There are 7 rules you should never violate when choosing a domain name for your business. Failure to follow these rules will result in customers having difficulty emailing you, finding your website, or even worse, remembering it when attempting to refer you business! Violate these rules at your own risk. Read the rest of this entry »
Streaming MP3 playlists through Asterisk is relatively easy. The concept is thus:
1. Use mplayer to stream the radio station from the source, and convert the format simultaneously using the following command:
mplayer -af resample=8000,channels=1,format=mulaw -playlist http://provisioning.streamtheworld.com/pls/WSBAM.pls
2. Add the command line parameter -ao to throw the output to a file:
-ao pcm:file=streamtemp.wav
3. Shove the output to “null” and make it a background process by putting the “&” at the end:
mplayer -af resample=8000,channels=1,format=mulaw -ao pcm:file=streamtemp.wav -playlist http://provisioning.streamtheworld.com/pls/WSBAM.pls >> /dev/null 2>/dev/null &
4. Use PHPAGI to control the call flow, get temp file names, and shell execute the mplayer command. Everything to this point is done for you in the download below. For this, you need to download the phpagi package, and extract it under /var/lib/asterisk/agi-bin/. Primarily, you need to satisfy the include statement: include(‘phpagi-2.20/phpagi.php’). So, the “-2.20″ part may change depending on the current version of phpagi.
5. Download the AGI script radio-stream.php, extract from the zip file, and place in /var/lib/asterisk/agi-bin/. Change file permissions on the php file:
chmod 777 /var/lib/asterisk/agi-bin/radio-stream.php
6. Add an extension to your dial plan. My suggestion is to use the callsign of the radio station. In this article, I have chosen WSB Radio AM 750 in my hometown Atlanta. So, my dialplan reads *750:
exten => *750,1,agi(radio-stream.php);
7. Reload dialplan.
Questions? Comments? Need Help? Leave comments below!
You may not know it, but your brain has an autopilot function built right in. You can harness this function to solve problems, create great new business strategies, and build your business. You actually use it all the time, but you have probably never been told how to command it to do your bidding. The process is quite simple, and involves programming your Read the rest of this entry »
As an entrepreneur and business owner, you are faced with many daunting challenges. You have payroll, employees, customers, clients, marketing, sales, “the books” and a myriad of other challenges to deal with. Meeting all these challenges requires energy, but where do you get it? Where is the limitless supply of energy that powers all the great entrepreneurs of history? The answer is simple… Read the rest of this entry »
Persistence is often quoted as the quintessential a key for success. It’s so obvious that it is frequently over looked. It is also the most elusive because it requires repeated, sustained decisions over time. There is one circumstance, however, where persistence will never pay off… Read the rest of this entry »
More and more companies are making an investment in virtualization. Moving multiple physical servers into a single virtualized server provides numerous benefits in teh cost savings department, disaster recovery department, and on the desktop / user’s side, it provides an incredible opportunity for systematization and standardization of desktops across users. But with all this technology, are you likely to be upgraded out of a job?
To truely understand how this will affect you, your organization, and your paycheck, Read the rest of this entry »
One of the most beloved qualities of Asterisk as a PBX is the voice mail to email capability. Frequently, however, it breaks or doesn’t work. To many, this can be very frustrating, but troubleshooting the problem is actually just a simple set of steps. This article will give you the basic tools you need to fix the email problem that is plaguing your Asterisk phone system. Read the rest of this entry »
Intellectual capital is nothing more than specialized knowledge. Intellectual capital typically exists before any business does. It is formed from the scientist who invents a new widget, the computer programmer who develops new software, or the ex-con who spent 3 years in prison reading about horticulture and agriculture so he could start his own business when he got out.
Intellectual capital may also be intellectual property, a methodology, or simply: a set of answers needed by other people.
Intellectual capital can be used to generate business captial and generate money, but intellectual capital by itself is rarely the source of riches. It is a fuel that is to be burned in the machine of business to generate business capital, which is where the real wealth created. When companies buy other companies, they do not buy intellectual capital, the buy business capital, systems, and cash flow.
Business capital is the by-product of mistakes, time and experience of you and your employees. Business capital represents the net worth of an employee’s knowledge and ability to perform their job and “grease the wheels” of your money making machine called a business.
For instance, one of the most overlooked and under appreciated departments is IT. IT Guys know that the entire “belly of the beast” operates solely on their ability to build and maintain networks and information infrastructure. But how much is an IT guy worth? If you take the average salary of an IT professional ($60,000 / year depending on the area) you can quickly see how how valuable the “average” IT person is to a large company.
However, when an IT person increases their personal intellectual capital and transmutes their knowledge into systems that produce profit for the company, they multiply their business capital. You go from being the break-fix guy to the guy who saved the company 11% on costs last year and helped pad the bottom line an extra 5%. What do you think that guy is worth now? The answer is no longer $60,000 / year. The answer is: replacement cost, which is salary + benefits + time required to find a replacement + learning curve + lost revenue from service interruption. That’s a lot more than $60,000.
I have a friend who worked for a small company of 45 people here in the Atlanta area. My friend, Steve, managed their network, serviced all the computers, wrote programs to automate tasks, built servers, built and operated the database, and kept the entire infrastructure going all by himself. Over the years, the owners of the company became short sighted and told him repeatedly that he needed to take a pay cut from the six figure salary he was earning to something more along the lines of the $60,000 / year mentioned above. Their reasoning was: “we could fire you and hire two college kids to do the job.”
They had no idea how expensive it was going to be to replace Steve’s accumulated business capital. The entire business ran on command line programs written in C, which were operated from scripts. 15 years of code. There was very little documentation on what operated what, and what little documentation there was were Steve’s personal notes, and those might as well have been written in Sanskrit because only Steve could read the notes and understand them. Just to “keep up” with everything Steve managed, the company would have had to hire a C programmer, a database administrator, a network administrator, and a help desk tech.
When Steve left, it only took a couple of weeks and their entire IT infrastructure came into catastrophic failure. Weekly sales and commission reports could not be created, so the sale people could not be paid. Backups fail. Email crashed. The more their cheap college kids tinkered with the system, the worse it got. The company even tried to hire Steve back, but because they had burned the bridge and repeatedly told Steve he wasn’t worth what they were paying him, Steve had no interest.
It would have been vastly cheaper to keep Steve on at full pay (or even increase his pay by a percentage) because of the value of his acquired business capital.
One of the most mis-quoted proverbs of all time must be: “Money is the root of all evil.” The correct quote is “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil”, and it originates from 1 Timothy 6:10 in the New Testament of the Bible. And, this quote is very true. Money is a tool, and should be treated like such. It is a wonderful slave, and an evil master. Money is often referred to as liquid capital. We characterize it with terms like liquidity and cash flow. Money is nothing more than the oil of the machine of business. It allows energy and value to move from one part of the machine to another and back again. When the oil runs low, the machine cannot function properly. When the oil is plentiful, the machine runs well. When there is “too much” oil, some is skimmed off the top and distributed or stored for when the machine needs more.
Money is a natural by product of the delivery of goods or services, which are the combined result of growing intellectual capital and growing business capital. Both need to grow in order to continue the growth of money and wealth. The growth of intellectual and business capital should always be the goal. Money itself should never be the goal. When you begin to chase money as a goal rather than build ever increasing intellectual and business capital, your business will invariably decline.
Never chase money. Chase intellectual capital. Chase business capital. Keep members of your team that are rich in both, and fire employees who are not appreciating in intellectual and business value. Keep this cause, and money will show up in your bank accounts almost as if by magic.
There is an old adage that states: “If you want it done right, you have to do it yourself.” You may be tempted to think this is good advice, but you would be wrong. You may be tempted to think “no one in my company can complete this task, because no one can do it to my standard.” Again, you are causing trouble for yourself.
The difference between doing something well and choosing properly something that only you can do is Read the rest of this entry »
Decisions are a great resource. They cost nothing to produce, and can make all the difference in the world to your business. Are you making the right decisions? How do you know?
One of the most overlooked means of success is the speed at which you can Read the rest of this entry »
