http://www.general-articles.com General Articles from the World Sat, 19 Jun 2010 18:29:25 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.3 en http://www.general-articles.com/33302-fast-fax-a-long-history-and-a-modern-truth.html http://www.general-articles.com/33302-fast-fax-a-long-history-and-a-modern-truth.html#comments Sat, 22 Nov 2008 12:17:35 +0000 admin The facsimile, or fax as we call it today was one of the earliest concepts in modern technology. First patented in 1843 by Scottish physicist Alexander Bain, the fax is an encoding and/or imaging method that reads text and/or images in small areas at a time, assigns numerical values based on darkness and lightness and then transmits them to a receiver. The receiver produces corresponding marks on paper as the transmitting fax proceeds to scan the next lower line continuing until the entire document has been scanned, digitized and transmitted.

We typically think of the fax as transmitting documents via telephone line, but history verifies that Bain patented his original invention 33 years before the telephone and Morse code became standard transmission methods. The facsimile made its official debut at the 1853 World’s Fair in London with English physicist Frederick Bakewell conducting the first public demonstration of fax transmission. By 1865, Italian physics professor Giovanni Caselli had launched the first commercial fax system linking Paris with other French cities.

Not to be outdone by the Europeans or by having just missed the patent for the telephone by three hours, American professor, Dr. Elisha Gray of Omnifax sold his facsimile patent to the Gray National Teleautograph Company. A demonstration of his fax system generated record-breaking crowds at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair.

The fax continued to advance and was significantly furthered by the work of German scientist Dr. Alfred Korn. Though not to be outdone by the Europeans, In 1922, his facsimile system was utilized to transmit a photo of Pope Pius XI from Rome to the state of Maine in the U.S. enabling the New York World newspaper to publish the photo the same day. The military drafted the fax for use in 1941 to transmit weather charts, maps and orders during World War II.

Newspapers relied on faxes to provide them with up-to-the minute details and photos from political conventions and other news-worthy events from around the world. Although the FCC authorized the development of commercial fax technology in 1948, it would be the mid 1970’s before it caught on in the mainstream of daily business operations, but even then only in limited industries due to complicated technology and expensive costs. By the mid 1980’s though, fax operations were simpler and less expensive and set the world of big business ablaze in a way that forever changed the way the modern world does business.

Corporations and large organizations worldwide began implementing the fax as their primary method of communications. Authorizations, customer orders and verifications could be delivered within minutes instead of waiting for postal pickup and delivery, which took forever. The cost to productivity ratio proved a profitable investment for sizable enterprises.

Faxing can still be a heavy expense on small businesses, especially for professionals who work from home. There’s the cost of the fax machine itself and the cost of ink cartridges, toner and paper, not to mention the cost of additional phone lines and/or expensive software if small business owners opt for strictly computer-based faxing. While e-mailing documents is an option, e-mails often go astray and frequently the computer receiving an attached document does not feature the software application required for opening the document. Thousands of home based businesses rely on faxing for document editing that bypasses the need to have compatible, expensive software.

With faxing being a necessity in today’s business world instead of a luxury, how can small business owners and work-from-home pros offset the high cost without passing it along to their clients? There has to be an affordable fax option that keeps them competitive with other businesses.

And there is … once again the Internet-age comes to the rescue with cost-effective faxing for small business owners and work-from-home pros leveling the playing field so they can be not only more productive, but also more competitive in their markets. Online faxing gives them a decisive advantage in doing business.

I’m sure you’ve heard about online faxing, but you’ve also heard about the expensive set-up fees that go along with it. Your budget is stretched to the limit now and a hefty set-up fee just isn’t in the cards.

Well, you can scratch that expense off your list of luxuries by visiting http://www.faxitnice.com for a simple, affordable option. They’ve broken the well-kept industry-secret that there is NOTHING to be set-up on an individual basis in Internet faxing, which means that there’s no reason for online faxing to be expensive.

In business since 2003, FaxIt Nice offers its clients two affordable service options, the OnceOff Fax and the FaxIt Credit. OnceOff Fax is designed for someone sending a one-time and/or occasional fax. FaxIt Credit offers a FREE membership with NO monthly fees. You simply purchase a pre-determined amount based upon your individual business needs in $20 increments at valuable per page savings with deep discounts for volume purchases.

Give your small business the big business advantage by using the FaxIt Nice services developed by 350 Nice and ditch the last minute trips to the office supply store for expensive toners and drums. It’s a cost-effective way, available 24 hours a day to any country in the world to give your business the competitive edge it takes to be successful in today’s market!

(c) 2005, Angelina Jordan. Reprint rights granted so long as article and by-line are printed intact and all links made live.
Article Source: http://www.articledashboard.com
Angelina Jordan is a freelance writer and editor specializing in serving the needs of small business owners. She offers over 15 years’ solid experience in drafting quality content and providing comprehensive copyediting in the business and non-profit arenas. Contact her via e-mail message to apjordan@adelphia.net to discuss your business writing and editing needs.
]]> http://www.general-articles.com/33302-fast-fax-a-long-history-and-a-modern-truth.html/feed http://www.general-articles.com/33316-save-a-bundle-when-you-self-bundle.html http://www.general-articles.com/33316-save-a-bundle-when-you-self-bundle.html#comments Sat, 22 Nov 2008 12:17:35 +0000 admin Cable and telephone companies, both large and small have been offering discounted bundled services for years. Bundled local and long distance, or cable TV and Internet have saved consumers thousands on elective utilities.

With the outbreak of new broadband Internet technologies, emerges a new market for bundled services. You may have noticed your local cable company offering telephone service, and your telephone company offering satellite TV services in their bundled packages.

These bundled services do in fact provide consumers a reduction in monthly service cost, and the big pitch is you get it all on one bill, and all from the same company. To the average consumer this looks to be the “beat all to end all” deal in bundled services.

The frugal know better. Satellite TV and VoIP are both Independent services one can find and use outside the restrictions of your local cable or telephone companies bundled prices. When you start to figure in your own choice of broadband Internet it takes on a different light.

There are many satellite TV, VoIP, and broadband Internet companies to choose from and you do not have to be bound by the rates of your local providers anymore. Do the research and you’ll find you could be saving a pretty good chunk each month by bundling your own services.

Sure, you won’t get it all on one bill, but if that’s what you want, you are likely over paying for those services. You’re really paying for the convenience of having everything on one bill. Shave ten or fifteen dollars off each service, and it really starts to add up.

Saving twenty five or thirty dollars a month might not sound like much, but try multiplying that figure by twelve months. What you’ll save in a year paints a whole new picture and is probably worth taking 5 extra minutes each month to pay a couple bills separately. That’s an hour a year for those with their calculators out.

Why let the local cable or telephone companies decide what features you get with your bundle ? You’re paying for it. You should choose exactly what you want, and what works best for you. When you self bundle your elective utilities you’ll not only save a few dollars, but get what you want too.
Article Source: http://www.articledashboard.com
Editor at Cheapest Service www.cheapest-service.com/
]]> http://www.general-articles.com/33316-save-a-bundle-when-you-self-bundle.html/feed http://www.general-articles.com/33687-how-to-stream-your-teleseminar-audio-online.html http://www.general-articles.com/33687-how-to-stream-your-teleseminar-audio-online.html#comments Sat, 22 Nov 2008 12:17:35 +0000 admin Teleseminars cost money for you and others to attend. One way to help bring more people into a teleseminar is to create streaming audio of your teleseminar over the Internet. Unfortunately, most methods of streaming audio over the Internet can be expensive, difficult to setup for the average user or both.

The good news is, you can now broadcast a streaming audio of your teleseminar very affordably, in a secure and private manner so you won’t find any gate crashers if you sold access to the call. Here’s how.

First, get a web conference room. Web conference rooms vary a lot from company to company but to broadcast your teleseminar you’d want to look for:

Good streaming audio quality. This is a given. While every technology is not perfect — even telephones have a lot of annoying beeps and static — many web conferencing services today have little problem with streaming audio. Often, issues with audio come from user inexperience or computer settings but this can easily be remedied with a little bit of help documentation and education.

The next biggest consideration is a room that’ll give you flexible or good number of number of seats. You’ll want this because it’s often difficult to anticipate number or attendees. You can ask people to confirm and send reminders but there will always be a certain percentage of no shows.

This will be a little challenging because most web conference rooms sell by number of seats or per minute or both. Look for flat rate options instead.

Don’t get distracted with the rest of the services like video if you’re only looking for streaming audio. These usually bog down the system because of the huge amounts of bandwidth required to transmit video. Most web conferencing systems will have video conferencing capabilities already built in. Does that mean you shouldn’t go with them even if everything else is right? No, because often you can ‘turn off’ the video or simply not use it and performance won’t be affected. The point is it shouldn’t be a major factor in your consideration unless you plan to transition to web conferencing and reduce the use of the telephone bridge.

Once you’ve nailed down the web conferencing service provider of choice, you’ll need a key piece of equipment that’ll pipe your telephone audio into the computer and vice versa. One of the best we’ve seen is the Dynametric TMP 636 or TMP 636S. Once you have this, hook it up and you’re ready to broadcast streaming audio of your teleseminar online.

Now, you may ask why go through all that trouble when you can simply look for a web conferencing service who has built in telephone and streaming audio capabilities. That’s a good question and can only be answered by you. Consider the cost for these integrated phone and streaming audio solutions? They will naturally cost more but beyond dollar amount, are there any limitations? Compare them with the cost of your existing teleconference call line, your (preferably fixed rate) web conferencing plan and the one time telephone patch.

So there you have it. One last pointer, consider how often you conduct teleseminars and the number of people attending as these are the biggest variables affecting cost. As a rule of thumb, if you don’t conduct that many teleseminars or you have less people calling in, it’ll work out better to have an integrated solution. After all, why buy a piece of equipment for streaming audio that you’ll use infrequently. Given this information, you’ll be able to easily figure out which is best for you.
Article Source: http://www.articledashboard.com
Lynette Chandler helps entrepreneurs recognize and apply the power of technology and its trends to their marketing. Learn to leverage web conferencing in your business www.meetingonnow.com/web-conferencing-course.html
]]> http://www.general-articles.com/33687-how-to-stream-your-teleseminar-audio-online.html/feed http://www.general-articles.com/33847-how-to-run-a-successful-conference-call.html http://www.general-articles.com/33847-how-to-run-a-successful-conference-call.html#comments Sat, 22 Nov 2008 12:17:35 +0000 admin These days with more and more of us working from home, working on the road, and generally dealing with multiple suppliers, contractors and business partners in locations all over the world, the conference call is supplanting the face-to-face meeting. Here are some tips on getting the most out of your conference call…

Tip One: Send Out an Agenda

The key to an effective meeting is an agenda - this applies to any kind of meeting, not just a conference call. With a conference call, always make sure you have the instructions on how to access the conference call at the top of the agenda, preferably in a box or with some other text decoration to make it stand out.

Another option is to send a meeting request from within your calendar application, whether it be Microsoft Outlook or Apple’s iCal, or some other scheduling tool. The meeting request is sent as a specially formatted email, so you can add attachments just like with a regular email. Attach the agenda, and repeat the instructions on how to connect to the conference call in the body of the email.

Most conference service providers require participants to dial a special number (which may be different depending on where the user is, or it may be a national number), then enter a conference “room” number, followed by a security code or PIN. Make sure all the necessary details are included on the agenda and the meeting request.

If the conference call is a regular status update, ensure you also send out the meeting notes from the previous call, since the first item on the agenda should be chasing people up for the actions they’ve agreed to be responsible for.

Tip Two: Take Care of Housekeeping

At the beginning of the call, call off the roll and ensure everyone is on the call. Introduce any newcomers to the rest of the group and invite them to spend a couple of minutes describing themselves and their role on the call. If anyone is missing from the participants list, immediately call them (preferably on their mobile) to get them onto the call as soon as possible. If they can’t get on the call within a couple of minutes, proceed without them. Nothing detracts from a good conference call more than making everyone wait at the beginning.

Next, ensure everyone has a copy of the agenda, and that they can all hear one another OK. If you are not going to be the one taking notes, make sure everyone is clear who is. This serves two benefits: firstly, the person taking notes is going to be careful and accountable, and secondly, a single set of meeting notes will be distributed after the call. If this is not made clear, you may end up with several versions, which is both redundant and confusing.

Finally, lay out the rules for interaction on the call. Because it’s audio-only, the usual cues we use to indicate that we wish to take a turn at speaking are not present. Therefore it’s worth stating at the outset what the rules will be. These can be as simple as “Please make a note of any questions and we’ll deal with them in turn after each agenda point”, or as sophisticated as listing the order of speaking of the participants, and asking each participant only to speak at their particular time. This last is called “round table” conferencing, and is particularly effective once people are used to it. It has the dual effect of keeping all participants engaged, and speeding up the time it takes to get through each point.

Clearly it’s unrealistic to expect people to stick to the interaction rules for the duration of the call, but laying them out at the outset will help ensure things run quickly and smoothly.

Tip Three: Turn Off Speakerphone

Unless you have a majority of participants all in one room together, you should turn off speakerphone. Speakerphone and conference calls are a bad combination, unless you have a high-quality dedicated speakerphone. In order to prevent audio feedback, speakerphones automatically mute the speaker when a sufficiently loud sound is heard at the microphone. Unfortunately, few speakerphones do this particularly well, and often the speaker will mute because of its own output feeding back into the microphone. This means annoying dropouts and missed words and sentences.

Because it’s a conference call, often these dropouts can go on for some minutes before someone has the opportunity to pipe up with “We missed all that!” Needless to say, having to constantly repeat yourself can be very time consuming and irritating for all the non-speakerphone participants.

Even if you’re in the same room as someone else, it can sometimes be an improvement to use two handsets rather than use speakerphone.

Tip Four: Send Out Meeting Notes

You should ensure everyone on the conference call gets a copy of the meeting notes no later than the following morning, while the call is still fresh in everyone’s minds.

There are many helpful guides on the web for effective note-taking, but in essence:
Don’t try to write down absolutely everything; just the items where an action needs to be taken Keep track of who has agreed to be responsible for each action Keep track of the deadlines for each action item Don’t forget to note the time and date of the meeting and who was present
If the conference call is a regular status update, ensure you note in the meeting notes the time and date of the next meeting. If possible, deadlines for action items should correspond to the dates of status meetings so that the notes can be quickly scanned (or even sorted) for items that need to be chased up in a given meeting.

Tip Five: Keep it Brief

Studies have shown that people start to suffer a number of unpleasant side-effects after holding a telephone receiver to their ear for longer than about an hour. In any event, forty minutes is about the limit of most people’s concentration span.

If you find the call is starting to drag on beyond an hour, it’s a good idea to wrap things up and continue either later that day, or preferably the following day. If you find this is a regular occurrence, it may be an indicator that you need to revisit the agenda, or possibly split the group up into separate, more focussed groups. A particular time-waster is having engineers and businesspeople on the same conference call. A better way to handle this is to have three shorter meetings - one with just the engineers, one with the businesspeople, and one with single representatives from each group to present the results and take any feedback to the next department meeting. With practice, you can keep the length of each meeting down to around twenty minutes.
Article Source: http://www.articledashboard.com
Michael Pollitt is an experienced home-business operator, with several highly successful home-based businesses, including ConferenceOne, a telephone conferencing service, and LB Broadcast Systems, a developer of closed captions software.
]]> http://www.general-articles.com/33847-how-to-run-a-successful-conference-call.html/feed http://www.general-articles.com/33943-two-way-radios-a-beginner-s-guide.html http://www.general-articles.com/33943-two-way-radios-a-beginner-s-guide.html#comments Sat, 22 Nov 2008 12:17:35 +0000 admin A two-way radio is a device which transmits and receives voice signals through the air. They work somewhat like a telephone, but since they do not require a central network they can be used anywhere! With two way radios, two or more people can have a discussion no matter where they are — sometimes while they are miles apart! Another common name for a two-way radio is a “walkie talkie”.

The most common type of two-way radio for regular consumers is the FRS/GMRS two-way radio. These are the radios that you typically see in the big-box stores. FRS and GMRS are the different frequency ranges, or channels, that these radios can operate on. The FRS channels are 8 though 14 and the GMRS channels are 15-22. Channels 1 through 7 are shared, and are used by both the FRS and GMRS systems.

All radios in your group will need to be set to the same channel before you can communicate. For example, if your radio is set to channel 7 it will send your voice over that channel when you talk, and it will listen for and allow you to hear other people talking on channel 7. It is always important to remember that these channels are public! Always be careful what you say over a two way radio, because you can never be sure who is listening.

When choosing a channel, privacy and range should be your primary concerns. If you are using a FRS only channel, because of government regulations your radio will only broadcast at a maximum of .5 watts of power. This wattage will typically get you between half a mile, and one mile of range. If using a GMRS channel, you can get the maximum output power and range out of your two-way radio. However, if you are using a GMRS channel, you are required by the FCC to purchase a license to operate on those frequencies.

As far as privacy goes, if you choose a channel and notice that there are others using the same channel, you should switch to a different channel to avoid confusion. Sometimes, such as at a crowed amusement park, 22 channels just aren’t enough to provide privacy. Because of this, most mid range radios and up also provide “Privacy Codes,” which break up a single channel into anywhere between 38 and 121 sub-channels. When you figure in the privacy codes, many radios offer over 1000 individual channels for you to choose from.

Some two-way radios operate on AA or AAA batteries. You will also find that many of the radios come with rechargeable battery packs and desktop chargers. If you buy a model with a rechargeable battery pack, you will get the convenience of the rechargeable batteries and plus, you will still be able to operate them with regular batteries if your battery packs happen to drain before you get them back to their chargers.

There are many good uses for a two-way radio, but they can come in especially handy on family vacations or outings. Have you ever taken a trip to an amusement park or a ski trip and somehow got separated from your friends or family? A two-way radio would have been very helpful to locate one another. How about taking more than one car on a road trip? A two-way radio would be a great means of communication between vehicles.

Another popular sport in which two-way radios can play a big part is hunting. Hunters are always in need of some sort of communications device to keep in contact with one another throughout the woods. The avid hunter can now even find two-way radios in camouflage color!

The major brands of two-way radios include Motorola, Cobra, Midland, Kenwood and Uniden. You can find radios from these manufacturers in all different ranges of output power and distance. There are all different types of features out there you can get with your two-way radios as well. Many two-way radios even support the NOAA weather channels. There are also lots of accessories you can find for your two-way radios including headsets, handheld speakers, earbud receivers, and throat mics. A lot of these you can even operate hands-free as long as they, and the radios, are VOX capable. You can now even buy car chargers for your two-way radios!

It is no doubt that two-way radios have come along way over the years. Most people have found them impossible to live without, just like cell phones! From starting out at a maximum range of about 2-5 miles, you can now find them with maximum ranges of up to 14 miles! Next time you are on the go with friends or family, make sure youÂ’re prepared and take a two-way radio along. They may just prove to be pretty handy.
Article Source: http://www.articledashboard.com
Danny Feemster writes about two way radios, and the communications industry. For more information and articles on 2 way radios, visit www.buytwowayradios.com
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