Colocation Leverages Your IT Staff

Most businesses today, even the largest and most well known, find it hard to justify staff increases in this economic climate. That makes it tough on the IT department. Not only can't they expand to meet increasing demands for their time, but they may be subject to hiring freezes or even across the board staff reductions. Is there any way to keep this situation from heading into a morale and productivity meltdown?

There is one idea that can take some pressure off. What you need is leverage. That's the ability for each valued member of the team to be able to get more done without destroying their own health or getting so overextended that they start creating more problems than they solve. Forget trying to cram more work down fewer throats. Instead, use a technique that can multiply the effectiveness of your IT team.

That technique is called colocation. Basically, it's a way to outsource some of what you do while retaining control over the results. I know that outsourcing has gotten a tarnished reputation, especially among those who have seen their jobs moved overseas. This isn't that. In fact, everything remains nearby. What moves is not the hands-on customer service you enjoy in house or the business strategy that is core to your operation. What you are moving is the mundane, everyday infrastructure needed to run a data center.

With colocation, you move your equipment not your jobs, not your people. You rent rack space or a completely secure caged room where your servers, appliances and their WAN connections will reside. You still operate everything remotely and have access to the physical equipment when needed. What you don't do is provide physical space, main power and backup power, light, fire protection, and security. You can elect to have the colocation personnel do server maintenance and upgrades or just rent server capacity instead of owning it.

But isn't this a zero-sum game? You move the equipment from one spot to another but you still need all the resources you already have, right?

Not really. A colocation facility gains efficiency through economy of scale. A colo center can staff for monitoring, maintenance and security for hundreds of companies much cheaper than a hundred companies can do individually. The same is true for backup generators, data center facilities, and WAN bandwidth.

You may be having trouble getting the bandwidth you need because your facility just isn't located near enough to carrier facilities to make high bandwidth drops cost effective. But a colocation center often has multiple carriers with POPs (Points of Presence) in the building. They have all the bandwidth you could want and you'll get it at a bargain per Mbps or Gbps. The construction costs are as little as running a fiber or copper cable from your choice of carrier to your equipment location. You might pay very little. You might not have to pay anything.

Want to find out what colocation services can do for your business? Simply call the toll free number or enter a quick online quote request for colocation services now.

The BlackBerry Storm Just Blew In at a Lower Price

Please don't tell me you've been standing out in the cold in-line to get a BlackBerry Storm. Oh, I'm sorry. And you didn't even get one because they ran out? Oh, that's awful. Well, I've got some news that will cheer you up. The new revolutionary BlackBerry Storm has just made its appearance on Cell Phone Plans Finder. You can buy it online with free shipping for just...

Oh, drat. They won't let me tell you the price. It's too low and would be against the rules of fair play if I mentioned it here. But that won't stop you from clicking through to the cellphone special offers and finding it yourself. Then you can order it with the Verizon Wireless service package of your choice and have the whole thing delivered to your doorstep without having to pay extra for shipping.

Yes, this is the BlackBerry Storm 9530 Black that is in the news everywhere. It's the first BlackBerry with an on-screen touch keyboard. It's something on the order of an Apple iPhone, but for BlackBerry users who are addicted to their keyboards. This one is no virtualized keyboard on a piece of hard glass. The screen gives when you press it so you'll get that tactile feedback you expect when texting or entering data. They call it SurePress technology.

The touchscreen itself measures 3.25 inches with 480 x 360 pixel resolution and the ability to display over 262,000 colors. it adjusts orientation and well as providing a click feedback. You'll be sending text, instant and email messages with ease. Or use the full HTML Web browser along with touch navigation. You'll be zipping along at up to 3. 1 Mbps when connected to Verizon's EV-DO Rev. A network. That may be more bandwidth than they give you at work.

The digital camera in the BlackBerry Storm has features you'd expect in a stand alone camera. It's 3.2 Megapixel resolution with LED flash, face detection and editing tools. It runs in camcorder mode, so you can capture live action wherever.

Another multimedia feature is the built-in music player that lest you download music over the air or sync with a PC. Go ahead and stream your music to wireless stereo headphones or other devices that conform to the A2DP Bluetooth standard.

I could go on and on about the advanced features of the BlackBerry Storm. But you can probably recite the details by heart at this point. So don't waste another minute. You know how fast these things are going, especially with Christmas nigh. Learn more and order your BlackBerry Storm 9530 Black for Verizon Wireless at Cell Phone Plans Finder before they're all .... gulp!... GONE.

Your Next Battery Is a Capacitor

Benjamin Franklin may have had it right in the first place. When he conducted his famous kite flying experiments, he was trying to capture electricity and store it in a battery. In terms of Colonial technology that meant Leyden Jars. A Leyden Jar is a glass jar with foil conductors wrapped both inside and outside. The glass in-between forms a dielectric insulator that allows electric charge to be stored in the conductors. Charge it up with static from shuffling your feet across the floor or atmospheric charge from a thunderstorm and you have stored electricity that can be useful later. You can even link multiple Leyden Jars together in a "battery" of jars to get a really big charge. That's where the idea of a battery started.

Fast forward from the days of Ben Franklin to this year. The latest iteration of the capacitor is the Graphene Ultracapacitor created by researchers at The University of Texas at Austin. Ultracapacitors are physically small but powerful capacitors. By replacing big glass bottles with nanometer thin dielectrics, capacities on the order of farads can be produced in something the size of your thumb. Compare that to the Leyden Jar which has a capacity measured in picofarads, a million millionth of a farad.

The thing about farad level capacitors is that they start acting like batteries. A Leyden Jar or a capacitor typically found in electronics filtering applications will give you a good jolt, but it won't power a cell phone more than momentarily. In high school electronics class, a popular prank was to charge up a capacitor using a DC power supply and then leave it laying on the desk for some unsuspecting victim to pick up. Oh, the ROFL joy we experienced every time that happened. It was great amusement until the day one of the dimmer students plugged an electrolytic cap into a wall outlet. In seconds the end cap exploded with a loud bang, spewing aluminum oxide powder up his arm. I'm not sure who was more shocked: The student who thought he'd been shot or the teacher who laid down the law for all of us.

Fortunately, this was in the days before capacitors with more than a couple hundred microfarads at a hundred volts or more were too expensive and too large to be used in most applications. Nowadays you might vaporize a piece of wire with a larger ultracapacitor. Or, you could put all that capacity to good use running your electronics. Capacitors and batteries can both be used as power sources. Capacitors have an advantage in that they charge very quickly. But until recently, they've had the disadvantage of being able to pack less power in a given size package. With the development of new material technologies such as graphene, it may not be long before your cell phone, computer, watch and even hybrid vehicle are all powered by high technology versions of Ben Franklin's Leyden Jars.

Research Your Cell Phone Online

Every couple of years it's cell phone renewal time. Your wireless contract runs out and you have the opportunity to make a change. You can elect to go with a new provider and get a new phone or stick with what you have. So what to do? How about go shopping?

Now you might limit your cell phone shopping experience to browsing the collection shown at a big box electronics retailer. Or you can cruise the carrier stores, seeing what each has to offer and fending off hungry sales agents. But there's a better way. Research your cell phone choices online.

Why online? First of all, it's convenient. No hustling through stores between errands. No burning gas driving around town from location to location. Anytime things are quiet and you're online, you could spend a few minutes scouting the mobile device offerings.

There's also no pressure. You know how it is in retail stores these days. The sharks are hungry and you smell like food. It's hard to scan the merchandise or play around with a demo unit when somebody is breathing down your neck every few minutes prodding "can I help you?" What they really mean is "Oh, please buy something - anything - just hurry up and whip out that credit card - please, please, please."

The most important reason to comparison shop online is enormous price savings. That's right. The big phone savings are online, not in the stores. The reason is simple. Online resources stay open 24 hours a day, there's no floor staff lurking, and there are huge efficiency gains in having a single central warehouse to fulfill orders versus hundreds or thousands of retail properties.

But if you buy a phone online, how do you get wireless service? Easy. The same service plans you get from a store are also available online and at the same prices. You select and order your plan at the same time you order your phone.

Now, let's take a look at some current online deals on cell phones. We'll use the Cellular Phone Finder available at Owl Cell Phone. The default presentation is a collection of the most popular cellular phones. There are 5 models shown and most are free or free after rebate. No, wait. Some of them let you make money after rebate. Yes, you can get a phone free and then get cash back. Ever hear of that in a cell phone store?

These specials are going to change often, but here's what's shown as of this writing. The Samsung BlackJack II i617 Sky Blue is available for a list price of 1 cent. With a $50 rebate, you make $49.99. The Samsung Cobra M320 Burgundy Red is priced at $0 with a $50 rebate. You make $50. The RIM BlackBerry 8700g doesn't have a rebate. It's just free. So is the LG enV2 VX9100 Black "envy phone." You'll have to pay $79 for the popular Samsung Katalyst T739 w/ myFaves. But after the $50 rebate your cost is only $29.99. Mind you, this phone has a value of approximately $245. You can probably get it at a discount locally, but I'll bet you'll pay more than $29.99.

The Cellular Phone Finder is interactive. You can have it present phones available by a particular carrier, such as AT&T, Verizon, Alltel, T-Mobile, Sprint or Nextel. Or select all phones by a particular manufacturer. There are 28 models for BlackBerry alone. Ask the finder to show you phones in a certain price range, only those that are free after rebate, or only those where you can make money after rebate. I just checked on that. There are 64 results on 5 pages that are phones where you can make up to $100 after rebate.

Perhaps you are happy with your cell phone but want an Air Card for your laptop computer so you can get cellular broadband. You're in luck. There are 21 different Air Cards available, some with cash back rebates. Just select "Air Card" on the "Phone Types" search.

Has all this piqued your interest? If so, use the Owl Cell Phone Cellular Phone Finder right now. It gives you results instantly, lets you learn more about each phone, lets you select the wireless service plan you want, and place an order online any time of the day or night. Can it get any easier? Not hardly.

Cable vs FTTH Bandwidth Throwdown

The battle of the bandwidths has begun in earnest. In one corner, the presumed high speed champion, FTTH (Fiber to the Home). In the opposite corner, the challenger, Cable Broadband. Who will be champion? That's too early to tell. But we know who the real winner is going to be - bandwidth hungry broadband users.

The latest battleground is Washington state. Comcast, the Cable giant, is rolling out 50 Mbps Internet service to compete with Verizon, the telco giant, that offers 50 Mbps FiOS Internet service. FiOS is the name Verizon has given to its PON or Passive Optical Network system that connects homes and businesses to distribution hubs via fiber optic cable. The fiber and its splitters are passive, although you do need a rather large network interface box mounted outside to terminate the cable and convert the pulsating wavelength data back to electrical signals.

So what makes Comcast think that plain old copper coaxial TV cable can take on light powered optical fibers? DOCSIS 3.0, that's what. DOCSIS or Data Over Cable System Interface Specification is the cable modem standard that allows cable system operators to transport data along with TV signals. They do this by setting aside some TV channels for Internet service and using modulation technology to create signals that are compatible with cable channels. The modem takes care of making those signals Ethernet compatible.

From a users perspective, it doesn't matter if the incoming cable is fiber or copper as long as it can handle the needed bandwidth. Ultimately, the user is simply going to connect an RJ-45 plug in the back of whatever interface box is provided.

Just what bandwidth can you squeeze out of cable, anyway? Well, it's a far cry from analog telephone lines. We know how quickly our analog modems topped out at 56 Kbps. That's all there will ever be from that technology. A telephone voice channel just hasn't got any more room to grow. Telephone companies get around that by using frequencies beyond the voice range to deliver DSL over home and business phone lines. But there is a definite speed versus distance tradeoff that limits this technology.

No so much with Cable. Those TV channels can go and go and go. Most Cable companies now use fiber optic transmission for part of the distribution distance. They just haven't gone the extra step of bringing the fiber right to the building, like Verizon has done. For users lucky to get 3 to 6 Mbps on their Cable connections, 50 Mbps may seem a bit fanciful. But they're stuck using older DOCSIS standards that don't bond multiple channels together to create a pipe capable of as much as 400 Mbps.

Wow! Comcast is sitting on 400 Mbps? Well, not so fast. That's an upper limit and could require a huge investment of both equipment and set-aside channels. For now, Comcast is figuring their 50 Mbps "Extreme 50" service will be enough to compete with 50 Mbps FiOS.

We'll see how long that lasts. Verizon is already planning to up the ante to 100 Mbps in the near future.

One thing that doesn't seem to be mentioned in the news about these fantastic broadband speeds is download limits. There's been a lot of hoopla recently as Internet Service Providers, including Comcast, have announced caps on how much data you can download per month before getting kicked off the service. The providers say the limit is set high so that only network abusers will be affected. But that's with the modest bandwidths most of us have available. You have to spend a majority of your time in constant download mode to hit the limits.

What happens as bandwidths exceed 100 Mbps and full-length high definition video downloads become commonplace? Perhaps by then the carriers will have upgraded their network backbones and have auxiliary content delivery networks in place to handle the video load. They'll need to keep on this. After all, the way technology advances we'll be clamoring for Gbps broadband service sooner than any of us expect.

The LG Lotus is Square to Be Hip

Mathematically, PI R Squared. Now cellphones are squared too. At least this avant garde entry into the competitive mobile wireless market is square. It's the LG Lotus LX600 and it packs a lot of power into a uniquely designed messaging phone.

Yes, it's thin. It's light. It's square. But flip it open and you have a full QWERTY keyboard, backlit, in a package just slightly wider than a typical cell phone. Even so, it remains more compact than most messaging smartphones.

Let's see what else you get in the LG Lotus. The advanced digital camera offers 2.0 Megapixel resolution for photos good enough to print as well as send. This camera has 2x digital zoom, a self-timer, and a night mode. It runs in video capture mode to create a camcorder that can record up to an hour's worth of video with QVGA Resolution at 15 frames per second. An hour's worth? Yes, considering that you can plug in memory cards up to 12 GB in size.

This phone runs on the Sprint PCS network and has access to Sprint's EVDO cellular broadband service with up to 700 Kbps download speed. That supports a variety of Web and messaging modes, including mobile Web browsing, multimedia messaging, Email, SMS text messaging and instant messaging. That QWERTY keyboard will get a good workout with the speed of this network.

There's also a built-in MP3 music player and stereo Bluetooth that lets you stream to A2DP compatible devices. GPS services support is included so you can run location based services.

Now you might think that a square phone isn't going to have much battery life. Well, this one does. You get up to 330 minutes talk time. Wow, that's over 5 hours. Plus over a week on standby.

What are the hottest cell phone deals available right now, including free cell phones? Use the Cell Phone Plan Finder to check out the top phones and associated wireless service plans.

Cisco's New Terabit Monster Router

Cisco's new edge router, the ASR 9000, is upping the ante on network bandwidth. This beast will deliver 6.4 Tbps when fully loaded at 400 Gbps per slot. Who needs a router this powerful? Probably not your mom and pop retail store. But they might be using services downstream from a carrier who has installed an ASR 9000. Why the need for even more speed? One word: Video.

Video not only killed the radio star, it's pretty much killing service providers too. The Internet was conceived and built in an era when text was king. As technology and applications evolved, it managed to scale up with the move to more visual Web pages. But video is taxing the ability of service providers to add bandwidth as fast as users glomp onto more and more video content. It's YouTube, certainly. But it's also Web pages that embed video reports instead of text, and TV producers that see the Internet as another medium for distributing their programs.

So bad has it gotten, that major ISPs have taken to impose download limits on what was once unlimited broadband. They're easing into this by setting the cutoff point high enough so that only rabid video downloaders are likely to get kicked off the network. But today's rabid downloaders are merely early adopters of the way we'll all want our content delivered eventually. It's going to be high definition large screen full length video at will. Once this genie gets completely out of the bottle, satellite and cable are going to have to scramble to avoid becoming as limited as over-the-air TV channels when it comes to program delivery. If we had the set top boxes, programming guides and motivated content producers today, the Internet would be brought to its knees overnight.

That's what Cisco is trying to address with the ASR 9000. What might appear to be overkill for many edge router applications is going to be a normal requirement sooner than we think. In fact, the ASR 9000 is targeted at video service providers, such as cable companies, and also at mobile providers. These include cell phone companies that are starting to push mobile video and likely WiMAX operators who will be dealing with video-craving users sooner than they may think.

The other trend that Cisco is positioning for is the move from legacy time division network technology to Ethernet and MPLS. The ASR9000 has built-in capabilities for IPoDWDM or IP over Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing as a next-generation network core technology.

You don't really need Terabit transport requirements to take advantage of Ethernet and MPLS in your business. Metro Ethernet offers cost savings over traditional DS3 bandwidth and can often be provisioned over copper pair rather than fiber optic cable for bandwidths below 50 Mbps. MPLS networks are fast becoming the preferred method to interconnect multiple business locations.

Is your network ready for an upgrade? Take advantage of our VAR Network to find authorized dealers for Cisco routers and other professional grade network equipment and services.

BlackBerry Shows its Curve in Pink

Where is it written than productivity comes only in shades of gray? Why can't technology be beautiful? Why can't business be beautiful? Well, why not?

Oh, yes it can. As evidence, I present the BlackBerry Curve 8330 Pink for Verizon Wireless. Somebody should do a product placement in the movies. Call it, say, "pretty in pink." Oh, wait, that's been done. But the description still applies. This is a classic BlackBerry wireless productivity device nicely curved and dressed in a lovely pink. Stylish in the hand. At home in the purse.

The beauty of this BlackBerry is truly more than skin deep. That's a backlit full QWERTY keyboard engulfed in pink. Directly above is a large 240 x 260 pixel main color display that auto-adjusts to ambient light to save battery life.

BlackBerry is famous for its business productivity applications. The pink Curve offers the amazing "push" real-time email that can integrate with up to 10 accounts and VPNs or Virtual Private Networks. It includes a spell checker so you'll always be proper. BlackBerry Messenger comes pre-loaded for instant messaging, also with a spell checker. You have full HTML Web browsing and the ability to view Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents that come attached to emails. You'll be able to seamlessly synchronize your address book, calendar, pictures and email with your PC.

This model BlackBerry has a built-in GPS receiver that works with location-based applications such as BlackBerry Maps and Telenav navigation software. Other niceties include a 2.0 Megapixel digital camera that take pictures good enough to print as well as send. The built-in MP3 music player also supports WMA music and WMV video files. You can wirelessly stream music to stereo headsets and other devices that are compatible with the A2DP Bluetooth standard. Of course, you can also use a standard Bluetooth earpiece for phone conversations.

What are the hottest cell phone deals available right now, including free cell phones? Use the Cell Phone Plan Finder to check out the top phones and associated wireless service plans.

I Heard What You Wrote Last Summer

Have you ever been in a class or a meeting where you were feverishly taking notes, only to later wonder if you really got it down correctly? One solution is to buy a pocket digital recorder and record what's being said as well as taking notes. But then you have the nightmare of matching up the audio with the text. it sure would be nice if you could automatically synchronize your audio and text. Even nicer if there was one device that would do that. You're in luck. There is.

The Livescribe Pulse(tm) smartpen records as you write. That's right. You write. It records. It's a pen, albeit a good size pen. It's about the size of a larger fountain pen or one of those fat rubbery ballpoint pens. But this is no low-tech ink squirter. The smartpen has a 96x18 OLED display, 2 microphones, an embedded speaker, a high speed infrared camera, 1 GB or 2 GB of memory, a rechargeable lithium battery, and a 32 bit, 150 MHz processor. That makes the smartpen smarter than some PCs still in use.

Here's how it works. The tip of this pen has the usual black, blue or red ink in a replaceable cartridge. But it also has a infrared camera that watches what you write. Now here's the trick. The smartpen needs a special LiveScribe Dot Paper to do its magic. This paper comes in lined notebooks popular with students and more professional looking journals. As you write on the dot paper, the camera tracks and records what it sees. You can later upload your pages and see them just as you wrote. You're not limited to entering special characters like a PDA expects. You can write, draw, scribble or whatever and the smartpen will capture it.

The second part of this one-two punch is that there is a stereo recorder running along as you write. It will record up to 100 or 200 hours worth of audio pickup, depending on how much memory your pen contains. I don't know about you, but if I wrote for 200 hours my arm would fall off. In fact, after 8 hours of meetings in one day I'm tiring of writing and listening. In fact, after 8 hours I'm not sure who said what, when. Ah, the smartpen doesn't get bored or confused. You tap it on the text you wrote and it plays back what it heard at the time.

Pretty clever, right? This pen is great for collaboration. You can post your writings and audio online for your colleagues. You can email your notes to a friend. You can even run searches for keywords to quickly find the exact content in your notes that you are looking for.

So cool, and not all that expensive. The smartpen is less than a couple of hundred bucks and may well replace a bulky notebook computer for many meeting situations. Is it right for you? Watch the informational videos and learn more about the Livescribe Pulse(tm) smartpen.

Who Needs A T1 Line at Home?

You've heard about how reliable T1 lines are and that they can be installed just about anywhere you can get telephone service. So, you may be thinking that sounds like a good solution for home broadband. In most cases, no. The price will make your eyes bug out. But for some people, a T1 line may be the only option that makes sense.

Residential broadband is designed to be as cheap as possible so it can be sold to as many people as possible. That's why you can pay under $20 a month for some DSL services, and typically around $30 to $40 a month for Cable broadband with 3 to 6 Mbps of bandwidth. If you live too far out of town for these options, satellite or wireless Internet will run you about twice that. Now compare that with T1 line prices. You'll pay at least 10x and perhaps 20x as much for T1 bandwidth at 1.5 Mbps. Still think that's what you want?

What makes T1 so pricey and why would anyone pay such a premium? T1 is a technology developed by the phone companies for their own use and now sold to business locations. It was built to be extremely reliable and delivers a constant 1.5 Mbps in both the upload and download directions. Sure, anyone can cut a telco cable with a backhoe at the most unexpected times. But being a tariffed telecommunications service, often with a service level agreement, T1 service gets top priority if and when outages occur.

Contrast that to consumer grade services. These are not regulated telecom services but "information services." That means they are offered as-is with no guarantee of bandwidth or availability. The providers will certainly make an effort to provide decent service levels, at least to keep users from getting so frustrated they sign up for a competing service. But there should be no illusion that home broadband is intended for casual and not serious business use.

The other reason that residential broadband services are cheap is that they are oversubscribed. The providers know that not everyone is online every minute of the day. So they can share their backbone bandwidth among dozens or hundreds of users. How much bandwidth you actually get will fluctuate during the day and depends on who else is sharing the service and whether they are casually browsing the Web or downloading videos.

T1 bandwidth is not shared. You sign a lease for 1.5 Mbps and that's what you get. Characteristics such as latency, jitter and packet loss also tend to be better for T1 service versus DSL or Cable broadband.

So who needs a T1 line at home? Usually it's someone running a serious business or professional application who needs the dependability and consistent performance they get from T1 service. One example is someone who trades stocks or options from their home office. Another might be a physician who reads medical images. Business executives who want their home office to be a mirror of their company office may also opt for T1 service.

These professional users tend to have needs that justify the higher monthly cost with a need for high grade service. Sometimes cheaper actually costs you more. Consider the stock trader who's line keeps dropping in the middle of a trading session. Or the Web developer who can't update sites or who's server becomes unavailable. It's possible to lose more money in one day than you'll save all month with cheap broadband.

If you have a serious need for professional broadband service at home and can afford at least several hundred dollars per month for bandwidth, a T1 line might be right for you. On the other hand, if your needs are less demanding and you want the lowest price possible, then check into Cable and DSL broadband options. For mobile operation, 3G wireless is hard to for cost and availability.

The Surprising Low Cost Phone Option

With all the hype over bundled services and broadband phone, you're probably thinking that only a chump would keep one of those old analog landlines. Not so fast. Despite all the heavy promotion, your cheapest telephone solution may well be that century-old technology combined with a competitive long distance service.

Perhaps that sounds outrageous, but have you actually priced out your options? To do this properly, you need two things. The first is the lowest cost local service that meets your needs. You're more likely than not to get that from your local telephone company. Depending on how many local calls you make and how long you talk, you can easily overpay by buying too much service. The minimum you need is line access, also called dial tone. It's just what it says. You pick up the phone, you hear a dial tone, and you make your call.

Next you likely need some way to make local calls. You can get unlimited service. But you may also be able to get metered service that charges so much per call or so much per minute. Sit down and figure out how much you really call in a month. It will be worth the exercise. If you make only a few calls or primarily talk long distance, you don't need deluxe local service.

You may also want Caller ID. That typically adds about $5 a month. I'd never give it up, because it helps me avoid talking to political campaigns, surveys, scams scheming for donations, and banks looking to promote yet another credit card.

Next, you'll want to have a low per minute rate long distance service. Ten years ago, switching your long distance service to save money was all the rage. Now it's something of a lost art due to the emphasis on cell phones, bundles and VoIP. Once again, before you buy too much, use a long distance rate calculator to see how much your long distance calling is really worth. Competition has driven rates down to a few pennies a minute for most calls. Even overseas calling is dirt cheap these days.

Why not just use the long distance service that comes with your local line by default? Because it's the default service, chances are pretty high that it is NOT the low cost option. It's just convenient for people who just want to call the phone company, ask to have a line installed, and dutifully pay the bills when they come in.

Hey, why not just buy one of those bundled services and get everything for one price? Once again, it sounds good, but a bundle may not be your lowest cost option. Competitive bundles give you local dial tone, a package of local minutes or unlimited service, and a package of domestic long distance minutes or unlimited service. It's really convenient because you get one bill and you know what the price is going to be every month. What you don't know is how much you could save by paying separate bills for local and long distance service.

You should also know that competitive bundles have to buy their local lines from the local telephone company. That's because by law all the analog copper phone lines belong to your incumbent local telco. So you won't be getting a break on local service. You may or may not get a decent deal on long distance service and calling features, depending on your usage pattern.

OK, then, why not avoid the copper phone line issue completely and go with a VoIP telephone service? The same discussion of paying a bundled rate for service you may not ever use versus paying by the minute applies. Also, unless you have very, very good broadband service, you'll find that voice quality suffers and you may not be able to talk on the phone and use your computer at the same time.

Certainly, this discussion makes the most sense for someone with a home office, or a small office with a couple of phones and one or two lines. Once your business gets larger than this, you should consider T1 digital phone trunks or SIP trunks to get the best value for your telephone expense dollar.

Find Metro Ethernet

If you've been using T1 lines to provide dedicated Internet service or point to point connectivity for your business, you may be wondering if there is a way to get more bandwidth without having to pay a huge premium to upgrade to DS3 over fiber optic cable. There is. It's called Metro Ethernet. Sounds great, but how do you find it?

Finding Metro Ethernet service is easy if you know where to look. Isn't that the case with just about everything? The trick with Ethernet is having a special tool that is designed specifically to find locations where Ethernet bandwidth is available and map them in relation to where you are located. You've used Google Maps, right? Wouldn't it be nice if you could specify a location and then see flags where Ethernet service is already provisioned?

You bet it would. Why? There's an old saying among prospectors. If you want to find gold, look in places where it has already been found. The same is true for bandwidth services. If you want to find Ethernet, look in places where Ethernet is already established.

What's so special about mapping out Metro Ethernet service? You need to realize that bringing in high bandwidth connections is an expensive and time consuming proposition. Competitive carriers need to trench fiber optic cables or fly them overhead on utility poles. When they get to a location where there are lots of potential customers, they'll establish a POP or Point of Presence. From there they extend service to major office buildings and other establishments that are willing to commit to bandwidths in the hundreds of Megabits/second or even Gbps.

You don't have to be a user of massive bandwidth. You only need to be near one. Then the cost of connecting you up is only the hop from the nearest distribution point to your location. If all you want in somewhere between 5 and 50 Mbps, chances are that you can get EoC or Ethernet over Copper. This is a technology that uses already in-place copper pair telco wiring to bring in Metro Ethernet service. For this to work, you need to be within a couple of miles or so of a service location.

Another option is to colocate your equipment in a facility that has Ethernet connectivity already available. These "carrier hotels" or colocation centers specialize in providing rack space, power & cooling, security and bandwidth at all levels at quite reasonable pricing.

Ready to find the nearest source of Ethernet service? Simply use the GeoQuote (tm) Shop For Ethernet online search engine by entering your business address. In a matter of seconds the system will respond with a map and list of nearby locations of buildings that are already "lit" for Ethernet.

LG enV2 Sparks Envy Too

The original enV "envy phone" from LG turned a lot of eyes green. The new enV2 VX9100 upgrade makes the envy factor even stronger, especially for heavy text messagers, mobile gamers and mobile media aficionados.

What makes the enV2 really special is the hidden full QWERTY keyboard. This phone doesn't force you to tap out messages on a virtual keyboard shown on a glass screen. Oh, no. This is a real keyboard with nice size keys. Normally, you'll keep your enV2 closed and use it just like any other candybar phone for making and receiving calls. But when you want to text, just open the case to reveal both a full keyboard and a larger 2.4 inch high resolution color display. There are also dual stereo speakers to make your multimedia experience special.

The sleek black and silver styling of the LG enV2 sports a plethora of features that make it an up to date high-tech cellphone. It's broadband data connectivity is EV-DO on the Verizon Wireless network. That gives you up to 700 Kbps download speed, similar to many DSL connections. This bandwidth is great when you are watching on-demand TV or listing to music with Verizon's VCAST add-on plans. It's also valuable for sending and receiving picture messages.

Photographic capability of the enV2 includes a 2.0 Megapixel resolution digital camera that can be used in camcorder mode with QVGA resolution (320x240 pixels) and record videos up to 1 hour long. There is 63 MB of memory built-in and you can expand that up to 8GB using plug-in MicroSD/Transflash format memory cards.

Other niceties include GPS services support so you can get turn-by turn directions from VZ Navigator, if you choose to subscribe to it. There is Bluetooth streaming for musical enjoyment on high quality wireless headphones and other devices that support the A2DP protocol. Voice activated dialing lets you speak a phone book name with no pre-training required.

What are the hottest cell phone deals available right now, including free cell phones? Use the Cell Phone Plan Finder to check out the top phones and associated wireless service plans.

Just the Tech Jobs, Please

Nervous about your job in this shaky economy? Just want to be looking around in case... gulp... the worst happens? Or perhaps you're an employer who wants to selectively, very selectively, add talent that's a perfect match to a specific need. In either case, you don't want to be fooling around with general job sites overcrowded with everybody and every job under the sun. What you want is just tech jobs from JustTechJobs.

JustTechJobs is an IT centric job search portal that is what it says: just tech jobs. When you visit their site, your eye will be immediately drawn to the list of recent tech job listings in the left column. I just took a look and noticed a few striking things right off the bat. First of all, every job on the home page was posted in just the last day or so. There were over 30 separate listings from all over the United States. Some typical job titles include "Mid-Level JAVA Developer", "Web Graphic Designer", "Lotus Notes Administrator", "Data Center Operations - Technician", "Marketing Manager", "Technical Writer", "Project Manager" and "Network Administrator."

If you don't see what you want right off the bat, use the search box to enter job title, keywords, or company name. You can do a search of the entire U.S. or target a particular state. An advanced search feature lets you limit the search to as little as 10 miles from a particular zip code. You can also specify the freshness of postings updated within only the last day up to 90 days, or all of them. Check boxes let you specify full time, part time or freelance/temporary positions.

As a job seeker, you don't need an account to search the listings on JustTechJobs. But if you do register you get additional features, such as email alerts when the job you're looking for is posted on the site. There are also RSS feeds available for jobs, by specialty or by location.

For employers, JustTechJobs offers a low cost 30 day posting with discounts for multiple job listings. Jobs are listed chronologically, so as soon as you get your listing online it pops to the top of the list. You can also make your job a "featured job" for an additional fee so that it appears on the homepage at the top of the listings for an entire week. You'll be able to edit your listing at will, so you can adjust the wording based on the response you're getting from candidates.

Do you need an edge in the job market as a potential employee or employer? If so, then take a couple of minutes and take a look at JustTechJobs - Connecting IT's Best.

Private Branch Exchange Connections

Private Branch Exchanges, also known as PBX telephone systems, are the most popular business phone technology for medium and large organizations. Recent technical advancements have brought PBX prices down to the point where even small companies can upgrade from hard wired analog phones or key telephone systems. If you are in the market for a new PBX system or want to see what's available, you can contact the VAR Network to get an idea on prices and system options.

In addition to the hardware, Private Branch Exchange systems need connectivity. There are a wide variety of options available, each with their own cost and performance advantages. The most basic connection is called an FXO or Foreign Exchange Office. That's another way to say analog telephone line to a phone company central office or CO. These are individual twisted pair connections that provide dial tone and local phone service. They may also be set up for long distance calling and toll free numbers. For one to a few lines, it's hard to beat good old analog lines for cost and voice quality.

Once your business has grown to the size where you are using more than a half-dozen outside lines, it's time to consider trunking services. A trunk is digital phone line that carries multiple conversations simultaneously. The most popular digital trunk line is ISDN PRI, which stands for Integrated Services Digital Network Primary Rate interface. That mouthful is jargon for a T1 line that offers up to 23 outside lines plus faster call switching and Caller ID. Another version of T1 telephone service offers 24 phone lines, but slower call switching and no Caller ID information. ISDN PRI lines usually plug into an interface card on your PBX system, a common option.

The reasons to go with ISDN PRI service are high voice quality at lower cost than multiple analog lines. This type of service is very popular with corporate users and call centers. Each line can be configured for incoming and/or outgoing calls. DID service can give each employee their own telephone number without having a separate outside line for every number. The system assigns lines as needed. Larger organizations can get multiple ISDN PRI lines for greater capacity.

The newest PBX systems go by the designation IP PBX. This is enterprise VoIP telephony. IP PBX systems can have individual lines run to each phone or use SIP handsets connected to an Ethernet network. SIP is the switching technology of VoIP. A SIP trunk can provide outside phone lines and even Internet service as an option to the combination of ISDN PRI trunking plus T1 dedicated Internet access.

With all these options, how do you go about choosing the right service for the performance and capacity you need? An easy way is to get free comparison pricing and discussion of your needs with a expert consultant from Telarus through the Shop For T1 service. Even if you already have a phone system that you are happy with, Telarus can likely save you money on your monthly business phone bills.

Adam Edwards Interview Part II

A short while ago, I had the opportunity to enjoy a dinner conversation with Adam Edwards, president of Telarus, Inc. Adam graciously let me interview him on my Zoom H2 Handy Recorder so that I could share the experience with you.

In Part I of our interview, I asked Adam to explain the philosophy that has made Telarus a phenomenon in the world of business telecommunications services. Just 5 years ago the company was launched with its groundbreaking GeoQuote (tm) instant pricing search engine. Since then it has become arguably the most important master agency in the field, with top awards from the carriers to prove it.

In this audio report, I ask Adam to explain the range of services that Telarus offers and why they are important to you, the customer. To listen, you can click on this link to our Audio Interview with Adam Edwards, Part II. It should start playing in the MP3 audio client on your computer. Or, if you wish, simply listen online using this built-in audio player:


Remember, you can access any of the services Telarus has to offer through our site at T1Rex.com. Simply call the toll free number you find there or enter a quick online inquiry through the Shop For T1 search box. For T1 voice and data lines, you'll get price quotes instantly online. For higher bandwidth services, a product specialist will be in touch with options and special pricing offers.

My Store is Solid, Solid Like a Cactus

You want to port your retail business to the Web or start an online business selling products you know will fly off the shelves. So, what do you do? Rent office space and start interviewing programmers? Take the cheap-charley approach and build your own site using bargain software you found at the office supply store? Naw. What you want is a Yahoo! Store from Solid Cactus.

Solid what? Solid Cactus. That enigmatic name happens to be one of the top 500 fastest growing private companies according to Inc. 500 Magazine. Like Google, they happen to have their own restaurant to serve their 150 employees. It's Saguaro's Cafe. You might get the impression that Solid Cactus is a great business in Arizona. But it's actually been awarded the title of "One of the Best Places to Work in Pennsylvania." Pennsylvania? Go figure.

What Solid Cactus does is build Yahoo! Stores for their clients. They've designed lots of them. More than 3,500 Web sites built to date. Sure, you can go off and build your own store. But why take the hard road when you can get a professional result quickly with help from Solid Cactus.

A Yahoo! Store is an ecommerce platform offered by the same company that is a main player in the field of Internet search. What you get with a Yahoo! Store is a online storefront that can handle anything from a few to a few thousand different products. You get a shopping cart, tax and shipping calculator, gift wrapping options, and the ability to accept payment from credit and debit cards or PayPal. You'll be able to print invoices and shipping labels and use major carriers like UPS, FedEx, and USPS to get the goods to your customers.

Yahoo! Stores are built upon a platform called RTML or Real Time Markup Language. It was designed by Viaweb and later sold to Yahoo! as a means to create Web pages too complex for standard HTML programming. You can learn RTML to customize or modify your store pages, or you can let a developer such as Solid Cactus handle that for you.

Solid Cactus has taken the basic store templates that Yahoo! offers and added additional features. Some of the features you can get are multiple photos of your products on a page, reviews written by your customers, send-page-to-a-friend, display the money saved when buying from your store versus retail, randomly displayed best sellers, mailing list sign-up, randomly displayed testimonials, and LivePerson's live chat and contact center.

There are other enhancements designed to improve search engine optimization so you can be easily found on the Internet. Online marketing as well as website development is a key expertise of Solid Cactus. In fact, the owners of the company got started with their first Internet based store in 1994. That was long before the popular retailers you find online today were doing anything on the Internet.