Billy Fire LLC

One the huge benefits of a hard drive video camera is the ability to find and playback any clip within a matter of seconds. On the Canon HG10, when you change the mode to play, up to six clips are displayed on the screen. You can easily navigate between the clips using the control to the left of the screena and play the clip by pressing the middle button (see the image below). It sure beats rewinding tape, stopping, playing, rewinding etc.

We recently introduced a virtual PBX into our business. The system from 800PBX.com provides us with a toll free number, together with a local fax number. I have initially opted for their lowest cost option ($14.99) per month, this means that since a fax number is included, it is almost cheaper than what I used to pay eFax just for their fax service. $14.99 doesn’t get you that many minutes, but it is a good place to start and you can always upgrade later.

In choosing 800PBX I looked at several competitors. They were all more expensive and some did not allow me to have a number in my area code (858) so they were not an option for us.

There are many really cool things that I like about this service including:

• You can set up several extensions (for people or departments, e.g. sales). Each virtual extension can be associated with several phone numbers (e.g. your cell number, office number, home number, a partners cell phone number). these numbers can be chnaged, if required, and the updates kick-in immediately Once someone calls your 800PBX number the system is set up with two options. Either it will hunt for you, trying each of the numbers you set up in turn, or it will call all the numbers at once.
• You can have the system get the caller to announce themselves. The system then plays back the name to you so that you can decide whether to take the call or send it to voicemail.
• When you get a voicemail you get an e-mail notification. You can then listen to the voicemail by dialing into the virtual PBX or you can log into your 800PBX account on the Web an hear the message on your computer.
• You get several professionally recorded messages as standard as well as on-hold music. You also get one free message recorded by a voiceover artiste (although in our case he mispronounced Sian, which was predictable, I suppose). You can also record your own message and upload them to the system (I use Audacity and I had to try a few settings before this worked correctly).
• The message callers hear depends on whether it is business hours or not (you set your business hours within your control panel).
• Received faxes are delivered by email.
• The system means that you can always be available to potential customers, wherever you are.

There are too many great benefits and features to describe in detail. If you are interested in trying the system you get a 15 day free trial by clicking here.

Podcast feeds use RSS (’Real Simple Syndication’). The beauty of RSS is that once you have subscribed using a ‘feed reader’, you automatically get future episodes of a podcast.

There are many options as far as feed readers are concerned. Some of these are on-line services such as those available from Google and Yahoo. Others are software programs such as iTunes.

An excellent free program is called ‘Juice.’ Juice may be downloaded at http://juicereceiver.sourceforge.net/. You can use Juice to subscribe to a podcast feed and then adjust the settings so that every time you open the program it checks to see whether any more episodes have been added to the feed to which you subscribed. The program is easy to use, attractive and free!

If you would like to install the software, follow the instructions and then ’subscribe’ to our podcast as follows:

Once you have installed Juice you will see the following screen.

Click on the green ‘cross’ symbol. When prompted enter our RSS feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/<name of feed>, as follows:

Press save and press the refresh symbol

Click on the ‘downloads’ tag and you should see our ‘First time buyer issues’ podcast. Right click on the podcast and select ‘play episode in media player.’