office and leave a message when they can simply dial an extension from our toll free number and be instantly connected to anyone in the company? The best part is that when I do act on a freelance basis to do design work for a client, they never have to know I’m not actually in the office.

Pay once and get web hosting and a domain name forever? 
It sounds almost too good to be true. Well, it is true, but it’s also only available for a limited number of new web hosting accounts. THC is offering their Rudolph hosting plan to the first 1000 plans sold for a one-time fee of $95. That gets you both the hosting plan and the domain for life. You don’t have to pay ever again – no hidden costs or subsequent fees.

The hosting plan is just as powerful, if not more so, as anything else you’ve probably been looking at lately. You get 250 GB disk space, 3000 GB bandwidth, unlimited MySQL databases, PHP4, web mail, professional website design tools and that free domain for life that I already mentioned. It’s ready to go out-of-the-box, so to speak.

Check it out. As I mentioned, this deal is only good for the first 1000 plans they sell. My current hosting plan is good, but I have to pay each year to renew my domain name and my hosting. I’ll spend considerably over $95 in the first two years with my current plan. If you are budget minded or have been getting cold feet about starting up your own domain, this is a great time to take a plunge, at minimal risk.

I like Netflix and the DVD direct mail service they offer. When I got a divorce, though, I saw it as a luxury expense and I cancelled my account. My daughter and I got to the local library once a week and between the two of us we check out three movies. That tides us over. I do miss seeing the more obscure titles I was able to find at Netflix though.

Netflix might get me back as a customer, though, with their next venture. Later this year, they plan on delivering movies and other programs directly to your TV, via a special set-top box that will use a high-speed internet connection. The box is the progression of their current online streaming service.

You’d have to buy the box, I assume, and then choose the movies you want to watch while logged onto the Netflix site. At that point, the service would send your choices to your television.

This new offering is a response to the competition Netflix is now seeing from other services that offer mail order rentals and streaming content. Apple and Disney are said to be developing content delivery programs.

I love my cell phone and I am in no real hurry to replace it. Plus, my contract with Sprint is finally up and I am a free agent, which feels good. If I let them talk me into a new free phone, then I end up signing away in blood again.

But, you should see my phone. It is beginning to show its age. I have never kept in a case or had a good cover for it. Don’t get me wrong. It looks “ok”, but I’ve been hard on the poor thing. The scratches on it are what have kept me from carrying my TomTom and Palm more often.

I found this product called the invisibleSHIELD™, though, and it is just what I need to protect my beloved gadgets from the wear and tear I put them through on a daily basis. It is made from the same material the military uses to protect helicopter blades, strong stuff. There are designs to cover most any gadget, including iPods, MacBooks, cell phones, and even my TomTom One. They will custom make a cover if you can’t find what you need on their site. Need a particular ipod case? Just let them know. Look first, though. I was impressed with their selection.

The best thing about the invisibleSHIELD is that it is a “full body” cover for your device, custom cut to fit the unique angles of each gadget. And, they are super inexpensive.

Here’s something a little different in the world of search: a sustainable search engine. We all know that with the latest grabby Google antics, the world can use a few new good search engines.

Each time you use the Carbon Neutral Search Engine, fooke limited will offset each query by a minimum of 300g via the Climate Care and Carbon Fund. Climate Care is a leading offsetting organization in the UK. They invest in renewable technology, energy efficiency and reforestation. Carbon Fund is a leading US non profit carbon offsetting company.

I just talked to my former boss. He calls sometimes to pass along a bit of freelance design work for different projects. I love working for the guy, because after so many years designing things for him, I can almost read his mind when it comes to what he wants a graphic to look like in its finished state.

This call was a little different. He wants me to be a part of a team that will develop a computer network across three locations for a new company he is forming with a friend. I suppose this is because when I worked for his former company, we had so many problems with the issue of multiple locations and a single network. The network seemed to be down more often that is was actually in a productive state.

I’m doing some homework on the issue now and have been reading through the specs for the Uplogix Envoy Management Station, which enables web-based control of your entire network and all of its devices. That’s the direction I am going to pitch. Reports can be automatically sent via e-mail, access is secure, log management is automated, permissions are easy to manage, and it sends alarms on individual appliances. It actually does a lot more, but these are the features that struck me as applicable to the needs of the business based on my past experience.

The crux of issue is that if there is a problem in any location, it can be detected quickly and repaired from one central location. There is no need to send someone out to do fixes or have an expert on hand at each office.

I’m surprised sometimes how much I stay involved in business decisions even though I am technically taking this year to be home with my daughter.

A lot of my readers are individual business owners, as in they do it all themselves, without a bit of help. That can stretch you to the limits once your business starts expanding. Sometimes it is all you can do to keep up with orders and answer all of the e-mail your business generates. In the midst of all of that you still need a way to connect personally to your customer, both existing and new. People are looking for real people with real voices when they approach a business.

If a new customer finds your site and wants to contact you, they probably have to use an e-mail form or pick up the phone and call. What if you could turn one click into immediate one-on-one communication with that potential customer?

Here is a very handy tool: Ifbyphone – free phone calls from your web site. The system gives you a link that can be placed on a webpage, Powerpoint Document, in an e-mail and even in a Word document. Your customer simply clicks that link and enters their phone number. Then, their phone rings, your phone rings and you are connected in real time! Nothing could be simpler. Plus, there’s absolutely no technical expertise needed.

The best part is that you don’t have to know anything about web design or phone systems or anything technical. It’s a simple system that anyone can use. And, you can sign up for a free account. Check out their site. They have a live demo so you can see how the system works right now.

Here is their press release, in case I left anything out:

Ifbyphone Releases revolutionary Phone-Me-Now: the world’s first Zero Configuration Click to Call With 100 free minutes per month Phone-Me-Now
Promises to be biggest Killer App of 2008

Chicago, IL: December, 2007 – Ifbyphone, a voice infrastructure and applications development company providing enterprise class services to Small and Medium sized Businesses (SMB’s), has just released a solution destined to revolutionize the web to voice space: Phone-Me-Now, a zero configuration click to call application. To introduce Phone-Me-Now to hundreds of thousands of businesses that will be able to use it as a sales tool, Ifbyphone is making it available free of charge for 6 months and providing the first 100 minutes per month of usage for free as well.

This patent pending solution can be integrated in less then 60 seconds into any website, email or hyperlinked document and requires no experience to configure. It’s literally the Internet’s first instant voice mash up tool.

“While many companies provide click to call services we were troubled by how complex they are to use. Users had to cut and paste HTML or javascript, rendering these services outside of the technical reach of thousands of businesses. Once we designed this patent pending solution we configured our existing smart click to call services to work with the Phone-Me-Now interface.” says Irv Shapiro, Founder and CEO of Ifbyphone. The zero configuration Phone-Me-Now service is literally the Holy Grail of web to telephone integration and ease of use.

Using Phone-Me-Now is as simple as typing: www.phone-me-now/your-business-number into any web site, Word Document, Powerpoint Presentation, Spreadsheet, PDF or email. When a reader clicks on the link they are prompted for their telephone number and the Ifbyphone systems call your business, calls the reader and conferences the call. Phone-Me-Now works with any telephone number you register on your Ifbyphone account.

“We wanted to eliminate any barriers to basic click to call, and know that Phone-Me-Now will immediately set an industry standard for rapid deployment. If the Internet is all about speed and response, what could be a more appropriate Killer App for 2008 than Phone-Me-Now, which puts a business owner in instant voice communication with their customers,” adds Shapiro.
Free Phone-Me-Now accounts can be updated to additional Ifbyphone packages that include:
- Click to Call with Custom Dialog Forms
- Integrated Call Routing and Reporting
- Find Me
- Virtual Voice Mail
- Virtual Receptionist
- Outbound Voice Broadcast
- Web Configured Voice Dialogs (Hosted IVR)
- Call Recording
- Backend Database Integration
- A Complete Call Management API

All Ifbyphone solutions work with any telephone system and are fully portable if a company moves from one telephone transport vendor to another.
# # #
About Ifbyphone
Ifbyphone is a hosted voice application and platform company with a simplified approach to the deployment of stand-alone and web-integrated voice services for small and medium sized businesses (SMB). Combining advanced telephony and web services, Ifbyphone’s web-integrated voice applications turn the small business telephone into a powerful tool, increasing lead generation, improving sales conversion and enhancing the customer experience. Ifbyphone makes it easier for customers to connect with you from online and off. All of Ifbyphone’s applications are accessible via a click on a Web site, an inbound call to a toll free number, an outbound call or with the help of a programmable API. Our configuration and deployment tools look and feel just like Web applications, and require no previous knowledge of telephony programming or terminology.

Previously available only to large enterprises, Ifbyphone is delivering these converged voice and web solutions at affordable monthly fees, with no major upfront costs. The company’s services are available online and through a network of SMB value-added resellers.

When I contact customer support at any given company these days, I skip the 800 number and the mailing address and go straight for e-mail. I like that communicating via e-mail gives me an instant record of all correspondence between myself and anyone at the business. All too often, though, I find that my messages have not been properly tracked on the business end and if several employees are involved, I often have to get on the phone anyway to help untangle the path my inquiry took.

Businesses of any size can afford to use simple customer management systems, like PerlDesk help desk software. This particular program implicitly tracks all incoming e-mails, logs all requests and issues so that any staff member can log in and see the full scope of the situation, and allows a variety of reports for tickets and other pieces of info. When you have a central system like this, anyone can login and have all of the information they need in order to interact with a customer. And, as more and more business applications are now, it is web-based and requires no on-site installation or backup.

Years ago, when I worked at a large non-profit professional association, we had an internal system that did many of the same things PerlDesk does, but it was clunky and complication. Nonetheless, what it did accomplish is that no matter who a member called and spoke with at the association, they always received consistent information since we were able to login and see the absolute most current status of any issues or communication of file about the member.

Even a very small business benefits by having a help desk set up. PerlDesk just happens to be the number one rated system of its kind. It’s worth checking out, since it is the industry standard.

I have a website where I offer free hair bow instructions. Connected to that site is a mailing list of over 1000 people, most of who are small business owners. I get asked a lot of questions about starting a small business and most often what people ask is, “how do I choose a web host?”

I wish I had one answer for everyone, but I don’t. There are so many factors involved: scope of your business, online tools you will use, presence of ecommerce, reach of customer base, your budget, and so forth.

It’s often good to find an online tool that helps you explore a variety of web hosting companies at a glance. There is a site called Web Hosting Choice that has a good selection of tools you can use to filter through hosting companies, their various hosting packages and parameters such as options, bandwidth, cost and extras. You can look at several option, choose a few companies that look like they may work for you, and do some follow up on your finalists,. In the end, you will come out with an educated selection that has been made on your own terms.

You can browse through the webhosting listings in a simple directory format. There is a directory that list my host and another that lists by plan. Or, you can use the advanced search if you have particular aspects that are important to you in choosing a host. Maybe you want to find a package that has a monthly cost of less than $10, or maybe you need to make sure your plan will include a shopping cart system, pre-installed scripts, or that is allow FrontPage extensions. There are over 40 parameters on the webhostingchoice.com search you can specify when using the advanced search.

Don’t just use the hosting company that your friend uses or that someone e-mailed you a coupon for. Do your research and pick the host that will give you the plan that is perfect for your needs.

When you are looking for something very specific online, the very last think you want is to use a search engine that returns hundreds or irrelevant results ahead of the results that will actually give you the information you wanted in the first place. All too often, that’s the case, though. Even the search engines that pride themselves in having advanced, complicated, cryptic algorithms and filtering criteria show bad results more often than not. How many times have you typed in a search term just to find that first 20 results are simply pages full of ads?

That’s why it’s exciting when a new method of searching comes online, especially if there is user input. Spock.com is a new, free people and info search that returns results based on how a topic or subject is “tagged”. Users and Spock staff assign the tags and then other users can vote on the tags, helping to further determine relevance. Consensus, which is basically what is used on sites like Wikipedia, helps keep the results honest and constantly fresh.

If Spock catches on the way I think it will, we should see the word Spock turn into a verb very soon, hence the title of my post: Spock, Spocking, Spocked.

– “Hey, what do you know about that old show Maude?”
– “Not much. Let me Spock it.”

Spock is not a social network, but pages on LinkedIn and MySpace (just to name a few social sites) can be returned as a result. That makes it easy to find friends on Spock. So, it really does feel like it has a social element, which makes the whole systems feel people-centric and real – Velveteen Rabbit kind of real, baby.

Here, let me show you what results can look like. I did a search for Terry Pratchett, an author I love and who has been on my mind since I watched Hogfather last week. Her results page pulls up a series of tags that show me different ways she is categorized, as well as internet links and so forth. I’m inserting a little widget that puts it into a graphic format.

I had an old telescope in the garage that had been given to me by a friend in Gainesville. I never really got it set up and working, although when we moved into our home in New Port Richey I had romantic notions about using the telescope out on the verandah. Maybe I would have used it if things had worked out for our family in that house.

So, when I was packing up to move this last time, I have it to my nephew. He loves it, but it’s a very old, very inexpensive model and I know that for a reasonable amount of money I can get him a better telescope for Christmas this year. I’ve been going nuts trying to track down the specific Transformer toys he has asked for, so I think I’ll just give up on that and go for the cool, education toy. I know he won’t be disappointed.

OpticsPlanet.com has brands like Meade and Celestron, some of the nicer telescopes on the market. I like to check out the models on line before I buy: do price comparisons, read reviews, look at warranties, etc. It’s good to look at a site that has a large selection and carries the major brands, as well as generally specializing in all things optical, like binoculars and cameras. Plus, they have free ground shipping on all orders of $29.95 or more.

Due to my Girly Things website and affiliated mailing list, I get a lot of e-mail asking about how to set up a website for selling crafts and handmade products. I always take the time to highlight the options available, depending upon the site owner’s experience with website software. One thing that I always tell people is that you need to have reliable and fully customizable shopping cart software for your site. You want to have full control over how the cart works and the ability to tweak it if you want to make global changes to pricing or policy.

Ashop Commerce is one of the top shopping cart solutions available. Unlike some of the free programs you can install on your server, Ashop Commerce has a tech support team that will walk you through everything. You can test the system free for 10 days and see how easy it is to set up and how dedicated the support folks are about helping you find the right ecommerce solution.

Instead of installing software and attempting to make it work on your own, Ashop is hosted on their site. They provide the secure servers, the fraud alerts, design help, and even web promotion services.

They are a viable solution for small businesses. The costs are low and the learning curve is small.

My ex is a liar. I say that without venom. He is just one of those people who lies n a daily basis and for inexplicable reasons. He lies when there is no discernable reason for lying. He answers pretty much any question in the defensive, immediately, without a thought. It was difficult to navigate conversations with him when we were married, but I wanted to believe him so I overlooked an awful lot. Now that we are divorced, most of the issues that involve us communicating involve our daughter or selling our house. And, I am pretty sure he rarely tells me the truth –even when the truth would best suit the situation.

So, get this – there is a system called LiarCard. I can call my ex via a toll-free access number. I enter my pin and then my destination number. Once the call is fully connected, the software starts analyzing the speaker’s voice in real time. In the background I will hear a heartbeat pulse and a buzz when the software detects untruthful indications in the voice. Only I will hear these sounds. Plus, I will be able to login to the website at http://www.LiarCard.comand access a control panel to replay the call later.

LiarCard ignores the content and words, instead focusing on the emotional patterns of what is being said. It uses 129 parameters on every speech segment. I’m going to give LiarCard a try. You buy minutes, much like buying calling cards, which cost $10 for 30-minute intervals.

I’ll let you know how it worked for me once I have the chance to use it on an important conversation.

Back when I was married, one of the perpetual quests we seemed to be on was the journey to find a home with a bidet – or at least a way to fit one into our existing bathroom. My ex grew up overseas, where it was common to have a bidet in the home. He was very determined to find a way to make one fit into our bathroom. I was all for it, because even though we are not used to that particular fixture in the United States, there is no doubt it is a plus when it comes to hygiene.

Now, actually finding the room for an entirely new fixture was always an issue. I often wondered if there wasn’t just something I could attach to the existing toilet. That something would be a Spaloo. Tah-dah, hands free cleansing at your fingertips – so to speak. Not only does it provide a warm water wash, but also a warm air dry. Hands free, indeed.

I was watching a video review by Dave Graveline for his Into Tomorrow segment. Turns out installing the spaloo is just as simple as installing a new toilet seat. I just put in a new toilet seat here at the house a couple of weeks ago and I can attest that if I can do it, anyone can do it. Seriously, I’m really not that handy around the house and I can install a toilet seat with my eyes closed. Not that I recommend installing anything with your eyes actually closed. That would just be irresponsible.

Anyway, I digress. I’m really fascinated by the Spaloo fixture. I’ve got a tad of an obsession with being clean, so this piqued my interest from the beginning. So, if anyone wonders what to get me for Christmas – look no further.

One night last summer I went over to my next-door neighbor’s house for dinner and a movie – family style. They wanted to test out their new video projector. They had rid themselves of their DVD equipment and decided against getting a big screen TV, due to space restrictions and the fact that they wanted something they would to be able to tote around to use for presentations for their small business. Instead, they got a projection system that would show movies on a white wall in the great room. Not only was it a super space saver, it looked GREAT!

I did not get the big TV in my divorce and I have been struggling with whether or not to buy a big TV for the house here. I don’t miss it until I am watching a movie, particularly in a widescreen format. Once you subtract out the black bands from the top and bottom of the screen, there is precious little left to look at on a smaller television. I think getting a projection system would not only make my movie viewing more enjoyable, it would mean I would not have to make space in the family room for a giant TV. Despite the fact that televisions are being made flatter and flatter, I would just rather use the space for something else. However, I do have a wall I can use as a screen.

Using a projection system seems like an even wiser solution when it comes to office use. When I was working for the bag manufacturer, we were forever carting around TV sets to show clients presentations. A projection system can be a highly portable piece of equipment. I know the technology can sometimes be more costly, but I think function is far more important than cost in most cases. Audio Visual Equipment Installations are best done by professionals, but the cool thing is that the learning curve for using the equipment is typically not steep.