New Web Conferencing tool is not only free, but also green

Add to your list of cost-effective web solutions OpenaCircle.com, the first site to offer completely free web conferencing service.

Advantages of the service include the ability to share desktops with co-workers, colleagues and partners and the option to utilize blogs, wikis, texting and other social networking tools simultaneously with video and audio to share information.

The majority of web conferencing service providers have thus far tended to offer free service for a trial period, after which the user is prompted to select from a tier of service plans. OpenaCircle.com, however, offers full access from the get-go to web-based “meeting and information-sharing spaces,” which are private and fully equipped with convenient work tools for presentations, A/V conferencing, storing/sharing files and planning and scheduling meetings.

Here are some of the best features:

• Secure, private rooms
• Permanently open 24 hours a day
• Create a new circle for every customer, project or team
• Live presentations and desktop sharing
• Advance schedule meetings, presentations and events

What I love is that the bigwigs at OpenaCircle.com explain on their blog the positive implications of utilizing web applications not only on pocketbooks, but also on the green initiative. Here are a couple of quotes from the blog:

What will drive business travelers to go GREEN isn’t a sense of creating a smaller carbon footprint or being a responsible corporate citizen (though 40% of frequent business travelers say they are concerned). No, it is the simple fact that it doesn’t make financial sense anymore to travel to “get the sale.”

To learn more about other low cost web services like online fax services, please visit FaxCompare.com.

Jennifer Silva
Zilker Ventures, LLC

ChooseWhat.com

Are Email Marketing Providers Finally Working Out the Kinks?

Receiving a bunch of unwanted email messages from a company always results in negative consequences. In light of the reports about spam, it’s understandable that small businesses have under-utilized or ignored email marketing tools.

But the fact is that successful companies, who often see an increase in revenue of 50% or more, continue to use email marketing tools to reach customers effectively and instantaneously. That’s why people like me keep writing about it. If utilized correctly, email is a powerful, valuable means of marketing online.

Jeremy Saibil, director of deliverability at Campaigner, says that email marketers should empathize with email recipients to fully test the deliverability and effectiveness of emails before sending them. He advises:

Have your IT folks set up a pristine, never-before-used e-mail box. Take this new address and subscribe to all of your own marketing programs. Now take a step back and put yourself in the shoes of your users and ask yourself how many e-mails you send a week as a company (The e-mail deliverability blame game: Marketers need to look in the mirror, DMNews.com).

–Sage advice from a representative of Campaigner, a leading email marketing software provider who has just announced plans to focus on three key areas of improvement for their service in 2009:

1. 1.  Targeting (through highly customizable, segmented lists)

2. 2.  Personalization (through use of stored personal attributes features for message tailoring)

3. 3.  Deliverability (through third-party deliverability firms like Return Path)

It may be a while before small business email marketing providers catch up with bigger companies in terms of performance, but at least these service providers now recognize the need to improve based on the best practices of email marketing. It would be nice to have lower-cost software alternatives that can perform and be as functional as higher-end options.

For a comparison of the top email marketing options on the market, please visit Email-Marketing-Options.com.

Jennifer Silva
Zilker Ventures, LLC

ChooseWhat.com

Tax write-offs for Small Businesses

Nothing says Thanksgiving like a Christmas tree lighting at mall with a past American Idol winner. Right? This past weekend, for some yet unknown reason, I arrived reluctantly at the Macy’s Christmas tree lighting and jingle at the Domain (Simon Malls) in north Austin, waiting for Jordin Sparks to perform. I never got to see her perform, or rather, didn’t stay that long. After the Austin Girls’ Choir performed in their 1800s wassailing outfits and prior to some guy with an acoustic guitar and a fog machine (or something equally ridiculous), the crowd was forced to watch a bunch of hokey commercials for brands that I assume can be found in Macy’s department stores, ready and waiting to be purchased on Black Friday.

The whole event put a damper on my entire weekend. Children lollygagged around, bored and listless, with not much to stimulate their minds—no activities, no play areas set up. The guy standing in front of me was heard to utter “This sucks” under his breath several times. The event, though described as a family affair, was clearly more targeted to adults—those humans with wallets and credit cards and the power to buy lingering inventory. It was no surprise that the new store Vivo Chocolato! was brimming with parents and kids alike. Chocolate, in my mind, is very much the G-rated version of an alcoholic beverage. Thinking about the economy makes me want to get choco-faced.

Thanksgiving isn’t even here, and it seems that people have been talking about Black Friday since before Halloween. Following the recession this year, the post-holiday shopping sale event has a special significance. It could actually make or break many businesses. That reality has caused many retailers to slash prices to such an extent that has never before been seen.

“In response [to the recession], retailers have been rolling out non-stop bargains. Wal-Mart offered 10 popular toys for $10 in October, Toys “R” Us has touted its “lowest prices of the season” and Gap Inc offered 30 percent off last weekend — all well before Thanksgiving,” writes Nicole Maestri (Reuters).

As I wrote in my previous Black Friday post, there are quite a few deals out there, and there is also plenty of time to buy. Many retailers are opening their stores as early as midnight and extending the sales through the entire weekend. Online retailers are planning to promote sales until Monday, which is aptly being called Cyber Monday.

As a small business owner, you’re trying to save money and trim spending during this time. But it may be wise to purchase while the deals are good and the equipment is low-cost. Thanks to a change in the 2008 Federal Tax Code, tax write-offs for property that directly relates to business activities (such as printers, scanners, projection screens, etc.) are at an all-time high (MarketWatch)…..(Read more of this article at ChooseWhat.com/blog)

For resources that can help save your business time and money spent researching products and services, such as internet fax services and hosted pbx services, please visit ChooseWhat.com

For more information on taxes and tax software, please visit Tax-Compare.com.

Jennifer Silva
Zilker Ventures, LLC

ChooseWhat.com

Zilker Ventures is One Year Old!

Zilker Ventures, the parent web publisher behind brain child ChooseWhat.com, celebrated its first birthday this past Friday, October 3, 2008. In celebration of the fact that Zilker Ventures is now old enough to nibble and swallow solid foods, the office received an assorted box of Austin, Texas’s favorite delivered cookies from Tiff’s Treats.

We weren’t sure if Zilker Ventures was entirely ready for solid foods, especially after a mid-week scare that involved much beloved office manager April Coburn having choked a little bit on an unusually dense piece of pita bread and having had to be saved via Heimlich Maneuver from Zilker Ventures CEO Gaines Kilpatrick.

By Friday, however, April was happily munching on a chocolate chip cookie, as were the rest of the Zilker Ventures team. The carousing continued with Zilker Ventures watching the ingenious video from “misheardlyricsguy” who has splendidly synched the lyrics of Pearl Jam’s classic song “Yellow Ledbetter” with hilarious images of Bill Clinton and Mr. Potato head, among others. Check it out.

“Yellow Ledbetter”

It wouldn’t have been much of a fiesta without some TexMex food from Matt’s El Rancho, another Austin standard, which fully satiated the hungry mouths of all the ZV babies, more eager than ever to get the word out about fax services, email marketing, tax software reviews and hosted pbx.

“I can’t believe that we’ve been around for one year and are still going strong,” said ZV staff member Koby Wong, his eyes shining with childlike glee.

In an apropos manner, the birthday celebrations gave everyone a chance to marvel about Zilker Ventures and ChooseWhat.com. And perhaps more importantly, it has given everyone a renewed sense of pride in the service that the company provides to small businesses and entrepreneurs looking to optimize their online efforts.

One year ago, co-founders Leo Welder and Gaines Kilpatrick started a website for online fax reviews, simply prompted by their own frustrations experienced in researching internet fax services and choosing the wrong one. That website has since grown into the nationally successful review website FaxCompare.com, which boasts over 10,000 monthly visitors. The success of the website has allowed the company to branch out into other entrepreneurial web resources for businesses, which can be found on ChooseWhat.com and which are still expanding.

What’s going on with Zilker Ventures this week?

“Not much,” says Gaines Kilpatrick, “just living the dream.”

Jennifer Silva
Zilker Ventures, LLC

FaxCompare.com
PBXCompare.com
Email-Marketing-Options.com
Tax-Compare.com

Why Wall-E Would Approve of E-Fax

The impending widespread transfer from analog to digital television next year spells doom for the e-waste recycling efforts that have recently been gaining momentum. But the fact that people are even talking about the impact of the switch on the environment reflects a growing trend of combating electronic waste.

(Austin, TX) August 1, 2008 – The ubiquitous recognition of the problem of e-waste recently culminated in the successful Disney-Pixar film Wall-E. But if the film’s main character were replaced with a young Indian or Chinese boy living, not in the distant future, but here in 2008, then perhaps the movie would have hit a bit closer to home.

Though Wall-E calls attention to the problem of e-waste, it leaves many unanswered questions about e-waste and what ought to be done about it.

What does a child do with a broken Nintendo DS, and more importantly, do his parents know what to do with it? A nationally (or sometimes even locally) systematized means of collecting e-waste does not exist. One hardly ever sees e-waste recycling bins around residential areas. However, some local volunteer e-waste recycling programs have sprung up around the nation. These programs are rare and speak of a general avoidance of recycling efforts.

According to G. Jeffery MacDonald in a special report for USA Today, Best Buy, Dell and Sony are among the few companies willing to take back non-functional products from customers for free. It is clear that as more people learn about the hazardous effects of e-waste, recycling efforts will continue to increase. But what should people do in the meantime?

A quite important action is to attempt to send electronics back the company or to resellers for possible refurbishment. Also, pundits have argued that checks and certification requirements should be imposed on e-waste recycling efforts to ensure ethical practices.

“The easiest, most cost-effective thing to do is to stop buying new electronics when possible, advises Gaines Kilpatrick, co-founder of online fax comparison website FaxCompare.com. “Telecommunications is a good place to start: Don’t buy new fax machines or phones, and use Internet fax and virtual private branch exchange (PBX) services. From a business standpoint, it’s cheaper; from an environmental standpoint, it’s the right thing to do.”

With websites, such as FaxCompare.com and PBXCompare.com, a website for hosted PBX services, Zilker Ventures has attempted to promote the virtual office over the office that is inundated with obsolescence-prone hardware..

Though e-waste has gone without lasting remedies, it is something that has inspired businesses to encourage alternatives. “Logically, if there are less unnecessary electronics floating around, there will be less waste for both the office and the environment,” says Zilker Ventures co-founder Leo Welder. “That’s not a simple solution, but it’s a simple start. That’s what we try to provide.”

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For additional information regarding the virtual office or Zilker Ventures, please visit our online fax website.

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Zilker Ventures, LLC is a web publisher that consolidates information and reviews various business and financial products.

Contact:

Jennifer Silva
Zilker Ventures, LLC
(512) 448-9031

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