This article is intended to show what some of the benefits of IP telephony are. It focuses on what you can do to supplement your existing services for little or no cost. It is wonderful material for those that must answer phone lines from multiple locations. Later we can focus on more advanced paid services.

If you have a need to answer your phone or share your lines from multiple locations, support telecommuters I think you will find that you have some options as presented here. Many of these techniques apply “out of the box” to many “open” VoIP services. Unfortunately some of the most popular services such as Skype, Vonage and Majicjack are not “open” , however dor at least some of these there are solutions to mix those services as well.

If you followed my previous post “Free Calls to USA and Canada; Part 1“, you are 90% on your way already! If not , go back and read that article to get you up to speed.

Now while we are here, and that previous post is fresh in  your mind,  I should mention that one CAN pay a few dollars a month to get a number from any one of MANY countries worldwide. Teknogeekz has a reseller account here and many USA numbers are available there. We also have resources for many  Internartional numbers and if you are looking for a number, please contact us. We ask that if you are considering this , consider doing this through us, or with our guidance.

What we can then do is deliver those calls that come into that USA Washington number, or a purchased number if you need one from Mexico City, or Toronto.  For those who sign up for the commercial service mentioned above there is no need to have a Vonage MajicJack or Skype account. Also with the IP Kall number it could be your primary USA contact number.

So you already have a Vonage, Majcjack por Skype line with incoming calls , and unlimited USA calling, and you want to answer those calls Monday through Friday but you want your weekends free and someone else to answer those calls, maybe even in another part of the world on the weekends, or ring in four countries simultaneously.  You need only forward that line to the newly acquired free Washington State number from IPKall.com, or to the newly acquired commercial number, when you are available to answer those calls, simply forward it to the new number. Some services may offer simultaneous ring which would allow you tio answer it on any of those phones based on who answers it first.

So what if you have a traditional line like from Telmex in Mexico City that you want to do this with? Get a Mexico City Local phone number.  We forward our Telmex line to that new “local” number. That line can now be answered anywhere we have an ATA or softphone connected to the VoxALot Account. Otherwise there are ATAs for phone lines such as a Linksys SPA3102. It will take any fixed phone line and convert it to a VoIP line. Contact us if you need help with this.

Now via Voxalot we register a SIP ATA or softphone to that number. If you want , you can register MULTIPLE ATAs or Softphones to that same Voxalot account. Then when a call comes in, it rings all connected devices.  You can also use multiple VoxALot accounts to facilitate free calls between all users.

What is an ATA? Theere are 2 types of ATAs do not confuse them! 1)An ATA is a device that allows you to use a standard telephone with a VoIP service . If you have Vonage this is not an open service so you have a “locked” ATA that can only be used with Vonage. Also The MajicJack USB device is a kind of USB ATA device that is also “locked” to their service. 2)A device that connects a traditional phone line to/from VoIP.

What is an “open” VoIP service? A service that allows you to connect any standards based device or any softphone to the service.

Many folks who initially set up a web site rely on the web designer to register their domain and to acquire hosting. I have seen time after time when later the customer wants to make a change or delve into a dynamically driven site,  their web “designer” has no knowledge of getting involved in dynamic content and databases. This forces the customer to seek skills of someone who is more techinically inclined and the web “designer” feels put out.

Some of these “designers” deserve the title because they can take a bland site and make it pretty, if they know the ins and outs of CSS.

On the other hand, there are technical folks who can put together functionality, they may often lack the ability to make your site pretty.

It is therefore very important that your web ” designer” and the technical person can work together as your site’s functionality is enhanced. Your web designer should know CSS well enough to be able to make the dynamic content match the colors and style of the rest of your site.

When we embark on dynamic content and lookiing for a set of skills beyond that of the person that initially set up the web site, is often when we find out as well that a customer that has paid for hosting is not really getting what they have paid for like cpanel access, because the web designer has decided to host multiple accounts in that same web space.

Recently, I asked a web “designer” that I know about the customers Cpanel access and I received a reply of the “F” word. She felt put out or retired, when she should have instead recognized the opportunity and realized that she would be the one making the site look consistent, and in the end it would make more work for her.

Often times these situations result in some animosity between the designer and the client, and sometimes between the designer and technician . The client may feel thay have not gotten what they paid for because the designer is hosting their site in a manner in which they have no access to Cpanel, and this may well be true. Also the designer believes they are being brushed aside when the client wants login information, and in some cases the web “designer” has little or no knowledge of the use of Cpanel nor creating databases nor PHP.

Here are some guidelines to follow when embarking on any web project which may help you to avoid a bad situation:

1) ALWAYS register the domain yourself. This will ensure the registration is made in your own name, with your own credit card. The holder of the card is ultimately the one who owns the domain

2) ALWAYS pay for your own web hosting, with your own credit card. The holder of the card is ultimately the one who owns the domain.

3) If your web “designer” or technician sees it necessary to change any password, you should be notified IMMEDIATELY of any such change, in writing.

4) NEVER allow another person to register the domain “for you” , nor to acquire hosting on your behalf. Never put a middleman between you and your domain, nor your hosting.

5) Cpanel hosting allows easy installation of various server features, programs and functionality in seconds. Look for Cpanel hosting, and ensure you get your Cpanel log in. If you buy from a reseller or your web “designer” ,  make sure your account is not subject to the whim of that “designer” who may feel put out if you seek someone to work on your web site with a different skill set.

following these few simple guidelines will help to avoid problems. Also make sure that to your people can work together as technician and artist to create a beautifukl web site that functions to perfection.

I once had a blog on Blogspot

the traffic did not come as I once thought

Then without fear,

I moved it to here

now every day

the people come and they say

they found it thanks to googlebot.

Recently, Teknogeekz  got involved in something that was somewhat out of the normal comfort zone, a Classified Advertising System for Banderenews.com. The system can be seen at pvShopper.com.

In the past they had manually posted all classifieds as HTML. As the demand for classified ads seemed to be growing, that task was becoming more and more time consuming.

We started with a low cost off the shelf script and have applied some customizations. We did not do much with the visual appearance because it already seemed to match the classic Banderasnews colors, although not the newest colors. We had to take into account that Banderasnews.com is in flux.

Again teknogeekz lived up to the challenge that was a bit out of the comfort zone and the system is currently up and operating. One of the larger challenges was to make category specific display ads appear.  In other words the ads displayed on the right hand side you will see change as you change categories. Few categories however have the custom ads as most appear from the same pool. You will see different ads in Health and beauty than in business opportunities. Most notably however the ads in the erotic section are completely different than those anywhere else on the site. Most categories share some common ads if not all.

So with this latest project, Teknogeekz is once again proving its diversity.

More information on this and some other projects for banderasnews can be found on our our projects section. The direct link to the entry can be found here

Welcome to the all new Teknogeekz Blog. For continuity I first want to point out the location of my previous blog posts, which have now been moved here. That URL is markosjal.blogspot.com and it now redirects you back here.

So while this still has that new car look and feel you may not see much here, but hope you will take the time to review my older posts.

Meanwhile I will be getting under the hood here to see how I might make this better!