GoFaxer Blog

Before fax, the fastest you could send something was in a day, through Fed Ex, or some other high end shipping method. It was overnighted by plane. Then the fax machine became mainstream in the 80’s, allowing you to send something in minutes, over the phone line. Again, a major innovation in the speed of communication.

But in the 90’s, we saw the next giant leap into a faster world. The Internet was born. And with it came email, a form of sending messages and documents through the Internet in seconds. Funnily enough, this didn’t just become popular for sending messages over long distances. It also became enormously popular for sending messages over short distances. Everything is sent through email these days.

Well, not everything. There still are businesses and organizations that have fax machines. And although most everyone has email and the Internet, there may be times when they prefer that a document be sent through fax. If this ever happens, your organization is required to have access to the technology. But who wants to go out and buy a new fax machine when they can send most of their documents through the Internet?

That’s where Internet fax comes into play. You can send documents to fax machines, through an Internet based system. It’s as easy as sending an email, and significantly cheaper than fax technology.

Isn’t email wonderful? It’s so fast and easy, and it’s got an amazing memory.

But email can also be the office workers crutch. Too often we send communications through email that would be more effective in person.

Let me offer some simple advice about email. Keep it really simple. Use it for sending information that the other person is going to use or need as a reference. If you need to send someone a document as an attachment that’s great. Email fax is also great for this.

But don’t push your projects through email. Meaning, don’t send someone an email reminding them of that report they were going to create for you. Don’t reprimand an employee through email. Don’t give a motivational speech to your staff through email.

This is when the speed of communication can hurt you. Because your message will get lost in the simplicity of it all. You still need to take clients to lunch. You still need to go by someone’s desk, strike up a conversation, and then remind them of that report they were creating for you. It’s old fashioned smoozing techniques, but they’re still often the best ways to really communicate with your coworkers.

For further proof of how Google is taking over the world, take note of Gmail, their wonderful email platform. It’s become the new standard for free email services. Frankly, it’s so good; it’s hard to imagine why you’d need anything else. Many companies are foregoing the purchase of company email accounts through Microsoft Outlook and are using Gmail exclusively.

Some cool features:

• A great notifier which pops up a little window every time you have an email.
• Plenty of storage.
• Incredibly smart storage and sorting options.
• Great searching operations.
• Free IMAP and POP access if you want to route it into another email program like Outlook or Apple Mail.
• A cool starring and custom color labels  system that lets you organize conversations easily.
• Connects with Google Talk, letting you IM and group chat easily.
• It also connects easily to other Google services like Picasa for storing picture albums to share with friends and Google Docs for storing public files.
• A great calendar program, where you can schedule meetings and other events.

In the end, do we really need anything more besides Google? Well, you might need an email fax service, at which point I’d recommend GoFaxer. But otherwise, I think Google’s got us covered.

You’ve probably seen that coworker who has not embraced the new paperless millennium. You look at her desk and it’s covered in papers. She prints up every email she gets. She looks cluttered.

Now, maybe her methods work for her, as she claims, but they are behind the times. Modern companies are understanding the huge cost of paper and office supplies. The more that each coworker can organize their entire operation to a single computer, the more efficient they will be both in time, and cost to their company.

This is why so many companies are turning to email fax as a new way to avoid using fax machines. These machines were revolutionary for their time. They enabled people to send messages and documents over long distances in a matter of minutes. No more need for the mail. But in the nineties that all changed, with the advent of the Internet and email.

Nowadays, a few minutes to send a document is still too long. We can send it in seconds. It should be easier; it should be faster; and should be less expensive. This is what the market demands because your competitors are doing it.

So it’s time for all of those paper-reliant workers and businesses to make some fundamental changes to the way that they do business.

I’m starting this post out with a simple question. How long does it take to send an email fax? The answer: about 30 seconds. How’s that for fast?

Remember when you used to wait in line at the fax machine at work. I could never figure out whether the paper needed to go upside down or right side up. I could never figure out whether the paper needed to face me or face the machine. It was always very confusing. And unless I did it every day so the process was ingrained into my brain, I’d always forget. And for some reason they’d never post the instructions up, so I’d have to ask the receptionist every time, so she probably thought I had a serious learning disability for fax machines.

Needless to say, email fax was a huge revelation for me. it is the way the world is supposed to function. I’d be perfectly happy if my entire life could function through email.

I wish I could just email my shopping list to the supermarket and have them do my shopping for me. I wish I could just email my reservations to restaurants without having to call. I wish I could just email things that I’m supposed to fax. Oh wait. I can do that. I can just go to GoFaxer.com. Technology is turning my way.

Last week I wrote a number of tips for controlling your email inbox. Email fax is wonderful but if your inbox is out of control, the advantages of the technology will mean little.

Many of us live a good portion of our lives monitoring our email, responding to our email, and composing emails. It’s become the central mode of communication in the business world. It’s also become the best method for social correspondence. I seriously have not sent a letter in the mail to a friend in years.

But today I want to speak to the busy business person trying to get some work done, while managing his or her email. People expect to hear back from you when they send an email to you within 24 hours. That gives you some time but not a lot of time. So it’s important to manage your time well so you can meet that expectation.

It’s extremely impressive to your co-workers, clients, guests, and customers when you reply to your email promptly. Don’t you hate it when you really need to get a hold of someone to resolve an issue and they don’t respond promptly, or sometimes never at all. So you then have to call them or go visit their desk and nag them about this small but important issue. Don’t be one of those kinds of employees that is annoying your co-workers.

In my next post I’ll be discussing some time management techniques that will help you to accomplish this standard.

Email, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways:

1. I can get correspondence from my brother in Colorodo in seconds, rather than having to wait for the mailman.
2. If I have to send a message to someone that they might make them upset, I can test the water by sending it through email.
3. I can speak with a customer in another country in seconds.
4. I’ve never actually received a paper memo and I think I’m better off for it.
5. No need for single’s bars. Now there’s single’s websites.
6. Less paper cuts.
7. No one can think poorly of me for my handwriting.
8. It’s got spell check, which helps those of us who are naturally poor spellers.
9. I can re-read my emails before I send them to make sure that I haven’t said anything stupid. If wish my spoken words worked the same way.

Yet in spite of all of these wonderful things about email, up until a couple of years ago I was still required by circumstance to send a fax with an actual piece of paper. But email just keeps getting better. Now I can send email fax and my love affair with electronic communication has become complete.

Every large business has started small, probably in someone’s living room or garage. But now the new entrepreneurial start-up location of choice is the local coffee shop with free Internet. You can sit, visit, drink your daily dose of caffeine, or have a scone. And you can start your brilliant new business idea. That’s right, now it may be coffee, but some day it will be champagne if your ideas and work ethic are sound.

But is it really possible to start an actual business without some sort of office. I mean, as soon as you get customers, won’t they find out just how small time you are? What if they want to send you a fax?

Fax to email by GoFaxer is the solution for the coffee shop office. All of your faxes can be sent and received via email. On the other end, if they have a traditional fax machine they’ll receive the document just as if you had a fax machine yourself. And you can receive their fax in your email inbox.

Technology has really become the boon to small time business owners dreaming of becoming big time. The American dream is certainly not dead with Internet fax technology and regular cups of coffee to keep you awake.

With the invention of email, fax has gone the way of the ghost. Email fax is now the king. One of the big advantages of Internet fax is that you will have a digital documentation of every fax that you’ve received.

But many of the advantages of using this technology will be useless unless you figure out how to manage that email inbox. Many of us receive a hundred or several hundred emails a day. It can be maddening to use this technology that is supposed to save time. Sometimes we can spend all day working on our email inbox without actually working.

So here’s a few rules of thumb:

1. Don’t permanently delete any email. You never know when that insignificant email is going to come in handy. When your boss comes to you and says, do you have an email you sent to me about a year ago about______, it’s your moment to shine. You find that email and your boss will be extremely impressed. Better yet, find an email that your manager sent you that they can’t find, and he or she will be indebted to you.

For the rest of the list see tomorrow’s continuation.

This morning we got hit with half a foot of snow. When I walked out to my car the snow came up over my ankles. And then I had to clean off my windshield. Driving was a nightmare. I was lucky to even get out of the parking lot in my apartment complex. When I pulled onto the main street my wheels spun out while a car almost hit me.

Frankly, I would have just assumed stay home and work. Years ago, that wouldn’t have been an option for anyone working in a business where their employees needed access to traditional communication tools like business phones and fax machines.

But now, with technology making office work easier and easier and more and more convenient, there are options for businesses that want to allow their employees to work from home. Your typical office worker can work from home, call his or her customers through their inexpensive cell phone. They can contact their business associates through email. And now, thanks to fax to email, they can send their faxes through the Internet.

So if there had been another half foot, I could have avoided the drive and worked from home. And if needed I could send a fax to any of my customers through my home pc.