Get Organized For 2012 With Technology Innovations

We can all count on a few things after a long holiday: it will be tough to get back into the swing of things, we will all pine for the holiday cheer from a month ago and our inboxes will be bursting at the seams. But with the right technological organization, you can make sure your documents are all where they need to be as the New Year gets underway. Whether you need to send a fax, return some e-mails or find things more quickly on your computer, technology can help you start the year off right.

Prioritize E-mail: As e-mail has become the preferred method of communication in most offices around the world, your e-mail inbox should be sufficiently inundated by the time you return from a long break. But fear not, e-mail providers have been hard at work making e-mail prioritizing easier. Gmail now monitors which e-mails you read and which you delete without opening, assigning a priority to each, marking those most important messages with a yellow tag. Yahoo mail offers many different category folders you can save to. These methods allow you to separate e-mails by importance so you can get through your work faster.

Online Fax: By switching to an online fax service, offices can organize faxes in many ways. Internet fax services change incoming faxes into digital PDF files so you can stay better organized and save paper. And by creating a digital version of all outgoing faxes as well, you create a digital backup for all faxes so you will never be without the necessary information. You will also be able to move these files into your regular computer filing system.

Computer Storage: The area of digital storage has grown by leaps and bounds in recent years, bringing increased capacity to external hard drives. These small plug-in drives can hold over a terabyte of information for very little money. But if you are worried about security and even larger capacity, along with the ability to access your info from anywhere, cloud storage is the way to go. These encrypted, online storage centers allow you to share information, transmit online fax documents and even save e-mails and other important materials so they can be viewed anywhere by anyone with access at any time.

Protecting Your Signature Online

With the advent of social media, text messaging and e-mail forwarding, information has never traveled faster. But how can you be sure your private information won't fall into the wrong hands? Nowhere is this fear more realized than with digital signatures and signed documents being transmitted online. Just like forging a note from your mother, digital thieves can intercept a signature from you when you send a fax, send a digital signature file or send an e-mail. Once they have a copy of it, they can learn to forge it or retransmit it and rob you blind.

Fortunately, there are new communication technologies available that protect your digital signature and ensure that it stays on your invoices, contracts and even permission slips, and nowhere else.

Online Fax Services: While faxes sent over the phone line can be intercepted, internet fax services come with a 128-bit encryption so your signature transmissions stay completely protected as PDF files transmitted to your contacts only.

Digital Signatures: Software created to help you insert digital versions of your signature into documents is nothing new. But with the traditional fax machine falling out of favor in many American offices, digital signatures must find ways to protect their users if this technology is going to take off. By sending legally binding documentation, some software gives recipients peace of mind to know that the signature is authentic, while others protect it with a cloud-based encryption.

Technology Helps Doctors Comply With HIPAA Regulations

Ensuring that patient records are kept confidential requires more of doctors and other healthcare professionals than just not chatting with neighbors about your patient's thyroid problem. HIPAA regulations require doctors' offices to go through a rigorous security screening, ensuring that all communication technology is up to snuff. So if you want to send a fax, make a call, save a chart to a database or send an e-mail, all lines must be secured.

While this can create some roadblocks for hospitals, new technologies are helping hospitals maintain compliance without changing basic daily practices. This guide gives you a few essentials that your office can use to protect against infiltration and still get work done for your patients.

Online Fax: While typical phone lines can have security holes, internet fax services offer a compliant 128-bit encryption so fax transmissions cannot be intercepted. That includes prescription information, letters to specialists and work orders that require signature that are still faxed from doctors' offices every day. Online faxing offers a more feature-rich environment, including a never-busy fax line for all the departments in your hospital or office and back-up storage for all faxed documents, while still complying with HIPAA regulations.

VOIP: HIPAA compliance can be expensive if you have to pay for testing on all communication portals. By reducing these portals, your facility can save time and money. Voice Over IP allows your facility to eliminate contracts with the phone company by making all calls over the internet. Since you are getting your Wi-Fi signal tested for security anyway, why not make this portal your phone portal as well? Partnering this service with an online fax can give you complete communication compliance on all outgoing and incoming messages.

Starting The Perfect Co-Working Space

With unemployment still plaguing much of the US, many Americans have struck out on their own, determined to occupy a position with 100 percent job security: CEO and Founder. But like any other enterprise, working with others can bear better results than working alone, even when you are a one-man operation. Whether you want to split a company fax line with other business owners or just need a buzzing office environment to stay focused, many entrepreneurs have found the answer in 2011: co-working.
Co-working spaces allow small, entrepreneurial businesses the ability to share expenses, network and own a piece of their very own office. According to a report from co-working experts at DeskMag.com, the number of co-working spaces worldwide increased by 17 percent between February and May. Many entrepreneurs have even started their own co-working spaces as a way to earn extra money for future business endeavors. And with a few technology additions, you can be one of them. But where to start? The guide below will help you set up your new office with a few essential tech tools you can't be without.
Encrypted Wi-Fi and Cloud Storage: Co-working spaces are great for networking and sharing business secrets. But if you want those secrets to stay inside the walls of your new office, you will need an encrypted, secured wi-fi network and effective, mobile storage. This way, companies can both share and protect information with ease. Your fellow entrepreneurs will be able to share access, print, and send a fax on the go.
Fax And E-Mail Software: Many co-working spaces are inhabited by freelancers like web developers and graphic designers. The ability to send large files over e-mail is important. Most free e-mail platforms will not cut it, due to file transfer restrictions. And if your fellow business owners are interested in sending mass e-mails to contact lists, bounce-backs could cripple your servers. But getting online fax and email tools that work together to provide failover can protect against server crashes and ensure that, when you send a fax or e-mail, it gets where it is going.
Stocked Office Areas: Like any normal office, co-working spaces have to be set up for people to entertain clients, eat lunch and grab a cup of coffee. Make sure that you establish inter-office relationships by offering activities and giving workers places to congregate. This will make it feel like a corporate office, only better because it is owned by proud entrepreneurs chasing their dreams.

Apple Phases Out Fax Capabilities With New OS Lion

While the march into a more mobile-connected world has done its damndest to phase out paper, faxing seems to be here to stay. In industries like law and construction, where an original copy or a personal signature can mean the difference between moving forward and postponing, modern incarnations like internet fax services have been a godsend.

But Mac users reliant on sending faxes through a modem attached to the telephone through Mac OS 10.6 were shocked when the computer giant Apple released the highly anticipated Mac OS 10.7 Lion in July. Stripped of these fax capabilities, Lion instead uses a Print-and-Scan feature that has left many users unsatisfied, searching for new faxing solutions. If you are one of them, perhaps it is time to upgrade to a web fax service this fall.

The changes are small but significant. The Print & Fax preference pane from 10.6 Snow Leopard is now called Print & Scan, but when you click the + button to add a device, you can still add a fax modem. But the Apple USB Modem (discontinued in 2009) won’t work in Lion because it relies on 32-bit drivers that don’t work (and thus aren’t included) in the 64-bit Lion. So USB modem users will have to find a new way to fax.

If you have been using a modem to send a fax, you have probably been looking for a change for some time. Online faxing provides many features not available with a modem. You can get all the conveniences of e-mail, including no busy signals, add-on contact list clients and desktop notifications so you won't miss your modem when you upgrade to Lion.

Saying Goodbye to Snail Mail and Fax Machine Dinosaurs with Online Fax

Business communication has been transformed drastically thanks to inventions such as e-mail, smartphones and their various apps, and online fax services. E-mail has eliminated unwanted junk mail piling up in the office mailbox, while Online Fax has created the opportunity for businesses to say goodbye to their old fax machine dinosaurs taking up space and sucking up money for supplies. With fax machines there are constant operating and security headaches. Online Fax increases office productivity, eliminates unnecessary supply costs and assures that important documents get to the appropriate recipient.

Fast and efficient business is smart business. The Internet has made it possible for businesses to work together, whether they are in the same city or across an ocean. Yet some businesses are still using old fax machines to send important documents, dealing with the hassle of busy signals, paper jams and restocking supplies, losing time that could be focused elsewhere. Implementing online fax services to everyday business makes it possible for businesses to run fast and efficiently, assuring time isn't lost fighting the fax machine, rather, freeing time to accomplish more important tasks while saving money.

Online Fax was specifically designed for the use of business teams, multiple users throughout one or multiple office spaces are able to send and receive important documents simply over the Internet. With a secure and productive software platform, it assures users can send one or thousands of documents safely and with ease. Whether packages that will fit any business, starter or established businesses will find everything they need with Online Fax. Online fax makes it safe, secure and simple to send a fax.

With Online fax it's possible to fax or email important documents, invoices, purchase orders and newsletters from the office, while on the road and even while traveling all from your computer. The software is easy to use, from first use it's value is clearly evident. Online Fax eliminated the need for the office fax dinosaurs and will help businesses evolve out of the stone age.

Transitioning From Traditional To Online Fax

While the jump from a traditional, paper-based fax machine to an online fax service may seem daunting, Online Fax makes the transition easy by offering you tools that you already enjoy in your current phone or fax system, and fixing some of the most frustrating parts about modern office communication.

Contact Lists: If you are like most people in the era of cell phones and built-in e-mail lists, you can't remember a single phone number or e-mail address no matter how often you use it. So why should you have to for your fax system? Online Fax offers integration with all major e-mail systems and contact servers, including GMail, Outlook, Act, Goldmine and even Excel spreadsheets. Send a fax to anyone in your contact list and sync thousands of contacts with our fax system so you will never have to remember a contact number again.

No Busy Signal: Cell phone users have waved goodbye to the busy signal. That annoying beep has invaded our ears for the last time. Make sure it isn't the first thing your customers hear when they try and send you a fax. Even if multiple faxes are coming in at once, Online Fax insures the line will never be busy again.

Keep Your Number: These days, contact information is like currency. You trade your business card or e-mail address for services, access, and as a way to stay in touch. For the avid business professional, your contact information may be gracing thousands of contact lists right now. Don't change your fax number to move on an online fax service. Online Fax allows you to keep your current number so you won't have to resend thousands of contact files just to send a fax.

E-mail Hacking Averted Through Online Fax

With recent e-mail hacking scandals from GMail, Yahoo and HotMail, many are looking for more secure ways to send and receive documents. But few could have anticipated that the answer was through a technology that has existed for years. Online Fax offers an extra layer of security while working within your existing e-mail server that can protect you from hackers, spammers and junk faxes that plague modern offices.

On June 3, Google announced that hundreds of e-mails, including those of government officials and prominent journalists had been hacked. These GMail users fell victim to Phishing, a new kind of e-mail infiltration where hackers create an e-mail form that looks as if it is from a trusted source like your bank or doctor's office. The form asks for personal information like e-mail addresses, account numbers, and phone numbers. Once you have entered the information, you are told to click a link. That link sends the information into the wrong hands. This type of scam has infiltrated the top e-mail servers in the world, as well as some of its biggest corporations.

But with Online Fax, you can send a fax over the Internet, giving your customers peace of mind when opening any transmissions. You can also receive all messages through the online fax service so you don't ever face the perils of a phishing scam.

If your e-mail is hacked, Online Fax ensures that you're communications are delivered while you put your e-mail account in order. When CitiGroup's credit card department was hacked in late may, causing the infiltration of over 360,000 credit card accounts, Citi notified state governments using fax transmissions to avoid further complications. These safe, direct transmissions ensure that you won't run into any trouble.

Log on to OnlineFax.com to learn how we can help modernize your office today.