Marcus' Macro Scheduler Blog

Check out this Virtual Earth Technology Preview. Drive a car through the streets of Seattle or San Francisco. The database for Seattle contains 10 million images! You can search for businesses and see them on an aerial map. But the cool bit is how you can drive around the map. According to Scoble the guys at Microsoft stuck 10 cameras on a van and drove it around the two cities. They’ll be adding more cities in due course.

As most of you know, we are based in the UK. Those that have called us on the phone will also know that we have a US phone number. It is listed on our contact page. That phone number comes straight through to us here in the UK. We don’t have an office in the US – there is no US mailing address on our contact page – just a US number. We set the US number up a few years ago because we wanted to make it easy for our US customers to contact us, and we realised that many companies in the States don’t allow international calling. Calling outside your country is expensive, and with low, flat-rate calling plans, optimised for mostly local calls you may not even be able to call internationally. Why pay for the option when you hardly ever need to do it? So to make life easier for everyone we set up a US phone number that routes straight through to us here in the UK. If you’re in the US and you call it you’ll only pay for a national call (or local if you are in WA). But you get to talk to us in the UK. Simple!

So, five minutes ago I took a phone call and the guy said “Is this the US office?”. I said “No, you’ve come through to the UK, we don’t have a US office”. He said “So it’s just a mail drop?”. I said “What’s just a mail drop – there’s no US address on our contact page where you saw the number you’re phoning on”. “Ok”, he says. I said “We provide a US number so our US customers can get through to us easily”. He said “Thanks”. I was just about to say “So, anyway, how can I help you?” when I realised that he had hung up. That was it.

So what was all that about? I was slightly concerned that he was a potential customer who was put off when he found out there was no US office. But surely I am being paranoid. He didn’t even give me a chance to ask him how I could help. Perhaps it was a cold caller trying to sell something, and finding we had no US office decided the service or product he was selling was of no use to us. Hopefully the latter, not the former. I certainly don’t want to be scaring customers away. Is it a problem that we don’t have a US office? In nine years it hasn’t been yet! But either way, I was surprised he disappeared without explaining why he had called.

Anyway, if you ever need to call you will find the numbers on our contact page. The only issue with us being in the UK is the time zone – we’re 5 to 8 hours ahead of the US – but because of that we work late most days, so the only time our US customers may fail to catch us is if they call late in the day. So here’s a tip – call in the morning, your time, and you’ll be sure to get through!

I’ve been evaluating various remote support solutions lately. For a while we’ve been using a reverse VNC system, which is free, and works well for the most part. Being a reverse connection there are usually no firewall issues, since the customer adds us as a listening viewer and therefore the connection is from inside out, rather than outside in. However, some very strict firewall policies do actually prevent VNC traffic in either direction. So we have had to seek alternatives.

One of the most well known desktop sharing solutions is WebEx, but at prices starting from $149/month it’s not cheap! Other solutions such as Citrix’s GotoMeeting are more reasonable at $49/month. Another I’ve tried is LogMeIn which costs $99/month and seemed a bit complicated to set up and use. So I’ve been on the lookout for something more affordable and workable.

Well I’ve just discovered BeamYourScreen.com which starts at $19 a month (for a one:one connection – all you need for remote support) and there’s 25% discount to be had for a 2 year subscription. Seems like very good value. I’m currently evaluating it and it seems to work really well. The system is web and Java based so as long as java applets are permitted it should work and shouldn’t suffer the same security issues that VNC often does.

I found BeamYourScreen really easy to set up and use too. Once I had created an account and installed it all I had to do to start a session was click on the system tray icon. That gives me a session URL to give to a guest and a link to send it by email. The guest simply visits that URL and gets connected. Very simple. I’m running a seven day trial at the moment so we’ll see how it goes, but so far, I think this could be the one. If anyone wants to try it out, and get some free remote Macro Scheduler support at the time, let me know 🙂

The people we outsource our payments processing to, Plimus, also run an affiliate sales program. So if you find yourself recommending our products to clients, friends or colleagues, why not sign up as an affiliate and have folks click through your links to receive 10% when they purchase.

Once you’ve signed up as an affiliate with Plimus, find Macro Scheduler under “Product Catalog” and click the “Sell this Product” link.

Plimus carry hundreds of other titles too, so you could earn commission on all sorts of other products from other vendors. Don’t forget to add your affiliate links to your website, if you have one, and tell people how useful Macro Scheduler is.

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Very addicitve! I managed 943. I have NO idea how the top scorer achieved 3392!

Interesting video interview on Channel 9 with Bill Gates. Find out what he thinks about the Web and what the future holds for software. Microsoft have really become much more transparent lately. Channel 9 is a great way to get an insight into what goes on at Microsoft and meet some of the key people. Watch the interview.