Sipdroid allows you to use your Android phone with just about any SIP phone service or PBX. The best part about Sipdroid is that it integrates into your phone, eliminating the need for a separate phone book.   In our experience the calls are clear, you cannot tell the difference between the cell phone running SIP or any other VOIP phone.  You can use your Android contacts in the same way as if you were making a normal call from your cell phone.

It’s really an amazing application that is stable and simple to use, with the potential to save you plenty of money and some headaches.

Here is a simple example:

When you are on the road and need to call someone but you really don’t want them to have your cell phone number, what do you do? Let’s face it, no matter how nice we are, there are just some aggressive sales type people who you would rather not have your cell phone number.  You can either connect to your office’s PBX by having the port open to the outside world, or setup a VPN connection.  Now your calls are coming from the office and not your cell phone number.

This is not limited to just office PBX systems.  You can connect this application to a multitude of VOIP service providers. In my case, it is very convenient that when I enter my office or VPN in I can be reached.  I’m not tethered to my desk phone; I take it with me on my cell phone.

How to Set up Sipdroid

The application is free to download from the market just click here.

From here, most people would need assistance from their IT departments to answer a few questions about the application setup.  Let’s go through a few of these so you know what to ask when you go to set this up.

The first one is a decision that you need to make about preferred call type.

As you can see I have mine setup to use Sipdroid if available otherwise use the phone.  I would imagine this would be the setting most of you would want.

The next important question is your account settings.

These are the questions that your IT department are going to need to answer.  Mostly likely all you would have to setup is your username, password, and server or proxy.  That is pretty much all you need to do to setup the application.

Call options

I have my phone setup to attempt to use this application over wireless LAN and 3G.  I know these work very well, I would not trust to run it over EDGE.  As for the VPN option I do not have this checked because I am not using the stock VPN application with the Android, I have chosen to go another route and install OpenVPN, because that is what I prefer.

Notifications

These are pretty stock notification options.  Voicemail is for the service or PBX you are using, not your own cell phone voicemail.  Missed call led notification works well and is convenient.  No Data indicates that you are not connected to the provider.  SIP Ringtones is very nice so you can tell the difference between a cell call and a call from VOIP.

Wireless Control

These you will want to adjust from what I show here.  From here you can setup how your phone acts with wireless when running this application.  You can choose if you want to keep the radio on or not.

This is a very simple application to work with, it does take some knowledge of VOIP or assistance from the IT department to get up and running, but it is well worth it.

Quick Review

This software is a great step in the right direction.  It is rather easy to setup and use.  I would love to see an auto setup in conjunction with FreePBX but that would be just icing.  This application is not for everyone, but anyone using an IP PBX (like FreePBX) or another VOIP service this application is a can’t miss.

Want to know more on how Sipdroid, OpenVPN or FreePBX can help you? Contact Golden Technologies today! We would be happy to help answer any questions you have.

What is your favorite part of Sipdroid?

Watching the “blogging boom” happen has allowed me to see a variety of ways that businesses are blogging. Some ways work better than others. Here are a few tips to getting your company blog up and running at a good pace.

Step 1: Host your blog on your company’s domain.

Yes, there are a lot of “free” ways to create your blog out there. While they may be free, ultimately they will cost you in the long run. What the exact url of your blog is, that is up to you. It can be a sub domain or a sub folder but keeping it on your website’s domain will benefit you in more ways than one.

For starters, the free hosts aren’t going to help your SEO. If that is the goal of your blog, than you’re already going the wrong direction. If you were to host your blog on the same domain as your website your new blog posts will allow your domain to get credit for the updated content in search engines such as Google. By hosting your blog on your domain Google will recognize it and in turn you should see higher rankings for your target keywords. You’ll also see traffic come in from keywords you never even considered.

In contrast, a free site will be ranked entirely on its own. Google will not give your company’s domain name credit for the updated content. You’ll retain the link back credit from the one website (your blog) which over time isn’t going to boost your rankings all that much.

The biggest problem with hosting your company’s blog somewhere else is that you will lose possible conversions. Chances are if you are using a free service, you don’t have too many options in customizing the template (see step 2 for more details). This will result in you having less of an option for a call to action button on your blog and it will not serve as a good landing page for customers who are looking to find out more about a product or a service you offer.

Step 2: Make your blog match your marketing message.

Your company has a set of marketing materials and a standard for a reason. Part of putting your blog on your website’s domain is that you now have control over the theme. It is up to you how integrated you want your blog into your company website. However it should follow the same general color scheme so a visitor knows they are still at a site associated with your company.

Include some call to action buttons as well. These buttons will encourage your blog visitors to contact you with questions or get in touch with you about a product, opening your blog up as a place for your company to gain possible conversions.

Step 3: Invite your employees to write content.

As great as it is to have your CEO write for your blog, it’s also nice to hear from someone other than the face of the company. Employees can offer their opinions on their specific area of expertise. Unless you run a factory line, chances are your employees all have their own individual areas of expertise. Encourage them to write about it.

Your customers trust you to be the expert, but it can’t hurt to share a little bit with them. No one is going to be able to teach themselves every thing that is needed to run a business. Opening the door into your environment may also help smooth over questions about deadlines and timeliness.

Step 4: Keep your content relevant.

If someone is coming to your company’s blog, chances are they want to learn about one of two things:

1. Your Company
2. Your Industry

They don’t care to read what your family did this weekend in detail. (Unless you’re a mommy blogger by profession. In that case, write on!) It can’t hurt to mention that you had a cookout, or something simple to lure your readers in but do not make it the main focus of your blog entry. At the end of the day though they’re there for a specific type of content.

Sometimes the personal side of the company is relevant, and it’s okay to share, but keep your readers in the back of your mind as you write it.

Step 5: Keep your content coming!

Update! Update! Update! I understand, we all get busy, we have things to do, and ultimately clients come first. Starting your blog has given you another piece of your online reputation to manage. By starting it up, writing for awhile, then abandoning ship you leave your readers wondering about your ability to commit. (Sometimes, it’s the little things that make a difference.) If there is nothing new and exciting going on in your company, do a feature on an employee or talk about a project you recently finished.

Don’t risk your quality just to keep your blog current, but don’t let your blog sit six months after you were posting once a day. Set up a schedule for your blog. If your readers are expecting you to update once a week, then schedule a post to go up once a week. This will be a major help if you invite your employees to write the content.

What do you do to keep your company blog moving at a good pace?

Creating a blog for your company is a great step in the right direction. With these five tips you should be on your way to a successful blog.

Need help seeing it up on your company’s domain? Contact Golden Technologies and we’ll get you moving forward with a custom blog and custom template.

To all of you company bloggers out there, what advice do you have for new bloggers?

Photo Credit: subcess on Flickr

LISTEN to your customers needs.

This may sound overly simple and that’s because IT IS. However, all too often, companies spend more time NOT listening to their customers than they do actually listening. There isn’t anything more frustrating than telling someone what you want or what your problem is to later find out that that person hasn’t been paying attention and you need to re-explain what your looking for or your problem is.

So I ask you… when you listen to your customer, are you listening to their words or are you listening to what they really mean? It’s one thing to hear the words that they are saying and it’s another to be listening to what they MEAN. Concentrate and train yourself to listen to what they mean versus just listening to the words that are coming to of their mouth.

Reminds me of the movie Rush Hour : DO YOU UNDERSTAND THE WORDS THAT ARE COMING OUT OF MY MOUTH? How many times have you wanted to say (or scream) that at someone who wasn’t listening to you?

Don’t do that to your customers.

With that said, never be too quick to apologize for any situation either. Too many times in business (and in life) we apologize immediately for something that went wrong. The apology comes so fast that you don’t even know why your apologizing. I’m not saying that apologies wont be necessary. However, take the time to LISTEN and take in your customers needs. After you understand, then be forthcoming with your apology for the right reasons. It will make your customer feel justified and it will let them know that you actually took the time to understand what they are talking about.

After truly listening and possibly apologizing, remember that one set, standard type of customer service will not be suitable for all your customers. Make sure that your customer finds VALUE in whatever it is your offering to them. If you listen and offer something of value to them, they will be more satisfied with your product/service, feel more understood, which in turn will form a relationship with them and foster customer loyalty. As you can see, all these ideas and principles really work together.

Be sure to check back next week for the FINAL customer service tip on the Golden Tech blog.

In the consulting business we’ve worked with all types of phone systems.  Some are large complex monstrosities that require an entire room and some are so small they look (and act) like a toy with nothing more than a small plastic box.  Some giant corporations have had the same system since the ’70s.  Some small businesses spend a fortune with no way to gain new features.  Don’t buy a so called solution just because a pushy sales person said you need to.

No More Proprietary Software

Most new phone systems today are just regular computers with some specialized hardware and software.  So why do most companies want you to break the bank just to have specialized features like custom voice menus and remote phones?  The boxed phone systems that are affordable for a small office won’t scale or will cost an arm and a leg for any fancy features like phone queues or ring groups.  Your business will change.  Your phone system should change with you.

Asterisk

What if you could have an affordable phone system that could scale to thousands of users? What if I told you of a PBX system that has all the features you could ever want in a phone system?  An open source phone system that has been around since 1999. The software is called Asterisk and is being used by small and large businesses, Federal governments to Fortune 500.  Here is the kicker.  The software is completely, totally FREE.  There are no licensing fees, no upgrade fees and no hidden fees.  The software can be downloaded and used by anyone without cost.  Now, I’m speaking the words of most businesses:  Free is good.

FreePBX

Configuring Asterisk used to be done by hand editing configuration files. Unless you’re a hard core geek that will write call menus from scratch (like me) then you need another option.

FreePBX is that option. It is a web based interface front end for configuring and managing asterisk.   As the name implies, it is also free. The best part of FreePBX is that it is modular. While the base install is almost featureless, you install modules through its built in “Module Admin” which enables the advanced features.

The FreePBX modules enable you to do anything from setting up a basic auto attendant to caller queues with music on hold and hold time announcements.

No more excuses

With Asterisk and FreePBX there is no reason to use proprietary old expensive systems that lack features.  Resist the urge to buy a so called out of the box solution when we can customize a system to meet your needs for now and the future.

More to come

I could easily go on for days on a single feature so this is just an introduction to the many blog posts to come that talk about phone system features and uses.

If you are going to be in the Valparaiso/Northwest Indiana area gives us a call at 219-462-7200 to schedule a demo and see for yourself how we can customize this solution to fit your needs.

What features interest you about Asterisk? Any features you would like to learn more about? Leave us a comment!

Also known as the “catalog” style (as well as by other words), Golden’s brochure website design makes it so that all the essential content you would like visitors to view is never more than a click or two away.

Typical pages in Golden’s Brochure Website

Home – the “main” page that introduces the visitor to your company.
About – this page gives a nice, brief synopsis of who you are and what you do.
History – The history page tells visitors of your origins, trials and tribulations, and how you’ve come to be where you are today.
Products / Services – A nice summary of the products and services that you would want customers searching / researching to know
Portfolio / Projects (Recent Work) – People like to see the type of work a business has performed before doing business with them. A Portfolio page provides this opportunity. Pictures, summary of work, video can even be a part of this page.
Contact Page – A contact page is a safer way for the searcher to send you information. A Golden contact page provides CAPTCHA form to minimize spam, making it easier for both you and the website visitor to connect.

Examples of Golden Technologies Brochure Websites:

• Arctic Engineering
• Smith Ready Mix
• ME Simpson

For more information on Golden’s Brochure sites as well as our other many web design styles, please check out our Web Design that Works for You e-Book as well as our website.

What Type of Website Do You Need?

You read it right, Google Voice and Gmail now overlap more than just an email when you get a phone call.

Google Continues to Change the Way We Interact

While Google’s attempt at a social networking system has been just short of failure, they have been doing a lot of other things right. First there was Gmail (a simple, yet incredibly large email inbox in comparison to Yahoo! and Hotmail),  next came Google Talk (with the built in ability to talk to another computer using a microphone), then there was Google Voice. Obviously Google has released more applications than these three, but these three alone have changed the way people interact.

Before Skype became a popular tool to use, Google talk let us make calls to other Google talk members, saving us cell phone minutes and calling cards. As a college student when this came out, it was nice to know that I wouldn’t be over on my cellphone minutes anymore too often.

With Google Voice released we were able to have a second phone number that would send us email transcripts of our phone calls and text messages. It saves us the step of having to go through the voice mail menus to find out if a call was important or not.

Google Voice in Your Email

While Google Talk has always allowed you to talk to others while you had your Gmail client open, it wouldn’t let you make calls to an actual phone. Starting this week, you might notice a pop-up in your Gmail client telling you about Google Voice phone calls. While some international rates do still apply, this will prevent you from going to the store to purchase a calling card, or wind up with a phone bill so high you’re eating Ramen Noodles for a month.

There is a plugin that needs to be installed in your browser in order to enable voice. You will also need a microphone hooked up to your computer. Once you have that you are ready to go.

In the first 24 Hours the new plugin was out over one million calls were placed.

They have also taken it one step further, no need for a cellphone, a computer, or change to make a phone call. You may not even need a Google account.

Google Introduces Phone Booths

It wouldn’t be like Google to leave us with one small announcement. Starting in the next few weeks a variety of public places, possibly including airports, will have Google Voice’s Magic Phone Booths installed in them.

Plane delayed and need to call home? Cell phone dead and out of quarters? Don’t worry… Google Voice’s Magic Phone Booths ARE FREE! (Anyone else waiting for Billy Mays to pop up on the blog?)

Google also expects to place some phone booths on Universities allowing students to make calls overseas to their friends and family back home.

An official launch date has not been announced yet.

What are your thoughts? Will this change the way you make phone calls? Will you consider using your cellphone less in public if the free Google option is available?

Interested in learning more about Google Voice? Need some help setting it up? Give Golden a call.

Photo Credit: CarlosLuna on Flickr.

During the last post we covered a sample script using a file, array, and random number generation to build a basic randomized restaurant picking script.  For this post we are going to use some of those same concepts for a more practical purpose: a basic password generator.

The password generator will use the same concept of random numbers, as well as the use of four different arrays.  This will also be a relatively short script, but one that will be expanded upon in future posts.  Also, this is one of several ways that this specific function could be done, but this is probably the easiest to begin with.

Four Static Arrays

To start with, we will build a password generator using static arrays.  This is easier to work with, but not as much fun.  I’ll present the script first, then we’ll go through it line by line to go over the details.

#include <array.au3>

#include <string.au3>

DIM $lower[27]=[‘26’,'a','b','c','d','e','f','g','h','i','j','k','l','m','n','o','p','q','r','s','t','u','v','w','x','y','z']

DIM $upper[27]=[‘26’,'A','B','C','D','E','F','G','H','I','J','K','L','M','N','O','P','Q','R','S','T','U','V','W','X','Y','Z']

DIM $number[11]=[‘10’,'0','1','2','3','4','5','6','7','8','9']

DIM $symbol[33]=[‘32’,'`', '~', '!', '@', '#', '$', '%', '^', '&', '*', '(', ')', '_', '+', '-', '=','{', '}', '|', '[', ']‘, ‘\’, ‘:’, ‘”‘, ‘;’, ””, ‘<’, ‘>’, ‘?’, ‘,’, ‘.’, ‘/’]

DIM $length=Random(8, 14,1)

DIM $password

For $i=1 to $length

Local $rand=Random(1,4,1)

If $rand=1 Then

$password=$password & $lower[Random(1,26,1)]

ElseIf $rand=2 Then

$password=$password & $upper[Random(1,26,1)]

ElseIf $rand=3 Then

$password=$password & $number[Random(1,10,1)]

ElseIf $rand=4 Then

$password=$password & $symbol[Random(1,32,1)]

EndIf

Next

msgbox(0, “Password”, $password)

**************End Script – Don’t Copy This*******************

#include <array.au3>

#include <string.au3>

These lines are added to give some additional functions from au3 files included by default in AutoIt, specifically regarding Strings and Arrays.

DIM $lower[27]=[‘26’,'a','b','c','d','e','f','g','h','i','j','k','l','m','n','o','p','q','r','s','t','u','v','w','x','y','z']

DIM $upper[27]=[‘26’,'A','B','C','D','E','F','G','H','I','J','K','L','M','N','O','P','Q','R','S','T','U','V','W','X','Y','Z']

DIM $number[11]=[‘10’,'0','1','2','3','4','5','6','7','8','9']

DIM $symbol[33]=[‘32’,'`', '~', '!', '@', '#', '$', '%', '^', '&', '*', '(', ')', '_', '+', '-', '=','{', '}', '|', '[', ']‘, ‘\’, ‘:’, ‘”‘, ‘;’, ””, ‘<’, ‘>’, ‘?’, ‘,’, ‘.’, ‘/’]

Here are our actual arrays, though in SciTE, these will be on a single line.  What we have are four arrays containing different characters.  The first array contains all letters from a to z in lowercase.  The second array contains all letters from A to Z in uppercase.  The third array contains the numbers 0 to 9.  The fourth array contains all of the symbols that are valid for Windows passwords.  Also, the first element in each array is the number of elements the array contains.  This is actually the 0 (zero) element, and will not be used in our actual scripting, it is, however, used in counting the number of elements the array contains, which is why we are saying, for example, that the array $lower contains 27 elements.

DIM $length=Random(8, 14, 1)

Now we have a $length variable that is between 8 and 14 characters in length.  You may have also noticed that there is an additional ,1 attached to this “Random(8,14,1)”  This means that the random number will be between 8 and 14, and that only whole numbers will be used (i.e. 8,9,10,etc…) as opposed to floating-point numbers (i.e. 8.093452,9.564232, etc…).  Anyways, as is implied by the variable name $length, this variable will be used to determine how long our password will be.

DIM $password

This variable, $password, will be our result after generation.  It is declared here so when we run the next section of code it does not error out for an undeclared variable.

For $i=1 to $length

Local $rand=Random(1,4,1)

If $rand=1 Then

$password=$password & $lower[Random(1,26,1)]

ElseIf $rand=2 Then

$password=$password & $upper[Random(1,26,1)]

ElseIf $rand=3 Then

$password=$password & $number[Random(1,10,1)]

ElseIf $rand=4 Then

$password=$password & $symbol[Random(1,32,1)]

EndIf

Next

Getting into the Fun Stuff

This is the fun section of the script.  To start with, we have a For loop, “For $i=1 to $length”, during which, several different things are done. The for loop itself basically instructs the script to run through the actions listed until the line “$i=1 to $length” is true.  What this means is that every instruction in the for loop will be executed until $i(1) is equal to the randomly generated $length variable.  So if $i is 1 and $length is 13, the loop will be executed 13 times.

The line “Local $rand=Random(1,4,1)” generates another random number from 1 to 4.  This will be used to determine which array is used to generate the next character of the password, as shown below:

If $rand=1 Then

$password=$password & $lower[Random(1,26,1)]

ElseIf $rand=2 Then

$password=$password & $upper[Random(1,26,1)]

ElseIf $rand=3 Then

$password=$password & $number[Random(1,10,1)]

ElseIf $rand=4 Then

$password=$password & $symbol[Random(1,32,1)]

EndIf

Next

Here, we are taking the result of $rand and running If/Then statements to determine which array will be used for the next character in the password.  On a 1 it will use a lowercase letter, on a 2 it will use an uppercase letter, on a 3 it will use a number, and on a 4 it will use a symbol.

The lines “$password=$password & $symbol[Random(1,32,1)]” are actually pulling the next character from the chosen array.  We are telling it that $password equals the current value of $password with a random symbol appended to the end of it, or if the array chosen were $upper, then a random uppercase character would be appended.

Finally the word Next signifies the end of the set of instructions for the For loop.  It will either restart the instructions of the directive applied to the for loop is not yet reached, or move on to the next instruction in the script if the directive has been reached.

Because the for loop is running this set of instructions for a number of time equal to the randomly generated length, we would end up with a set of characters that looked something like “a$G8v(tP!”.

The final line of this script “msgbox(0, “Password”, $password)”, Will display the generated password in a Windows message box, exactly like the lunch chooser displayed it’s result.

Our final, compiled script should look like this:

So when we run the compiled executable, our results should look like this:

Now we have a basic password generator capable of creating random passwords of 8 to 14 digits, but what if we need more functionality for it, such as changing the minimum and maximum lengths, or limiting the number of special characters that can be used?  Check back for the next post where we will cover this extra functionality as well as adding a basic GUI for our password generator.

How are your scripts coming along?

Note:  For assistance compiling this script, please refer to the compilation steps in the first post.  There is no need to worry about what directory the executable resides in, as this script does not make any external file references.

this is only the beginning of the scripting, there is so much more that can be done. Need help with your Windows scripting automation for your business? Contact Golden Technologies for assistance.

• Foursquare
• Google Latitude
• Facebook Places

Back to the topic:  Facebook Places

I’ve learned a few lessons the hard way when setting up Golden’s Facebook Places page. I thought I’d share them in hopes that others are spared these little agonizing moments.

How to access Facebook Places (at the time of this writing)

There are only a couple ways to access Facebook Places at the time of this writing. And only one of them are worth checking into:

• Via your web browser at touch.facebook.com.
• Via an iphone app.

Yeah, the iPhone app is the one worth checking into. Don’t worry, the other major cell phones will have Facebook Places soon enough. And though the iPhone app provides more features, each method has their quirks:
Touch.facebook.com on your web browser – Your web browser on your computer will do just fine for checking in, but your computer doesn’t have GPS so the map (which is Bing map on a computer) will show you the location of your ISP (internet service provider). At least that’s my guess because you can’t move the map around when accessing from touch.facebook.com so I’m really only guessing our primary ISP is there.

What does this mean? It means I wouldn’t try to add a business or location to Facebook Places from your web browser.

Iphone app – The good news is that the GPS on you iPhone will help the app come close to hitting your location, making it easier to add new locations. The bad news: you don’t have much visual space to type in the description. Tip: Type the description out in advance on notes, then copy the notes and paste it into the description.

Remember, Facebook Places doesn’t have a place to let you edit descriptions.

Things I found out the hard way.

Can you merge Facebook Places and Facebook Fan page?

Yes! There are 2 ways to do it.

1) Click the link “Is this your business?” at the bottom of the Facebook Place you want to merge. This will prompt a checkbox asking “Is this your business?” If you are an official representative…
2) Click the checkbox and then click “Proceed with Verification.” This is the part will it depends on your relationship with Facebook. If you do business on Facebook (aka – run facebook ads), then Facebook has your vitals. They will phone you (and if you have an automated voice system, they provide alternative means of verification) and give you a 4-digit code. Take the code, plug it back into the verification page, and you’re set.
If you haven’t done verification in Facebook, you’ll have provide official documentation. We used a PDF.

Any one of the following pieces of information will work:

Official documentation for your business (please provide a copy of one of the following):
- Articles of Certificate of Incorporation (for a corporation)
- Certificate of Formation (for a partnership)
- Local Business License (issued by your city, county, or state)
- Better Business Bureau (BBB) Accreditation

(Source:  Facebook Claim Your Business page)

Once you’ve filled out the information and uploaded the document, click the checkbox verifying you are authorized to act on behalf of the business and click submit.

I’ll let you know the rest once Facebook approves our request.

Have you played around with Facebook Places?

(Photo Credit:  Quintanomedia)

You will be judged by what you DO, not what you say.

We’ve all heard the saying “actions speak louder than words.” This saying couldn’t be more true when comes to your customers. They don’t want to hear how wonderful your company is, they want to SEE how wonderful your company is.

Here at GT, we know that actions speak much louder than words, which is why we pride ourselves on trying to always go above and beyond for our customers. GT partner, Scott Dujmovich, highlighted this best with a story about a customer who’s laptop died hours before a business trip across the globe.

“He called GT in a bind wondering if we had a laptop that we could load up for him and drop off at the departure gate. Well, long story short…we did it in a moments notice on a Friday night” said Dujmovich.

It is actions like that that speak way louder than any words or promises we could of made. Those type of interactions with a client build trust and goodwill.

Your customers have been around the block, they know that many businesses that talk a good game. They also have interacted with the businesses that can’t deliver. Simply put: Say what you mean and DO what you say.

Follow through on promises. If you can’t deliver; don’t make the promise. Be honest, sincere and sell your customers the item/product/service that is BEST for them, instead of the item/product/service that will improve your business. Don’t risk losing credibility in your customers eyes.

As unfortunate as it seems, customers are more apt to talk to others about their negative experiences than they are any positive experiences they have. If you or your business do have a negative experience with a customer (which does happen), that customer is more likely to share their experience with their friends than they are with you. In this time of social media and online connections, poor word of mouth can be disseminated to a large group of people faster than ever before. All of this makes it imperative that your business provide the best customer service possible.

Have you had a good or bad customer service experience using social media? How did it evolve?

Be sure to check back next week for customer service tip #3 on the Golden Tech blog.

The first thing you’ll notice about the HTC Evo 4G is its large 4.3-inch 480 x 800 pixel screen.  Those with small hands will have a lot to handle here; others will have a lot to handle with the power of this device.  I really have a hard time calling the HTC Evo 4G a phone, since that is a low percentage of what I use it for.  The HTC Evo 4G is a mini tablet that can make phone calls and do so much more.

HTC Evo 4G Specifications

Let’s quickly go through the specs of this device so we can get to the fun.

• Manufacturer HTC
• Type Slate/Candybar smartphone
• Power 1500 mAh Internal rechargeable removable lithium-ion battery
• CPU 1 GHz Qualcomm QSD8650 Snapdragon processor
• Storage capacity Flash memory: 1 GB microSD slot: supports 32 GB
• Memory 512 MB RAM
• Display 480 x 800 px, 4.3 in (109 mm), TFT LCD at 216.97 ppi
• Input Multi-touch capacitive touchscreen display, proximity and motion sensors, 3-axis accelerometer, digital compass
• Camera Rear-facing: 8 megapixel with autofocus & dual LED flash Front-facing: 1.3 megapixel
• Connectivity Wi-Fi (802.11b/g/n)    Bluetooth 2.1+EDR with A2DP stereo   microUSB    miniHDMI   A-GPS    FM Radio    Dual-Band CDMA 800 1900 MHz EVDO Rev. A   WiMAX (802.16e)
• Weight 170 g (6.0 oz)

This Phone is Nearly Perfect

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s get to the good stuff.

To me, this mobile device is nearly perfect; one knock on the Evo is the poor battery life. To the ‘iPwned’ slaves that often point this out, you need to realize that the Evo has a battery that is easy to swap out and uses an industry standard micro USB charger. This should be expected by consumers, not the sealed batteries and expensive proprietary cables. However because I have been using it as my full-time phone I have adjusted the settings and installed some “updates” to help.  I now have no issues making it 24 hours on a charge.

Believe it or not, I’m actually new to the Android environment.  I’ve been running it for nearly a month now and I have been really getting into it.  I have ‘rooted’ my phone and played with many marvelous apps.  I figured I should share my experiences with all of you, good or bad.  For example there is a great application called ShootMe for screen captures. Another great application is Sipdroid designed to allow you to connect to Astersk, freePBX, or any other SIP service.

I will be posting my experiences with these apps as I learn, play, tweak, and generally void keep my warranty in every possible way.

Want to know more on how mobile computing can help you? Contact Golden Technologies, we would be happy to help answer any questions you have.

Have you had a chance to try the HTC Evo 4g? What are your thoughts?

Photo Credit: louisvolant on Flickr

First there was the horse. Then the telegraph. Then both the horse and telegraph together (though rarely at the same time – rope burn) until enough telegraph lines were run to businesses. Before long, Bell’s telephone brought upon the next evolution of communications. So businesses used both the phone and the telegraph till enough phone lines were run to businesses…and so on.

Now we’re at a stage where telephone, email and websites all work together to make businesses quicker. And thanks to technology, these devices allow businesses to operate 24/7/365. But only one of these tools can play secretary, salesmen, courier, customer service rep, tech support, resource library and cashier when mere mortal employees need their rest.

Why a Website Works for You

Your hours of operation for a day might end when you lock the door and flip over the “closed,” sign, but the business cycle continues. Nowadays, prospects from all 24 different time zones are looking for your products or services like yours 24 hours of the day. Make it easy for them to do business with you.

A website isn’t a posh accessory. It’s is a virtual representation of your company. Several businesses have already learned that the website is an important tool that will provide a healthy ROI.

If you treat your website as anything other than an invaluable resource, then you’re leaving good money on the table.

Over the next few weeks we’ll be writing about the different solutions Golden’s web design team provides our Northwest Indiana, Michiana, Chicago & Southwest Florida customers. If you want to get a brief overview about out styles, please look at our e-book:  Web Design That Works for You.

And if you have any questions, please feel free to contact us. We’re pretty good at helping customers contact you in this fashion.

(photo credit: Alanack via Flickr)

Image courtesy of Tech Republic

Anytime a company makes a large investment they are at risk. Unfortunately without taking those risks a company will never be able to grow. Sometimes it’s best to look at all options, but ideally the choice needs to be for the option that will benefit them the most in the long run.

As for risk management, the purchase model has inherent risk to the customer, as any support and maintenance for the system is not included in the purchase cost, and will be added when needed. While this may be perceived to have a lower cost over time, it only takes a single virus outbreak or system component failure to quickly exceed any perceived cost savings. By utilizing a managed service, the MSP bears these risks (and hence should have a good model for proactive system maintenance in place).

MSPs such as Golden Technologies must have a support structure that facilitates efficient maintenance and support of the managed services they offer. It is of no advantage to customers to sign up for a managed service if support and maintenance is hard to obtain, and if the MSP does not have an efficient support model then the cost of supporting these agreements becomes too costly. Golden Technologies’ proven support and maintenance model makes our managed service customers some of our most pleased clients and most likely to recommend our service to others.

What can SMB’s expect for managed service offerings?

Utilizing the MSP model, Golden Technologies offers a myriad of hardware and software, including but not limited to:

• Firewall/VPN Devices
• Networking Infrastructure (switches, wireless access points, routers, etc.)
• Disk based backup systems and offsite replicas
• Desktop Computers (with Windows 7, MS Office 2010, etc.)
• Servers (Microsoft Windows and Linux)
• Thin Clients
• Hosted Desktops
• VoIP Phone Systems and Handsets

By utilizing the MSP model, customers either looking to start a new business or looking to make upgrades in current IT systems can do so confidently, with lower risk and less un-budgeted burden to cash flow than ever before.

Interested in finding out more about Golden Technologies as a MSP? Contact Golden Technologies!

As with everything in IT and technology, times change and fast. IT Hardware now is relatively inexpensive and extremely robust compared to 5 years ago… quad and six core processors are now commonplace, virtualization is pervasive throughout most IT environments and even core networking infrastructure is much less expensive.

For example: we just recently priced a 48 port all Gigabit network switch for $550 MSRP… 5 years ago this would have been 10 times as expensive.

Now it is possible for small/medium MSPs to acquire hardware through supply chains at a cost that allows us to profitably provide that hardware as a service.

The only sticking point was software licensing: specifically Microsoft software licensing. Again we had the issue that software licensing was too costly for small/medium MSPs to bear as  upfront expense. That was until Microsoft’s Service Provider Licensing Agreement or SPLA.

Microsoft’s Service Provider Licensing Agreement

The Microsoft SPLA allows MSPs to provide a slew of Microsoft products as a service to their customers. Microsoft sells these SPLA licenses on a monthly basis only to service providers. These products provide all updates and upgrades as part of the monthly “lease” of their software across the term of the agreement.

Now MSP’s such as Golden Technologies can offer full managed services on everything from PC’s to Servers, networking hardware, firewall/VPN solutions, etc. But let’s look at the numbers.

Here is an example of a Microsoft Terminal Server installation for 50 user:

To purchase this server, have it fully licensed installed and configured will cost approximately $10,000.00 (tax and hardware warranty included). This is a 1 time upfront cost which includes no ongoing support, updates or maintenance. Additionally, since a business would be purchasing this asset, it would need to be depreciated over 5 or 6 years depending on the accounting rules a business utilizes.

Utilizing our Managed Service model, the same server would cost $1200 upfront and $600 per month for 3 years. This is an ALL INCLUSIVE managed service, in other words everything is covered for this server. Since this hardware is provided as a service, it is not taxable and is considered an expense, thus it does not need to be depreciated.

While it seems that the managed service on the surface appears more costly over time it is important to note that the Service Provider Model is all inclusive while the Purchase Model completely discounts the on-going support and ‘surprises’. Any small business person worth their salt knows there are 2 things that make us lose sleep at night: Cash Flow and Risk Management. The value that the Service Provider Model conveys more than covers the difference that the initial math exposed.

When it Comes to Business… Cash Is King

It is obvious to see that the Managed Service model is much more linear on cash flow than the straight purchase option.

Because the solution is all inclusive, the support of the system is built into the managed service price. This allows a “no surprises” approach to IT systems, since all systems will need support at varying levels. The graph below shows the cash flow comparisons of the 2 models over time:

Cash Flow Comparison

The issue with the stair step cash flow shown, is that the steps in the Purchase Model are rarely predictable. A large expenditure may come at a time when cash reserves are at a minimum, making needed system repairs and downtime a hindrance to small business operations.

The Service Provider model – by including all support, maintenance and updates – smooths out the cash flow so it is always the same and easily budgeted. This allows service provider customers to concentrate on their core businesses, and allows the MSP’s to concentrate on their core expertise.

Thinking of outsourcing your IT management? Think of your budget. Which plan sounds better to you? Contact Golden Technologies.

Photo Credit: davidclow on Flickr

We’ve all been victims of poor customer service. In my opinion, it seems to be happening more and more these days. Good customer service is starting to become quite a rarity. Because customer service has become so poor, providing great customer service will make your business shine. I’ve gathered 4 tips that can give you some help with your customer service.

I’ve done a lot of research on this subject and have taken many classes. The principles and essence of providing excellent customer service are really simple. None of the following tips are ground-breaking or earth-shattering, but it’s so simple that it tends to be overlooked in business way too often. The bottom line of it all is a principle that goes back to something my mom taught me at the ripe ole age of 5…treat others as you’d like to be treated.

Put yourself in your (prospective) customers shoes and use that as a basis for moving forward. What keeps you going back to the brands/stores that you are loyal to? And what doesn’t make you loyal to those that you aren’t loyal to? I bet a lot of it has to do with how your treated. “7 out of 10 customers will do business with you again if you resolve a complaint in their favor” Much of that comes down to being fair and honest. In the following weeks, I will share my top ideas on providing the best customer service.

1. Form a RELATIONSHIP with your customers.

Don’t just focus on selling something to your customers. If you only focus on selling your customers something, that is pretty much all you will get is A sale. (Plus I don’t know about you, but I can smell someone trying to sell me something from a mile away.) Most customers put their guard up immediately. Instead, by forming a relationship with your customer you will instill a customer loyalty with them. And that is ultimately what your trying to form with your brand is loyal customers: customers that keep coming back and tell others about how awesome you were to work with/how awesome your product is.

I read a case study a while back about Cadillac buyers (I wish I could find it, if someone knows where I could find it…please let me know!). Cadillac does not look at their consumers as a one-time sale, because research has shown intense customer loyalty to the brand. Cadillac looks at their consumers as having an approximate price tag of $200,000 per customer (this is strictly from memory, so I might be off). The average Cadillac consumer owns 4 or more Cadillacs in their lifetime. They focus on creating a relationship with their consumers, so they are the first (and the hope is only) car dealer they think of when buying a new one. It been proven over and over again that it takes less to retain an existing customer than to try to find a new one. “Acquiring a customer costs 5 to 10 times more than retaining one.”

There are times that your customer base is so extensive that you can’t possibly form relationships with all your customers. That’s when this good ole (and sometimes overused) marketing lingo comes to mind: the 80/20 rule. 80% of your business comes from 20% of your customers. So my question to you is: Are you providing the best customer service you can to the 20% of your customers that are providing the majority of your business? Do you know that 20% of your business? You might be able to pick them off of a piece of paper, but do you know them, know them?

As for the other 80% of your customers that account for the other 20% of your business, are you friendly? A simple smile can go a long way with these people too. You never know, these are the customers that could make their way into that prized 20% one day. Two examples from my life come to mind in this instance, I’ll share one with you:

I have been going to the same jewelry store since 2001. We use this jewelry store because my family has been going there for a long time. In the few instances when we did purchase wedding rings or what have you, we purchased them at this particular jewelry store. There have been occasions that I have walked in there and nobody will help me or they will skip me to talk to someone who looks more affluent than me. My husband and I are younger and we don’t really have the disposable income for fine jewelry, just yet, so I understand that I’m not in their 20%. I’ve lived on this earth long enough to have lived and learned about the stereotypes in American culture. My thought on this matter has always been: I may be young and not have as much money to spend now, but I’ll get there one day, and I probably won’t go to your jewelry store because of the poor customer service that I received way back when. I’m not asking for them to know my name, but a friendly, courteous greeting would be appropriate. This has also happened to me at various car dealerships. I know not every customer that you encounter or work with will continue to come back, but small things, like a smile, could make or break their experience and decide whether they will work with you in the future.

Let’s be real here. This is America, there are many choices for almost every product out there. I can almost guarantee that whatever service you are providing or product you are selling, you have competition. Many times customer service and how I’m treated is the reason I buy what I do and continue to buy what I do. Build those relationships!

Check back next week for customer service tip #2 on the Golden Tech blog.

“AutoIt v3 is a freeware BASIC-like scripting language designed for automating the Windows GUI and general scripting.  It uses a combination of simulated keystrokes, mouse movement and window/control manipulation in order to  automate tasks in a way not possible or reliable with other languages (e.g. VBScript and SendKeys). AutoIt is also very small, self-contained and will run on all versions of Windows out-of-the-box with no annoying “runtimes” required!

AutoIt was initially designed for PC “roll out” situations to reliably automate and configure thousands of PCs. Over time it has become a powerful language that supports complex expressions, user functions, loops and everything else that veteran scripters would expect.”

- AutoIt V3

There is documentation available for AutoIt.

The purpose of these entries will be to provide tutorials and sample applications, but to begin with, we’ll go through getting everything installed.

How to Install AutoIt V3

The first step will be to download AutoIt V3.  You will need to get the AutoIt Full Installation package, which includes both x86 and x64 components.  The installation is pretty straightforward.  Once the download is completed, run the autoit-v3-setup executable and select your installation options.  One of those options will be the default option for *.au3 files, which will be to either run the script, or edit the script.  This choice is entirely up to you, but I prefer to edit the script by default.

The AutoIt setup comes with a slimmed down version of the SciTE script editor (SciTE is a SCIntilla based Text Editor).  A customized version of SciTE with lots of additional coding tools is also available from the AutoIt download page.  This is well worth downloading and installing if you plan on spending any amount of time working with AutoIt.

The final component we will need will be the Koda Form Designer (Credits).  The form designer is available for download.  You will need to select the latest release (at the time of writing the latest release version is 1.7.3.0 from 2010-07-30).  The download will be a zip file containing all of the elements of Koda.  Create a subdirectory under your installation directory or AutoIt named Koda (for example “C:\Program Files\AutoIt3\Koda”), then extract the zip archive to this directory.

Once each of these packages is installed, you will be ready to go, so we will now go over some basics regarding AutoIt and SciTE.  AutoIt uses the .au3 file extension for scripts and can be compiled to either .exe executables or .a3x executables.  The difference between these two is that .exe files are standalone executable files that can be run on any windows system, while a3x files must be executed with AutoIt3.exe or another compiled AutoIt executable.

SciTE is the default editor for .au3 files and contains multiple tools for simplifying script editing, as well as the AutoIt compiler.  The window is a basic Notepad style interface, though a small debugging window will appear at the bottom of the window when testing or compiling scripts.

Auto It Sample Script

Now we will make a small, sample application.  (Note:  All code will be written in italics).

The first thing we will need to do for this script is to create a file called “lunch.ini” in the directory that we will make the script in.  You can right-click in this directory and create a new text file, then rename it to “lunch.ini”.  Make sure that the file type actually changes from .txt to .ini, and not to .ini.txt.  You can check this by going into Folder Options, selecting the view tab, and unchecking the check box for “Hide extensions for known file types”.  Once the “lunch.ini” file is created, go ahead and open it for editing and type in the following lines:

[Restaurants]

1=McDonalds

2=Burger King

3=Wendys

4=Taco Bell

5=Long John Silvers

6=Pizza Hut

7=Jimmy John’s

8=Papa John’s

9=Little Caesars

10=KFC

Feel free to change any of the restaurants, or even to add your own, just make sure that the numbers on the left are kept in sequential order.  For example, if we wanted to add Applebees to the list we would add an entry that looks like:

11=Applebees

This is an ini file so it is broken up into sections.  The line that reads “[Restaurants]” is the name of the section, and the numbered columns underneath it are referred to as keys.  Keys hold the actual values that we will be calling in our script.

Once you have edited the file however you like, go ahead and save it.  You can always go back and add more later.

For the script itself, go ahead and launch SciTE and a new script (unsaved) will be started for you.  SciTE is a tabbed editor, so you can be working on multiple scripts at once and just switch tabs like in Firefox or Internet Explorer.  Your screen should look like this:

We are going to start with a quick application that will randomly select one option from a list of options stored in a file, so for this example we will make a random generator to choose what restaurant to go to for lunch.  The first lines we will enter will be:

#include <file.au3>

This line adds in the functions of the file.au3 script that is included with AutoIt.  This will allow us to use files external to the script that we are writing.

#include <array.au3>

This line add in the functions of the array.au3 script that is included with AutoIT.  This will allow us to create an array from the lines that we will add to the file later.

Next we will need to declare some variables.

DIM $File=”lunch.ini”

This is the file that we created earlier that has the list of restaurants to choose from.

DIM $Array=INIReadSection($File, “Restaurants”)

This is the array that is built from the file.  $File refers to the file variable created above, and “Restaurants” refers to the section of the INI file that will be read.  Our file only has one section “Restaurants”, but it must still be specified.  The array will look something like this, but you won’t actually see it:

[0]|10|

[1]|1|McDonalds

[2]|2|Burger King

[3]|3|Wendys

[4]|4|Taco Bell

[5]|5|Long John Silvers

[6]|6|Pizza Hut

[7]|7|Jimmy John’s

[8]|8|Papa John’s

[9]|9|Little Caesars

[10]|10|KFC

This is a two-dimensional array, or basically an array where each row has two columns.  The first number on the left is the Row number, the second number is the value of Column 0, which is the numbers that we have listed in our ini file, and third entry is Column 1 which contains our list of restaurants.  An exception to this rule is Row 0.  Row 0, Column 0 contains the number of entries in our array (not counting 0) and has no data in Column 1.

DIM $Num=Ubound($Array)-1

This variable will determine how many lines are in the file that was read in.  This is used as the maximum value for the random number selection, and is declared in this way so that entries can be added into the ini file without having to modify this script.

DIM $Rand=Random(1, $Num)

This variable is created using a Random number from 1 to $Num, which, as stated above, is the total number of items that we add to the ini file.  This variable will be used to pick which row we use for the lunch choice.

The final line for this script is to show the results of the random choice.

msgbox(0, “What’s for lunch???”, $Array[$Rand][1])

What this line does is display a standard Windows message box with the title “What’s for lunch???”.  The contents of the message box are the randomly selected restaurant as broken down below:

$Array[$Rand][1]

$Array is the array we created earlier, [$Rand] is the random number that was generated, and [1] is the column number we want to use from the array.

For example, if the random number was 3 then the script would display the value of column 1 for row 3, which is Wendys if you did not edit the list of restaurants.

The final script should look like this:

#include <file.au3>

#include <array.au3>

DIM $File=”lunch.ini”

DIM $Array=IniReadSection($File, “Restaurants”)

DIM $Num=Ubound($Array)-1

DIM $Rand=Random(1, $Num)

msgbox(0, “What’s for lunch???”, $Array[$Rand][1])

Your screen should now look like this:

Once you have this entered, Save the script by clicking File, then Save.  Enter the name to save the script as (for example:  lunchgen.au3) and make sure you save it to the same folder as the lunch.ini file.

You can then test the script to make sure it works by clicking Tools, then Go, or by pressing F5.  You should receive a message box titled “What’s for lunch???” that lists one of the restaurants in the ini file.  It will also have an X in the top right and an “OK” button.  Either one will end the script.

Assuming everything works properly, you can then compile the script into an executable program.  Click on Tools, then Compile.  A window will appear with several tabs, but we will only need to worry about the default tab for now (“AutoIT3/Aut2Exe”).  The Source line will be the full path the script.  All we need to change is the target.  Click on the button next to target with the three dots (“…”).  A window will appear titled “Select the Target program?”

You should be in the same directory that you saved the script in by default, if not browse to it.  Then enter the file name to use (for example:  “lunchgen”) then click open.  You will be returned to the previous window and the Target line will now be filled in.  Click on “Compile Script” and this window will close, then a Progress window will open with a progress bar.  This will only take a second since this is a basic script, and this window will close on it’s own.  Once it does, you will probably notice that some comments have been added to your script as shown in this picture:

Now that your script is compiled you can close SciTE and browse to the directory you saved everything to.  You should see your ini file, your au3 script file, and the executable file you just made.  Double click on the executable file and you should once again get the message box with the random restaurant.  Again, feel free to add as many lines to the ini file as you want.  Since the script counts the total number of items in the file it will not need to be edited to accommodate more entries in the ini file.

Your results should look like this:

This is just a basic starter script, but shows off what can be done with just a few short lines.

Interested in more details? Contact Golden Technologies.

What programs have you written with Auto It?

From here it is a four step process.

Analyze Your Website

There are a variety of ways to analyze your website and it’s traffic. The best place to start is with your analytics program. We’ve talked about looking at the design of your website, the keywords you’re targeting, and the quality of your traffic. Now its time to dig deeper into what is working best for you.

Let’s create a spreadsheet.

In one column make a list of all of the keywords you were targeting and add in the ones that your analytics tool shows that you’re getting visits from. In the next column make a list of how many visits you’ve had in this specific time period (1 week, 1 month, 2 months, etc.) for each keyword. Take out the keywords that involve the name of your business and your employees names (these may take over a lot of the top keywords) and take a look at the top ten keywords. How many of them are keywords that you were actually targeting with your SEO campaigns?

Follow the same process with each of the websites that you have been using as part of your link building. How many of these links were ones you were expecting to bring in the big traffic?

Change

For now let’s ignore the keywords and sources that are working and look at what is not working. The best part about the web is that if something isn’t working you can change it and you won’t need to reprint 3,000 brochures.

Take a look at the spreadsheet above. Take those keywords and sources and look at how many of them you want to get visitors from. Preferably all of them, but how many of them will turn over conversions? Rework your content around those keywords that you think will help you with those conversions.

This is also a time to adjust what content you have on those landing pages. Play around with the content on the page as well as the call to actions. Remember, the whole point of a landing page is for a conversion.

Test

Since changing your website is a lot easier than printing new brochures, there’s always room for testing.

A/B Testing is one of the most popular way of testing website content to see what will work. A very quick rundown of  A/B testing:

1. Set up two different versions of your landing page. Version A and Version B.
2. Get an equal sample of visitors to go to each version.
3. Track their clicks.

While it goes a whole lot deeper than this (we will get into the details another day), you can get a basic idea of where people THINK they’re supposed to click when they visit your website. Is it what you were expecting them to click?

It doesn’t hurt to leave a version of your website up for a month and see what works for you and see what isn’t working. You can always change it.

Repeat

Your chances of getting it right on the first try are slim to none. Sorry. As simple as it sounds to go through this process only one time, it is going to be an on going process. There are going to be times of the year where some of the keywords will be more popular than others. As your industry grows and changes your keywords and website will need to grow and change with it.

Keep track of your spreadsheets and add dates to them. Overtime you’ll get a better grasp on keywords and sources. Take a look back a year from now, you might be in a whole new ballgame.

What changes have you made to your website? Are you ready to start a new SEO campaign?

Photo Credit: bitterlysweet on flickr

Now Planet Hollywood is a meteor and the three were road off into the sunset, begrudgingly.

Lately, like the Balboa / Creed 1, the trio started to pick themselves off the mat and get back into the fight. And I’ve watched their offerings. Some were worth renting on DVD. Others, well…

And then something happened.

Somewhere along the line the three realized they could channel what was left in their collective tanks and make a movie that would entertain the fans one last time. With Stallone co-writing (remember: Sly did write all the Rocky movies – including the original!), directing and making a few phone calls, the crew rounded up every action hero they could muster. They got Jason Statham, Jet Li, Mickey Rourke, Dolph Lundgren and then filled in the gaps with legendary fighters and entertainers:  Randy Courte, Stone Cold Steve Austin…and turned the movie into one big party.

Better than that, they built a community their fans would want to be a part of!

The result: look who’s back on top. The Expendables opened as the #1 movie of the weekend its opening weekend.

And you can bet Van Damme, Snipes, and Seagal are kicking themselves for not joining in (if Wikipedia is accurate). Here’s to a sequel!

And I’m going to see it once I get back from Blog Indiana

Regardless of whether you love or hate over-the-top action movies, marketers could learn a thing or two from The Expendables.

1) The cast of the Expendables were honest about who they were, what they had to offer, were realistic about their expectations and worked together. Stallone and company didn’t try to pass themselves off as 20-somethings who could run 4-4 40s.

2) They were open about their stage in life and what they wanted to do. And they went to make something fun that their fans would like. And if it played a little on the nostalgia, then let it play a lot on nostalgia.

3) The marketers for the Expendables made materials to reflect this event. They knew their market and went after them. Check out their Facebook page.

And if that isn’t social media, then I don’t know what is.

In the end, whether it’s social media marketing or traditional marketing, it comes to reaching your target market. And whatever it takes to reach them.

I’m just hoping Stallone and Lundgren do a “Balboa / Drago” reenactment in the movie.

(photo credit:  Christian Hot via Flickr)

This usually involves budgeting for a large capital expense or worse case scenario having to borrow for an un-budgeted expense. After that there’s the process of depreciating the hardware asset (it is rare these days that a server or a computer will last more than 5 years), paying taxes on the purchase, maintaining the system and managing hardware warranties and so on.

In addition, businesses utilizing this model take on significant risks such as technology assessment and selection, remediation of system issues and successfully managing upgrades. This oftentimes leads to over budget IT service expenditures and unplanned downtime.

Enter the Managed Service Provider (MSP) Model.

What is the Managed Service Provider (MSP) Model?

First, let’s talk about what the big boys do. For years large technology providers (think EDS, IBM, HP) have provided “Managed Services” to their enterprise customers. These large providers (many of whom manufacture their own hardware) will procure, manage, service and maintain IT environments for Fortune 500 companies. As MSPs they own all the hardware, and take on the risk of managing, supporting, maintaining and upgrading the IT infrastructure in exchange for an annuity stream from their clients.

This works because the customer no longer needs to worry about IT environments (including hardware, software and infrastructure), employees, asset management, and the associated risks. Clients can concentrate on their core business while the MSPs take on managing the IT environment. The MSPs are able to utilize their own supply chains and manufacturing abilities which allow them to keep the costs down. By using their economies of scale and expertise in IT staffing and hiring they are able to make servicing these agreements a profitable endeavor. The bottom line: clients save money and get better service, MSPs do what they do best for a decent profit.

Five Years Made a Large Difference

While this model has worked very well in large MSP operations, it did not scale well for small/mid sized MSPs and smaller customers. Smaller MSPs simply could not get hardware and software at a cost anywhere near what the big boys could, and hence could not facilitate a model that had a sufficient profits and significant cost savings for small to medium sized customers. In addition, the cost to the MSP to support such agreements did not align with the risk these providers had to take and the price they could charge.

As with everything in IT and technology, times change…and fast. IT hardware now is relatively inexpensive and extremely robust compared to 5 years ago, allowing small / mid sized MSPs, such as Golden Technologies, to work with the smaller customers in a more cost efficient way.

How are you managing your companies’ IT services? Need help? Call Golden Technologies.

Photo Credit: fboyd on Flickr

It’s been a long, successful ride for Yahoo! They had the great careers, coveted salaries, hit many a good Pay Day, and were able to collect many of the desired LIFE tiles. It’s just too bad one of those tiles wasn’t “build a better mousetrap”.

As for everyone who plays the game of Life, Yahoo! has come to that dreaded fork in the road. And as we wrote yesterday, come the end of August 2010, Yahoo! – once the World’s largest search engine – will stop serving their own organic results and paid search ads. They have opted instead to become another conduit for Bing’s content.

Fortunately for this Search Engine pioneer, they’ll have enough to retire to Millionaire
Acres where they’ll live out their days fighting AOL.com for online board game and fantasy sports supremacy.

And, as for the merger, Yahoo! isn’t the first to adopt this practice. In fact, only Google, Bing and Ask serve their own organic content.

• Ask.com? They get paid results from Google to bolster their sponsored ad offerings.
• AOL? – Paid and Organic Search results come from Google

In the end, Yahoo! can leave holding their head high. Unlike their predecessors, Yahoo! left many a good reason for businesses to continue to devote time to the once-industry stalwart.

Tradition – Yahoo! has been around since they were a backroom, trailer project in 1994. With millions of loyal users, continuing (or starting, for those who haven’t) to use the search engine will still garner you positive results.

Flickr – Industry people are always spinning numbers to make a news story. For example, a couple times this year, Facebook topped Google as the most visited website. They say that because all of Facebook’s tools and devices sit under their top-level domain, Facebook.com. In contrast, Google’s video site, YouTube, sits under YouTube.com and doesn’t get counted into Google’s traffic stats. Neither does Blogger.

Yahoo! has a similar situation. They’re picture / video site, Flickr (used frequently by this blog) doesn’t get factored into Yahoo!’s stats. Flicker still gets around 25 million unique (different) visitors a month, which if counted would increase Yahoo!’s traffic stats by about 20%.

And Flickr isn’t a part of the Bing deal, meaning it kept its independence.

Email, Fantasy Sports, Trinkets & Toys – Yahoo! users are loyal because they love the features that come with their Yahoo account. Primarily Email, chat and fantasy sports. Don’t take these tools for granted. Being one who dabbles in Fantasy Football, the Yahoo! Fantasy Football league tracking tools are pretty nifty to have around. In my opinion, they’re still better than ESPN’s and Google, well, Google doesn’t even have fantasy sports – yet. Not only that, but with the relationships Yahoo! continues to develop, many users will still have Yahoo! as their default search bar in their web browsers so Yahoo! Most people don’t even know how to change that.

Yahoo! Analytics – Here’s the thing that intrigues me: Yahoo! Analytics. At last check, Yahoo! Analytics was Free if you spent money running advertising on their services. Otherwise the service was Free. But now that Bing will be serving Yahoo! Analytics, it will be interesting to see what Yahoo! / Bing does with it. People like the real time results of YA! and the tool is accurate enough for people to believe it paints a pretty good picture of their web traffic. If Yahoo! / Bing allows Yahoo! Analytics to become free, then Yahoo! / Bing traffic could see quite the uptick in traffic. And you’ll want to be on that upswing.

ROI – In the end, Search Engine Marketing comes down to ROI. It’s a silly business decision to stop using a tool because people are seeing it fading away. So long as you’re continuing to develop a Return on your time invested into Yahoo!, keep using it.

And, who knows? Maybe Bing and Yahoo will put enough together to make them a juggernaut, again.

(photo credit:  Christian Lang via Flickr)

As long as it remains a cash cow...

It doesn’t look like anybody’s backing out of the deal this time, so here-goes:

For those of our readers who don’t know, Yahoo! and Microsoft worked out a deal in which Yahoo!’s organic and paid search engine results will be provided by Microsoft’s search engine, Bing. According to the Yahoo Search Marketing Blog, Yahoo!’s migration should be complete by the end of August, 2010, right in time for the Christmas marketing season. The merger will mean that for the first time in years, an entity outside of Google will be close to having a controlling interest in the Search Engine Marketing Industry. I say “close,” because between the combined share still doesn’t add up to 25% of the total market share.

In the end, there’s a great chance that Search and Social industries’ interest in the Yahoo! / Bing Bing will be way out of proportion to the impact of the merger itself. That being said, those numbers, small in percentage, still represent millions of users. And a few million is still a few million.

Here is what is changing

As mentioned above, all of Yahoo’s organic results will be served by Bing. Simply put, by the end of October 2010, if you go to Yahoo.com to search for something, you’ll find the same exact thing at Bing.com. And those “Sponsored Results” you see over the top and along the side of your search results? Those ads for yahoo.com and bing.com will be coming from Bing’s adCenter.

Here is what is staying the same

Everything else. Yahoo! Local and Yahoo! Maps, in addition to all partnerships Yahoo! has with advertisers. Which means the Yellow Pages partnerships businesses have that include Yahoo! Local will remain intact for the foreseeable future.

What will this mean for your target audience

It really comes down to a few questions:

• How computer savvy are your customers?
• How particular are they about their search engines?
• Will they know that a Merger between Yahoo and Bing took place?
• And, most importantly: will they care?

In the end, especially for small and medium-sized businesses, unless the Yahoo-using leads in your target markets are search snobs, there’s a pretty good chance they’ll remain loyal to Yahoo. Users like their Yahoo! email, fantasy sports leagues and Flickr. It’s strange, but it is what it is. As long as the results are giving them what they need, they’ll keep using it.

So DON’T DO ANYTHING DRASTIC, YET. Monitor the results. If you are still getting a good ROI with Yahoo, keep at it.

Tomorrow, we’ll give you a list of reasons why paying attention Yahoo! will be a good idea for your businesses.

(photo credit:  Franco Folini via Flickr)