VoiceMail Transcription Saves The Day

By Stuart Zipper

If it wasn’t for Phone.com’s VoiceMail transcription service, my entire checking account could have been emptied out.

It seems that some credit card bandits used my Visa debit card to charge 76 cents from a place in Kansas. I can only guess where they got the number from, but I have fairly recently received several notices from major retailers that their systems had been compromised. The reason for a tiny charge like that is possibly that the bandits were probing to see if the card number really was good, and hoping that such a tiny charge would go unnoticed.

That my card number was stolen is the bad news. The good news is that the tiny charge was flagged almost immediately by Visa’s security people, and I quickly got a phone call from my credit union’s security team.

But the bad news is that I wasn’t at my desk when they called, I was out of the office on a job. Now as anyone who follows my blog knows, if my home office phone isn’t answered the call goes to my cell phone automatically using Phone.com’s ‘follow me’ capabilities. But, as luck would have it, I was inside a building where AT&T’s signals don’t always penetrate well enough to support voice.

So the call went to my Phone.com Voicemail. Now I had subscribed to Phone.com’s computer-based VoiceMail transcription service almost instantly when it was first offered. Thus, a computer some place in the cloud “listened” to the voicemail, transcribed it, and sent the transcription to my eMail, all in a matter of seconds. And I have a smartphone set so that all my eMail can be read on the phone from wherever in the world I am, without having to fire up a computer. While the cellular signal for voice wasn’t strong enough to penetrate the interior of the building where I was located, either the data signal could penetrate or perhaps I had moved to a part of the building where signals could get through.

In any case, my eMail was downloaded to my phone, and within 10 minutes of the security folk calling I was reading the Voicemail transcript. Within another minute or two I was on the line with security (obviously not from my cell phone, given the at best spotty service where I was … actually I called via a Phone.com VoIP connection). Another couple of minutes and the card number was cancelled.

Phew. Saved by a VoiceMail transcription. Without that it would have been six hours or more before I got home to listen to my VoiceMail. By then I suspect my bank balance would have been approaching zero. Eventually I might have gotten my money back, either from the credit union or via an insurance policy I carry that supposedly covers such situations. But it could have taken weeks to collect.

The bummer, though, was that this happened just a few days before I was flying out of town to see my grandchildren and other family members, and the Credit Union said that Visa couldn’t get a new debit card to me before I left, even if I paid a pricey $25 rush fee. Oh well, I do have a MasterCard credit card, and I heard a rumor that cash and checks also still work.

Kathmandu VoIP ‘Bandits’ Snared In ‘Operation Voice Fox’

By Stuart Zipper

This is scary, but true. There are still places in the world where using VoIP to make a long distance call can get you thrown into the hoosegow for half a decade.

One of the neat benefits of VoIP that is often touted is the ability to slip an ATA into your suitcase, plug it into any Internet-connected Ethernet port in the world, and instantly have your office or home phone sitting there with you. The business value of that can be tremendous, as any road warrior and/or small businessman can tell you. And as I’ve written many times, coming down the track at full speed is the ability to make your VoIP calls from handheld devices, including “cell phones” that really are miniature wireless data terminals, from tablets of all ilk, indeed from almost any portable device with a wire or wireless connection.

But world travelers had best be careful about where they make those VoIP calls from.

I was just reading a report in the Himalayan Times, datelined Kathmandu. It seems that Nepal’s Central Investigation Bureau, an arm of the local constabulary, raided what they called an illegal “VoIP call center” in Shantitole, Manamaiju (even Google maps couldn’t find this place), and arrested three people, two of them Bangladeshi. The call center was operating out of a private house. The entire operation consisted of a single desktop computer.

(For those not into the technical niceties of VoIP, it is possible – although not recommended for several very good reasons – to turn a desktop PC into a server, and run software on that server that turns it into a VoIP switch. There’s not a lot of reliability in such a system, but it does work, making the story of Kathmandu’s ‘VoIP bandits’ very credible.)

This past week’s arrests are just the latest of dozens in what the Nepalese cops are calling ‘Operation Voice Fox.’ Reportedly 79 VoIP bandits, many of them foreigners, are currently sitting in Nepal jails.

The penalty for using VoIP in Nepal is up to five years in jail and, lest there be any question of why VoIP is illegal, there’s also a fine equal to the long distance revenue that Nepal’s national telecom carrier allegedly lost because of the use of VoIP.

There are, by the way, a bunch of other countries with similar VoIP bans in place so, a word to the wise for any world traveler: Check the local laws before making that VoIP call, especially in third world countries.

Conference Call Etiquette

By Jeb

If you’re on a lot of conference calls or the same call on a regular basis you probably know proper etiquette but for those new to the joy in life called conference calls I want to share some common rules to follow.  Most of this is common sense but for people on their first few calls they may not think of it.

• Always identify yourself when you get on the call and typically when you’re speaking if the call has more than a few attendees.
• Limit or eliminate background noise before you call in.  Put your animals in another room or outside and close your office door if you have kids.  Mine are wonderful but at 2 they don’t understand being quiet while I’m on the phone.  Also close a window if there’s any chance a gardner will come by because they always magically appear during conference calls.
• Send the dial-in or bridge number, pass code, and instructions multiple times leading up to the start of your call.  I know I end up usually referencing those emails just before I’m supposed to call in.
• I don’t totally agree with this suggestion but I’ve heard it many times.  Most people say to skip using a speakerphone if you’re not with a group.  I have a Phone.com HD Voice IP phone so even on speaker phone I know my calls sound good.  In general though cell phone speaker phones should be a no no if at all possible.
• Dialing in from a desktop phone used to be a must but it isn’t really anymore if your cell phone has good reception, as long as the call can stay active if your call drops.
• Stay away from the hold button if you have to do something else.  If you have hold music it may override your phone’s mute and play the hold music for all the participants.  I know how nice some of Phone.com’s hold music is but it may not be appropriate to have Snoop Dogg playing during your call.
• Lastly and most importantly, make the mute button your best friend.  My rule of thumb is I mute myself any time I’m not talking.  No one wants to hear your coworker or kid start to cry if someone eats their lunch.  Not everyone has a door to their work space or a perfectly silent office.  Mute! Mute! Mute!

Some of us are on conference calls all day long and others are more lucky but anytime you’re on a group call these are good starting points.  Do you have any conference call horror stories?  Tell us on Facebook or Twitter.

State VoIP Regulation Scorecard: 25 Down – 25 To Go

By Stuart Zipper

Legislation barring local utility commissions from regulating Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service has breezed through the California legislature, making it the 25^th state to pass such regulations. As this blog is being written the new law – passed by overwhelming majorities of 63-12 in the California Assembly and  28-7 in the Senate – was sitting on Gov. Jerry Brown’s desk awaiting his signature, which was expected without problem.

What the law will do is ban “any department, agency, commission, or political subdivision of the state from enacting, adopting, or enforcing any law, rule, regulation, ordinance, standard, order, or other provision having the force or effect of law” regulating VoIP. Indeed it covers almost all IP-enabled services, and the ban stays in effect until 2020.  A key point in the law is that California does recognize the right of the federal government, in the form of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), to regulate VoIP.

What’s happening here is that one state after another is backing off any claim to having a right to regulate VoIP. In my opinion, this is a good thing for both VoIP users and providers, because it means that VoIP providers, such as Phone.com, aren’t going to have to deal with a nightmare scenario of 50 different sets of VoIP rules – and potentially more if counties and cities get into the act. It almost makes me pity the traditional landline switched circuit phone providers, who do face a labyrinth of government regulations on both the local and federal levels.

To be even-handed, I should note that some consumer groups are opposing these state laws, facing off against high tech companies and organizations – particularly in California – who are backing it. There’s also more than a bit of resentment by some Public Utility Commission members in California and other states, who feel that their authority is being undermined.

But I’m thinking of just how bad things could have gotten were each state to set its own VoIP rules. It is easy to imagine, particularly for business VoIP. For instance, if you’re using a Virtual PBX, the truth is that there really is a piece of hardware somewhere out there in the cloud providing that service. But which state gets to regulate that server and service? Perhaps it’s your home state. Or perhaps it’s the state where the hardware sits. Oh, and the other state where the geographically remote emergency backup hardware is located. And perhaps you’d also have to answer to a state where your business has a phone number with a local area code but no physical presence (a service Phone.com offers, with numbers from every state in the nation, plus worldwide numbers, available). But by now readers should get the picture – a unified nationwide set of rules is going to be good for all of us, and I’m not going to argue about what those rules should or shouldn’t be in this blog, although I do have my opinions.

For now: 25 states down, 25 to go.

Nice GetVOIP Video Review Of Phone.com

We just got a really nice video review from Michael at GetVOIP.com.  He goes through our website and covers a number of pages on it.  It’s a great video for anyone looking for small to medium size business phone service.  If you ever want to share Phone.com with a friend or counterpart I suggest having them watch this video.  Without further ado here’s the video.

Thanks again to Michael Roden from GetVOIP.com for the kind write up.

Setting Your Phone.com Caller ID

By Jeb

I get asked every so often how to change the Caller ID for outgoing phone calls from a specific number.  For example if you have a doctors office and the main doctor is Dr. Brilliant then you might want to have your outgoing caller ID show “Dr. Brilliant”.  Or if you prefer the practices name you can choose to put that in instead.  The only limitation is keeping it to 15 characters and that’s due to keeping it reverse compatible to older caller ID systems.

Picking the caller ID is the hardest part, setting it up takes mere seconds.  Once you log into the administrators account you will want to click on Numbers in the row towards the top.  Now select Edit to the right of your phone number.  At this point you should see Caller ID Name: and just to the right and down 1 line you will see Name To Display: with a text box to the right.  Here is what will appear when you call a landline with caller ID enabled.  If you like what’s there don’t change it but here is where you may want to put in your companies name.  Keep in under 15 total characters including spaces and DON’T forget to hit Save at the bottom.

Do you have any questions about Phone.com or how to set some aspect of our service up?  Once you’ve Liked us on FaceBook or Followed us on Twitter send us a message and I’ll explain it for you.

“Plan B” Revisited

By Stuart Zipper

When I woke up this morning I discovered that I had no Internet connectivity … and thus no VoIP to my home and office. A quick check of the log on my PC revealed that although I did have broadband connectivity, at full speed, my connection to the Internet was dropped at about 1 A.M.

This isn’t the first time this has happened over the past few months. Nor the second time, nor the third. Indeed a couple of weeks ago my Internet connectivity disappeared for almost 12 hours. The reason this is happening isn’t really relevant (although for those interested, it allegedly has to do with Century Link’s authentication servers, a customer service rep insisted). What is relevant is that the VoIP lines in my home office, and my home, weren’t working.

The point of all of this is one I’ve made in the past, but I think it bears constant repetition: You need a “Plan B” if your business depends at all on phone service – which almost every business does.

Fortunately, with the capabilities of business VoIP, coming up with a Plan B is an exercise in simplicity. And for Phone.com subscribers, a workable Plan B doesn’t cost a penny extra.

One answer is simply to program your VoIP phone line for “follow me” services. In my case, I already have my line set up to forward to my cell phone whenever I don’t answer the desk set when it rings. As a corollary, if the Virtual PBX that powers Phone.com can’t reach that desk set – because of lack of Internet connectivity or because of a fumble-fingered blogger (me) who accidentally disconnected his ATA while installing new PC speakers – it automatically sends the call to my cell. The result: Not a single missed call.

Taking it a step further, if your business has multiple locations, you can simply have unanswered calls shifted to another office whenever your line isn’t answered (or, indeed, doesn’t even ring because of a connectivity glitch). And of course there’s always the use of multiple levels of menus. For instance, if your phone line isn’t answered (or again, if it doesn’t even ring), the call can go to a menu that lets the caller decide what to do next – perhaps ring your cell phone, or leave a message, or try to reach some other location in your company.

One interesting point is that, setting aside for a moment the tremendous cost and feature advantage of VoIP, the venerable switched telephone system has been around so long that it’s been engineered to a “T,” and does deliver 99.999% reliability. I have no doubt that the carrier industry, both telco and cable, will someday fairly soon be able to deliver broadband – and therefore VoIP – with the same level of reliability. After all, small to medium-sized businesses and homes do rely on the very same fiber and copper infrastructure as traditional phone service, at least up to the point of connectivity with the Internet backbone. Indeed so do many of the remote offices of large corporations, although typically a large company site accesses the Internet via highly reliable dedicated lines if available.

Meanwhile, whichever of the methods I discuss above, or combinations of methods, you use – always have a Plan B, just in case. I’d also be happy to hear from anyone who has additional ideas for a great Plan B, and is willing to share them with other readers of this blog.

Stuart Zipper is currently a contributing editor to Communications Technology, a high tech business journalism consultant and freelancer, and the past Senior Editor of TelecomWeb news break.

Don’t Let Your Cell Phone Voicemail Pick Up Your Phone.com Calls

By: Jeb

If you ever have a problem with your cell phone voicemail picking up your Phone.com calls this post is for you.  You most likely need to activate your Call Screening Rules or modify them if it’s already active.

A common problem customers experience is when somone calls their Phone.com number it forwards to a desktop phone like an IP phone as well as to a cell phone.  What can happen is that the devices voicemail picks up and answers the Phone.com call and you get a message on your mobile number.

The solution is easy, you need to first decide which Phone.com extension you want your VM to arrive in.
Then depending on the architecture of your Phone.com menu system and the set up of your companies phone service you’ll either go to the Entensions or Numbers tab toward the top of the control panel.
Extensions: Go into your Extensions then Settings (on the left) then Call Handling Rules (on the left under Settings).  Under your chosen number or extension to ring it says “Ring above number for XX seconds.”  I always pick 20 seconds because that’s shorter than the time it takes for my cell phone voicemail to pick up.

Numbers: Click on the Numbers tab at the top then click Settings to the right of your number.  Now click the Edit button to the right of Number Action:.  In this case you should see all the numbers you forward your Phone.com number to, below that you will want to select the drop down that says “Ring above number for XX seconds.”  As I said before I pick 20 seconds.

In both cases of Extensions or Numbers you MUST click Save Rule Settings toward the bottom or your changes won’t be saved.

At this point you should not have your cell phone voicemail pick up your Phone.com calls any longer.  Now you can have those messages transcribed, emailed to you as a recording and/or alerted by text message.  We have a great number of voicemail notification services.

Sometimes A Number Does Matter

By: Jeb

Sometimes a number does matter…  Over the last few months a friend has complained to me on more than one occasion about potential clients that ended up going with a different wedding photographer because his area code represents a region that is nowhere near the client or their wedding.  Chris has lost more than just a few clients now because he has a 562 number, that’s a Los Angeles area code.  One client was from Hawaii, one was from San Diego and another from San Francisco.  Some people understand that an area code doesn’t denote your area of coverage but obviously others don’t.

So Chris has been talking to me about getting a toll free number because it represents no region at all.  Chris has shot weddings all over the world, he has a few ads in different magazines that cover many different regions and doesn’t want to miss out on business because his phone number says he’s from Los Angeles.  When a bride is spending enormous sums of money on her wedding an airline ticket to fly a professional wedding photographer that she bonds with to Hawaii or San Francisco?  Chris needs to change the perception of his business, his potential clients need to understand that he’s available anywhere and the most efficient way to do that is by getting a toll free number.

Chris asked for my help and of course I suggested Phone.com right off that bat but I also told him to look around at other service providers.  I always do this for people who ask and allow them to come to their own conclusion that Phone.com has the best offering and they always do.  Chris’s story isn’t over, it’s just starting, he’s just recently signed up with us and got his toll free number.  The lesson here is that if you’re a region free business and want customers from all over, a toll free number is something you should consider.  Being just $9.88 (for 2 numbers) a month it’s almost a no brainer.  Don’t hesitate and potentially lose out on business because a customer may think you only work in a certain area because of your phones area code.

If you have any questions don’t hesitate to call our toll free number 800-998-7087 or send us a message on Facebook or Twitter.  We’re always happy to hear from you.  If you have any good stories about how a toll free number helped your business let me know.

Phone.com Introduces Our First Cordless Phones By Panasonic

By: Jeb

Phone.com is adding to it’s very first cordless IP phone, the Panasonic KX-TGP500 (scroll down) and it’s a beauty.  This shiny black wireless phone, charger and base station is launching today and is available for $164.95 and $4.88/month on many of our plans.

Phone.com is one of the first companies to introduce the DECT 6.0 Panasonic cordless handset featuring Internet-enabled SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) technology.  With a 2.1 inch screen, 5 hours of talk time and 10 days of standby time it’s ideal for small businesses that need mobility within an office, the ability to retain outstanding call quality, and the wealth of features available from Phone.com. I even know a business traveler who spends more time in hotels then at home or in his office so he carries his IP phone with him.  He’s already told me he’s getting one of these so he can walk all over his hotel room talking on the phone.

“The SIP cordless phones from Panasonic allow our customers to enjoy the familiarity of existing cordless phones but with much lower phone line costs than with traditional Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS),” said Ari Rabban, our CEO.  Many of us in the office and other people I’ve talked to are very interested in how this can make our lives a little easier.

The system includes one handset and supports up to 5 more Panasonic KX-TPA50 handsets costing $149.95 each and $4.88 each per month.

Are you interested in getting cordless phones for your office?  Let us know on our Facebook page or on Twitter.

CFO For Hire

By: Jeb

A very special customer of ours named Ray is a CFO for hire.  He works for multiple companies, typically because the companies need his expertise but not everyday.  The thing is, Ray doesn’t ever want to confuse one client with another.  So he gives every single different client he has a different phone number to reach him.  We’re only talking about a few clients at a time but it could be catastrophic if he was to give a client the wrong advice because he guessed wrong about who was calling.

Ray has 1 main toll-free number and then approximately 5 standard numbers, 1 for each of his current clients.  Now when a client calls 1 of his 5 standard numbers it rings through to Ray on his IP desk phone or his cell phone, when he picks up the call he’s informed which line is calling him giving the name of the company, for example he’ll pick up and hear “Acme Co.”, then connect the call and know which company is calling without having to ask.  He does this using our Call Voice Tagging feature.

Do you have any unique ways you use Phone.com?  Let us know on Facebook or Twitter.  We’re always happy to hear from you.

Dial #2663 To Call Into A Phone.com Conference Bridge

I want to share something I was just reminded about this morning.  I was trying to get on a conference call with some of my Phone.com coworkers but forgot how to dial in.  I was using my desktop phone the Polycom IP450 and was reminded that I could just dial #2663# and send.  Then I just dial the room number.

This isn’t some new Phone.com feature but something I thought I’d share with all of you.  Good luck.

–

Jeb Brilliant

Phone.com

Community Manager

Time To Change Your Hold Music

I just spent 10 minutes on hold and by the end I was losing my mind.  I was driving and couldn’t do anything else besides listen, it was horrible.  The hold music was the worst I’ve ever heard and it’s always this way when I call my dentists office.

I’m reminding all the readers out there that our hold music is great but it like any other should be changed every so often. Plus we offer Premium Hold Music for just ¢99/month.  That’s 5 very different styles of music for you to choose from and for you to change as often as you want.  These 5 channels include music from Bruce Springsteen, the Beatles, The Grateful Dead, Pink Floyd, Jay-Z, Snoop Dogg, Miles Davis and Louis Armstrong.

I guarantee anyone who calls you very often will be so grateful every single time they get put on hold that it’s not the same music as the last time they called and it’s not the same old hold music they hear everywhere else.  It will be unique and different and everyone needs to stand out a bit in this day and age.

Have you tried Phone.com’s Premium Hold Music yet?  What’s your favorite channel?  Let us know on Facebook or Twitter.

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Jeb Brilliant

Phone.com

Community Manager

Stop Exceeding Your Minute Plan – use Phone.com Unlimited Calling

I’ve been going over my minutes lately on my Phone.com office line.  I’ve been on a lot of conference calls lately and a lot of calls with a client. I’ve been blowing through the minutes like it’s nobody’s business… But it is.  Do you ever blow through your minutes? Do you ever get stuck on a conference call you know you need to be on but you’re trying to calculate how many minutes you have left in your bucket?

My solution is to add Unlimited Calling to my desktop extension. I’m in my home office most of the time during the workday and most of my calls are handled on my Polycom IP450 (it’s a great phone) so it was a no brainer.  For $21.88/month I now never worry about going over my minutes.  My long calls don’t stress me out and hold times aren’t an issue any longer.

If you ever go over your minutes or it’s something you just don’t want to worry about I suggest checking out the Phone.com Unlimited Calling plan.  If you have any questions we’re on Facebook and Twitter to answer any and all of your questions.

BYOD Via Phone.com

I’ve written a few times now about the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) concept on the Phone.com blog but I’ve never explained how this works with Phone.com.  I’m going to focus on the most basic approach of BYOD in terms of cell phones.

It’s all about Call Forwarding.  If you have an employee that is willing to take calls after hours or on the weekends then you can forward their extension to their cell phone number.  This means if a sales call comes in on a Sunday night when it’s already Monday in Australia the lucky recipient can take the call and make a sale over the phone.  Or at a bare minimum remind the customer it’s Sunday night and they’ll call back when their in the office to complete the sale.

BYOD now puts employees on the clock all the time, good or bad, you decide.  But it’s an option none the less.  It’s also great for when you know people will be out of the office, you can just send the calls directly to their cell phones.  You may want to consider setting the scheduling so they don’t get any middle of the night calls if they’re not supposed to.

Does your company support BYOD?  How do they implement it?  Let us know on Facebook or Twitter.

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Jeb Brilliant

Phone.com

Community Manager

BYOD Is Killing The Non-Working Vacation?

I recently wrote about BYOD and sick days becoming work from home days and never thought about vacation time becoming work time due to BYOD or bring your own device.  Thanks to Ari the Phone.com CEO who must have understood this issue before most of us had even heard of it I got a full fledged vacation 15 months ago.  I went over seas and Ari told me to let my co workers handle my responsibilities for those 2 weeks.  I was so grateful because I could really disconnect.  This isn’t the case in most companies.  Most CEO’s never stump up and tell their employees before they leave on vacation to disconnect and forget about email and the rest of their responsibilities.

The big issue here is now that people are bringing their own devices to work, whether it’s a smart phone, tablet or laptop, they are also taking it on vacation with them and tempted to respond to “just that one email”.  This can easily cascade into a 2 hour work session and your significant other getting upset.  It’s the company’s job to set standards and practices in terms of working during vacation time but it’s the employee who needs to have the willpower and follow through to not check their email.

Now that it’s vacation season it’s time to decide how to handle this but handle it you must or you’ll end up with burnt out employees.  Talk to your IT guys and find out if you can suspend email delivery.  On the Phone.com control panel you can forward your vacationing employees extension to voicemail or to someone elses extension.  Do your employees a favor like Ari did for me and tell them to fully disconnect, they’ll appreciate it and you’ll get a renewed employee on their return.

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Jeb Brilliant

Phone.com

Community Manager

Buzzing Guests In Using Phone.com

One of my favorite uses for Phone.com is our Call Forwarding to a cell phone allowing someone buzzez in a guest into an appartment building or open a gate in a gated community.  We have a customer that reached out to me and told me about this.

The customer has it set that anytime someone buzzes in at their gate it forwards directly to their home and cell phone using Call ID Routing and when they pick up they hear “Front door” set up with the Call Voice Tagging feature.  Then they just buzz in their guests.

Our customer told me that in another year or 2 when his daughter gets older he will change the call routing to only ring on his cell phone or his wife’s so they can always ask who’s buzzing in.  Then they’ll know who’s coming to see their daughter.  He told me he feels like it might be a bit much but it’s his right to be an overprotective parent.

I thought this might be useful for our customers using Phone.com at home but also for customers that have to buzz in visitors to their office.

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Jeb Brilliant

Phone.com

Community Manager

What’s Beneath The Surface

The overwhelming topic of the week for the high tech blogosphere was the unveiling of Microsoft’s forthcoming Surface tablet PCs. Since swimming upstream is tough, I too will go with the flow, and to keep the metaphor going I’m going to probe what’s beneath the Surface.

For the VoIP community, Microsoft left unanswered many questions about Surface, although it did answer others. For instance, there will be two cameras, both front and rear facing. The rear facing one, we are told by Microsoft, will be angled so that it can be used for conferencing during a business meeting. That makes it quite clear that business VoIP, with video, is on Microsoft’s agenda – it’s on Phone.com’s agenda too, I might add.

But what Microsoft didn’t reveal is just how extensive the connectivity needed for that video VoIP will be. I’ve got to assume that Surface has, at a minimum, built in Wi-Fi and perhaps a wired Ethernet connection. But unknown is if there will be versions with Long Term Evolution (LTE), the 4G wireless technology that’s really needed when away from Wi-Fi or wired connections for the video-centric business VoIP phone service that’s being hinted at.

Also not disclosed is whether there will be Bluetooth built in to Surface. That’s important to anyone who doesn’t want to talk on a speakerphone (indeed there will be stereo speakers in the device, in addition to a microphone or two) when using Surface as their VoIP phone.

At least we know that there will be a version of Surface powered by an i5 CPU, which immediately implies that the same VoIP clients that run on any laptop, or desktop for that matter, will run on the i5 version of Surface. If it all works I can just picture it, sitting in a hotel in front of a pretty big, bright screen, typing on the “real” keyboard Microsoft is promising in addition to a touch keyboard, with my VoIP business phone right there with me, a virtual extension that will work almost anywhere in the world.

Stuart Zipper is currently a contributing editor to Communications Technology, a high tech business journalism consultant and freelancer, and the past Senior Editor of TelecomWeb news break.

The Tablet Is The Future, 67% Of Small Business Use Them

Small Businesses are digging the tablets, that’s not news these days but what I read this morning is.  I got this from a post Gary Kim who wrote about a study AT&T sponsored.  These numbers actually surprised me, I’m glad to see tablets catching on in small businesses so quickly.

• 43% of small businesses surveyed report ALL of their employees use wireless devices of some sort to facilitate working outside of the office.

Here’s the kicker and the number I was so happy to see…

• 67% of small businesses use tablets.  That’s up 10% from last year.

This is huge, that means that it shouldn’t surprise anybody to see a plant manager or IT directors walking around with a tablet.  I know I walk around my home office and my clients office all the time with my iPad.  I have nearly everything I need to answer their questions or participate in a meeting.  From my email, IM, documents and my work phone it’s all in my tablet.  The future is upon us.

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Jeb Brilliant

Phone.com

Community Manager

Change Your LinkedIn Password NOW

I wanted to suggest to all our customers and readers that you change your LinkedIn password.

LinkedIn states “We can confirm that some of the passwords that were compromised correspond to LinkedIn accounts.“

LinkedIn is also suggesting that you change your password once a quarter.  I am guilty of not changing my password regularly like most people but I highely suggest using a different password for every service you use.

I personally use a password app called 1 Password, I like it but I’m not endorsing it.  It stores my passwords and allows me via their app to access my passwords on all of my different devices, from phones to tablets as well as computers.

Please just a minute and change your LinkedIn password.  If you need help here are the steps needed to get to the page to change it.

1. Log into LinkedIn
2. Click on your name in the top right corner
3. Select Settings from the dropdown
4. From the 4 tabs on the left side of the screen more then half way down select Account
5. There should be 2 columns that appear and the second from the top in the right column is Change Password
6. You should be able to take it from here.

Good luck and it’s better to change it now then have your account hacked and have to go through the trouble of fixing it.

–

Jeb Brilliant

Phone.com

Community Manager