I am expecting my beta invitation from Republic Wireless very soon.

In case you don’t know Republic is a new cell phone company. They want to pass off most of your wireless services to WiFi. I think that’s a great idea and I’m mostly close to a WiFi signal when I’m using my phone. In exchange they have a really good rate ($19/month). I’ll write more about this experiment once I get my new phones

What does this have to do with MagicJack you ask?

I’m currently a T-Mobile customer, I also use T-M for my home phone. They have a really cool VoIP telephone service called @home that works really well. They give you a router that accepts a SIM card (or 2) and I ported my home phone to that card way back when porting your number was new. You plug your phone into your router and it just works. You makes all your phone calls over the Internet. It costs $15/month up from $10 originally. It’s still a good deal, but I’m not sure they will let me keep it if I drop my cell phones.

I thought I would check out MagicJack as an alternative. It seemed like a good deal, you don’t need to plug it in to a computer anymore and I figured VoIP is VoIP, so the quality should be the same.
My MagicJack arrived and I spent several hours trying to get it to work.

I plugged it in to my computer, installed the software, got my phone number and activated it. I plugged the MJ in to the power and my network, then plugged in the phone…
Nothing, but a message saying it couldn’t connect to the Internet. I plugged it in to my router and my switch. Nothing worked. I plugged my computers into the same wires and they worked fine, so I know that the network was connected to the Internet.

Near as I can tell, the problem may lie with port forwarding or my DNS settings. I love OpenDNS and wasn’t about to mess with that, so I started looking for other options.

That’s when I bumped into NetTalk. They offer the same service as MJ, but their prices are better and shipping is free. For $5 less than the MJ+ I can get a box that connects to the Internet by WiFi (if it works). That can save me a router port and let’s me put the box many more places. NetTalk also gives you a lot more free stuff with the basic plan (29.95/yr) including: Voicemail, Call Waiting, Caller ID, 3-Way Calling, 411, e-911, and more.

I also found out, in advance, there was a $20 charge to port my current phone number to Magic Jack. I thought was high, but not really a big issue. Then, I was really mad to find out after I got the unit that there was an additional $10 a year charge to keep that number. They only have to do that once, I thought that was much too much. Looks like it’s free to do that with NetTalk, for the time being, at least.

So, if it works, there’s no contest. I sent back the MagicJack and Ordered the NetTalk box.
I’ll let you know what happens.

If you are in the Pittsburgh area or Visalia CA, let me recommend the Business Exchange Networking Group to you.

If you’re in business, it’s a great way to promote yourself, meet other like minded people and open your network a bit more. It’s been the best leads tool for me.

One day a month or more (4 locations in The ‘Burgh). It costs $18 for the lunch (tip, tax)
No membership, no obligation. Networking is a great way to expand your business.

http://blxnetworking.com/

I cannot say this enough. Make sure your hosts can contact you.

I just had a situation with a client where their email suddenly stopped working. She had many email accounts and only one stopped.

After several hours and many emails back and forth with me, we were both baffled and she was frustrated. Then she tried to bring up the site and low and behold there was a GoDaddy page telling her that the domain had expired. Apparently the credit card that was used for auto renew was now old and the contact information that GoDaddy had was no longer used.

They renewed the domain and all is well again, but there was a real possibility that they could have lost their name. There’s usually a little leeway, but as soon as a domain name actually expires it’s almost always instantly swooped up by speculators. They will sell it back to you at a profit or in many cases just put up a page of ads and use the traffic that you’ve built up. There’s also the possibility that you will never get it back.

I also recently had a customer who was using some old software on their site and it was hacked. They had a good webhost who saw the malicious activity and shut it down right away. Because the webhost had good, current, contact information, they were able to notify their client right away and let them know what happened. They were able to contact me quickly and we got it cleaned up and running again in just a couple of hours.

The lesson is that if you have a website, the people that you are relying on to host and run it need to be able to contact you in the event of a problem. They won’t usually call you, they won’t usually send you a letter, they will email you. You need to be sure that they can reach you or you can make a bad situation much worse.

Take a little time and visit your domain name and website host(s) and be sure that your contact information is current. You’ll be glad you did.

Last post I mentioned that thought “connected TVs” would limit your choices too much.

This looks like an interesting little box running android.
Just a browser and media player. All you really need

Disclaimer:
I haven’t tried this box myself, but the specs look good. I had Android 2.2 on my phone and it’s pretty good.

Only $100 on Ebay

If you know me you probably know that I dropped cable TV about two years ago.

My friends asked me how I was going to be able to see anything at all with just an antenna and an Internet connection. I had done my research, so I knew what I could get and also believed that it would only get better (and it has!)

The other day someone mentioned to me that “connected” TVs were now everywhere and asked if they should buy one. When I said no, they were quite surprised. I explained to him that connected TVs would work much like my current blue-ray player does and would only provide them with a tiny fraction of what is available on the entire web.

Sites would be available like Netflix and Hulu-Plus, but usually not regular Hulu and you would never, ever, ever get a site like tv-links.eu which is miles above Hulu-Plus, but probably not one the entertainment companies want you to know about.

I told them to get a regular HDTV, perhaps splurge on an LED model and take the savings to buy a small laptop with an HDMI port. Then just plug that into his TV. He would have the entire web at his fingertips. I also mentioned some other ideas I’ve written about before or wait until there’s a TV that’s also a regular web browser.

As an afterthought I mentioned that the players in the connected TV game were also starting to add more and more advertisements. I don’t mind a few ads, preferably something I’m interested in, but there seems to be more piling on every day. The media controlled sites like Hulu seem to be out of control. In the case of Hulu-Plus they want you to pay and still watch commercials.

I saw more evidence of all this today and I thought I would share it with you

Tremor Adds Connected TVs to its Online Video Network

Guest blog post by Meg Huwar, Huwar Marketing & Media Services.

They say nothing in life is free…well not anymore!

Introducing SpOfferZ! SpOfferZ (Special Offers) is a website developed by me.

SpOfferz features coupons for discounts on products and services. Unlike most of the “daily deals” this site provides advertisers with one free coupon. The coupon includes an offer that gives people a reason to try your product or service. Each coupon is good for at least 30 days and at the end of that time, advertisers can make a new SpOffer (Offer). In addition to the free Spoffer, there are opportunities to purchase additional SpOfferz or to place ads on the SpOfferZ website. For more information go to SpOfferZ.com

Go ahead give it a try…Because finally something is free!

Last month I decided to put Google AdSense on my SpOfferZ website.

You may know SpOfferZ is a site where businesses can upload coupons and special offers. They get one free SpOffer every 30 days. After 30 days it’s deleted and then they can add another free offer for 30 days and so on. Visitors to the site can print and use the SpOfferZ for free. It’s a solid concept and something that will continue to grow.

One of the questions I get asked most often is, “If it’s free how will you ever make any money?”
That one question seems to scare off more businesses than anything else. The short answer is that we are selling advertising, along with offering premium packages where merchants can have more than one SpOffer or have it last longer than 30 days.

The site is built in a way that it can run itself, even on a pretty large scale with little or no cost to me. I believe that information, once it’s digitized becomes an infinite resource with almost no cost to store or distribute. So, my primary goal initially is to build traffic and boost the number of businesses offering SpOfferZ using those free, unlimited resources, not really selling anything until it’s more established.

Of course, it would be nice to make some money and one of the really nice thing about the Google Adsense program is that they let you place advertisements on your site, no matter what it’s size or traffic and will pay you every time a visitor clicks on one of those ads. I’ve used it before on this site and several customer’s sites with pretty good results. I placed these ads on the SpOfferZ site thinking it would be a good way to make a few bucks until the site does build some large scale traffic and momentum.

We were doing pretty well, had made a few bucks and things seemed fine until last week when we got an email from Google telling us that our account had been disabled for “invalid click activity”. I have never received an email like this, but I knew just what it meant. They suspected us of clicking on our own ads to get paid or perhaps hiring someone else to do it. I know we didn’t do that, but it’s impossible to find out from Google what the exact problem is, so it makes the issue very difficult to explain. I did tell them that we didn’t do anything wrong that we know of ourselves and are following their rules.

This got me thinking that if you know what you’re doing it may be just as easy to disable a competitors account as it would be to drain the funds of competitors buying ads. Since Google doesn’t tell anyone what they are doing to combat click fraud it may not be public knowledge, but I’m sure the methods are available. It’s also possible that they are more concerned about their advertisers being robbed than they are losing websites posting their ads. I would probably error on their side. From what I can tell Google does a pretty good job of policing all of this fraud, but if they aren’t how would anyone even know?

I filed an appeal and today they told us that they have it and will check into what’s wrong. Unfortunately no one but Google even knows what’s wrong, let alone how to fix it, so it could go either way. There are other advertising alternatives and we may have to switch, but I would rather not. I’ll let you know how this turns out.

I would love to hear if you or your business have had any experience with this kind of thing and any possible Adsense alternatives.

Currently I’m building a series of social media classes designed to help businesses who want to get into social marketing.
Things like facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ can be very useful, but also very intimidating for businesses.

My idea is to have a series on ongoing classes that will help businesses improve their market and sales. I believe the best way to do that is to be social. Ask what their concerns and questions are and then with the help of the group answer them.

What I’m looking for now are any suggestions, questions or requests that you might have or would like to see in such a course.
It’s not just businesses either, although I believe that will be my focus, individuals are welcome to comment here or if you prefer send me an email.

If you know anyone who is running a non-profit organization you probably things are just as tough for them, or maybe more, as the rest of us.

Google has been offering non-profits free advertising for quite some time, but many don’t realize it. I had even forgotten about it until I saw this post. You should share this with every non-profit organization you know.

Nonprofits: Get Free Advertising From Google AdWords

Someone in one of my groups on LinkedIn asked “what is the best way to allocate (promotional) resources?”

Asking how best to allocate their limited resources (time and $$)

I answered and thought I’d share it here, you may have heard this before.

Start with the free stuff. There are some good ones
http://www.lillicotch.com/Blog/?s=marketing

When paying, try anything that makes sense to you, but be sure to take the time to track how much/many you get from every single ad/promotion. You need to know if you are spending $1 to make $10 or $10 to make $1

Otherwise you might as well take your money to a casino.