Tag Archives: incomes

Get Dropbox

15 Oct

It’s been a few years now that I’ve pondered how to share faxes with our office overseas. Before anyone criticizes the problem and offer a solution of CIF or Exchange routing, the problem is not as simple as that. Here’s the best simplification I can offer of the problem:

  1. Given 2 sites. Let HQ be the headquarter & XO be the offsite location.
  2. Given incoming faxes only.
  3. Faxes must be sorted according to its content. The sorting is manually done (drag & drop) into folders. Let’s say we have to sort into 3 folders, A, B, and C. These folders must be sorted by Day, Month, Year. That gives us 4-levels of heirarchy.
  4. HQ and XO may sort the faxes interchangeably.
  5. HQ must always have all files, thus it makes sense that files are hosted by HQ. XO does not need to have all files; only the files they need.
  6. Hierarchy must always be preserved.
  7. Both sites should be able to print faxes anytime they want.
  8. Low cost solution.
To satisfy my readers who are itching to recommend Goldmine or Exchange routing, how are you going to sort 300-500 faxes daily and easily access them when needed?
My solution was the use of Terminal Services. The disadvantages are:
  1. Expensive because of licensing, so I had to resort in limited users.
  2. Since the setup is minimal (click me), the resources are lacking which causes sluggish performance. That means, access is very slow. TS is already slow itself.
  3. Maintenance is too much of a hassle.
  4. It’s annoying to access RD in order to check faxes.
Experimental Solution
The latest solution I thought of is using Dropbox. The first 2GB is free and subscription is only $10/month @ 50GB. Therefore, I have 2GB of test space before implementing the logistics. Faxes will still be archived and hosted by HQ then XO will sync from it. XO must be restricted from deletion. Although Dropbox has the recovery feature that is a failsafe in case someone in XO‘s end is trigger-happy (my instantaneous backup in HQ‘s end will still remain of course; I’m paranoid).
With DP, the heirarchy is preserved, faxes can be easily accessed by both parties because the files will be locally (network scope) available to them. Since XO does not need the files, HQ will do deletion (folders have to be moved to reduce clutter in the workspace — imagine 30 folders when you only need the last 7 days.)

Smart Plug ‘N Talk

3 Sep

I can finally come out of the shell and talk about Smart’s latest technology release — Plug ‘n Talk. I met with Smart representatives earlier today and I was able to witness a demonstration of this very cool gadget. It is a hybrid VoIP unit. In a nutshell, the unit which is essentially a thumbdrive accepts a Smart Buddy Simcard, plugged into a Windows computer with internet connection and can take outgoing and incoming voice calls and SMS/MMS messages incurring Philippine local rates. The hybrid nature of the technology is derived from the model whereas the party using the unit uses an over-IP technology which connects to Smart’s network in the Philippines and from there a circuit-switch communication occurs. The reciprocal applies when the unit becomes the receiver. In other words, it’s a VoIP-Circuit-switch technology.

Though I know the launch date, I will not provide that information as well as any pricing. I’m just to excited to post the technology’s overall concept. For more information, visit the hyperlinked site above.

During the demonstration, the call is quite loud and clear, however I won’t be too optimistic. There still is that VoIP characteristic. I’m only after the text messaging because it only costs P1/outgoing message to any Smart/TNT and P2 for Globe/TM/Sun and the MMS which costs the same as what they charge in the Philippines. I’ll have my dongle hooked into my PC and find TXTM8S.

Rice Shortage

14 Jul

Kalam is a public service documentary by a Philippine television network GMA. The episode discussed the rice shortage facing the world and especially the Philippines. The show was very thorough in discussing the causes and possible outcome of the crisis facing the world today. I will discuss and give my two cents on some of the issues. (more…)

Social Domain

28 May

Okay I have been wondering about these in the past few weeks (or months maybe):

  1. How come new bloggers still use Blogspot.com over WordPress.com?
  2. Why is there a need to create multiple blogsites? (most of the time are not updated) (more…)

Info On Philippine Officials

18 May

If you want to know more about the officials representing your town, province, region, or the Philippines, there is a site that has a database of all information from personal to how much money they have on the bank (declared of course). Grafted incomes are not included I’m pretty sure. At least the site will tell you if they are honest enough, can they still live a lavish life?

The site is called Eye Site — The information site on Philippine politics and government.