I finally switched my main business land-line phone to digital cable

I finally switched my main business land-line phone to digital cable. That Bell South business phone (with all the bells and whistles, including a fax line "Ringmaster Service") was costing me about $112/month, for the past five years, Time-Warner cable is charging me $30/month for almost the same service.

So far, it's absolutely indistinguishable from the previous phone service. It sounds perfectly good, everything works fine, and I barely know I changed.

There were a couple of down-sides:

-- The big one - I had to change phone numbers. Once BellSouth gives you a business phone number, you are completely married to BellSouth for as long as you want to keep the phone number. I really didn't want to change numbers, but for $72/month, it seemed worthwhile. The old phone company put a "...This number has been changes. The NEW number..." recording on the old line, and I sent out notices to all of my clients, letting the most important ones know personally. I don't think I will lose any business over this, but regardless, I can't have BellSouth holding me captive for $112/month forever.

-- The digital phone service doesn't allow for faxes. Or, probably not. Maybe it will work, he said. But it would have to share the main phone number. I don't want to put my clients through that, so I got the fax-to-email service that I mentioned in an earlier post here.

-- If the cable goes out, we'll lose TV, internet, and phone. Oh well. I have a cell phone, I can go to a Wi-Fi location and use the internet, and I can do without TV for years if need be.

Anyway, I believe this is turning out to be a good move. I'm on a roll of reducing cyclical expenses; I think most of us don't realize the impact of, for instance, a $72 bill every single month - on and on - forever.

Removing restrictions on Adobe Acrobat PDFs

I bought a PDF e-book this week, and was happily looking forward to printing it out and curling up in the chair out on my deck to read it, as I've done with hundreds of PDFs before over the past 12 years.

So imagine my surprise when I went to hit the "print" button and saw that it was grayed-out and "unavailable". For some silly reason - because there is no good reason - the publishers of the book decided to "disable printing". My guess is that they have somehow gotten the impression that this will protect their copyright in some way. Since the PDF itself can be copied and sent to thousands of people in seconds, I can't see how preventing me from reading it legibly really helps protect the copyright.

I emailed the publisher, who ignored my email completely. A newsgroup post gained me lots of suggestions (including one slightly off-the-wall one, that it's "normal" for a PDF e-book to have printing disabled), including one which worked great. It's a little program called A-PDF Restrictions Remover. It's shareware, and the free trial worked great. If I need it again, I'd be glad to pay $9.99 for it. Highly recommended.

Dealing with one more non-content-provider

We all know about clients who just can't seem to produce the content for the web site you're building them. I've had quite a few in my time. In this situation I'm about to describe, I felt I had to take a firmer hand than I have in the past, and it seems to be working out well despite, or because of, my "businesslike" approach.

The story began last year, when I signed a contract to produce a web site for a very nice client; I'll call her Diane. The project proceeded along pretty well until we hit the point that every client dreads: providing content. Diane struggled. Weeks went by, and turned into months, and the months piled up.

My contract states that if a client delays for more than 60 days in responding to requests for feedback or content, the project will be cancelled. Of course, I'm in no hurry to cancel most projects, so I keep that contract clause there to give me that right, but I generally will wait a long time.

When almost a year had passed, I decided to take action. I contacted Diane. She was apologetic, saying that she very much wanted to finish the site, and promising to get all of the content to me right away. I dug out the site files and went through them, familiarizing myself again with the structure of the pages and the site. Unfortunately, there were a few aspects of the site that are slightly "dated" now, after a year, but I didn't feel it was my responsibility to update them at my own cost. But it made me realize that I really cannot allow a client to just let months and years pass without finishing a web site that I've contracted to produce.

When four weeks passed with no contact from Diane, I did some thinking. I had every right to cancel the project, but I kind of wanted that last 1/3 payment (due when the project was complete), and I knew she wanted the web site. So I emailed her and offered two choices: (1) We cancel now, or (2) she pays me now, and we have 30 days to finish. If (due to her) we're not finished in 30 days, we cancel it permanently.

She readily accepted option #2. A check should be on its way to me, and some content has already been sent.

I'm not sure whether or not Diane will be able to come through and finish the site, but even if she doesn't, I feel that I was more than fair and reasonable.

A brand-new project: what to do first

Yesterday was one of those happy days in which an envelope arrived in the mailbox with a signed contract for web development, and a big deposit check. These people (an architectural firm) first contacted me in early October 2006, so it's taken about four months to work out way through the preliminaries.

But now I have a big new project, and I need to get started. This is always slightly intimidating to me, but there are a few mundane things that need to be done, and going down this list always helps me to get on track.

What To Do First

1. Deposit the check. :-)
2. Sign the contract myself and send a copy to my client
3. Create a folder on my hard drive for the new project. Each of my web site project folders has a "assets" directory, within which are folders for "documents", "content", "graphics", "pngs", "archive", and "notes". I keep this stuff within the "site" folder, so that it gets uploaded to the server as a backup. From the "potential clients" folder, move the last 4 months worth of documents into these new folders.
   
4. Create a paper folder for the project (in the color designated for "active projects"), and from the "potential client" folder, move the last 4 months worth of documents into it.
5. Create a big label for this project for my Mighty Bulletin Board (see my article "Client Juggling" for more about the Mighty Bulletin Board).
6. Read over all notes and information and formulate a basic plan for producing the web site.
7. Phone or email the client with a "here's what we need to do first" message.

All pretty mundane stuff, but in my business, it all has to be done by me, and it helps get me ready to approach a brand-new project.