Dayton SBS User Group Meeting

Kevin invited me to attend the Dayton SBS User Group meeting with him tonight. He was going to talk about Cougar and suggested I talk about Response Point having just returned from SMB Summit. It was such a beautiful day and I figured that I couldn't pass up a nice ride up to Dayton with the top down. So I got my other ride out of the garage and headed out of town. Unfortunately, when only about a mile from MAX Training where the user group meeting was - my car began to loose power and pooped out. I'm guessing it may be the fuel pump. Anyway, Ronnie was my flatbed driver that picked me and my car up and then dropped me off at the user group meeting and then took my car back to the repair shop in Cincinnati. I got to talk to the user group about Response Point and then Kevin was nice enough to bring me all the way back home before driving on to his home in KY.

Another Cool Gadget for Telephones

Okay, this one wasn't my idea. I got it from Jerry at CMP. The MagicJack device connects to your computer's USB port and gives you telephone usage from a softphone on your computer or a telephone connected to its RJ11 port. The cost is $40 for the first year and $20/year after that. It gives you a telephone number in your choice of area code (Cincinnati not available yet), voice mail and unlimited long distance. With it you are calling to MagicJack users AND to any regular telephone user! Jerry told me he uses it at Trade Show exhibitions. He has his laptop connected to the internet and with this device he can give dial tone to his demonstration Response Point system. Bravo!

Cool Gadget for Response Point Presentation

I used this gadget in my Response Point presentation last weekend at SMB Summit in Dallas. It's made/sold by Radio Shack and only costs $25. It's sold as something that would let you record your cell phone conversations to a voice recorder. The only little thing extra you need to know or have is a gender changer (the audio connector kind ) for F-F 1/8" adapter. Instead of connecting it to a voice recorder I connected it to the input of the hall's PA system. I was then able to use my cell phone to call in live to a Response Point system - in this case one back in my office in Cincinnati. This enabled me to let the audience 'listen in' on the caller's experiece with Response Point. This worked great and I think it helped those in attendance see how the voice recognition works. I almost wound up in the dog house later when I took a live phone call from my wife during the presentation - using this gadget.

SMB Summit 2008

I just returned home from SMB Summit 2008 in Dallas. It was a great event with a loads of information for our IT practices - especially on the new SBS and EBS 2008 products. In addition to getting to meet some the Microsoft Response Point product team and the CMP and Syspine sales managers, I had the privelege of doing the Response Point presentation.

Lots of new stuff going on with Response Point. Many people have heard about Service Pack 1 being around the corner. Microsoft recently announced two VOIP partners for Response Point - NGT and CBeyond. These companies are developing their partner programs for Response Point dealers right now. Another REALLY hot item was the announcement Friday that Syspine has a limited time FANTASTIC demo kit pricing for Microsoft Partners. This really kept the Syspine/CMP vendor booth hopping at the Exhibitors Hall. It may not be too late to get yours - contact CMP if you are interested.

SMB Summit 4/19

The end of the second day of presentations at SMB Summit in Dallas, TX. We've had two full days of SBS 2008, EBS 2008 and WHS. In addition to that there has been a lot of 'networking' (the people kind). The lunch today consisted of a room full of tables where each table was themed. I was at a Response Point table where we had a full boat of people that were interested in talking about the new Microsoft telephone system.

Tomorrow afternoon will have the vendor exhibits going on and in the afternoon I will be giving my Response Point presentations.

Oh yes, Zenith Infotech apparently supplied 4,000 bottles of Backup & Disaster Recovery water. That's a lot of water for a group of 400 people drinking mostly coffee, soda and chai tea. I know, picture is rotated. Just can't figure why? and don't feel like fooling with it.

SMB Summit 4/18

Got in to Dallas Thursday before the big weather event. At least they don't have quite the weather idiots here as back home in Cincinnati. But, I think there were about 5 weather channels on the hotel cable tv. Not sure if there was an actual tornado or not but there were 70 mph winds and hail the size of baseballs (per report). I spoke to several attendees at breakfast this morning that were 3 or 4 hours late getting to the airport here on arrival.

You probably can't make out the speaker in this picture but it's Chris Almida, Program Manager with the Small Business Server team. There are about 450 attendees here and lots of great programming.

Nice Internet Speed Test

I just found this nice Internet Speed Test. I've used others - this one just looks to be very well presented. It's at SpeedTest.net. Here's my results.