Why VoIP Should Get VIP Treatment in Your Small Business

Posted in: Business Technology,Business Tips,Office Equipment

Over the past few years, an increasing number of small and midsized businesses have been dumping their traditional phone systems in favor of VoIP (voice over Internet Protocal) and IP-PBX (Internet Protocal private branch exchange). And this trend only promises to get stronger in light of the current economic climate where a small business’ flexibility, efficiency, and productivity is all the more critical to its survival.

If your small business has yet to adopt VoIP technology, you may want to give it some serious consideration. The following are some of the benefits of upgrading to a VoIP system:

Cost Savings: For many small businesses the biggest draw to VoIP is its low cost. At the most basic level, VoIP has minimal hardware requirements: a sound card, speakers and a microphone. For more advanced services you may need headsets, IP-enabled phones, and a physical IP-PBX box.

Calls made over VoIP are dramatically cheaper than those made via a PSTN phone service. Businesses can use VoIP between computers with downloadable free software like Skype or Asterisk. For more feature-rich services, there are several commerical options, such as the Asterisk Business Edition, but even the cost of these for-pay services are generally much lower than the equivalent standard phone service.

Simplicity: The combination of an IP PBX system with a VoIP telephone service allows voice and data to be handled by one set of network protocols and wiring. As a result of this unified system, your company can benefit from lowered expenses, simpler management and greater functionality in general.

Features: Many VoIP systems are rich in features. Some common features include: off-site call forwarding, extension dialing, voice-mail boxes, audio conferencing, and auto attendants to answer the phone and direct calls.

Flexibility: VoIP will give your employees the ability to work from anywhere that has a fast and reliable Internet connection. You can use VoIP to make both national and international calls from one PC to another or from a PC to a landline. You can even have a VoIP account on your mobile phone.

 

The Smartphone Demystified: For Those Who Are Still A Little Clueless

Posted in: Business Technology

What is a smartphone?

A smartphone has all the features of a regular mobile phone combined with the computing power of a PDA. This means that in addition to making regular calls, you can access the Internet, download e-mail, read or edit document attachments, send instant messages, listen to MP3s, synchronize data with your computer, determine your location with GPS and watch videos- all from one compact device.

If you also take into account a wide range of mobile software applications and business tools, it is little wonder why smartphones are making their way into the realm of small business. Some small business owners are going so far as to run their entire operation on their mobile devices.

If you are new to smartphone technology here is a brief rundown of several common features that you can expect to see in many smartphones currently on the market.

Email Capabilities:

The smartphone can access browser-based email accounts such as Yahoo Mail and Gmail and can display full HTML email messages. It can also be synchronized with Outlook to exchange contact information

Voice Commands:

There is voice recognition for auto dialing

Multimedia Text Messaging and Instant Messaging:

The cell phone has the ability to send multimedia text messages, consisting of text, audio, photo or video files. It also supports instant messaging through popular chat services like MSN, Yahoo and Google.

Synchronization:

Smartphones can be synchronized with your desktop computer to update contact information, emails, and files. Phones that use the Windows Mobile Smartphone edition with ActiveSync can easily synchronize with Outlook, Word, Excel and PowerPoint files. Synchronization can either be wireless via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth or through a USB port.

Internet Features:

Many smartphones support full web page access (ie not just web pages designated for mobile devices) with a highspeed wireless Internet connection.

Network Connection:

Smartphones use the GSM (Global System for Mobile communication) network for voice transmission and the GPRS and 3G networks for data transmission. Most smartphones now offer EDGE (Enhanced Data GSM Environment) connectivity which provides high speed data transfer, particularly for Web and multimedia over the GSM network. Many devices also offer Wi-Fi allowing for highspeed surfing.

Data Input:

Some smartphones sport a full QWERTY keyboard, others, such as the iPhone, have a touchscreen interface.

Multimedia:

Many smartphones come with a high resolution digital camera, MP3 player, camcorder with video playback, and video player.

Who Are the Major Players?

So which smartphones are making the top of the review lists?

Click here for a list of major smartphone reviews.