telecommunications

Basic Communication Tools

Specific tools that can be used for communication include telephones, pagers, facsimile machines and Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs). The lines between the devices are blurring. For example, a telephone can now contain all of the functions of a PDA and also access email and the Internet. For this discussion, however, each device will be presented as a separate entity.

• Telephones

  There are many types of telephones and only you can decide which type(s) or combinations of types are right for you.

  Even the standard telephone that is installed in your office has many options. You should start with at least one line that is unique to your business. This line should have the capability to take messages in case it is not answered personally.

  The wireless telephone is becoming a requirement. With a wireless telephone, you can avoid missing calls. The features needed for this type of telephone depend entirely on you and your needs. You can get the basic instrument free by signing up with most carriers, or you can get a model that can receive your email, store your contacts, maintain your calendar and allow you to play interactive games.

  There are many features from which you can choose on standard and wireless phones, such as call waiting, call forwarding, conferencing capabilities and voice mail. There are also many plans and many carriers from which you can choose. Competition has forced options that bundle popular features and usage patterns, making them very cost effective. Be sure to ask questions about your specific needs before selecting a carrier and a plan. When your usage or your needs change, do not hesitate to request information on plans that more closely meet your new set of requirements.

• Telephone Tips

  It is important to treat the telephone as an important business tool. Record a voice mail message that indicates when you will return the call and then continually check your voice mail to return calls promptly.

  Have a separate line for your business phone and your personal phone. Don't have family members pick up or use the business phone. Get any required extra telephone lines installed before you start.

  A remote (voice mail) answering system is usually more desirable than using an answering machine. Voice mail is reliable, reasonable in cost, accessible from anywhere and projects a more business-like image.

  The need for an 800 number is becoming less important because long-distance rates are much more affordable.

  Consider using a headset for both wireless phones and cell phones. It is clearer, safer and you can move about with free arms.

  When leaving phone messages, clearly state your name and phone number at the beginning and the end of the message.

  Be polite in wireless use! Good business courtesy includes avoiding being interrupted by telephone calls when in a meeting or during a business lunch.

• Pagers

  There are many varieties of pagers: those that only receive numeric messages; those that provide both voice and text capabilities; those that have two-way messaging; and, those that have the capability of receiving and sometimes even sending email. They now come in colors and sizes to meet your every need.

  Some devices operate on paging networks, have the features of a PDA, allow you to receive and reply to email messages and the latest models include a cellular telephone. One of the key decision points is the geographic coverage that you will be needing. This coverage can be as limited as your own county or as comprehensive as nationwide. Usage charges increase as coverage expands.

• Pager Tips

  Use the pager with the same polite guidelines as the wireless telephone. Keep the pager in "vibrate" mode when involved in business meetings. There is nothing more distracting than having a pager play music during an important discussion.

  If you use a pager with a wireless telephone, you can manage your interruptions. The one thing that you must do is to make sure that the expectations of those paging are realistic - you will get back to them as quickly as possible, not necessarily immediately.

• Facsimile Machines

  The decision must be made as to whether to get a simple fax machine or whether to get an "all in one" model that not only faxes but also prints and scans. Consideration should be given to your budget and your space constraints. Generally, the simpler the machine, the less problems you will have with it.

  It is very important to get as much memory as possible on your fax. That makes it possible to send at a rate faster than the rate at which the fax can print. Only when the memory is full will the transmission rate slow down to the speed of print.

  Some vendors can provide you with a fax number that works with your email system. Sending a fax to you works just like it does when the fax is being received by another machine but you receive it as an attachment to an email. This can be very handy for those who travel on a frequent basis and are not always near a fax machine.

• Facsimile Tips

  Use a cover page that is appropriate for your company. Remember, this is external communication that reflects your business and your image.

  Use a separate dedicated phone line for your fax machine.

Computers

A computer is such an affordable tool that it should no longer be considered an option for your business!

The following discussion will focus on three basic models - desktop, laptop, personal digital assistants - and the software that makes them work.

Desktop

- This is the most common type of computer, one that is set up to operate in your office. This computer system should include a basic processing unit, a monitor, a modem, a CD drive, a floppy disk drive and a printer. Some type of backup storage should also be considered, such as a Zip drive or a read/write CD.

Computer systems can be purchased for a wide range of prices. The only advice that seems appropriate is to get as much and as fast as you can afford. Given rapid advances in technology, whatever you buy today may quickly become obsolete. Fortunately, this does not mean that the computer you purchase will not meet your business requirements for a much longer period of time.

Laptop

- A laptop computer is portable. A single unit will contain a combination of the capabilities shown for the desktop. It usually does not include a printer so that will have to be purchased as an additional item. Another option is a docking station that allows you to plug your laptop into a unit at your office, giving the capability of using your laptop as the basic processing unit while enjoying the use of a larger monitor and a full-sized keyboard.

Laptops tend to be a bit more expensive than desktops but if you travel and need computing capability, it is worth the extra expense. Once again, get as much capability as you can afford.

Personal Digital Assistants

- Handheld computers, or Personal Digital Assistants (PDA's), are becoming increasingly popular. There are basically two versions of these units: 1) those that use the Palm Pilot operating system and 2) those that use the Microsoft Pocket PC operating system. These units allow you to synchronize your key organizational elements with your computer. In a very small package, you can have your entire contact list and your calendar as well as a list of things to do. Many of these units also allow you to receive and respond to email via wireless or modem transmission. You need never be out of touch!

Software

- The software you purchase is key to making your computer a productivity aid. The operating system, whether it is a PC or a Macintosh, should be loaded onto the system. Many software packages are often bundled into the system at the time of purchase. At the bare minimum, you should have the capability to do word processing, spreadsheets and presentations.

Additionally, you should consider financial and accounting software that is appropriate for your particular business. Keep in mind that many accounting/bookkeeping software packages are not double-entry systems and care must be taken in making the entries correctly.

Auxiliary Products

- There are many products that can be used in conjunction with your computer to enhance the functionality and image of your business. These also require software specifically designed to facilitate their usage.

Types of Communication

Communication is key to any business success! Unless potential clients and customers are aware of your business, they will not have the information to contact you or to purchase your products. When they are aware of your business, they must be able to contact it easily.

Two types of communication are essential - external and internal.

• External communication reaches out to the customer to make them aware of your product or service and to give them a reason to buy. This type of communication includes your brochures, various forms of advertising, contact letters, telephone calls, web sites and anything else that makes the public aware of what you do.

  Image is extremely important in external communication! Your logo should represent who you are; your letterhead should be a selling tool; your telephone message should reflect your professionalism.

• Internal communication is essential to attracting and retaining a talented staff. You must provide the direction for the company by consistently communicating that message; you must motivate your staff through various forms of communication, which can include awards, newsletters, meetings, telephone calls and formal and informal discussions.

Effective communication requires tools and planning. In this session we will discuss those tools, as well as planning guidelines, to facilitate that key element of your business - communication.

The following discussion will be grouped into

1) basic communication tools

2) computers; and

3) the Internet.

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Faster Chips Are Leaving Programmers in Their Dust

Faster Chips

REDMOND, Wash. — When he was chief executive of Intel in the 1990s, Andrew S. Grove would often talk about the “software spiral” — the interplay between ever-faster microprocessor chips and software that required ever more computing power.

The potential speed of chips is still climbing, but now the software they run is having trouble keeping up. Newer chips with multiple processors require dauntingly complex software that breaks up computing chores into chunks that can be processed at the same time.
The challenges have not dented the enthusiasm for the potential of the new parallel chips at Microsoft, where executives are betting that the arrival of manycore chips — processors with more than eight cores, possible as soon as 2010 — will transform the world of personal computing.
The company is mounting a major effort to improve the parallel computing capabilities in its software.
“Microsoft is doing the right thing in trying to develop parallel software,” said Andrew Singer, a veteran software designer who is the co-founder of Rapport Inc., a parallel computing company based in Redwood City, Calif. “They could be roadkill if somebody else figures out how to do this first.”
Mr. Grove’s software spiral started to break down two years ago. Intel’s microprocessors were generating so much heat that they were melting, forcing Intel to change direction and try to add computing power by placing multiple smaller processors on a single chip.
Much like adding lanes on a freeway, the new strategy, now being widely adopted by the entire semiconductor industry, works only to the degree that more cars (or computing instructions) can be packed into each lane (or processor).
The stakes are high. The growth of the computer and consumer electronics industries is driven by a steady stream of advances in both hardware and software, creating new ways to handle audio, video, advanced graphics and the processing of huge amounts of data.
Engineers and computer scientists acknowledge that despite advances in recent decades, the computer industry is still lagging in its ability to write parallel programs.
Indeed, a leading computer scientist has warned that an easy solution to programming chips with dozens of processors has not yet been discovered.
“Industry has basically thrown a Hail Mary,” said David Patterson, a pioneering computer scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, referring to the hardware shift during a recent lecture. “The whole industry is betting on parallel computing. They’ve thrown it, but the big problem is catching it.”
The chip industry has known about the hurdles involved in moving to parallel computing for four decades. One problem is that not all computing tasks can be split among processors.
To accelerate its parallel computing efforts, Microsoft has hired some of the best minds in the field and has set up teams to explore approaches to rewriting the company’s software.
If it succeeds, the effort could begin to change consumer computing in roughly three years. The most aggressive of the Microsoft planners believe that the new software, designed to take advantage of microprocessors now being refined by companies like Intel and Advanced Micro Devices, could bring as much as a hundredfold computing speed-up in solving some problems.
Microsoft executives argue that such an advance would herald the advent of a class of consumer and office-oriented programs that could end the keyboard-and-mouse computing era by allowing even hand-held devices to see, listen, speak and make complex real-world decisions — in the process, transforming computers from tools into companions.
The chip industry will continue to be able to add more transistors to a silicon chip for the foreseeable future, but the problem lies in the amount of power they consume and thus the amount of heat generated. That will limit the rate at which processing speeds increase.
The need to get around what the industry is calling the “power wall” has touched off a frantic hunt for new computing languages, as well as new ways to automatically break up problems so they can be solved more quickly in parallel.
Although the Microsoft effort was started about five years ago by Craig Mundie, one of the company’s three chief technical officers, it picked up speed recently with the hiring of a number of experts from the supercomputing industry and academia

Mr. Mundie himself is a veteran of previous efforts in the supercomputer industry during the 1980s and 1990s to make breakthroughs in parallel computing. “I’m happy that by hiring a bunch of old hands, who have been through these wars for 10 or 20 years, we at least have a nucleus of people who kind of know what’s possible and what isn’t,” he said.
The more recent arrivals at Microsoft include luminaries like Burton Smith, a supercomputer designer whose ideas on parallel computing have been widely adopted, and Dan Reed, an expert on parallel computing.
Dual-core microprocessors are already plentiful in consumer devices. For example, both Intel and A.M.D.’s standard desktop and portable chips now have two cores, and even the iPhone is reported to have three microprocessors.
Microsoft sees this as the company’s principal opportunity, and industry executives have said that the arrival of manycore microprocessors is likely to be timed to the arrival of “Windows 7.” That is the name the company has given to the follow-on operating system to Windows Vista.
The opportunity for the company is striking, Mr. Mundie said, because manycore chips will offer the kind of leap in processing power that makes it possible to take computing in fundamentally new directions.
He envisions modern chips that will increasingly resemble musical orchestras. Rather than having tiled arrays of identical processors, the microprocessor of the future will include many different computing cores, each built to solve a specific type of problem. A.M.D. has already announced its intent to blend both graphics and traditional processing units onto a single piece of silicon.
In the future, Mr. Mundie said, parallel software will take on tasks that make the computer increasingly act as an intelligent personal assistant.
“My machine overnight could process my in-box, analyze which ones were probably the most important, but it could go a step further,” he said. “It could interpret some of them, it could look at whether I’ve ever corresponded with these people, it could determine the semantic context, it could draft three possible replies. And when I came in in the morning, it would say, hey, I looked at these messages, these are the ones you probably care about, you probably want to do this for these guys, and just click yes and I’ll finish the appointment.”
There are those who argue that there will be no easy advances in the field — including some inside Microsoft.
“I’m skeptical until I see something that gives me some hope,” said Gordon Bell, one of the nation’s pioneering computer designers, who is now a fellow at Microsoft Research.
Mr. Bell said that during the 1980s, he tried to persuade the computer industry to take on the problem of parallel computing while he was a program director at the National Science Foundation, but found little interest.
“They told me, ‘You can’t tell us what to do,’” he said. “Now the machines are here and we haven’t got it right.”