b.cognosco
Where leaping to conclusions is my primary form of forward motion.
Most Popular
- Historical Yearly Average Gasoline Prices
- Outlook 2003 Message-ID Insanity
- Real-time Sand Animations
- Adobe Acrobat 7
- Adobe Announces Name Change and New Product
- Largest Technology Boondoggle in Public Education History
- Yahoo! Buys del.icio.us
- Skype - Disruptive, Not Compelling
- Aluminum Christmas Tree Museum
- Network Printing Hell and windoze XP
Book Reviews
Recently
1st Skype Conference Call - Problem Resolved
Alternative Voice Options
Adobe, Brother, Fujitsu and the Written Page
Alternative Voice Options
Adobe, Brother, Fujitsu and the Written Page
Theme Design
IT Support
Hosting
Sunday, April 17, 2005
1st Skype Conference Call - Problem Resolved
Just tried my first Skype conference call using SkypeOut. I de-installed/re-installed the 1.2.0.41beta client to no good effect. But I think I figured out what the problem was - passwords.When I bought a SkypeIn number the other day I changed my account password to something more than the simple, low-security password I use at public sites. But the Skype client never asked me to log-out and log-in under the new password. It kept working (apparently) normally for Skype-to-Skype connections and the SkypeIn number worked, so I didn't think about it. But it never recognized the voicemail service.
Today I bought some (initial) SkypeOut minutes, and when I went to make a SkypeOut call the client warned me that my password had changed and forced me to log-out and log-in again with the new password. Suddenly all my account options were available and working.
So I called two family members on their POTS numbers and we had a brief conference. Perfectly serviceable. Not great clarity - both parties complained about the the general sq being muffled - but serviceable as long as only one person spoke at a time. No noticeable time lag or echos.
This is probably not something I'd use with new clients who are used to traditional conference calling services - especially if the call required more than four parties. But I can see using it where I have an established relationship (and a bit of leeway) and the circumstances call for a small, impromptu conference of 3-4 parties. This is certainly as good as the typical 3-way calling offered through most cellular networks.
Posted by: 
Terry Frazier at 1:47 PM
| Permanent Link
| Trackback URL |
Categories: Productivity, Technology
Terry Frazier at 1:47 PM
| Permanent Link
| Trackback URL | Categories: Productivity, Technology
Thursday, April 14, 2005
Alternative Voice Options
For the past several months I've been experimenting with using my Treo 600 as my sole business phone. This just doesn't work - partly due to hardware problems on the Treo, and partly due to the realities of SprintPCS cellular service, I've grown increasingly dissatisfied.
I like having my cellphone, calendar, and address book in the same device and being able to sync it with Outlook. But I've had two Treos with defective headphone jacks (making the phone unusable with headsets) and the speakerphone facility sucks. SprintPCS offers no way to permanently turn off call waiting, which means that anytime a client calls me we're subject to being interrupted by a second call. And the thing rings, beeps, buzzes, or makes some kind of noise at every event and these beeps and buzzes are audible to whoever is on the other end of the line.
I need alternatives and I'm not going back to the telco.
The latest news on SkypeIn looks promising, and the $30/year price is low enough to make experimentation attractive. Reading about Steve's Skype and Treo combination started me thinking, so today I bought a SkypeIn number
- 678-608-1406 SkypeIn
VoIP looks like the best option. I have a great ISP - Speakeasy - that offers dry copper (no dial tone) DSL up to 6Mbit. I got a dedicated DSL link installed in my office some time ago. Today I ordered Speakeasy VoIP service that gives me unlimited calling in the US and Canada for $24/month. It will take a week or so to get my new number and the adapter, but I should soon be back in business - literally. And all without a single call to or bill from a telco. Now we're talking!
The cell phone experiment wasn't a total failure. I learned that running a business from a tiny, portable device isn't a strategy for heavy or long-term usage. It's great as a backup, temporary, or failover option but not reliable enough for everyday use. And I still like my Treo - I just need to get it replaced (again) under warranty.
Posted by: Terry Frazier at 1:07 PM
| Permanent Link
| Trackback URL |
Categories: Productivity, Technology
Terry Frazier at 1:07 PM
| Permanent Link
| Trackback URL | Categories: Productivity, Technology
Friday, April 8, 2005
Adobe, Brother, Fujitsu and the Written Page
A while back I wrote about two very cool products I use - Adobe Acrobat 7 Profesional and the Fujitsu ScanSnap. (Someone wrote me shortly after those posts to ask if ScanSnap and Acrobat 7 work together. Yes, they do. Swimmingly.) Both of these products represent state-of-the-art paperless office technology. Acrobat 7's comment tracking feature and its ability to flow comments and changes back into Word for further editing are "must-have" improvements for anyone who does lots of document reviews.
But the little ScanSnap is what really amazes me. I used to work for IBM and we developed page scanning solutions for book publishers and printers. What we struggled to do for $100k can now be done, better, for $400. The ScanSnap software is extremely intelligent. It recognizes blank pages and leaves them out. It's de-skews (straightens) a page that scans in crooked. It detects whether the page has been inserted head-up or head-down and automatically rotates it if needed. In short, it does everything you can imagine, and at a rate of 15 pages (30 images) per minute! It also ships with a little PDF Thumbnail viewer that lets me see the contents of PDF files in a Windoze Explorer window.
This thing is so fast and so painless to use I've changed my note-taking strategy. I used to attempt to enter everything into some sort of computer - PC, laptop, PDA. But there were many times when that was either impractical or improper. Now I don't worry about it. I carry a notepad everywhere I go. I write stuff. I draw stuff. I scribble. When I get back to the office I tear out the pages, drop them in the scanner, punch a button and have all my notes in a nice PDF file.
Then I toss the notepaper in a shredder. If I have a critical original I file it away but usually I just shred the paper. If I need the note in paper form again I print it out. If I need to change it, I mark up the printed copy, rescan it, and throw the paper away again. Sometimes I still need to convert the notes to text and have to type them in, but not very often. I'm working on getting my voice recognition software trained well enough I can just read it in, but I have a ways to go with that.
One more device that makes this easy is my Brother HL6050DN laser printer. This 25 page-per-minute device prints on both sides of the sheet and has great software that lets me shrink pages to fit 2-up (or more but it gets really small) on a sheet, which means that a 100-page document can be printed out in about a minute on 25 sheets of paper. All of this makes the paper-to-digital-to-paper-to-digital cycle a quick and relatively pain-free exercise which, for me, is about as good as it gets.
Posted by: Terry Frazier at 12:00 AM
| Permanent Link
| Trackback URL |
Categories: Productivity, Technology
Terry Frazier at 12:00 AM
| Permanent Link
| Trackback URL | Categories: Productivity, Technology
Syndication
Contact
Presence
This Page was last updated: Wed, 02 Jul 2008 22:06:57 GMT
License: Unless otherwise expressly stated all original material, of whatever nature, created by Terry W. Frazier and included in this website, its related pages and archives, is licensed under a Creative Commons License, some rights reserved.
Disclaimer: This is a personal website. The views expressed here are those of the author and no one else. This is also an experiment in thinking out loud, so there are no warranties as to the reliability or accuracy of anything presented here. Source material -- references, citations, quotes, photos, and other elements -- are gathered from publicly available materials and some of it may be restricted. Any trademarks used are the property of their respective creators or owners. All are reproduced under the principle of Fair Use.