Jul

24

Moving Into The 21st Century: VoIP

Filed Under business, life, music, recommendations, technology | 4 Comments

When we first moved into our offices on Milvia street, we tried to keep costs low and used our cell phones insetad of buying into a couple of land lines w/ conventional phone service. This worked fine in the beginning, our needs were humble. For the most part, the cell was great, except reception in our building was definitely not consistent, nor reliable.

As we began to do more work with clients and move into new areas of work, we started to rely on our phones a bit more. We also had run into the need to send and receive faxes more than I think we should (anyone heard of e-mail? :)). Basically, it became clear to us that we needed to figure out some sort of phone solution.

At first, I was hesitant to buy into the whole concept of VoIP, even though countless people had recommended it for startups. We don’t have the fastest internet, and our stupid router didn’t support QoS until very recently, so that was another big deterrent to the idea for me. Altough, I was not able to find a conventional phone service that I thought made decent fiscal sense…AT&T wants a pretty hefty commitment for even the simplest plans, I just wasn’t happy with the idea of it. And also, what about PBX type features? Extensions would be nice, how about voicemail? $$$

So, this was becoming a mess for me, once I decided to bite the bullet and find a VoIP provider, which ones are legit? Packet8? Vonage? (short answer, no). I happened to stumble upon a company named Aptela, and started looking into their features. Call trees, extensions, digital faxing (what a concept!), unified messaging, the whole gamut basically. For a very affordable price! We dove in and decided to give them a shot, its something like $60 bucks a month for everything mentioned above.

The system only works with IP phones, so we purchased a couple of $100 Polycom handsets, plugged them in, and suddenly…the stars had aligned and we had a working phone system! To be honest, I was completely amazed with how easy it was to setup, and how great it sounds, even while dowloading large files! (thank you, QoS). Aptela is a fantastic service, so far I have had absolutely no complaints. Everything is 100% web-based and works just fine on my mac, as it should.

So long story short, If you are looking for an affordable, solid VoIP solution, I recommend Aptela!

Jun

14

Drumset!

Filed Under life, music | 5 Comments

My birthday was Thursday, the 12th. My brother totally shocked me and bought me a drumset! Its a Gretsch Catalina Club set, which sounds absolutely awesome! I’ve never played a drumset that had such good tone. Its a simple 4 piece set (1 rack tom, 1 floor tom, bass drum, and a snare). I also got a decent set of Symbian cymbals (B8 series) which sound crisp and solid. The rest of the hardware came as a kit from PDP, it seemed pretty solid, and so far is holding up nicely.

This is definitely a fun kit, I am really excited because it seems our studio is basically completed now with the inclusion of this element! I am hoping this summer is going to be musical. It better be now! Now we’ve just got to figure out the best way to mic/record the set. Oh, and I should get a cowbell too :)

Mark the intern testing out the set!