Voxer is here, and its going to help transform the way you do business.

Do you remember the good ole days of Nextel? Back when it was cutting edge? Oh wait, but then I’m sure you also remember the good ole days of the horrible “beeeeeeeeeeeeep” mid-sentence with your speech being cut off and having to start over. True, Nextel had many flaws like that, and audio quality was not much better.

Fast forward to today, and relatively new app called Voxer for both Android and Apple  iOS. Its a free app that really started gaining traction about a year ago. In a nutshell it adds very high quality nextel-like walkie talkie features without the negatives that Nextel had. The system also can be described as voice-text-messaging. Essentially push a button, say what you want to say, and boom the other party hears it, either in real time, or later if they were away. Thats one of the real kickers, unlike Nextel where if you were away when the other party spoke, you missed it. In Voxer, every nugget of speech is sent and stored like a voice-text-message. So you can listen later if you were busy or whatever. Another cool feature is it can GPS stamp each message, with an easy to view map. Great for dispatch purposes in your business.

To use Voxer, you simply download it from either store (iTunes here, Android here), create a new identity or log in with Facebook, sync it with your phone’s address book and/or Facebook, then start chatting with other individual friends, or groups that you join or create. The interface shows a text message style interface. You hold a talk button to record a quick message for the other party, although there’s also an option to listen live to an incoming message that a friend is recording. You can also send text messages within the flow of correspondence.

The system does require a data plan, and works fine on second generation and later phones. It works really slick on 4g as well with the newest iterations of phones.

How will this app help your business? Easy, it gives you near instant walkie-talkie like communication with your staff and other vendors and 3rd parties when needed. No need to give each employee their own phone anymore. With today’s smart-phones and platforms like our EasyVOIP service, your staff can use company resources with little to no impact on their own personal phones minutes, yet still get all the features and benefits of carrying around a company phone. This saves you money, saves them headache of having to carry around two phones and more.

Download the app and check it out. If you want help deploying this or any other app, or want more information about how this can integrate with our EasyVOIP system give us a call today.

Originally Written by %AUTHORLINK%% Originally Posted on Dynamic Computer Specialists

T-Mobile has announced that they will soon be offering the Square Mobile Credit Card Reader for free with any business sign up. If you are not familiar with Square, its an amazing little gadget and app that goes on your smartphone (iPhone or Android) and basically it lets you accept credit card payments quickly, simply, and from anywhere.

Its really great, and it was instrumental when I launched Legendary Jerky. It allowed me and my sales team to accept credit card payments easily while out and about. For T-Mobile to now offer Square with their business mobile plans speaks volumes about what they are trying to do to woo over business clients. It will be interesting to see how this plays out with T-Mobile trying to win back some market share.

Best thing about Square is there is no monthly fee, and the per-transaction fee’s are very reasonable. If you need to accept payments while in the field, you really should check out Square.

How easy is to use Square? Check out these simple steps or watch the video below:

1. Sign up and activate your Square account if you haven’t already.
2. Open the app on your phone by tapping the Square icon:
   
3. Plug the card reader into your 3.5mm headset jack.
4. Input the amount and item description for your payment.A payment for $3.50 with the description “Sticky bun” will look like this:If you have an iPad, you can select a pre-made item from your Item Library by swiping the keypad to the left.

   

5. Swipe quickly and smoothly, making sure the black magnetic strip is facing the thick end of the reader. Having trouble? Try these tips.
6. Once you see the signature screen, have your customer sign with their finger. (Note: If you have signature turned off for payments under $25, this screen will be skipped. More info here.)
7. Tap “Continue” and input your customer’s phone number or email address to deliver a receipt. If you use an iPad that’s connected to a receipt printer, you’ll also see the option to print a receipt. Tip: You can always find your payment history by viewing your Sales History menu in the app or on yourPayments page.
8. You’ll see the final Thank You screen after the payment is completed.

If you’d like to practice swiping before you start charging customers, try a few test swipes with your own card. Visit this article for more information.

Originally Written by %AUTHORLINK%% Originally Posted on Dynamic Computer Specialists

Like you, I used to get “Passwords Headache” all too often. Remember 500 passwords is unfortunately becoming more and more a fact of life and its something we all have to deal with. Passwords were originally created to help us, but these days we are faced with having to remember an ever growing list of passwords to access the websites we need to get to in order to conduct our daily business.

The problem is there is a myriad of different requirements to get in to the variety of sites out there; some are a simple user-id and a password, some have additional security questions as well. It seems that as time goes on there are more and more passwords you have to remember, even for something as simple as buying some Legendary Jerky, but often times is for something business related such as your bank website or to order parts/supplies online, endless passwords!

Like everybody knows, passwords are not always easy to remember, especially with the dizzying array of complexity requirements that many websites employ these days. Most people try only to remember one password, and they use this password on all websites where they need to provide such information which is a big no-no!

We see it all the time where one of these websites gets compromised and since they used the same info and/or password, all of their information is at risk.

This is where a tool like LastPass comes in handy, as it allows you to create a different password for all the websites you are using. It even helps you in generating the complex passwords that some websites require. It stores all these passwords in a secure way and retrieves them automatically when you need them with little effort on your part.

Why use LastPass?

Well, you could use your browser’s “remember password” feature to help you remember your passwords (like Firefox, IE, … and others do), but this technique stores these passwords in an insecure method on your computer. If anyone uses your computer, they can automatically get into everything with the click of a mouse. Besides the fact that LastPass helps you to pick proper passwords, it allows you to share your favorites and login credentials between your Mac at home and PC at work too.

According to LastPass themselves:

• LastPass allows you to stay synchronised; you’ll have access to all your sites and can add new passwords that’ll be available on all your computers
• LastPass catches and supports far more logins than Internet Explorer, Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari, or Opera.
• LastPass has Internet Explorer, Firefox (for Windows/Mac/Linux), Safari (for Mac/Windows), Opera, and Google Chrome versions.
• Access to your passwords on the road
• LastPass Pocket allows you to access your data on your USB drive, Firefox Portable, Google Chrome Portable, and for premium users, IE Anywhere support for browsing from your USB drive
• LastPass has a Form Fill feature which will save you time; it encrypts your sensitive data locally and available on the website
• LastPass is far more convenient than existing site information storage programs available
• LastPass has gone to great lengths to protect your privacy
• Unlike solutions like OpenID and Microsoft Passport, LastPass works within the way the web works today without relying on others.

The best part? LastPass is free, get it here.

Originally Written by %AUTHORLINK%% Originally Posted on Dynamic Computer Specialists