My Bite Into The Apple

by a-birdie

Online Fax Service – Starting Up A Home Business Or Office

Copyright (c) 2009 Titus Hoskins

It is almost inconceivable that anyone could start up a home office or a home business without having a fax service or fax number. It is one of those necessities of doing business, no matter where your business is located. In other words, having a fax service and number is essential to the running of your company or business.

With the recent downturn in the economy, more and more people are switching their attentions to working at home in order to bring in extra income. Many of those same people are setting up home offices because it is much cheaper than setting up an office outside of the home. Besides, working from the comfort of your own home is very appealing to most people.

As mentioned above, one of the first things any prospective home business will need is a fax number. This is where an online fax service enters the picture. More and more individuals are turning to Internet faxing to solve or meet all their faxing requirements or needs.

First, you probably already know online fax is simply using your current email system and your Internet connection to handle all your faxing needs. Your faxes are sent as email attachments, usually in TIFF or PDF format, although there are many more formats you can use to send your faxes.

In order to use web faxing, you have to sign-up to an online fax service provider where you are given a local or Toll-Free fax number. You also get an online fax account (interface) where you logon to send and/or receive your faxes. Your faxes can also be stored in your online fax account.

There are several important reasons why many new home business start-ups are using Internet fax instead of the traditional office fax machine.

Here are Seven major reasons:

1. There is no need for an extra fax phone line since everything can be done online and with your computer. This will save you money on your home business start-up costs.

2. There is no need for a fax machine, which will also save you money, since all your faxing can be done through the Internet and your email system.

3. You don’t have to purchase papers, inks, and toners in order to send and receive your faxes. Over the long haul, this can mean significant savings for you, not to mention, your savings on the maintenance costs of running your fax machine.

4. Online faxing is often cheaper than regular faxing. Monthly charges run on average around , but there are cheaper options, especially if you have minimum faxing needs. So it pays to shop around before you sign-up to any one service.

5. An online fax service is web based which means you can do your faxing anywhere you have the Internet and these days that’s just about everywhere. You can use cell phones, laptops, Blackberries, PDAs… to do your faxing from anywhere you’re located.

6. Internet fax is extremely easy to use. Actually, it is as easy as sending an email and we all know how to do that. Besides there are no more paper jams, messy inks and toners to deal with in the running of your office. You can also send and receive faxes simultaneously.

7. It can make your home business more competitive since having your faxes available 24/7, 365 days of the year will give your business an advantage especially if you rely upon faxing for bringing in sales, clients or you rely upon it heavily for communicating with your customers. Also remember, online fax is completely scalable to meet your growing business needs. For example, if you should need extra fax numbers you can get them without putting in the extra hardware and phone lines.

Lastly, since online faxing is mainly done through computers and the Internet, it is often thought of as the modern way to run your business. So why not start your home office or business off on the right foot by using this modern way of faxing? The rewards and benefits are well worth it.

Send Fax to the Internet


Image by frgdr
http://frgdr.com/blog/2009/09/02/israels-internet-society-asks-members-send-suggestions-fax/

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by Chris Blakeley

Nextiva Fax 2011 Review

Nextiva, a leader in the VoIP services for small businesses industry, has expanded their vision to include online fax services with Nextiva Fax. This company specializes in small business communication and has demonstrated their ability to reach both the businessman and the individual consumer with this new service. This high quality online faxing service is customizable and offers a wide range of faxing packages and payment options to match your needs. If you already have a fax number, Nextiva makes it easy to switch and enjoy their added benefits by giving the option to port your existing fax number(s) over for use with Nextiva Fax.

The fax services provided by Nextiva have only recently been implemented. Even in this short time, Nextiva Fax is establishing itself as one of the leaders in online faxing services. The professionalism and quality of their VoIP programs is carried over to create a full-featured and complete faxing service for the businessman and personal consumer alike.

Nextiva Fax was one of the most affordable online faxing services that we reviewed, offering a large monthly page limit and very inexpensive overage fees. With a 500 page-per-month pool to be split between incoming and outgoing faxes, a mere three cent fee per fax page thereafter and a variety of options and features, we could find little wrong with Nextiva. The program they’ve created is impressive, affordable and functional. In the end, the only things bringing Nextiva down in the rankings were a few absent features and missing customer service options.

Standout Features

Several payment and page-per-month options
Low overage fees
Versatile options for various needs
Well-rounded feature set

Feature Set:

Nextiva Fax contains a well-rounded set of features, missing only a few that we were expecting. Nextiva allows you to send faxes from your computer to up to five recipients. These recipients can be fax machines themselves or email addresses. You cannot send a fax from an email address directly to another email address, however. The primary recipient must be a fax number and the email address you wish to send it to can later be included to receive a copy of the fax transmission.

Copies of sent faxes and incoming faxes can be accessed from anywhere email is available, including your Smartphone. This added convenience makes it a very valuable way to monitor your faxes from any location.

Nextiva has one of the highest page-per-month limits on their basic plan that we’ve encountered. They also offer an extended plan which includes 3000 fax pages-per-month before overage fees apply, making this the plan with the highest page count that we were able to find.

We were disappointed to find that we couldn’t add a digital signature to our faxes and that vanity fax numbers were not available. The addition of these features along with some polishing and clarification of the present features would make this an exceptional service.

Ease of Use:

While using Nextiva Fax, we encountered no errors and only a few hang-ups. The interface is very simple and easy to understand, including a step-by-step process for sending faxes. This short, convenient process graciously removes the frustration of configuring several options on your fax machine to deliver your faxes to multiple recipients or fax multiple documents.

The search and view functions make it easy to retrieve and view faxes that you’ve sent. Filters can be applied to sort faxes by date and you can even configure separate folders for sent and received faxes. This added level of customization and organization makes filing cabinets and paper-shuffling a thing of the past.

Customer Service:

Nextiva does well in the customer service rankings, though a few features are missing. We could not find hours for the phone support line and no live chat option was present. The FAQs page is relatively short, but the knowledge base/troubleshooter on their website is quite extensive. We had some arguments with the search function, as it would occasionally return results as if our searches were in quotes, limiting its usefulness. Some questions went completely unanswered and we called in on the phone support line only to receive our answers from a friendly phone representative. While we were satisfied with their performance, clarifying the hours of the phone support option and adding options like live chat and a more functional search option for the knowledge base would help Nextiva in this area.

Price/Extra Costs:

With no setup fee, low monthly rates and one of the lowest overage fees for fax pages, Nextiva Fax is the most competitively priced online faxing service that we reviewed. Payment options range from a low seven dollars per month for 500 pages to a large 3000 page limit at 30 dollars per month. These options make this a very versatile choice for any consumer’s needs.

Summary:

Nextiva Fax is a relatively new online faxing service with a lot of power. The standard package of features is found here as well as incredibly competitive rates and a high degree of customizability. Whether you’re a small business owner, a fortune 500 CEO or a regular consumer, the online faxing service from Nextiva has an option available for your needs.

Fax Police


Image by NathanReed
This is *SO* strange! It came in by FAX. Now, how should I trust folks who send something like this to my FAX?

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How Do I Use An Online Fax Service?

Copyright (c) 2009 Titus Hoskins

Online or Internet fax has become an extremely popular service on the web. It is being used by more and more businesses and individuals who want a more mobile and a more secure way of faxing. Yet, many people still don’t know exactly how online faxing actually works.

Like anything that is relatively new, it will probably take a while before this convenient service is widely known in the general population. Perhaps, the greatest stumbling block is that most people are so familiar with faxing via the old facsimile machine in the office; getting their heads around using the web for faxing will take some time.

However, just like email revolutionized how we send and receive our mail, so too has online fax revolutionized how we send and receive our faxes. Internet faxing is simply the more modern way to fax.

Actually, these two new communication methods are closely intertwined since online fax is basically using your email system and your Internet connection to do all your faxing. You send and receive your faxes as email attachments usually in TIFF or PDF format.

Remember, in order to use online fax you have to sign-up to an Internet fax service provider who will act as your intermediary to handle all your faxing. You will receive a local or Toll-Free number which you can give out to all your contacts. There is no need for an extra fax phone line. You will also receive an online site (account) where you can logon and do your faxing. Your faxes are also stored in this online account.

However, what confuses many people is the fact that you can send/receive your online faxes in many different ways including through the old traditional office machine. Your fax service will act as your intermediary to intercept your faxes coming from an ordinary fax machine and direct them to your online fax account.

You can also get desktop applications which will allow you to directly fax from your desktop. Most services will work with Windows Outlook and Windows Office. Finally, most services will let you send a fax by just sending an email, i.e. destination number(at)yourfaxservice.com – It doesn’t get any easier than this.

Each fax service has slightly different procedures and methods so you have to become familiar with your chosen service. Also, each service will have different faxing rates and monthly fees, but most charge around a month. There are less expensive services out there so it pays to shop around, especially when you consider this is a long term ongoing business expense.

The main reason why email or online faxing has become so popular is the total freedom it gives you. Since it is web based, you can send and receive a fax anywhere, anytime, as long as you have Internet access. You can use any mobile device such as a cell phone or laptop to do all your faxing. It totally frees you from being tied down to the old fax machine in the office.

Plus, your faxes can be encrypted so it is much more secure than the traditional way of faxing. And no one but you has to see your faxes since you have your own private access to your account. This is important if you have faxes of a sensitive nature which you want to keep private.

Lastly, another major reason online fax has become so popular, most faxing services are completely scalable for businesses. You can upsize or downsize depending on your company’s requirements or needs. In this uncertain economy, having this flexibility is a major plus.

If you’re not using an online fax service you may just be losing out on one of the most convenient ways of doing business. You really do need it if your business depends heavily on faxing for bringing in new sales and clients; besides you may be falling behind your competition who are probably already using this new more mobile way of faxing. Can you afford not to use Internet fax?

It’s your call?

Group FAX (Cape Town)


Image by Independent Curators International
For 3 hours on Saturday, July 25, 2009 faxes were exchanged between participating venues in Istanbul, New York, Paris, Mexico City, and Cape Town in the spirit of sharing ideas and information through informal networks. Artworks, texts, and provocations were created and sent ‘live’ in response to what was transmitted.

This event launched a world tour of FAX, curated by João Ribas.

FAX is a traveling exhibition co-organized by iCI (independent Curators International) and The Drawing Center.

For further information on the exhibition and tour go to
www.ici-exhibitions.org/exhibitions/fax/fax.html

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