New Extended Hours Already In Effect

As of August 1st, we've expanded our engineering/tech support staff.  We now have online customer service representatives available throughout the day and evening to assist you.  The new expanded coverage:

Mon - Fri:
Daytime:  7:30am PDT to 4:30pm PDT
Evening: 8:00pm PDT to 5:00am PDT

Sat/Sun:
Partial coverage throughout the day and evening.  Full coverage is planned soon.

Just go to our site at www.voicegateway.com and click on the "Live Chat" icon to connect immediately to one of our trained support engineers.

You may also click on "Contact Us" and open a support request, but please try to use our "Live Chat" help service whenever you can.  With a real-time connection to our support reps, it's the fastest way to get help as we can ask you questions and follow-up immediately without the store-and-forward delay of a typical email request.

Amongst all the feedback we have received from you, the number one request has been to extend our customer service hours.  We are excited to be making this investment in providing better support.

It is unfortunate but there are a lot of fly-by-night or part-time web hosting companies that advertise "24 x 7 tech support" and dirt cheap prices.  We continue to welcome their former customers as new clients - especially when they read the fine print and realize their former host actually defines "24 hour support" to mean they respond  to tech support requests within 24 hours - sometimes.

The next time someone tells you about a hosting deal that is "too good to be true", keep that in mind and suggest they consider hosting with us - we post our actual support hours.  We're not truly 24 x 7, but with our expanded hours we're providing more coverage than 80% to 90% of the other hosting companies out there.

Back to Top

Digital Video Recorders (DVR's) have become very popular over the past few years.  A DVR is a computerized VCR machine.  Just like a VCR can record your favorite TV show or movie to a tape so you can watch it anytime you like, a DVR records anything you see on TV to a built-in hard drive.

Although the concept is very similar to a VCR, there are many incredible things a DVR can do because it is a computer and using a hard disk instead of a VCR tape.  The first feature that is always mentioned is "pausing live TV".  At any time, you can press the "pause" button on the DVR remote control and it will instantly freeze what you see on TV and start recording it.  So you can stop, fast forward (skip commercials), and rewind (instant reply) the recording for full control.  Need to answer the telephone?  Just press "pause" and resume when you want to.

There are three main types of DVRs - Tivo, Windows PC, and cable box.  Tivo, an independent Silicon Valley company, invented the product and is one of market leaders.  Microsoft entered the fray a few years ago with Windows Media Center Edition (MCE) and last fall upgraded it to Windows Media Center Edition 2005.  Finally, some cable or satellite TV providers are now including DVR features in the proprietary set-top boxes they rent to connect to their service.

The big difference between Tivo and Windows MCE is cost.  There are many different Tivo models but a basic box costs only $100.  Windows MCE requires a high-performance, Pentium 4 computer (windows MCE is a superset of Windows XP), plus additional hardware so an MCE box is usually around $1200 or more but lately there are some new models for $750 or less.

But up-front costs can be mis-leading.  Tivo has a monthly service fee of $12.95 or you can buy a lifetime service for $300.  Windows MCE does not have any monthly fees and the cable/satellite DVR fees vary but usually are around $5 per month.

At first glance Windows MCE looks like an expensive option and you might be tempted to get a Tivo.  Watch out!  Having done that, our resident tech guru recently made the switch to Windows MCE and can't believe everything he's been missing.  Don't forget - A Windows MCE is a complete PC so you can make your DVR box also be the computer you use at home.  If you're planning to upgrade to a nice, fast new computer anyway, the real cost of Windows MCE is only a little more for the MCE software and TV tuner card.

You can read more here:
Blog - Switching from Tivo to Windows MCE

Back to Top

NEW!

In this section of our newsletter we'll be showcasing actual sites (not demos) that hopefully can give everyone new ideas on what kinds of things you might want to incorporate into your site.

Our first site is www.aacase.net   It's a portal site built using DotNetNuke for the Alumni Executive Board of Case Western Reserve University.  As a portal, it provides dynamic data-driven content and includes a registration system. Registered users can login and gain access to the password-protected areas of the site.  This is a great example of how a sophisticated members-only application can be created without any programming or special skills.

The second site is our own www.mycblog.com   This is our free blog hosting site (which everyone is welcome to try).  I'm including here for a different reason -- it is built entirely using Windows SharePoint Services with a custom site template and customized web parts.  SharePoint is a very flexible tool, but quite often most SharePoint sites use the "default template" and they all look alike.  This site is worth a look to see how with some customization, a site can utilize all the dynamic database and interactive features of SharePoint with a custom look and feel.

Back to Top

FREE blog hosting - http://www.mycblog.com

90-days Free - Submit your site to 200 Search Engines: http://seo.voicegateway.com

Free 30-day trial - "point & click" store builder: http://www.merchant-in-a-box.com

Register a new domain: http://www.voicegateway-domain-names.com

Services Summary: http://www.voicegateway.com/services/default.htm

Update your contact/billing info: http://payment.voicegateway.com

Tech Support Request: http://www.voicegateway.com/support/reqsupport.htm

Tech Alerts free subscriptions: http://www.voicegateway.com/contact/techalerts.htm