Hurricane Earl is already doing damage to people’s productivity.  Just check out the trending topics on Twitter.  Conversation about Earl is hitting a high, as the Twitterati focus in on this new distraction.

Fortunately, even if Earl does touch down on Thursday as some are predicting, it doesn’t have to impede your productivity. Natural disasters happen, but with modern collaboration tools like Calliflower, business can still carry on. Calliflower has local dial numbers over most of the Eastern Seaboard of the United States and Canada.

So stay at home, make yourself some hot tea, pick up the phone and make a few conference calls.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Hurricane Earl heads for US coast (bbc.co.uk)
• Hurricane Earl Projected Path (MAP) (huffingtonpost.com)

In beta since March of last year, Skype Connect (formerly Skype for SIP) is now officially launched.  The purpose of Skype Connect is to allow companies to connect corporate phone systems to Skype, letting customers who use Skype contact the company via an IP call, and allowing the company to take advantage of Skype’s cheap outbound calling rates to make outbound calls. According to Skype, some 2400 companies have been using the beta since last year.

We have been using Skype Connect to allow customers to connect to Calliflower conference calls via Skype Connect since late 2009.  Four reasons we use it:

1. The service is solid, and the voice quality is excellent (it’s Skype, after all).
2. Skype Connect allows us to service customers in countries where we simply can’t obtain local phone numbers – China and India for example.
3. The price is excellent.  At $6.95/mo for unlimited calling, per channel, it’s very affordable.
4. Skype Connect is a flat rate price per channel, like Calliflower’s flat rate pricing.  It’s affordable, low risk, and easily forecast.
5. Our customers love it!  Since introducing Skype calling to our customers in January, usage has steadily ramped.  Today, Skype callers represent 11% of our volume, growing by an average of 16% every month.

Oops… that’s five reasons!

Interested in finding out how good Skype Connect really is?  Click here to call Calliflower from your Skype client.  You’ll be suprised.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Skype Wants To Power Your Corporate Phone System (gigaom.com)

It might seem curmudgeonly of me to say this, but I am baffled by the attention generated by Google’s announcement that they will add voice calling to Gmail. Granted, merging the voice mail box and the email box is a very friendly move for users.  Allowing an immediate follow up to an email, via voice, is also a nice usability feature.  Aren’t these staples of modern day unified communications systems?

Google Voice doesn’t often show up on my radar any more.  It’s not available to those of us who live north of the 49th parallel, so I don’t use it.  That’s a shame.  If Google Voice did supply service here, I would surely take advantage of all of its super cool features like call screening, one number, voice transcription and more. For reasons that are unclear to me, though, especially since Google offers unlimited calls to the United States and Canada, Canadians don’t have access.  Maybe it’s payback for the defeat of the US Men’s Hockey Team at the Olympics?  Who knows?!  That’s as good a theory as any, I suppose.

These days, if I want one-click calling from within email, I turn to Skype.  And perhaps that’s the reason Google is adding these features to Gmail now – Skype already has them, and word on the street is that Skype and Google are headed for a showdown.

Skype also has a global international network, that includes Canada.

So how about it, Team Google? Whaddya say?

Related articles by Zemanta

• Google Tests Out Voice Calling In Gmail (searchenginejournal.com)
• It’s official: Google Voice comes to Gmail — phone booths on the way (downloadsquad.com)

Friday morning I got a call from a CBC reporter named Laura.  She had seen me tweet that I planned to turn off Facebook Places and wanted to know more for a planned piece on the Ottawa Morning radio show.  My reasons boil down to the following:

Control.  Although I’m a heavy user of social media, I’ve always approached it with caution.  What information do I want to share, how, and with whom?  When people ask me about Facebook and privacy, my answer is pretty simple – if you don’t want pictures of yourself at a keg-party on Facebook, then don’t publish them, and don’t befriend people who would publish them without your permission.  It’s early going in the location game.  I’d like to see how this data will be used, and how Facebook responds to the inevitable pressure to reveal more.

Benefit.  I’m a pretty heavy user of location enabled applications.  However, I rarely publish my location.  I’m not dating, nor do I hang out in downtown clubs waiting for my friends to join me.  There isn’t an obvious purpose or benefit that I can see in publishing my location at this point in time.

Privacy. Location is pretty private information.  Publishing location has risks.  I rarely publish my location on Twitter or Facebook today.  The accuracy available with today’s GPS enabled phones simply compounds the risk.

As I said to Laura, I’m from a generation who grew up reading and internalizing Orwell’s 1984.  We are rushing headlong toward Orwell’s surveillance society, if not the dystopia he wrote about.  It’s fashionable to say that privacy is dead.  Perhaps it is, or perhaps we simply need better tools to manage that privacy.

Early this morning we had a support request from a customer in the UK looking for a Portuguese teleconference dial-in number for a call he was planning later today.  Good news!  We were able to source and provision a national number for Portugal very quickly.

If you have callers who need to reach your meetings from Portugal, they can now do so by simply dialing +351 308 800 181.

Related articles by Zemanta

• iotum Adds Skype Access to Calliflower Conferencing Calling (eon.businesswire.com)

I’ve been doing a ton of customer service recently.  Pat, who does sales for us and handles a lot of customer service related calls, has been off at his son’s wedding.  So I’ve been picking up the phone, selling Calliflower subscriptions, and helping people to understand our offerings as well as the odd bit of tech support.  Frankly, it’s a good thing for everyone in an organization, and I enjoy it as well.

One of the most rewarding things about talking to customers is problem solving their real issues.  For example, the other day I was chatting with a customer and the conversation went something like this:

Customer:  “What are your per minute charges?”

Me: “We don’t have any.”

Customer: “Really?   No minute charges?”

Me: “Yup.  There’s enough margin in our monthly fees that we don’t have to charge extra for usage.  And, frankly, it keeps our expenses down as well since we’re not generating bills and all that kind of nonsense.  So it’s good for everybody.”

Customer: “Cool!  So what are your international rates?”

Me: “We don’t have any of those either.  It costs the same to use Calliflower for your conference call whether you’re calling in from Sydney Australia, New York, or London.  Heck you can have callers in every country and city we serve and we’re STILL going to charge you just $50/month.”

Customer: “You’re kidding me, right?  There’s a hidden charge somewhere.  What’s your boss going to think?”  I chuckled at that.

It went on like this for a little bit more before this person was convinced that I wasn’t kidding.

Then she asked “Do you have the ability to assign a unique code to calls?  Like a security code?” Calliflower doesn’t, it turns out, but then again she wasn’t really looking for a security code.  Some more conversation revealed that she was tracking security codes on her current system, so that she could know which clients to bill the call to.

Me: “Ah, you must be a law firm and you want to bill back your disbursements to your customers, right?”  BINGO!

Me: “So, given that the service is only $50 per month, do you think you’ll still want to do that?”

Customer: “I never thought of that, you know.  It’ll probably cost us more to figure out the billing than to just eat the $50!”

Moral of the story:  When you know your own margins, and how your own customers behave, you can often find creative ways to solve their problems. Sometimes it takes a bit of probing to figure out what the problem really is, though.

Last week while I was vacationing, I saw this in action first hand.  We did a whale watching tour off Vancouver Island, which is a pricey undertaking.   So I asked the tour company what kind of guarantees they would give me, hoping that they might offer a partial refund at least if we didn’t see any whales.

“We can’t offer a guarantee that you’ll see whales, sir.”  “Oh, that’s too bad.”  “But if you don’t see any, we’ll take your group out again, and again, until you do.”

Made me feel good, and I suspect, given the number of whales we saw, that it’s a pretty rare occurrence for them not to see whales.  And here’s a few pictures of how magnificent they were!  Check out the big guy doing the back flip.  He surfaced no more than 10 yards from our boat, did two of those, and then dove underneath, where he surfaced on the other side and breached four more times.  What a show off!

Over the last six weeks we’ve had the benefit of summer intern Jon Saunders working away at web site projects for us.  He’s been looking into SEO, cranking out content, and doing tons of work on simply making our web site run better.  The latest project?  An online “How to” guide to help you make conference calls with Calliflower.  Check it out.  Whether you’re an old hand at Calliflower, or brand new to our service, you’re bound to find something of value in this short web guide.

Microsoft has finally announced the Xbox Live titles that will be available on Windows Phone 7, and according long time Microsoft watcher Mary-Jo Foley, the company has said that games will be front and center for the Windows 7 platform.  Marrying the successful XBOX franchise to Windows Phone is clearly an attempt to counter the success that Apple has had with games on iPhone. It helps that the games look pretty cool too.

Provided the XBOX experience doesn’t interfere with business use of the phone (Microsoft’s traditional franchise), it’s a strategy that might work. Tens of millions of XBOX’s have been sold, and Microsoft has a devoted and hardcore fanbase who might flock to Windows Phone 7 as a result.

If successful, expect to see competitors in the smartphone space quickly form alliances with Sony and Nintendo, the other two giants of the gaming space. RIM? Nokia?  Or perhaps Google has a play with Android?

What do you think?

Related articles by Zemanta

• Microsoft unveils Windows Phone 7 games (telegraph.co.uk)
• Windows Phone 7 to Have Xbox Live at Launch (jkontherun.com)
• Microsoft Shows Off WINDOWS PHONE 7 Launch Games (geektyrant.com)
• Microsoft links new smart phones to Xbox Live (independent.co.uk)
• Microsoft links new smart phones to Xbox Live (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Big list of Xbox Live games for Windows Phone 7 launch (techflash.com)

As the West Coast Trail Express sped off into the distance early the morning of July 31, I realized I’d made a terrible mistake. “I’ve forgotten my poles,” I said to Janice.  “They’re sitting in my parents foyer back in Esquimalt.”

I’ve used trekking poles when hiking for the past 15 years.  You can go faster on an ascent, and they take the pressure off your knees on a descent.  Here I was, at the start of a 5 day packing trip – the first I’ve done in several years – and I had left the darn poles behind.

The Juan de Fuca Marine trail stretches along 47 kilometres of rugged coastline a little over an hour’s drive west from Victoria.  The terrain varies from beach to forest, and flat to steep ascent.  Those scant 47 kilometres pack over 2,700m (approximately 9,000 feet) of elevation gain and loss in, of which nearly 1,000m is on the second day alone. It’s as tough as anything I’ve ever hiked.

And I had forgotten my poles.  Ouch. Big error. Three days later I was feeling the pain as my big toes, hammered by the repeated impact of climbing up and down the headlands on the trail, turned first a deep purple, and then ultimately black.

So, what does that have to with a blog about technology and technology start-ups?  It turns out that there are a lot of lessons start-up founders, or indeed any business people, can learn from distance hiking.

You’re only as good as your plan. You can never be better, you can only be lucky.  Without my poles, I still made it through this trip.  I taped my heels and toes with duct tape (the most versatile hiking aid known to man), and the supply of Advil in my first aid kit numbed the pain in my toes to the point that it was bearable. I had a contingency plan.  Every business needs one too.

You’re only as good as your team. There were eight of us on this trip, and it became pretty clear early on that if we were all going to enjoy the outing, then we would have to shift the weight from some in the group to others.  Some were simply carrying too much.  Everybody carried to their ability, nobody complained, and we had a great time. On a hike there’s no room for a slacker, nor is there room for a diva in a start-up.

You must focus on the essentials. In the case of backpacking, the key determining factor is weight.  There comes a point when that one extra kilogram suddenly turns your pack from a comfortable tool into a medieval torture device.  Every beginner hiker learns this lesson the hard way.  It makes you ruthless about cutting out non-essentials, and sometimes causes you to go to extremes to reduce weight.  One hiker I know routinely cuts the handles off his toothbrushes.  A start-up needs the same focus on the essentials – what are the keys to success, and what are unnecessary luxuries?

Getting to the end means making incremental steps toward your goal. You can’t set out to hike the entire trail in the first day.  And by the end of the second day, you’ll be wondering whether you’ve made a mistake.  Getting to the finish line means taking incremental steps – climbing one hill at a time, passing one way point followed by another, and not giving up.  Sounds awfully familiar doesn’t it? You achieve the big goals, whether in life or in business, by focusing on the small steps that get you to the finish.

Five days after we set out, we emerged no worse for the wear, hiked 3 kilometers into Port Renfrew, had a nice cold beer at the Port Renfrew Hotel, and hitched a ride back to Victoria with the West Coast Trail Express.  It was five days of paradise, hiking the shorelines and temperate rainforest of BC, camping on the beaches, watching the whales and otters swim by.

Who cares if my toes are a little bruised!

Here are a few photos, and you can find plenty more in my BC 2010 Flickr set.

Sunset, Chin Beach

Waterfall, Sombrio Beach

Rocks, Chin Beach

Driftwood at sunset

Payzant Creek

Tide Pools, Botanical Beach

Trail’s End

There’s nothing that new in the virtual PBX business, right? Well, if you think that then you likely haven’t heard about Ringio, which just came out of beta last week.

Ringio is a cloud based voice service for businesses. A hybrid of CRM, call-center, and PBX, Ringio is probably the perfect answer for any small business (especially a start-up) that wants to look like a big business to its customers.  It’s a classic Voice 2.0 application – mashing up telephony, the web, and mobility into an affordable and sophisticated suite of business communications tools.

• Web-based tools. They claim 10 minutes to configure, and I believe them.  You can either bring your own PBX and use Ringio for screen-pops, IVR, tracking, and more, or use the Ringio Virtual PBX.  Even if you have an existing PBX, you’ll probably want to replace some of its functionality with the Ringio equivalent.  Ringio’s web based capabilities are probably better than what you already have, and because they’re evolving in “web time”, they’ll get better even faster.
• Smart Call Routing. This is way beyond basic find/follow, skills based routing or even time of day routing (all of which Ringio supports).  With Ringio, callers can be greeted by name, automatically routed to the last person they spoke with, and allocated priority based on “VIP” status. And as calls are received, screen pops show contact information, relationship status, the last communication with that person and call history as well.
• Smart Voice Mail. It’s a simple feature, but when you leave a voicemail for a Ringio user, Ringio sends you a voicemail receipt.  Need to “nudge” the person who you left the voicemail for? Well, you could leave another voice mail or… email the receipt back to them and ask when they’re available to talk.
• Google Contacts Sync. These days so many small businesses are switching to Google for email, calendar and contacts that it only makes sense for Ringo to integrate with Google contacts.  Now when you receive a call, Ringio can pop-up the entire communications history for that customer.

There are tons of additional features, such as Gravatar support for picture caller-ID, an Android based mobile version, toll-free numbers, and a management dashboard for the folks who have to track and pay bills.  And you get all this, for up to 4 users, for $99/month including 2,000 minutes of calling.

What I like most about Ringio is how cleverly they’ve targeted the start-up world.  For example, they’ve decided to use Google Contacts for the address book, rather than try to tap into an enterprise class offering such as Microsoft Exchange.  They assume that people will be mobile and that offices might be virtual, which is another reality in the start-up world.  They’ve priced their offering to match the cost needs of start-up companies. And they leverage the tools, like Gmail and Google Contacts, that start-ups are using today.

If I was starting a company today, or running a small business and looking at replacing an existing PBX, I’d definitely look hard at Ringio. The price is right, and the feature set is guaranteed to please.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Ringio Enhances Cloud Based Voice Service (informationweek.com)