Google® Voice – a new way to manage how people contact you.

I love playing with new technologies. It’s not often that something comes out that I take a second look at. I’m not sure why that is, maybe its old timers disease or does it just take a WHOLE lot more to excite me? I don’t know; no wise cracks needed on that topic… haha! Now if this isn’t new to you I apologize that it excited me, well maybe I’ve been hiding under a rock; so, I’m hoping that this is something new and you’ll really get something out of this article. You may have heard about it on your Google® enabled phone; but there really is a lot more that you can do with it besides using it on a smart phone.

Are you a busy professional? Do clients ever tell you that you’re a hard person to get a hold of? I hear that sometimes. So does my wife, she’s in real estate so she is always on the road and sometimes she’s not even in cell phone range. How many phone numbers do you have for people to get in touch with you? If you are like my wife, she works from home and on the road. She is always complaining that she wished she only had one number for the house and the cell. So I started looking around for a phone service that would basically hunt you down so that no matter where you were someone would always be able to get a hold of you. I’ve seen features like this in expensive phone systems. I’m happy to say I found it, and for the most part it’s free!

Google® has introduced a service called Google® Voice. What is it? Well, to sum it up simply, it’s basically a traffic cop for getting in touch with you. You can sign up with Google® , and they will assign you a new phone number. Oh great you say, all I need is another phone number. Wait! Let me explain! This number could be your last phone number! Oh REALLY!? Yes, it really could be virtually (no pun intended) the last phone number you ever need. I found one for my wife that was very similar to the number she already has, but I imagine the numbers are going pretty fast so finish up reading this and head over to Google to get your own number.

Once you sign up with Google® Voice you are assigned a new phone number. Now there’s nothing special about that, but this then allows you to sign into your Google® Voice account where your options are unfathomable! You can tie your home phone, your work phone and your cell phone to this new number. Then you can create contact groups of people you know and rules for what phone to ring and what time the phone will ring when these contacts call you. So you could have customers call you on the new Google® phone number , play special greetings which you can create, then in turn the system can ring your home number , your work and cell phones before it goes to voice mail! But that really is only scraping the top for what you can do.

When callers call your new phone number you can request that they identify themselves and this is recorded and played to you before you answer the phone so you can screen your calls if necessary. You can program this for your default calling rules, group rules and even down to the individual caller. If you decide you can’t talk to that person at that moment you can send them to voice mail.

Voice mail messages can be forwarded to your cell phones. They are transcribed fairly accurately and stored on Google’s® web site. You can log in from anywhere and review them. Or you can call into own phone number to retrieve messages with just your pin number.

To learn more visit

http://www.Google.com/voice

or http://Googlevoiceblog.blogspot.com

Redneck Computer Terms ( NOT MICRO KEY TERMS )

Folks I had to laugh. I went to eat the other day at a favorite local restaurant called Fat Boys. Now it's a good ol'e boy’s kind of place that serves anything related to MEAT and Barbeque sauce. I picked up a copy of the Orange Peel Gazette from Osceola County and read small article called Redneck Computer Terms. Now if something here doesn't make you laugh, there is a problem.

• Backup - What you do when you sight a skunk in da woods.
• Bar Code - Them's da fight'n rules down at da local tavern.
• Bug - The reason you's a givin for callin in sick.
• Byte - What'cher pit bull dun to cousin Jethro.
• Cache - Needed when you go to da store.
• Chip - Yer cousin's uncle's mother's boyfriend's name.
• Terminal - Time to call da undertaker.
• Crash - When you go to Juniors Party univited.
• Digital - The art of counting on yer fingers.
• Hacker - Uncle Leroy after he got empherzima
• Hardcopy - Picture looked at when selecting tatoos.
• Internet - Where da caferteria workers put der hair when dey work.
• Mac -Big Bob's favorite fast food.
• Megahertz - How your head feels after 17 beers.
• Mouse Pad - Where Mickey and Minnie live.
• Modem - What ya did when da grass growed up over the pickup.
• Network - Scoop'n up a biggin fish before it breaks the line.
• Online - Where to stay when taking da sobriety test.
• Rom - Where da Pope lives.
• Screen - Helps keep da skeeters off da porch.
• Serial Port - A red wine ya drink wid breakfast.
• Superconductor - Amtrack's Employee of da year.
• SCSI - What you call yer week ole underware.

We at Micro Key Solutions know not everyone is a computer genius, but don't be caught without a plan to protect your business. When I read this article I thought it would be excellent to use in my blog to stress how important it is to backup your database regularly. If you are not doing backups, WHY NOT? Just stop for a minute and consider these questions. How long will it take for my office personnel to recreate all my database tables and information? How much lost revenue, over time pay and loss of productivity can your businsss afford? Please take a moment and review our MicroVault (Database Back and Validation service); especially if you are not currently doing any backups. You should not use this service as a substitute for you making your own backups, but if you are currently doing nothng, this is a start.

Backup and Cool gadgets!

All right – I just found a little gadget that may come in handy and I would recommend every computer geek out there to rush out and buy one of these and keep it with you at all times! Those of you that are not computer geeks make sure you tell your computer geek friend about this. Well, if he’s a true geek, you’ll probably get a laugh and some smart comment like “Where you been?”

Anyway, I’d seen stuff like this advertised before but never really thought about the practical need or even what situation I might use one. Have you ever had a spare hard drive lying around and wondered what information was on the drive? Hmm . . . do I really want to go through putting this drive into a PC just to see what’s on it? Well, that’s not why I bought one of these, and I’m sure everyone can probably come up with their own use for this device. I’m using this device to help facilitate the recovery of a failed server. No, I didn’t lose a server, but I’m making plans in case I do! But the device was so easy to use that when I received it I grabbed an older Western Digital 40gb drive and hooked it up in a matter of a minute and viola I was reviewing the drive through a USB port on my computer. I’ll give you a link to the device after my required shameless plug for Micro Key Solutions products and services! Muaaah!

Backups, are you doing them? You’ll never know how important they are until something goes wrong, catastrophic hardware failure, natural disasters and accidents can make or break your day. How are you doing your backups? Are you backing up just your database or entire servers? Do you have a disaster recovery plan? These are all really good questions. By now most of you should know that we can provide some assistance with these issues. Two services that we provide are Micro Vault and Disaster Recovery.

Micro Vault is a service that we provide that should give you some peace of mind about backing up your valuable customer data. I’ll go into further details about how this works in another blog post, but basically, we automate your database backup routine and monitor its progress with you.

Disaster Recovery goes hand in hand with the Micro Vault service. This service will allow your Central Station to continue operating whatever the state of your existing central station finds itself in after a natural disaster or accident. Again, I’ll go more into the details of how this works in future blog posts, but basically, we have the facilities to accept your receiver lines and give you the ability to process signals remotely.

Ok now back to why you all really came here to read my blog, the link to the device! This device is a Sata/IDE hard drive adapter that allows you to plug an internal hard drive into a USB port on any computer. Talk about portability. It supports 2.5 /3.5 / 5.25 Sata Devices and 2.5 / 3.5 / 5.25 IDE devices. The specific unit I purchased comes with some backup software but I have not reviewed it and I’m not sure I will any time soon. If someone buys one and plays with it please be sure to report back so we can k now if the “Free” software that comes with it is any good!

Introduction

Wow - I'm on the World Wide Web! Actually, I've been here for quite some time, I was on AOL and CompuServe when it first came out. Back in the early 90's I ran a BBS (Bulletin Board System) from Mustang Software. The application was called Wildcat. It was a dial in system that had games and basic messaging, boy we've come a long way.

I just thought I would share a little bit more about myself and introduce my blog. As it would be, most of my experience has been learned through trial and error and my interest in computers has been spurred by the love of computer games. Sure I grew up with some exposure to computers before many even knew what a computer was; my cousin had a Bally gaming system that played things like pong and breakout. It also had the ability to connect a cassette recorder and you could write basic like programs. It was primitive but it kept us entertained for hours. I've tinkered with the commodore and the Tandy. My first real experience with a computer was when I found the Moria game on a campus vax terminal. It was a basic text adventure game that kept me up until the wee hours of the morning sometimes. It was over . . . I was officially a computer nerd. From there I just kept buying computer hardware and software. In the early days installing a software application was not as easy as it is today, and this sometimes meant you had to get down and dirty personal with your computer. Back in the DOS (EVIL-Muah-Garlic) days you had to do things like edit your config.sys and autoexec.bat. So I learned.

I have been with Micro Key now for a little over 17 years. Our applications began in DOS, and I think we still have a few die hards out their using the DOS version. It's been a challenge to keep up with the pace of technological change; however, all in all we feel we are keeping current and providing you top notch applications. Be assured that your interests are in our hearts as we put our hearts into providing you the best service possible. We love our jobs!

With that said - look for technical caveats and tidbits from my blog that I hope you will find useful. If you would like me to write about anything specific, please don’t hesitate to ask.