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Packetel is a low cost global telecommunications provider based out of California. An acquaintance of mine gave me a free demo so I tried it out and liked what I saw so I thought I would share this company with you.

As a home business it’s important to not only keep costs low but also ensure that your company comes off as professional so it can accomodate larger clients. If not you are limiting the potential of your company before you begin.

Packetel is currently operating in three areas of the telecommunications field: Fax Service, Long Distance, Web Conferencing and Voice Conferencing coming soon..

Fax Service:

Having the ability to receive faxes is important to most businesses. Buying a fax machine and paying for a dedicated line can be costly and now thanks to services such as this no longer required. Packetel enables you to receive faxes anytime from anywhere that are sent directly to your email. At the time of writing you cannot send faxes but most correspondence can be replied to via email and how often do you send faxes anyways? At it’s limited time offer of $3.95 it’s easy to factor into your monthly budget. Besides having fax capabilities without any equipment costs what makes it even more convenient is that it accepts all major credit cards and paypal. You can view your faxes in PDF and even be alerted via text message on your mobile when one is received.

Long Distance:

To begin with if you’re still paying traditional long distance prices you’re crazy. With all the cheap options available today there is no reason to pay full price for long distance. Packetel offers an international long distance calling service that is prepaid. Some features are: low international rates, toll-free access numbers, no obligations or contracts etc… What makes this interesting is some additional features that make this even easier then traditional calling cards. Some features include, online call history in real time, no pin dialing from trusted numbers, online phone book with speed dial functions and more. If you sign up soon you can even receive 200 free minutes worth of calling. I call my cousin and some other associates in the US quite often. I have traditionally been using calling cards but since it’s during the day my cellphone is still charged minutes. This package looks quite attractive to me. One feature that I’m saving for now that I like in particular is the “Follow Me” feature. It allows you to forward calls to any phone you like and answer them wherever you may be in the world. No more restrictions.

Web Conferencing:

Web conferencing is becoming increasingly popular. This is for several reasons including: travel is expensive, web conferencing has never been easier and it has never been so comprehensive. Your typical web conference is light years away from a traditional conference call. It allows you to share screen shots with multiple participants, host unlimited users, optimize conference depending on speed of connecting attendees, usage of a white board to share ideas and it integrates into outlook to send invitations.

I’m getting to a point soon where my editors and I may need a web conference to show them some things as it’s easier to demonstrate than explain in verbose emails. I wasn’t sure how I was going to do it previously but now it seems quite apparent. With so many new technologies making communication and group work so effortless it’s a shame to not be using them to some extent in your current business.

Having had access to Packetel I found the backend quite simple and clutter free. As a result it was easy to see how things worked and think that holding a web conference would be quite easy with this software. I’ve used another in the past but this one seemed easier to understand. I’m assuming it would be for an attendee as well.

As long as you are operating a home business it’s vital to be aware of new and existing services that help you run your business more professionally. What’s beautiful about the internet is that professionalism doesn’t have to be expensive anymore. I recommend you think about your home business and consider how different inexpensive technologies could help you grow. The price is right but what will you do with it?

Keep working from home,

Rob

Image via CrunchBase

This is just another quick bloggery I’m putting together. If you’ve been anywhere on Twitter lately I’m sure you’ve seen the trending topic “We Can Do Anything“. This uproar is about Facebook’s new terms of service (tos) that basically states that whatever you upload to the site is theirs to do as the please for eternity. Creepy stuff.

 The Consumerist is the blog that broke the news and got everyone talking.  Realistically though people what did you think? It’s a massive social media site that is struggling for revenue and holds all your personal data. I don’t like it but I can’t say I’m surprised. That said when I did sign up for Facebook I put in a name that my friends would recognize me by but not my real name. This was mainly so Bosses or future co-workers couldn’t snoop but now has a whole new meaning.

What I’m taking from this is: Use Facebook to stay in touch with friends but don’t be overly reliant on it. Once you’ve made contact go straight to email. I’m sure this TOS applies to “all content” including private communication. I’ve long been suspicious of Facebook and now I have  all the more reason to be.

Just be careful people and watch what you add to facebook because once you add it; it’s theirs for life! Also this makes me increasingly weary  of “Facebook Connect”. I’m not a big fan of connecting all these networks together. Just watch yourself and don’t be too enthusiastic to share everything. You may end up sharing more than you’d like.

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Plurk is rocking the social media scene of late and for good reason! Twitter is cool and I’m sure there will be many other twitter clones but to label Plurk a clone is simply outrageous. Looking back on that last sentence I wrote would you believe I signed up for Plurk almost exactly 24 hours ago?

Plurk fittingly has peace love unity and respect written all over it from the get go but that’s enough of the hippy stuff. Doesn’t matter whether it was planned or it was simply a short brandable domain that became available. I’ve heard in the plurkosphere it’s a cross of “Play and Work”. Whatever it is they have hit the big time with something that’s bound to become a blockbuster. I can’t see how it won’t.

What Are The Top 10 Reasons To Say Hello To Plurk?

1) Everything is organized on a graphical timeline. It is quite easy to interpret and makes things relatively easy and clear to follow.

2) Three different options for viewing the timeline of plurks. You can switch between everyone’s plurk’s, your plurks, or your private plurks. You’d naturally want to spend more time answering comments on the plurks you started out of respect for the people plurking. Also I would hope it’s a conversation on a topic you find of interest.

3) It has CLIQUES! That sounded bad I know but it’s just a fancy word for group. Now you can follow everyone and anyone until they spam you and if they are someone you are interested in hearing more from you can chime into that clique. So I went to check it out and the below quote is direct from plurk.

“Cliques make it easy to send plurks to a group of people. You can even filter your timeline via cliques.”

What’s even cooler is you can message a whole clique at a time? Maybe that is why there is a difference between a fan and a friend? Some people are more sensitive to perceived spam then others.

4) Each new “Plurk” is an individual thread. A dialogue that you can track on a timeline. Imagine writing about something of interest and coming back later to find an active conversation on the topic? Since I have only been a member for a day can’t confirm how long you can go back but I’m hoping a while.

5) You can easily share all types of media such as images, videos and links. The images and videos appear as clickable thumbnail; very cool.

6) It has a karma system. I’m not going to write much about it as I have no clue how it works and I have no clue when it updates except that it’s apparently not in real time.

7) You can talk in third person with a slew of choices to choose from that are also color coded. This will help the dedicated plurker know your mood simply by the color of your action. Items currently are things such as wishes, feels, has, says, is, thinks etc…

8) It’s still in the early adopters phase. As of 10:55PM June 5th 2008 the search term “plurk” on google brought up 59,300 results; “twitter” was 68,700,000. On the compete bar it showed 31,000 as the people count. I mean it probably/easily had more people then that register today alone. It’s in its infancy and now is the time to discover it. Imagine finding twitter 12 or 16 months ago?

9) It has emoticons. Whether you’re a high, moderate or low emoticon user / lover it’s good to have. It’s so easy to convey the wrong tone on email where you can write a book let alone 140 characters!

10) It has a built in top 10! It’s “intresting pluckers” features the top 10 users by karma and also lists the latest noobs who are always looking for a friend right? It also has 10 features worth mentioning for this and MANY more.

This may come across as a twitter bash which I guess it is sorta. I still like and plan to use twitter it’s just Plurk took a good idea and made it great.