Technology and Gadgets Online

Several years ago I had an internship at a real estate company and what I remember most is the annoying office fax machine. Aside from the torturing noise of the busy signal, many times the company would also receive lots of junk faxes which is a waste of paper. You may also have negative feelings towards the fax machine but the way you send and receive faxes is about to change for the better with email to fax services.

Email to fax is known by many names, you may have also heard fax to email, email fax, online fax or internet fax services. All of these are the same, a service that allows you to use the internet to send and receive faxes. These services provide you with an online dashboard where you can send and receive your faxes but you can also integrate their service with email, cell phone and Microsoft applications.

You can easily fax from computer by integrating an email fax service with your web mail (such as Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo etc) or with Outlook. You can also fax from your cell phone because many service also provide an app for smart phones such as the iPhone, Blackberry or Android.

Buy why make the switch to email faxing? Because it saves you money and also helps save the environment. Faxing through the internet is cheaper than using a fax machine but provides you with more professional faxing tools. For just $7 or $8 a month you can enjoy a complete online faxing service that also includes a free fax number. You also have access to amazing tools such as fax alerts, fax online storage, broadcast faxing, electronic signiture and much more.

Faxing online also eliminates the spam fax problem because you no longer waste paper on this or any other useless fax. All your faxes are delivered via the internet. You can view your faxes online and then decide if you need to print it out or forward it via fax or email.

So what is e-commerce? The ‘e’ just stands for electronic and can be happily placed in front of almost any other word describing a possible part of business (or non-business) activity. E-trading, e-tailing (retailing), e-charts (for music), e-travel and e-business are just a few of the terms that have grown along with e-commerce. E-business is basically business transactions which take place electronically. Ecommerce solutions describes the interface between business and customer, whether that customer be a consumer, another business or a government body.

Business was only just beginning to cope with much that was new about these procedures when a completely new technology came along. The old electronic means were developing fast: fax machines that combined with telephones, telephone answering machines (which rapidly became ubiquitous) and services such as call diversion had enjoyed growth. But new, faster, cheaper computer technology succeeded in replacing or enhancing much of this. In the communications field, the technology exploded through early versions of e-mad; advances since then have been on a geometrically expanding scale so that it is true to say that the best time to buy a new computer or to update your system is always ‘next month’. Whatever you buy today will swiftly be overtaken by something faster, more sophisticated, with greater storage capacity – and often cheaper into the bargain. Hardware, software and peripherals have become more and more efficient as different strands of technology have developed.

Some of the new innovations will work alongside existing kit and systems, while others need to stand on their own. Some are extremely expensive and require much time and thought before a business decides to invest in them; others are cheap, and in some cases free. There are already numerous sites on the web both selling and giving away software so that you can take best advantage of new developments as they come along and without charge.

But don’t throw the old technology away! Remember that clients and customers may not be as ‘tooled up’ as you are and could still be relying on old technology. Fax machines will be around for a long time to come (even though computers can be enabled to send and receive faxes) and the telephone is hardly obsolete! Many businesses have made the mistake of ‘upgrading’ everything and then discovering either that the new systems don’t work properly (many systems need real-time operation before faults and problems occur and can be ironed out) or that suppliers and customers cannot work with new systems. If you intend to replace your old systems completely, then it is a good idea to do it gradually and gently, whilst introducing and testing the new systems. The UK Post Office recently completed a programme of computerizing all of its branch operations. Anecdotal evidence suggests that this changeover has led to slower service and confusion in a number of cases. However, in the long run, the service will undoubtedly be slicker and better. The mistake was to go straight to the computerized system with no intervening period of transition.

A lot of years in this business means that I know more than the average person when it comes to alarms and security systems for business. Trial and error has been how I have accumulated most of my experience in business video surveillance systems. When I first got into the security business, there was not a lot of video options available and it was pretty much reserved only for those willing to pay the high costs associated with it. It was a struggle to convince a business owner that it was in their best interest to install surveillance cameras to help protect their property. Once you sat down at the table and spec’d out a system and an estimate for costs, well, the deal mostly went out the door because it was so expensive.

At the very least I would make a crazy recommendation to a client. I was actually ahead of my time and didn’t even realize it. I told my security clients that if they can’t afford a video surveillance system, then how about I install a fake security camera? They would usually just stare at me and wonder what the the heck I was talking about? I told them let’s just mount some old cameras that no longer worked on the outside of their building so it will look like they have security cameras? It was a smart move by me because I was always able to make a sell of the fake video cameras when I wasn’t able to close the sell of a real video surveillance system.

If I had been smart back in the day, I would have started manufacturing these cameras in high numbers and sold them. What I did, was to always save a camera when it broke and couldn’t be fixed. I would strip out all of the insides of the camera to make it lightweight and easy to install. The bad guys always thought there was a video security system and most of my clients never suffered a break-in.

The Business Intelligence Roadmap: The Complete Project Lifecycle for Decision-Support Applications by Larissa T. Moss and Shaku Atre is one of the most popular books written on the subject. What’s surprising is that the book was originally published in 2003, but continues to be one of the most comprehensive resources on the subject of BI roadmaps. Below we will briefly mention some of the positive and negative feedback that this book has received.

Positive Acclaims

More Than Charts And Graphs – A lot of the business intelligence roadmap books that deal with data management are simply about the latest ways to present information. While it is important to know how to create clean looking PowerPoint presentations, Excel graphs, and other charts, there is more to business intelligence than presentation. Yes, it is true that you have to present the information well, but you also have to make sure that you have the right information in the first place. This book helps you set up a business intelligence (BI) system that will gather the correct information and the book shows you how to present the information in a useful well.

Great Metadata Information – For those of you who are still a little confused about what metadata is and how it should best be used, The Business Intelligence Roadmap can help. Almost all the reviews we have read share one similarity: they loved the discussion on metadata.

Great Step By Step Guide – Some books simply offer general information, but don’t help you get the job done. The authors took great care to ensure that this book would help you set up your own business intelligence system. The beginning of each chapter has a checklist of action items that can help you know what you need to get done to get your own BI system operating correctly. The book really serves as your personal business intelligence strategy or roadmap.

Criticisms

Some of the chapters lacked extreme depth (in some cases the chapters were only a few pages long). The truth is that it is hard to know how in-depth you should go when you are writing on a topic. The authors often chose to only write a few pages so that the reader wouldn’t feel completely overwhelmed.

Some readers wanted more information on specific BI products. These readers wanted the authors to rate some of the expensive database and BI software out there so that they could make smart purchasing decisions. The authors rarely reviewed any business intelligence products.

Overall The Business Intelligence Roadmap by Moss and Atre is still one of the best books on this topic (which is amazing considering how much technology has changed since 2003). Anyone dealing with BI can definitely benefit from this book.

When a company decides to go with video conferencing, they are doing themselves a huge favor. Video conferencing is going to cut overall costs with the company since it is going to eliminate the need to travel to other businesses, as well as the cost of staying overnight in these places for their employees. Though, the initial investment into video conferencing equipment may be expensive, businesses should look at this as an investment for their future. They are going to make this money back, especially because video conferencing opens up a whole new consumer base since they are no longer limited to just the area in which the business is located. However, when having conference technology, there are problems that occur. But, these problems are usually easy to fix without having to call in a professional.

One of the biggest problems that people report is sound issues. These sound issues can be having no sound at all, or finding that there is an echo with the sound. Some people even report that the sound is picking up everything that is happening in the entire building, leading to so much background noise that it is impossible to hear the other person participating in the video conference. In order to fix this, the person should first make sure that the microphones and speakers are on. If not, then that is why the sound may not be coming out. In addition, they should make sure that the microphones have not become muted, which does happen on accident. For the echo that they may be hearing, the person should make sure that the microphone is at least thirty-six inches away from those that are speaking. When the microphone is too close, echoes can occur. These are very sensitive microphones thus there is no need to speak directly into one with it close to the person’s mouth. To eliminate background noise, the person should make sure that they mute the microphone when they are not using it, this is going to help those that are on the other end of the video conference.

Overall, these are just some small problems that the company is going to find easy to fix when they occur. If the problem keeps recurring then they may have to call in a professional or a tech expert to make sure that everything is installed correctly. As an incorrect installation can cause the sound quality to dramatically diminish and give a poor performance in a free video conference.