Open Journalism For All - News, Documentaries And Information Services

Every day you miss calls from customers who need your products or services. But now you can get rid of all these problems, your call will be answered by a live answering service with your company name. Representatives at answering services will provide you services like answering phone service, answering message service or even enter data into your web form.

But finding an answering service company is not easy, after all you are going to trust one of your assets i.e. your customer or prospects or clients or patient – to a third party about whom you know a very little. Hence, it is very important to choose a perfect answering service suitable for your business. We recommend you to take a glance of this article before taking a decision regarding answering services.

If you are serious about growing your business and providing superior customer service, you need a solution that provides 24/7 answering services with live operators that handle every call correctly and professionally. Some big companies are available for you to assist you in the regard. These service providers not only serve you with answering phone services, they also assist you with other services like answering message service, pager, voice mail, PDA, live operator and even via web portal to fit your schedules and needs.

People at answering services are consultant. They recommend right products and services to help you accomplish your goals. These answering services are working from the 1980’s and developing cost effective, customized answering services to meet your specific objectives.

There services include:

• In-depth, 24/7/365 customer service support
• Dispatch of service, emergency, or technical support personnel
• After hours, weekend, holiday, overflow coverage
• Dedicated receptionist during normal business hours
• Live operator answering service
• Medical service bureau
• Message delivery service
• Toll-free telephone answering service

Whether you are a corporation, an independent professional, in the medical field or related to any other profession that demands round-the-clock answering service and telephone support, companies can deliver the coverage you need and the professional care of your clients, patients and customers.

Leading answering service firms are continually search for pioneering technologies and services to help you better serve and improve your business.

While dealing with leading answering service companies you will be sure about:

• Answering services appoint courteous, professional and knowledgeable agents for your service.

• Dialer systems used at answering services are of good quality so that you can hear crystal clear voice quality.

• Customized answering service with your personalized greeting.

• Round the clock nationwide answering telephone service will give new horizons to your business.

• Multilingual answering message service is also available at answering services 24 hours a day and 7 days a week.

If you are a physician or businessman related with medical field, Medical Answering Services are for you, which is a full-service professional answering service. Medical answering services are medical call center that provides answering phone service, e-mail and fax messaging and other telecommunications services to doctors and other healthcare providers. Medical answering services also help in reminding your appointment, insurance verifications, data management, event registration and custom scripting.

Tyson J Stevenson writes on a wide variety of business related subjects, always with valuable news & reviews. Expect to see his name often.

A related resource is My Answering Service

Further information can be found at HubbuH

Have you noticed that some sound ideas get bad publicity? Two I
have in mind are outsourcing and free trade.

No doubt you could name others, but looking at these two
initiatives helps us understand a communication challenge for
many companies and not-for-profit organizations.

Free trade and outsourcing both produce a few (well, relatively
few) big losers, and many (very many) small winners.

More specifically, free trade leads to big losses for a
relatively small number of companies and their employees.
Companies can go out of business or be forced to drastically
restructure; employees can lose their jobs. The adjustment pains
they suffer are very real and very significant.

On the other hand, all consumers in a country that adopts free
trade are winners. In other words, just about everybody. The
gains for each person are small, yet, taken together those gains
far outweigh the losses suffered by the losers. And the gains
keep paying dividends year after year.

The story is much the same for outsourcing. A few employees take
a very big hit, losing their jobs. At the same time, though, a
lot of other employees get to keep their jobs because their
companies become stronger. A few suffer for the many.

Which do you hear more about? You hear far more about the losers,
of course. Why? Well, as a former news writer and announcer I can
tell you that losers holler louder and longer. They actively seek
media coverage. And that’s not all: stories about layoffs have an
inherent drama that stories about the preservation of jobs just
can’t match.

In addition, small-scale winners often don’t know they’ve won,
how they’ve won, or what they’ve won, so they don’t march in
protest or call news conferences. Add to that the general
principle that good news isn’t big news.

What do you do if you face a decision leading to many small
winners and a few big losers? First, hammer away at the context,
at the circumstances that drive the decision. For example, don’t
announce to employees that a new piece of equipment that does the
work of three people will make you more efficient. Rather,
explain the competitive pressures that force greater efficiency,
and the consequences of failing to meet those pressures.

Don’t assume everyone shares your knowledge. Few stakeholders
understand the broader picture, and even if they could, the
pressure of day-to-day events may keep them focused on just one
piece of it. It’s essential to start with as few assumptions as
possible.

Communicate frequently: in advance, during, and afterward.
Explain the problem, outline the options, list the decision
criteria, announce the solution, and report on how well the
solution has worked. Or not worked, which becomes the new
problem.

You won’t convince everyone your decision is the right one, but
you might convince enough people to make further progress
possible.

In summary, when a few people suffer big losses and many others
make small gains, you can expect the losers to complain very
loudly, and the winners to say little or nothing. To deal with these
situations, communicate frequently and carefully.

Robert F. Abbott writes and publishes Abbott’s Communication Letter. If you
subscribe, you will receive, at no charge, communication tips that help you lead or
manage more effectively. You can get more information here:
http://www.Communication-Newsletter.com

Really free adware removal programs can sometimes seem hard to find. You click on a link that promise really free adware removal programs, but end up on a site with programs that eventually turn out to have a lot of strings attached. You might only be able to try out the really free adware removal program for a very short time, such as a few days, before you must purchase an expensive version of the program. A few days is usually not enough to find if you are comfortable with you Adware removal program or not. Another disadvantage with this system is that when you purchase an expensive Adware removal program, you will most likely stick to that program even if the program becomes out-dated or a better program is offered on the market. In other cases, you can use the really free adware removal program for as long as you wish, but it turns out to be so basic that it offers very little protection from Adware. You are then encouraged to buy a better, but pricey, version of the program. Sometimes it is actually a really great free adware removal program that you are offered, but the updates cost quite a lot of money. Since all Adware removal programs need to be updated frequently to stay modern, this can turn out to be very costly in the end.

There are however examples of really free adware removal programs that are available for download online, but you might have to spend some time looking for them. Really free adware removal programs are seldom available off-line, since it would be too expensive to distribute them. Be vigilant when you choose a website from which to download a really free adware removal program, since there are a lot of dishonest sites offering fake adware removal programs. When more and more computer users began to protect their computers from adware with adware removal programs, the deceitful companies that gain from the Adware programs developed their own fake really free adware removal programs.

These fake programs are promoted vigorously on the Internet, and many computer users are lured into installing what they think is a protective. If you spend some time online, you will probably sooner or later stumble over a banner add that warns you about the dangers of Adware, or claim that your computer is already infested with Adware. You will be offered a great really free adware removal program, and if click on the banner your will be sent to a website. From this website you can download something that looks like a very good and really free adware removal program, but it is actually a fake. Your computer will not be protected from Adware when you use this fake adware removal program, and the fake adware removal program will probably also install Adware, Spyware and other types of Malware in your computer. You can minimize the risk of downloading a fake adware removal program by only downloading really free adware removal programs from trustworthy web pages with a good reputation.

New forms of malicious Spyware and Adware are constantly created and in order to protect your computer from infestations you must choose a high-quality program and keep it updated. Supportcave.com offer a selected number of the very best really free adware removal programs available for immediate online download

Speaking of outsourcing I mean a wider sense than just hiring of manpower from abroad for some remote work. I can mark out four types here:

1. Outsourcing itself. A US or Western Europe company (let’s call it “the West”) hires an employee from Eastern Europe, Asia, etc., i. e. from a country with more poor economy (let’s call it “the East”, though it is not quite correct). This employee performs remotely some part of the work for a company from the West.

2. A company from the West hires a company from the East that performs all the work content for an employer and gives the ready product. In this case an employer appears for a reseller.

3. Not quite outsourcing, but it is related to outsourcing. A company from the West orders a product or a service at a company from the East for private use that is much cheaper than an analogous product/service by a company from the West.

4. Not outsourcing at all. An employee from the East moves to the West and works at a company.

However we are not interested in the fourth type now. The problem of outsourcing arouses a lot of discussions. On the one hand – those who immediately order and perform, on the other hand – specialists from the West who are being ousted from the labor market by specialists from the East. And it is the only significant disadvantage of outsourcing.

Surely, for people who lose their jobs because of foreigners this disadvantage is very significant, but nevertheless we should take into account the fact that only in the USA there are 340000 vacancies for programmers. Programmers from the West have two ways out: to improve their professionalism to the level that no outsourcer could compete with them or to move to the East and become outsourcers.

So what can be opposed to this disadvantage? There are quite a lot of advantages. The most obvious among them is the considerable disparity between manpower costs in the countries of the West and in the so-called Third World countries. There are a lot of reasons; it is a question for economists, but all that comes down to the fact that the cost of living in these countries is much lower than in the USA or countries of Western Europe.

On the other hand, the professionalism of programmers, designers, etc. from not market-economy countries is highly competitive with the professionalism of Western specialists. The education system in the Soviet Union (and later – in the countries that became the USSR’s successors) is considered to be one of the best in the world; many specialists go to the West to work there, others are engaged in outsourcing. I am speaking of the countries of the former Soviet Union, because working with outsourcers from these countries is more profitable than with their Asian colleagues and developer from other countries of Eastern Europe. Of course, the benefit lies in the lowest manpower costs.

Now let’s appeal to the figures. When managers of a software or web design company plan to have resource to outsourcing, they usually aim to cut down expenses to 30% and more. I suppose that starting not only from labor hours, but also technicality, expenses can be cut down to 50%. These figures may be a little bit different depending on outsourcer’s geographical situation. As I already mentioned, if working with such countries as Russia and Ukraine, the profit gets still more. And it is while the quality is of the same high level.

Year by year greater and greater number of Western companies realize the advantages of outsourcing and collaborate with Eastern companies. As the IDC’s and Meta Group’s research show, 60% of midsized companies resort to outsourcing in IT development and web design. Forrester Research foretells that within the next 15 years 3.3 millions of jobs and $136 billions will move abroad.

Comparing different types of outsourcing, namely – the first and the second types, it must be said that the second one makes more profit since the cost value in this case will be less. The same reason is for buying a ready product or service by a company that is situated in Ukraine or Russia. Some companies are engaged exceptionally in reselling. That means that they find clients, pass an order to an outsourcer, pass the ready product/service to a client and get the profit that amounts to 100% and more.

Harking back to the words of some people who tell that outsourcers “steal” Western specialist’s work, I could say as follows. Economy controls the situation. It is market.

Dmitrie Highduke,
TheAnotherWorld,
http://theanotherworld.com/

1. Creating business cards. If you’re self employed or run a small business, you know how expensive printing business cards can be. If someone leaves your employ, or the phone area code changes, all that money is down the drain. Most printers and stationers work to standard designs anyway, so your business card looks pretty much like all the rest. With your own DTP software you can really let your imagination rip, and design a unique and memorable card. You can then print it out on your colour printer and save a bundle - you can even get pre-cut card to print your design out on that can make your work indistinguishable from a professional job.

2. Designing letterheads. Just like business cards, really, only bigger. You can get them offset printed by the ream, or save the design as a file and print out the letterhead every time you print out a letter.

3. Custom DVD covers and labels. Making movies is fun (I know), but if you make home movies and videos, and burn them onto disk yourself, the label that comes with the disk looks pretty boring. It’s easy to design an insert to go inside the DVD case - and a matching label - using your DTP software. Now your epic can take pride of place on the shelf alongside the professional ones from the video store.

4. Making banners and posters. Throwing a party? Want to advertise your goods or services? Got an event you need to publicise? Banners and posters are a simple way to catch someone’s attention. The traditional way of creating them is by using markers and paints. A combination of your DTP software and colour printer is much quicker - and less messy!

5. Designing flyers. Scale that banner or poster down to half a page, and you’ve got a flyer to hand out.

6. Typesetting newsletters. A newsletter is the easiest way of letting customers, or members of your club or other organisation, know what’s going on. Typing them up on a word processor is fine, but use your DTP software to make them more eye-catching, and your newsletter is more likely to be read than trashed.

7. Magazine layout. Go one further and layout your own glossy magazine with pictures ad text put together in full colour. It’s easier (and cheaper) than you may think.

8. Product packaging. Think package design is the preserve of expensive design shops or advertising agencies? Think again! Most package design these days is done using computers. “Reverse engineer” a package by taking a similar sized one apart to get the dimensions, build your own template from the measurements, then let your imagination run wild. You’ll be surprised at what you can come up with - and how little it will cost.

9. Laying out a catalogue. If you sell multiple products, or just want to let customers know what’s in your shop or store, a catalogue can keep you uppermost in your customer’s mind. Designing it using your own DTP software means you can easily update it without having to pay a fortune to an agency.

10. Designing a yearbook. Don’t let precious memories fade away. A yearbook isn’t just for high school. Use your DTP software to organise pictures, facts and reminiscences into a document you’ll treasure forever.

Shaun Pearce is a writer and video maker.
His latest production “DTP Master” shows you how to get to grips with desktop publishing, comes with free DTP software, and can be downloaded from http://www.learndtpfast.com.

Print brokers have been around since the invention of the printing press. Some are “fly by night” shysters that will do you over if given the chance; others are reputable multi million dollar companies that have branded their trust and experience with years of service. It is the “fly by night” sham operations that gives the profession a bad name, but all in all the concept of one company sourcing all of your print projects is brilliant.

Let’s take a look at what a print broker does and how they can save your company time and money.

Not all printing presses are the same. They’re just not. They vary in sizes, uses, capabilities, etc. Some are built for high quantity projects, some are built for low quantity projects…some are for labels, some are for signs. As many different products there are to be printed, there are just as many different machines to do the printing.

Print brokers go out into a defined network of printers and manufacturers and match your job to the best equipment built for that particular job. Usually this results in several manufacturers competing to produce your product, which means lower prices for you the consumer.

Not only will using a broker save you time by not having to search and call 50 different printers for one job, but they can give you feedback and advice on the most efficient way to set up and run your projects which will save you even more money.

If you are looking to have your products printed on the “best fit” equipment then you need to tap into power of an experienced and knowledgeable print broker.

Ken Hamilton
One Source, Inc.
305 Seaboard Lane, Suite 309
Franklin, TN 37067
615-591-7722
http://www.onesourceinc.net

Most people consider purchasing an accounting software application when they start their own business. You may own a small business and want to get more organized or are just starting a web based business and want to keep track of your finances. Regardless of your reasons there are multiple accounting software programs to choose from.

Some software programs fit into the category of enterprise systems or financial management. These software programs tend to be more comprehensive than basic software application packages, which usually handle ordinary features including accounts payable, accounts receivable, general ledger and order entry. Some additional features you may want to look for include:

• Fixed assets

• Purchase order control

• Shipping and receiving

• Services

• Marketing

• Ecommerce

• Payroll

• Fixed Assets

• Customer Service Management

Customizable Features

Ecommerce is a relatively new application some software providers are offering so businesses can integrate their online business with their traditional business offerings. Most software programs offer comprehensive integrated financial solutions that help automate accounting functions. Look for an accounting software program that is customizable if possible. That way you can customize your applications to meet your specific business needs. Typically, even basic accounting software programs like QuickBooks offers some customizable functions, even if it is just customizing reports and invoices.

Depending on the size of your business keep in mind you may need to investigate an accounting software solution that will allow multiple user access and log in, so you can keep track of who is making entries when. This is a handy feature if you hire other people to handle data entry or process financial transactions in your business.

Article by Frank Owen, visit his web site on accounting software for more on accounting software.
http://www.softwareforbusiness.net/accounting-software/

Adware is a method by which unscrupulous folk or entities can gain access to the files or systems within your computer and can make use of this by using your web usage details or personal information for their own gain.

Adware is also known as spyware,scumware or malware and a whole host of other nicknames and terms. It is definitely something that must never be taken lightly as the carnage it could inflict could be extremely harmful and worrying.

There are various ways by which spyware can gain access to your computer and this is usually allowed due to the fact that most folk do not have adequate pc security software’s. Even if you do have the best tools then it is essential that you run them via a regular routine.

One of the best examples of what adware or spyware can do is the fact that in some cases it can slow down your pc to the pace of a snail. It can sometimes even have the effect that to start your computer could even take fifteen to twenty minutes if your pc is infected. If this is the case even carrying out the required procedures can be troublesome to say the least.

It is actually not too hard or indeed costly to protect your computer from adware or spyware. Simply download an anti adware software and run it on a regular basis. One thing to remember is that even though there are a stack of free spyware tools out there on the web that you should not kid yourself that they are free, They might find the intruder but ultimately you will have to pay to access this part of the nuker program.

At the end of the day for the sake of a few dollars you will save a heck of a lot of time and could even save your precious files and data.

Yes Adware or spyware can be fatal from the point of view of personal data and software program safety.

Adware can harm..

Files. Programs. Registry. Computer speed and functionality.

Whilst carrying out adware removal there are a few key points to remember that will ensure the job is done correctly.

John Guage writes and researches adware and compiles articles how to remove it for free. details and terrific tips, go to: http://killpopups.info

This firewall is designed for homes and small businesses.This firewall can support up to ten users on a basic license from Cisco. It has a 133 MHz processor and comes with 16MB’s of RAM. In addition it has 8MB of Flash RAM.

The Firewall also comes with 1 uplink port and a four port switch. It does not support Layer 2 transparent fire walling. It also does not support the routing protocol OSFP which stands for Open Shortest Path First. There is no VLAN-Virtual Local Area Network.

The PIX 501 allows you to setup a VPN-Virtual Private Network easily with the Cisco Easy VPN Server. It can support up to 5 VPN users at a time. NAT will hide the IP address of this device.

The firewall supports speeds up to 60Mbps bidirectional.

When you implement cryptography such as 3DES or DES it slows down the traffic.The PIX 501 can support anywhere from 50-unlimited users depending on your license.

Administrators can remotely troubleshoot the Cisco PIX 501, thru a CLI command line, or graphical interface. The software also contains a network topology map, and policy wizards. It supports up to 3500 concurrent connections. There are many security solutions available from Cisco.

Benjamin Hargis
Phuture Networks
http://www.phuturenetworks.com
http://www.computersecurityadvice.com

Here at M6.Net we’ve just released our new control panel software, allowing for easier and better control over our clients’ website accounts. It was my task to write the documentation for this new software. After working through it in a traditional word processor application and subsequently producing a final product that was of little use, we came to realize that there needed to be a better way to write a manual, and to release it in multiple formats. One of the lead developers sent a link my way and after trying the evaluation copy of the software I realized that it was the package that we needed. ‘Help and Manual 4’ turns manual writing and distribution into a very simple affair.

The Help and Manual (hereafter known as H&M) homepage (http://www.helpandmanual.com/) states that “Help & Manual makes producing help a pleasure” and this is a fairly accurate little catchphrase. When I first tried the evaluation version or edition 3 a while ago, it frustrated me that I had to copy and paste every page of the manual from the word processor into H&M. This was a daunting task even for our modest sized manual that runs just over 50 pages. With the newer version however, all I had to do was export the document to Rich Text Format and use the import feature in H&M. The software went off and did its thing, returning to me with a nice manual file broken into sections based on the various headings in the document. While there were a few minor layout glitches these were easily solved, and the overall benefit of being able to directly import the manual was a huge timesaver. While it took me 3 shifts (about 4 hours a piece) to import and format the manual manually, with the new version of H&M, I had it all looking and working nicely within a single shift and still had time to edit and modify the document.

The second feature that impressed me greatly was the sheer number of output formats available to the manual writer. The formats include HTML Help, Classic Winhelp, VStudio help, Browser based help (HTML pages), Adobe PDF, MSWord manual and eBook. There’s bound to be an option or two that are right for your manual. For us it was perfect. We could create an HTML file for online help, and a downloadable PDF version of the document for offline perusal. Each output style is fully customizable, particularly the document outputs which can be modified with a handy tool called the “Print Manual Designer”. This comes included with H&M and allows you to design the overall look of your manual in an easy and self-affirming way.

I’ve spent a while talking about the input and output options, but not the functionality. I’m pleased to say that the interface is straight forward and all the expected options (or at least all the options that I expected) are included. You control the layout in a tree structure on the left hand side of the screen. This determines the numbering of your sections in the final exported manual. Then there are the many standard formatting options like font attributes, tables, character insertion, image insertion etc, but there are also more unique media options. It’s possible to embed movie, sound, flash, and other files straight into your manual. This allows you to make a demonstration video illustrating the point the manual is trying to make and include it as part of the documentation. Obviously the viability of this depends upon your chosen output format.

There are a few unique tools that I thought were exceptional concepts. The first is the Syntax Highlighter that allows you to highlight code in your manual to look much the same as code in a development environment. I didn’t actually have reason to use it and test it, but I think the idea is a great one.

The second is the Screen Capture tool. This useful little gadget hides the H&M window and allows you to capture an image of any control or window in an open program by simply holding the Ctrl key and then clicking the window. This image is saved into your images folder and inserted into the manual. It’s quick and easy to use and saves a lot of time when compared to the alternative method (opening the program, hitting print screen, cropping the image to a desired size, and importing it into the H&M software).

Overall I was very impressed with ‘Help and Manual 4’. Beyond being a basic conversion tool, it makes it very easy to write your entire manual using just the functionality of the software. Once your information is all inputted there are many customization and layout options to get it looking just how you want it. When you’re done you can output it to many different formats. Help and Manual made writing and distributing our manual quick and easy. Check it out at http://www.helpandmanual.com

Pros:

- Excellent output options
- Comprehensive formatting tools allow complete control of a project’s look
- Screen capture tool
- Good import options

Cons:

- There can be some formatting errors when importing from a document.
- You can’t select a network folder for your images folder. It is limited to your local hard drive(s).

Score: 4/5

Daniel Punch
M6.Net Web Helper
http://www.m6.net