Personal Technology Tips in Plain English
Computers
Internet Faxing 101
Feb 15th
In this demanding world that we reside in today, any successful business person will be able to tell you as to how important communication is for a business to function properly.
While email seems to dominate on a daily basis, sending and receiving faxes is still an option most need to have access to. Instead of investing in dedicated fax lines and machines, the smart thing to do is get a service that allows you to fax via the internet to/from your email.
There are many companies offering these internet faxing services and in case you’re not familiar with them, this is how the entire system operates:
- Such a method of faxing uses the same idea as a conventional faxing but instead of using bulky and troublesome fax machines; it uses the internet telephone lines as an interface which means you don’t need a physical telephone line anymore. Internet fax services usually assign a personal fax number to each person who signs up with a company. When a person signs up for an internet faxing service, they are assigned a fax number which they use to send or receive faxes. It is an incredibly inexpensive and convenient way of sending and receiving messages with the highlighted point being that all that is required to access it is an internet connection.
- Anyone can send a fax to your personal fax number. The fax gets “scanned” and delivered as a pdf or other graphical format like .tif of .png so you can easily print it out on any computer.
- If you want to send a fax, you can either use the service’s website to upload documents and send, or simply email your document as an attachment to a personalized email account. The telephone number indicated in the email subject or body is used to send the fax over the service’s own outbound lines. You’ll usually get a confirmation email about status and delivery success.
- Most of the companies offer free trial periods and money back guarantees. There are no sorts of hardware or software involved in the entire process and sending faxes to multiple recipients has never been so easy! A varying range of trial periods are offered with the usual being of 30 days, except fax87 which has a 15 day trial period and MetroFax which offers none at all.
More information regarding internet faxing in general, it is interesting to read the history of faxes.
So if you want to ditch your local fax line from Verizon or Bell South, what do you do next? Whether you are an individual or a business, human nature dictates that you find the best deal that is offered in the market.
Some of the leading companies are: Fax87, efax, Myfax, Ring central, Metrofax, Rapidfax, and Trustfax. While of these companies provide the same services, there are some points you might want to be aware of while making your final decision.
While Fax87, Myfax, Rapidfax and Trust fax has a monthly charge within the range between $4–$10, other companies like efax, Ringcentral and Metrofax are more expensive with charges ranging from $12 to $24. However all the companies provide an annual discount with the exception of Rapidfax and the process of setting up comes absolutely free. The incoming\outgoing limits are also different for the different companies with the maximum being 1000 free incoming/outgoing pages offered by Fax87.
Fax87 also offers the luxury of saving your documents for an unlimited period of time contrary to the policies of other companies. With Fax87 it is also possible to have unlimited people using the same fax number, thus a feature ideal for office purposes and more details about this company can be found at the online fax company site. For the transmission of excess documents, an extra amount is charged, called overage which also varies form company to company. Local toll fees; however are applicable for all transmissions regardless of the company.
QUESTION: Are fax lines completely outdated / outmoded? Or are they still something you need access to for business purposes?
Internet Faxing Services: The best option for communication.
In this demanding world that we reside in today, any successful business man will be able to tell you as to how important communication is for a business to function properly. Modern technology now offers the facility of receiving faxes via the internet from your email. There are many companies offering these internet faxing services and this is how the entire system operates: Such a method of faxing uses the same idea as a conventional faxing but instead of using bulky and troublesome fax machines; it uses the internet as an interface. Internet fax services usually assign a fax number to each person who signs up with a company. When a person signs up for an internet faxing service, they are assigned a fax number which they use to send or receive faxes. It is an incredibly inexpensive and convenient way of sending and receiving messages with the highlighted point being that all that is required to access it is an internet connection. Most of the companies offer free trial periods and money back guarantees. There are no sorts of hardware or software involved in the entire process and sending faxes to multiple recipients has never been so easy! More information regarding internet faxing can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fax
Sounds like great bargain doesn’t it?
Whether you are an individual or a business, human nature dictates that you find the best deal that is offered in the market.
Some of the leading companies are: Fax87, efax, Myfax, Ring central, Metrofax, Rapidfax, and Trustfax. While of these companies provide the same services, there are some points you might want to be aware of while making your final decision.
While Fax87, Myfax, Rapidfax and Trust fax has a monthly charge within the range of $10, other companies like efax, Ringcentral and Metrofax are more expensive with charges ranging from $12 to $24. However all the companies provide an annual discount with the exception of Rapidfax and the process of setting up comes absolutely free.
A varying range of trial periods are offered with the usual being of 30 days, except fax87 which has a 15 day trial period and MetroFax which offers none at all. The incoming\outgoing limits are also different for the different companies with the maximum being 1
Internet Faxing Services: The best option for communication.
In this demanding world that we reside in today, any successful business man will be able to tell you as to how important communication is for a business to function properly. Modern technology now offers the facility of receiving faxes via the internet from your email. There are many companies offering these internet faxing services and this is how the entire system operates: Such a method of faxing uses the same idea as a conventional faxing but instead of using bulky and troublesome fax machines; it uses the internet as an interface. Internet fax services usually assign a fax number to each person who signs up with a company. When a person signs up for an internet faxing service, they are assigned a fax number which they use to send or receive faxes. It is an incredibly inexpensive and convenient way of sending and receiving messages with the highlighted point being that all that is required to access it is an internet connection. Most of the companies offer free trial periods and money back guarantees. There are no sorts of hardware or software involved in the entire process and sending faxes to multiple recipients has never been so easy! More information regarding internet faxing can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fax
Sounds like great bargain doesn’t it?
Whether you are an individual or a business, human nature dictates that you find the best deal that is offered in the market.
Some of the leading companies are: Fax87, efax, Myfax, Ring central, Metrofax, Rapidfax, and Trustfax. While of these companies provide the same services, there are some points you might want to be aware of while making your final decision.
While Fax87, Myfax, Rapidfax and Trust fax has a monthly charge within the range of $10, other companies like efax, Ringcentral and Metrofax are more expensive with charges ranging from $12 to $24. However all the companies provide an annual discount with the exception of Rapidfax and the process of setting up comes absolutely free.
A varying range of trial periods are offered with the usual being of 30 days, except fax87 which has a 15 day trial period and MetroFax which offers none at all. The incoming\outgoing limits are also different for the different companies with the maximum being 1000 offered by fax87. Fax87 also offers the luxury of saving your documents for an unlimited period of time contrary to the policies of other companies. With Fax87 it is also possible to have unlimited people using the same fax number, thus a feature ideal for office purposes and more details about this company can be found at http://www.fax87.com/. For the transmission of excess documents, an extra amount is charged, called overage which also varies form company to company. Local toll fees; however are applicable for all transmissions regardless of the company.
So, what are you waiting for? Compare the rates and decide which one of them is the best opportunity for you!
000 offered by fax87. Fax87 also offers the luxury of saving your documents for an unlimited period of time contrary to the policies of other companies. With Fax87 it is also possible to have unlimited people using the same fax number, thus a feature ideal for office purposes and more details about this company can be found at http://www.fax87.com/. For the transmission of excess documents, an extra amount is charged, called overage which also varies form company to company. Local toll fees; however are applicable for all transmissions regardless of the company.
So, what are you waiting for? Compare the rates and decide which one of them is the best opportunity for you!
Mail Photos As Postcards To Anyone From Your Cellphone For $0.99
Dec 29th
Recently, we reviewed the camera capabilities of the latest and greatest cell phones on the market. Whether you have the 5 megapixel camera onboard the Apple iPhone4 or the slick 12 megapixel cam on the Nokia N8, most people carrying current smartphones can snap photos in a flash at decent quality.
Most of the time, we email the photos right from the phone to friends. But there are times when the photos come out so nice or the event was extra special — so an emailed photo doesn’t really do justice to the memory captured with the cell phone camera.
I’m testing out a new service from CellPhonePostcards.com which creates photo postcards on the fly and mails them via snail mail to anyone in your address book online. Now, I should be able to send a physical postcard to anyone I take a photo with on the spot and they’ll get it within a couple of days — all without licking any stamps.
The service is actually pretty ingenious. You take the photo, and then send the photo via text messaging (MMS) to the service at 77468 (it spells “PRINT” on the phone keypad) and include the hashtag shortcut of the person in your addressbook online, say #KENNY.
The service identifies you via your caller ID and then looks up the person’s address based on the hashtag name you sent. They’ll print the text message message as the postcard message on the back and mail out the photo postcard to your recipient.
All this costs $0.99 per postcard. Given the postage cost of the actual postcard stamp and the going rate for printing out regular photos at the local drugstore like CVS, that means the service costs less than 50 cents for each time you use it. Totally reasonable in my book. The only catch is that you have to pre-pay for bundles of cellphone postcard credits as a 10-pack or more. So $9.90 for 10 postcards at a time. Still, not a bad deal!
Here’s a video that explains the service and how to send a cellphone photo postcard:
UPDATE: Right now, if you sign-up for a new account, they’ll give you 10 free postcard credits – including postage – to try out the service. If you’re going to sign-up, please share a comment below about what you’re expecting or what you find useful or convenient about the service.
Poor Man’s iTunes: How To Download / Extract mp3 Audio From YouTube Videos
Dec 25th
iTunes = Lots Of Choices
There are over 13 million music songs priced at 69˘, 99˘, or $1.29 each on the Apple iTunes store as of 2010. That’s a lot of downloadable music content.
YouTube = Even More
But there’s another source of audio content that some people don’t think about — YouTube. I still use iTunes (or the Amazon mp3 store) for regular music downloads. But I also like to listen to other types of audio content to make good use of my time on my commute, waiting in lines, and other periods of downtime.
YouTube actually has tons of video content that is great even for the audio portion alone — I’m talking about lectures, tutorials, podcasts, interviews, sermons, and speeches. But by having them trapped within a video doesn’t make it as useful when you want to listen to it on the run (and sometimes literally!).
Extract Audio From YouTube Videos
The question is how to get the audio out of a video file on YouTube?
A couple of sites lets you download just the audio within a YouTube video. All you have to do is supply the video url and let them know if you want a regular or high quality version of the audio to be extracted.
Free Download Helpers
Two sites that work well (there are a bunch!) are:
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www.video2mp3.net
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www.vid2mp3.com
After the site does some quick thinking, it supplies you with a download link or even a direct URL to pass along to someone else so they can grab the audio file as well.
There’s over 150 million videos on YouTube supposedly. That’s a whole universe of potential mp3 files to download for you! Enjoy!
Free Tech Support For Your Christmas Tech Gifts
Dec 25th
If you’re like most homes, you’ve probably unwrapped one or two Christmas gifts today that require a battery or outlet to plug it in.
Today’s gadgets are increasingly complex and require more than a QuickStart guide. Sometimes it can be frustrating since you want to get the tech toy up and running asap, right?
Well, BestBuy has opened up the lines to give everyone access to their GeekSquad tech support this week. If you have a computer, HDTV, iPod, smart phone, GPS, DVD player, Wii, etc and you are have some questions on how to set it up, get on the phone or fire up the web browser for a web-based chat with GeekSquad support.
It’s completely free this week until the New Year.
Hey, even if it’s not about a new toy, use GeekSquad this week to troubleshoot that annoying problem you’ve been having with your printer or webcam or media player or Tivo or . . . .
The cool part is that their tech support is available 24/7.
Just call 1-800-GEEK-SQUAD or click over to their TechSupport live chat page
A Snapshot of the Top 5 Snapshot Cell Phones Today
Nov 10th
The photographic capabilities of mobile phones are increasing with each new batch of handsets and now it is almost impossible to find a high end smartphone which does not offer high definition video capture along with a high megapixel count for still shots.
Here are five of the best. . .
iPhone 4
With a five megapixel camera and LED flash the iPhone 4 is the best in Apple`s range when it comes to taking pictures. It also has the ability to shoot 720p video clips at a smooth 30 fps and has extra features such as touch to focus and various effects to apply. A forward-facing VGA camera supplements its rear-facing snapper for video calling and with 16GB or 32GB of storage space on board you can capture hours of footage and thousands of photos without filling it up.
Nokia N8
The N8 is intended to be a serious camera phone, so it is no surprise to see its 12 megapixel camera outclassing every other handset in this list. With a Xenon flash it is also the most capable when it comes to illuminating dark spaces. Digital zoom of up to 30x magnification is on offer when you are taking stills or recording video in 720p HD and like the iPhone it has a forward-facing secondary camera for video calls. Geotagging is applied to both videos and photos so you can find out the location later and there is 16GB of onboard storage space expandable by an extra 32GB if you buy a separate microSD memory card, which should be more than enough for all of your media.
HTC Desire HD
With an eight megapixel camera and dual LED flash the Desire HD is able to handle solid still photographs and can also shoot video in high definition at the same 720p resolution as its rivals. You can enable the LED flashes to act as a light for videoing in dark situations and you can tweak the settings from sharpness to exposure using simple on-screen sliders which are touch sensitive and intuitive. The autofocus is fairly competent although unlike other phones you do not get a dedicated macro mode for close-up shooting, which might be a problem for some users.
Samsung Galaxy S
Like the Desire HD this is an Android smartphone and it packs fairly similar five megapixel camera which matches up with the iPhone 4`s unit. Thanks to the 1GHz processor onboard it is responsive and easy to capture images or shoot video at 720p. You can find Galaxy S variants with 16GB or 8GB of onboard storage, which should give you enough room to work with as long as you upload images from time to time. Sadly the lack of any kind of flash, LED or otherwise, means that when the light is dim the Galaxy S is less than perfect.
BlackBerry Torch
Another five megapixel camera is affixed to the Torch, showing that this is the de facto image capture resolution for a high end mobile phone. An LED flash is also present although it is not as bright as the dual-LED solution of the Desire HD or the Xenon flash found on the Nokia N8. You can alternate between different shooting modes depending on the situation, but a lack of HD video capture lets it down.
DO YOU TAKE MORE PHOTOS WITH YOUR CELLPHONE CAMERA OR YOUR DEDICATED POINT AND SHOOT CAMERA?
One Man’s Trash Is Another’s Treasure: 10 Websites For Swapping Your Stuff
Oct 16th
We learn all about making swaps from our childhood.
Remember when you used to negotiate a trade for baseball cards or any other collector’s items? Heck, we used to swap lunches sometimes — almost nothing was off limits.
But when you grow up, that all changes for some reason. What’s mine is mine, what’s your is yours. We go to great lengths in today’s culture to make sure people know just how much *stuff* we accumulate, unwilling to share it.
Here’s where the Internet is helping to disrupt culture, at least in some corners of the world.
Perhaps it is the economy, perhaps it is the new generation. Perhaps it is the “green” machine that’s making all of notice things like the fact that the average American throws out 68 pounds of clothing each and every year according to Good Housekeeping Magazine. 10 years…that’s 680 lbs of unnecessary death to clothing. 20 years. . . 30 years . . . And it doesn’t apply to just clothes!
The Internet has taken the friction out of making swaps or just plainly giving usable things away for someone else to enjoy it. Here’s a bunch of websites including some Good Housekeeping highlighted in their recent November 2010 issue which you can explore so that those DVDs, you know, the ones you bought in the 90′s…the ones you can admit that you’ll *never* watch again, can be exchanged for a shiny new DVD movie you can watch an upcoming weekend (especially since the Blockbuster store has gone R.I.P.!). Got a book? Exchange it! Got some baby toys or clothes? Swap it!
Here’s a list of 10 websites you can start with to get a (re)newed collection of things. . . Read the rest of this entry »
15 Sites That Help You To Share or Transfer Large Files Over The Internet
Oct 11th
These days, collaboration is a buzz word that is becoming a reality.
Along with collaboration is a nifty term called “file sharing” – it used to be something that sounds easier than it really is.
It used to be you had to put it on a flash drive or burn a CD or DVD to move large files back and forth.
Or if the file was big, but not huge, you could simply attach it to an email and click SEND. But these days, files can grow beyond the 20 MB limit quite easily. And if we’re talking about media files, the 20MB limit is a joke.
But these days, it’s much easier to transfer files back and forth.
Here’s a quick hit list of file sharing services that let you send large files to someone else (or yourself!) over the Internet: Read the rest of this entry »
I love tech, gadgets and the web. Hope you pick-up a useful tip or two here today that helps you use technology to your advantage! Better yet, why not share your own expertise in a comment on a post today to help the other readers that land here for answers!