A Look at Bluetooth Headsets

Because of its ease of use and compatibility with a number of systems, Bluetooth technology is quickly becoming one of the more common forms of wireless peripheral that is used by consumers today. By choosing to use Bluetooth headsets, it is possible to have a fully-functional headset that will easily transfer from cell phones, computers, and a variety of other systems to any other system that has Bluetooth capabilities. The information below should be of some use to you in deciding whether Bluetooth headsets are right for your personal and business headset needs, while also helping you to choose the headset that will serve you best if you decide that Bluetooth is the way to go.

How Bluetooth Works

Bluetooth is the next generation of wireless peripherals, and is designed to allow users to transfer their peripherals from one Bluetooth-compatible device to another without the need for additional drivers or any other software installation. This cross-device functionality creates somewhat of a universal standard for wireless peripherals, allowing those who use Bluetooth to own a single set of peripheral devices which they can then transfer to whichever Bluetooth-enabled hardware they happen to be using at the time. Since Bluetooth is a wireless product as well, this can enable Bluetooth users to remain mobile while using their peripherals… combine this with the hardware-swapping capabilities of Bluetooth, and you have a peripheral that can be used on the move and which will adapt to different pieces of hardware as you use each one.

Advantages of Bluetooth Headsets

There are a number of advantages to choosing a Bluetooth headset to meet your needs. In addition to the fact that Bluetooth devices are wireless, you will only need to purchase a single headset in order to use it with your Bluetooth-enabled telephone, cell phone, laptop computer, or any other hardware device which you own that features a Bluetooth connection. This can allow for a more dynamic home or office, letting you cycle through different pieces of hardware depending upon which room you are in or what you are doing at the time. These devices are also on the cutting edge of technology, so even as the technology begins to age you are likely to be able to get several years of use out of the headset that you choose before the current technology begins to be replaced.

Bluetooth Headset Compatibility

Of course, if you are considering buying a Bluetooth headset it’s important that you make sure that your hardware is compatible with Bluetooth technology. Cell phones and other telephone equipment should have it labeled on the package whether they are Bluetooth-ready, and many other portable devices and computers will bear a sticker or symbol on the device or computer itself. If you find that some of your equipment isn’t Bluetooth compatible, you might want to see if there are Bluetooth adaptors available which will allow you to use a Bluetooth headset with a device that would be otherwise unable to utilize it.

Choosing the Right Headset for Your Needs

Of course, not all Bluetooth headsets are created equal. In order to make sure that you buy the headset that best meets your needs, take into account what you plan on using the headset for, whether you will be using it with a single device or multiple devices, and exactly how much mobility and overall hearing you hope to have with your Bluetooth headset in place. For work that will be done inside or if you only plan on using the headset in conjunction with a landline phone or computer, you might want to consider single or dual-earpiece headsets which can be worn comfortably for longer periods of time. If you are going to be mobile or using your headset with a cell phone, however, you might want to consider a single-earpiece or even an earbud headset as they will allow you a bit more freedom and will leave one of your ears uncovered so that you can better hear everything that is around you.

Ricardo Trinidad, President of Telcom & Data, is a telecommunications professional. Established in 1997, he has molded his company into a top-notch telecommunications provider. Telcom-Data offers telecommunications solutions to those business professionals in search of quality products and superior services. To view his whole line of products you can visit http://www.telcom-headsets.com

Tweet This Post On Twitter 

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Textalert launches world’s simplest sms marketing tool for hair & beauty businesses at http://salon.textalert.com. Salon businesses now able to take advantage of mobile marketing revolution. Free sign-up, no hidden costs – pay-per-use system offers value for money. Works globally, from any internet connected pc with no additional software required. (PRWEB) June 29, 2005 — Salon.Textalert.com, an easy-to-use online service enabling hair and beauty businesses to send promotional and marketing text messages to customers, launched today at http://www.salon.textalert.com. Salon.textalert.com is the world’s first SMS marketing solution specially designed with the needs of hair and beauty practitioners in mind. Having collected customer’s mobile phone numbers, salon owners simply enter the message, input the numbers of their customers into an online address book, and click ‘send’. Salon.Textalert can send messages to all their customers, or ‘filter’ their address book according to such criteria as the name of the customer’s stylist, or whether the customer is male or female. The service operates on a pre-paid credits system and there are no sign-up or subscription charges. No additional software is required to use the system, which can be accessed from any internet connected PC. Marketing via SMS has traditionally been the domain of large organisations. CEO David New said “hair and beauty salons whole livelihood depends on loyalty. Text messaging is the most exciting loyalty tool and marketing channel available at the moment – it is more effective than direct mail and traditional advertising, and far more memorable than email. And it’s costs much less. Pre-launch customer Joe Mills, owner of prominent style-leading Soho salon ‘The Lounge’ said “We use it in a couple of different ways. We turn away far fewer appointments by promoting quiet times during the week, which spreads the workload. We also use it to promote parties we do once every few months” “We set out to demystify SMS marketing for small and mid size businesses. We’ve made it so simple that no prior knowledge is required and new users can be up and running in just two minutes! We also offer more complex features that allow filtering and targeting but there’s no need to learn how to use them right away,” said Sarah Hodkinson, Marketing Director of Textalert. The applications are countless but popular examples include: *Informational : cancelling batches of customer appointments when stylist absent through illness *Promotional – product or service discount coupons delivered by SMS *Marketing – new salon products and services NOTES TO EDITORS: Mobile Marketing enjoys the highest recall rate of any advertising/marketing medium Research has shown that there is a 71-96% recall rate to mobile marketing campaigns (MMA 2002) and that 23% of people will show or forward a marketing message to a friend or colleague (Enpocket Insight Report 2003). Reach Textalert’s service sends to over 500 mobile networks in 170 countries. There are 1.52 billion mobile phone users worldwide. Out of the 135 billion SMS messages sent worldwide in March 2004, 2.1 billion were sent in the UK alone. Textalert & SMS Spam Textalert stressed that the system was specifically for marketing to an existing customer base, for CRM or as a means of driving loyalty, and not for advertising. Textalert.com provides help and information for businesses on how to go about collecting their customer’s numbers, and their responsibilities. Users are required to include contact information on each text message they send, to facilitate customers wishing to ‘unsubscribe’. Therefore unsolicited mobile ‘spam’ was not an issue. Costs Prices are pay-per-use and there are no additional or hidden fees. Prices start at around £0.08 /

Tweet This Post On Twitter 

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

SMS Marketing – finding customers through mobile marketing

The mobile phone has revolutionised everyday life as well as the way we do business. A less well-known fact is that it also opens up fantastic opportunities for interaction between companies and their customers.

The following statistics clearly demonstrate the fantastic take-up of Text Messaging, or SMS (Short Messaging Service), in the consumer market:

-Over 20 billion text messages were sent in the UK in 2003 (Mobile Data Association)
-Over 25 billion text messages were sent in the UK in 2004 (Mobile Data Association)
-Expected growth for 2005 to reach 30 billion text messages (Mobile Data Association)
-56% of direct marketers are planning regular SMS use this year (Forrester)

Over the past few years, text messaging has become by far the most popular mobile data service, and mobile marketing has established itself as an attractive medium in terms of entry cost, response rates and interactivity. We will see it become an increasingly important element in the communications mix in the future.

SMS as a Marketing Tool

For marketers SMS opens up completely new opportunities. Provided recipients have actively opted-in to a service or promotion, an SMS campaign is very well received. The results speak for themselves: recall rates of 60-90% and response rates of 5-20% are often achieved. This is why SMS is becoming incredibly popular to use as one of the many components in an integrated marketing campaign. Still, this medium is very much in its infancy, and the sky is the limit. The following factors will drive the future growth of mobile marketing:

-Further adoption of text messaging among older age segments
-Introduction of further content and services available only on mobile phones (ring tones, alerts, logos, pictures etc)
-Introduction of new standards and formats that offer a richer user experience and further interactivity (MMS with colour and sound, polyphonic ring tones etc)

The bottom line is, mobile phones are becoming an integral part of the social fabric. As such we strongly believe in the power of mobile marketing!

Case Studies

An East-end Pub using SMS to market theme nights

A small east-end pub wanted to increase the turnout to their pub during week. So they decided to create theme nights for both Tuesday and Wednesday. During the weekend they had membership sign-ups to the SMS TXTing service.

Using a web-based interface, the pub owner would prepare a text message the night before the event and send it to his database of members, usually offering a 50% off discount if the member would show up with that text message. It proved a great success with 27% of those who received the text message showing up at the pub.

A London-based security company – Off-site SMS timesheets

A London-based security company, wanted to centralise and automate their timesheet system for all of their off-site security officers. At each site a supervisor was provided with a mobile phone with an allocated monthly amount of SMS text credits.

Using SMS technology, the supervisor would text a keyword and a badge number for each security officer as they arrived on site. This SMS text message was sent to a central database which updated the individual security officer’s timesheet. As each officer left the site at the end of the day, the supervisor would again text a keyword with the badge number to the provided number. This cut the entire process of timesheet collection (sometimes taking 48 hours) to 0 hours as the database provided the administration with a live feed. This process also ensured that records were accurate and never lost.

A London nightclub news website – provide daily what’s on tonight SMS Textback Service

A London nightclub news website wanted to provide their members with the ability to find out what bars and nightclubs were open on any given day, without having to browse the website as well as convince bars and nightclubs to advertise on the website

Using reverse billing and textback, the website provided its users with the ability to find out this information. Users would text a particular keyword in their mobile handset and then send this message to a defined short code (i.e. 83999). A set amount was then immediately deducted from the users phone either pay-as-you-go or from their monthly contract. The user would then receive an instant SMS message with all of the particular nightclubs that were open that evening.

By using this type of advertising the website was able to increase its sales for advertisers on its site by 40% in first quarter alone.

2cast4 – SMS artist textback service for casting/booking application

2cast4, an application service software provider for agents in the media and advertising industries working in film, television and photography, wanted to provide casting agents a fast and efficient way to communicate with their artists in order to find out if they were available for castings.

By using a combination of Web and SMS technology, 2cast4 leads the industry in casting solutions. Casting agents enter all of the casting job details into a database and then query the database for artist matches based on set criteria. Then those short-listed can be sent an instant SMS message. The casting agent only enters the message once, but it is personalised and sent to all of the relevant artists. Upon receipt of the SMS text message, the artist simply replies to the text with either yes or no. The message is then routed back to the database and updates the records immediately. This solution provided the casting agents with time/cost-saving efficiency while ensuring accurate records.

A digital media company – Multimedia via SMS and WAP

A London-based digital media company wanted to provide their users with the ability to choose from several different media and by sending a text message to a given short code (i.e. 83999), an automatic WAP service message was sent back to the user for them to download the file (i.e. MID, MP3, 3GP).

Using a web interface, the digital media company was able to upload their media files straight to a web server, while also storing the file information in a database. All SMS requests, WAP service messages and downloads were tracked by the database, as were user information like mobile number, mobile network, mobile handset, WAP IP address, file requested, file downloaded, and date. Through use of this tracking system the digital media company was able to compile important user marketing information.

Conclusion

Mobile marketing is a new addition to the media mix, with great opportunities for direct interaction with customers and cost-effective data collection. Leading brands have adopted this medium and the number of companies actively using mobile marketing in their marketing strategies is growing rapidly.

Selecting a supplier that understands the medium as well your requirements is key to success – we hope that this overview will help you to make the most out of this exciting media channel. For further information and case studies from your industry, please see www.unilabplus.com, www.i-multimarket.co.uk or contact Stefanos Cunning at Unilabplus Ltd London office.

Director of Unilabplus Ltd, a London-based online business management software house.

Tweet This Post On Twitter 

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

If you already have a wireless network for your computers, you may be very interested in what’s coming next. Would you like it if your PDA, your mobile phone, your mp3 player and almost everything else you connect to your computer could be wireless too? It’s already a reality…

Personal Area Network.

Using wireless networking with your personal gadgets is often called PAN, which stands for Personal Area Network. The idea is that, in the future, we’ll all have laptop computers with their batteries charged and no more need to connect any wires to them at all — you just place your Bluetooth device near the computer, and the computer sees it and can use it straightaway.

Bluetooth has been around and in-use since 1999, and it’s only getting more popular. It was designed to be secure, low cost, and easy to use from day one.

There are two classes of Bluetooth that are in popular use: class 1 and class 2. Class 2 is the most common and cheaper standard, allowing you to use a device that is up to 10 metres (32 feet) away. Class 1 is rarer, but you can still find devices that use it easily enough, and it has ten times the range: 100 metres or 320 feet.

How Does It Work?

Bluetooth is more flexible than 802.11 wireless networking, in exchange for the shorter range. Essentially, a Bluetooth-enabled computer has one Bluetooth receiver installed in it, and this receiver can then be used with up to 7 nearby Bluetooth devices. On the other end, wireless devices do not need to have Bluetooth installed if they support it — it is already integrated.

Like 802.11, Bluetooth works by using radio signals to create bandwidth. It is not, though, the same thing as an old-style wireless mouse or keyboard, which required a receiver to be plugged into one of your computers’ ports, and didn’t have range or stability anywhere near that of Bluetooth.

Many computers now come with built in Bluetooth, especially Apple Macs. If you want to add Bluetooth to a computer that doesn’t come with it pre-installed, you should probably use a USB to Bluetooth adapter, although internal Bluetooth devices to install in your computer are available. If you have a laptop and a spare PCMCIA slot, you can get Bluetooth cards for that too.

What Can You Do With Bluetooth?

Mobile phones with Bluetooth are very popular, and so are PDAs — the instant synchronisation of addresses and calendars to a computer is a useful feature. Other than that, almost anything that would usually use USB can be done using Bluetooth, including digital cameras, mp3 players, printers, and even mice and keyboards. If you take a look through the comprehensive list of Bluetooth ‘profiles’ (kinds of devices that could, in theory, be Bluetooth enabled), it includes cordless phones, faxes, headsets, and even video.

Basically, more than anything, Bluetooth is a replacement for USB: some say that while 802.11 wireless networking is wireless Ethernet, Bluetooth is wireless USB.

Not Just for Computers.

Part of the power of Bluetooth is that it isn’t just used to connect things to computers — it can be used to connect almost anything to anything else, if both things are Bluetooth-enabled and recognise each other.

Mobile phones, in particular, take advantage of this. Hands-free headsets often use Bluetooth to communicate with the phone. Some cars, for example, now have on-board computers that will connect with a Bluetooth phone and allow you to make hands-free calls, regardless of where the phone is in the car (even if you’ve left it in your bag in the trunk!)

On top of that, of course, Bluetooth devices can communicate with each other. This has led to some people sending messages from their Bluetooth PDAs to others in close range — not an especially useful feature, but quite fun. This is called ‘bluejacking’, and the first recorded instance of it was a man who sent a Bluetooth message to another man’s Nokia phone while they were in a bank together. What did the message say? ‘Buy Ericsson’.

Since then, it has become possible to send images by bluejacking, and it is widely believed to be the newest advertising medium — yes, it lets billboards send messages to your phone, a practice known as ‘bluecasting’. Whether you think that’s cool or annoying, of course, is your choice.

Joe Byrne is a computer specialist specializing in network communications and Voice over Internet Protocol. Click on Voice over Internet Protocol for more information on VoIP.

Tweet This Post On Twitter 

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Six decades ago, thousands of people who were found on a rich German businessman’s record book were brought out from Auschwitz and into a quasi- World War 2 bullet manufacturing company not to work, but to have their lives saved. Fast forward six decades again, and we are into the the same dog-eat-dog world where online content is king. The question is, have you had yourself listed lately? Sure, it’s not a life and death situation like Schindler’s time, but if you’re a high risk merchant, the least you can do is sit down and wait till customers (errr…Gestapos?) find you. Don’t be caught off guard. One of the smartest thing you can do as an online entrepreneur is to get your business listed.

The natural law states that wherever there’s an open space, people will always fill it up with something. Think: table tops and your garage. Merchant directories do the same thing, so don’t feel a twinge of guilt. There are tremendous benefits at your disposal once you get your business advertised in these networks. You get: