The Write Spot, LLC

Need inexpensive, reliable conferencing? Try Conferencegroup.com

With more people working out of their home and telecommuting, conference calls have become a regular occurrence. I have at least one or two such calls a week, so finding an affordable audio conferencing provider is a priority.

However, those so-called free audio conference companies are less than ideal. First of all, they are not free, since you have to pay long distance charges when calling into their service. Second, the quality is always problematic. The one I was using last week would not take my conference number no matter how many times I tried. Plus, my calls are often dropped.

Instead, if you are looking for a audio, video or web conferencing solution, check out the Conference Group at conferencegroup.com. Since 1999, they have been providing conferencing services including audio conferencing, video conference services, and web conferencing with a focus on quality customer service and customization.

Audio conferencing services

The Conference Group offers a low price of 2½ cents per minute through their Together Talk® program. This service can accommodate up to 99 participants and offers toll-free access from the United States and Canada. (Canadian toll free access is 3½ cents to the host.)

If your long distance rates are 2½ cents or more, you will be saving money by signing up. There are no contracts or minimum commitments. You just need to sign up and give them your credit card and billing information.

Why small businesses need call centers

Do you find you spend more time answering the phone than working on your business? Using a call center or an answering service provides stress relief and helps your small business deal with your clients and business partners in a more professional manner.

When to consider using a call center or answering service

• You’re a soloprenuer who wants to give the appearance of having an office staff.
• You’re a work at home parent who can’t take calls when the baby is awake or when the kids are home from school.
• You work around your family’s schedule and want to make sure customer calls are handled 24/7 without interrupting family time.
• You have customers overseas who call when you or your staff is home asleep.
• The volume of calls is more than your business can handle.
• You find yourself spending more time answering customer service calls than drumming up new business.

Do your customers complain they only get a busy signal or voice mail? Are they tired of waiting hours to get a call back? Maybe it’s time to do some research into call center services.

Cozi helps families get it done

Cozi.com is an Internet-based service that helps busy families manage multiple schedules, track shopping and to-do lists, organize household chores, and stay in communication - all in place.

Cozi where were you a few years ago when I needed you?

Before I was professional blogger and social media consultant and was “just a mom,” I used a day planner to keep track of my family’s schedule. As I started to volunteer with my mom’s club and as a board member at my children’s school, I started using the calendars in Microsoft Outlook. When I got tired of my husband calling to ask me what we were doing that weekend, I synched Outlook with Google Calendar. Then I bought a Palm Pilot to take my calendar, shopping lists, and contacts with me wherever I went.

Maybe if I had know about Cozi, I could have saved myself a lot of time and expense.

Family life simplified

Cozi is a FREE web service that helps you manage a lot of stuff. To get started, just open a Cozi account. From your personalized Home Page, you can access all of Cozi’s features in one place either on your PC or on your cell phone. And you don’t have to download any software. (The only exception is the Cozi Outlook Toolbar.)

If I didn’t already have calendars set up in Outlook and synched to Google Calendar, I’d use Cozi Calendar. The cool thing about it is that if you do use Outlook you can sync your work and home calendars with the Cozi Outlook Toolbar.

Cozi Lists are great for organizing grocery, shopping and to-do lists. If you have other family members with online access, for example a spouse or teenagers, you can send them quick messages, reminders, and updates.

If blogging isn’t your thing because it’s too time consuming to set up, you can use the Cozi Family Journal to record family memories. The Cozi Collage screen saver download lets you build a a screen saver has appointment reminders built into it.

Clorox is listening to moms

In Clorox's Battle to go Green by Anya Kamenetz of Fast Company magazine (September 2008), new mom and Clorox marketing executive Jessica Buttimer had noticed how fellow moms were discussing natural “green” cleaners even though only 1% of the market was held by brands like Method and Seventh Generation.

When moms talk, Clorox listens. Surveys showed that 44% of consumers were interested in buying green cleaners. So what was stopping them? Buttimer and her team identified three major reasons:

1. Doubts that natural products cleaned as well as traditional cleansers.
2. Expense - most green cleaners cost twice as much as other products.
3. Inconvenience since green products are usually only available at stores like Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s.

Well, Clorox has met all these concerns with their new line of Green Works products:

1. The Green Works products I have tried, including the new Green Works dishwashing liquid and the Green Work's Natural Glass & Surface Cleaner and their Natural All-Purpose Cleaner I previously reviewed work great. (And thanks to Clorox for sending me samples to try out.)
2. Green Works products are a little more expensive than traditional cleaning products. However, compared to other eco-friendly cleaners, they’re a bargain.
3. Green Works are available at your local supermarket, discount store, and even at places like Walgreens.

Now that people are watching their pennies, Clorox has even a bigger advantage over products like Seventh Generation. People will still want to be as green as possible, but want to save money, too. For many, Clorox will be good enough – not too harsh on the environment and not too tough on the wallet either.

Oh, and did I mention the products smell great, too?

Sony gets you where you want to go: the Sony NV-U83T portable navigation system

In my ongoing romance with the Sony brand, the folks at Rocket XL sent me the Sony nav-u™ portable navigation device (NV-U83t) to review.

Ironically, I had just purchased a Navigon 2100 3.5-Inch Portable GPS Navigator for my husband, Paul, a few weeks earlier based on the Navigon 2100 review at Terry White’s Tech Blog, and that I could get it for less than $100 at Staples thanks to it being on sale and a $25 off coupon I had.

Paul is very happy with his Navigon, especially after using it on a recent business trip to the East Coast. I’ve only used it once and there are some features I love it on that the Sony nav-u doesn’t have. First it warns you when you go over the speed limit. (Paul promptly disabled this. Then again I have more speeding tickets than he has and need these warnings.) It also has 3D Reality View™, which gives you the feel of driving into the city. (When we drive into Denver we see a realistic silhouette of the city skyline on the GPS unit.)

However, I don’t want to compare the Navigon to the Sony GPS too much. The Navigon is a wonderful unit for the price, but it’s much smaller (3.5” compared to Sony Nav-U’s 4.8”) and has less bells and whistles.

The Sony GPS comes with some amazing features like:

• Bluetooth hands free communication so you can make and receive calls on the go.

I don’t use Bluetooth and don’t talk on the phone and drive, so I didn’t use this feature. However, if this is something that is important to you, and your car doesn’t come with a Bluetooth function in the radio, it’s certainly worth paying extra for this feature.

• Position Plus so when GPS signals are temporarily interrupted, such as when driving through a tunnel, the nav-u NV-U83T will keep you on-track by using multiple sensors to monitor your position relative to the map.

I didn’t go up to the Eisenhower Tunnel to test this, but if you frequently travel tunnels or places with many large overpasses, this feature may be a necessity.

• RDS-TMC Traffic Messaging Channel, which gives you real time traffic information radio reception so you can monitor traffic conditions. It also automatically re-route you around trouble spots. (This is a subscription service. You get a 90-day free trial. A yearly subscription is $49.99.)

I didn’t use this much either, since I don’t travel during rush hour. (One of the advantages of working from home). However, it did identify some of the construction on the roads and highways, though not all of them like the major overnight construction that we have here in Colorado.

Other Sony nav-u features I liked were:

• Dual view - 3D Junction Guide. This gives you more information about highway merge scenarios. (See picture to the right.)
• Detailed maps. Since it’s has a larger screen, the Sony unit can include more detail like surrounding street names.
• Text to speech technology. It’s almost as good as the computer talking to you on Star Trek. However, I wish Majel Barrett (the voice of the Enterprise’s computer) was hired by Sony to do the voice on the GPS. The voice was a little flat. Our friends’ GPS in their Land Rover has a British accent, which is charming and makes me think that Q from the James Bond movies will jump out of the boot any second.
• The main map view shows an estimated time of arrival. This is great to know, so when your kids ask, “Mom when will we be there?” you can tell them with pinpoint accuracy. Or you can use it to figure out how late you will be to your next appointment, so you can sweat bullets accordingly.

Sparkplug U helps you make money from home

If you’re a fan of Wendy Wendy Piersall, founder of the popular Sparkplugging *:) Blog Network (formerly eMoms at Home) check out her latest project, SparkplugU. She launched SparkplugU in response to the need in the Sparkplugging community for solid, practical, trusted advice in a more structured format on how to start and run a business from home.

Wendy’s dream has been to offer affordable training for anyone who wants to learn how to be their own boss and control their own career. This is great for not only for freelancers like me, but for stay at home caregivers who are looking to make some money on the side.

Wendy doesn’t promise instant riches. Instead, she delivers quality lessons in an understandable format taught by expert faculty members. Bottom line: the classes at SparkplugU will help you make money from home and start or market your business.

Each class provides:

• A Course Outline - What you can expect to learn by the end of the class.
• Prerequisites - What you need to know before you take a particular class
• Course Materials - Some classes will include course materials in the registration cost. But there are no surprise additional expenses. If there are additional books required, you will know exactly what you need up front.
• Refund Policy - You can cancel after the first session of any live class they offer. Self-paced downloadable classes are non-refundable.

I was so impressed that I signed up for the “Diversify Your Income Workshop” with Wendy Piersall and Marla Tabaka. It’s for bloggers and solo business owners who are looking for income diversification.

So what are you waiting for? Browse their current classes now and get started on building your dream career today!

Norton 360 Version 2.0 brought to you without interruptions

My PC has been on the fritz. At first anything using Flash locked up both Internet Explorer and Firefox, so I uninstalled it. Then I couldn't load more than one or two tabs in either Internet browser. After that my toolbars weren't loading in IE. (I need those StumbleUpon and Google toolbars, dammit.) And since I live my life online - from blogging to social bookmarking to Twittering - my work output started to slow down to a crawl.

Luckily I had my laptop as backup, but that meant taking the time to transfer files, and set up all the websites I need to do my my job as a community moderator at a popular women's social networking site. Of course, that ate up major amounts of time that I could have used for blogging.

The problem kept getting worse, and running my spyware and virus software didn't help. I finally decided it was time to take my PC into my local computer shop, which meant more time tracking my computer guy down (he's moving his shop right now) and unplugging my system.

Five days later I have my PC back, good as new. According to my computer guy, he had to run several types of security programs to get all the viruses off my computer, as well as reinstall IE, load some Windows updates, and do some general cleanup. (Tip: don't leave all those unused icons on your desktop - they eat up your computer's memory.)

I was dismayed to find out the highly recommended spyware and virus programs I use don't keep my PC completely protected. This is why I'm thrilled that the folks at Symantec sent me Norton 360 Version 2.0 to review.