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I just had a phone call from a telemarketer on my business line. Nothing unusual, I get them all the time. I know they’ve got a job to do but frankly I get sick of it. I’m a sole proprietor and don’t have unlimited funds to splash around from one service to another.

Today’s caller really annoyed me though. He wanted to know about my mobile phone service and when I said I wasn’t in the market for a new phone his immediate response was ‘oh, I’m not selling anything.’

Yeah, sure. I get that one a lot too. Then he proceeded to ask if I was under contract because if I was that would stop the calls. So of course I responded and asked if that was the only condition? He said ‘no’ and then told me it could depend on other things. And then I asked what if I wasn’t under contract? to which he replied there were still some conditions.

I asked what would I have to do to get off the list and he said answer these questions and then started to ask how many mobile phones the company (my business) had and… I hung up on him.

What right do they think they have to all the information about what phones I have, how many, who I’m under contract to and whatever else they wanted to ask? I get the same on my home line asking how much we owe on our mortgage, how many people live in our home, what ages are they, how much income do we get and so it goes on and on and…

How do you feel about this intrusion of privacy? Because that’s what it is. I’d like to know when it was deemed ok to start asking personal information for their records. And while I’m on the subject, that goes for any membership type websites that ask for your birth date before they’ll let you join whatever club it is. I mean, what’s with that? It’s not their business when my birth date is and I really do not want to give that information out. Too many organisations know too much about individuals now – why should I make it any easier for them?

Ok, so I’ll get off my soapbox now, I’ve had my rant, but perhaps you feel the same way too, and I invite your comments. KMT

intrusion of privacy, telemarketers

Tags: Author's Thoughts by Kathie Thomas
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I became aware today of a new conference taking place in September of this year. The topic is about Embracing Your Virtual World but the conference is on site in California with no mention of any virtual participation. I went and checked out their website with the hope of filling out a form or making contact – no contact information on the site at all – unless you register. What is this? A website (virtual presence), a conference about the virtual world, but no way of contacting these people virtually (or even by phone or fax) and no mention of any virtual participation. I emailed them care of their newsletter address so hopefully someone will get it!

I was recently made aware of your forthcoming convention but there is no contact information on your site promoting this and no way of making contact, unless you register.

I was interested in finding out why this isn’t being held virtually since it is about embracing the virtual world? And I am serious. I am a Virtual Assistant and belong to a fast growing worldwide community of virtual business operators. We’ve been holding annual conferences for two years now, over a 3 day period in May – all entirely virtual with speakers from 7 different countries or timezones.

I’m sure the topic of your convention would be of interest to people globally but because of airfares, accommodation and global unrest, many would not want to travel all the way to California.

What do you think? Shouldn’t a conference about something of this nature have a virtual component for virtual attendees? For those of you who aren’t aware, the Online International Virtual Assistants Convention was held online with attendees from many countries with a total of 23 speakers from different countries and timezones and was a fantastic event. Whilst the OIVAC focused on the Virtual Assistant industry anyone was welcome to attend as the variety of topics presented applied to anyone in business. KMT

virtual business, virtual assistant, starting a business

Tags: Author's Thoughts, Working Online by Kathie Thomas
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For many months now I’ve been writing a book. I’ve written other books which are sold as e-books online and are business ‘how to’ books, but this one is different and is being published by a company in W.A.

I began a blog (yes another one – I own several) in January 2006 which has proven very popular and when I mentioned it to my business coach late last year he said I should really do something with it and turn it into a book. I thought about that but didn’t do anything about it, and at the following session I saw my coach I mentioned I’d been booked to speak at a Christian Business Women’s Conference in Brisbane for September 2007. ‘Great!’ he said ‘you can launch your book there!’

Up till that point it was just an idea but suddenly it began to take hold and thereafter at each session he would ask me how many words I’d written? I took the idea of the blog and the content and built on it, and wove my story into it, and now it’s soon to be a full-sized paperback – probably to be listed in the ‘self-help’ or ‘Christian living’ genres.

If you don’t have a business coach it is worth exploring.  I provide VA services to a few coaches and decided I need to get a coach I didn’t do work for – for a couple of reasons.  I didn’t want to have to choose one from the other, but also I felt they would already have a perception of who I am and what I do (based on what I do for them) and I wanted to have someone work with me from a separate viewpoint.  And then I went to a networking meeting about a year ago and saw a man from my church who is a business coach. We began talking and things just clicked.  Stuart really has been excellent for me.  Whilst my business had been moving forward, he’s had me dreaming, planning and pulling out things I had put aside because I was so busy concentrating on running my business.  Now I’m looking up and ahead again and the book has become one of those things that used to be in the distant future.

Going this road is new, exciting, scary and full-on.  I had to commit myself to write a few thousand words every weekend for months and had it set in my Outlook calendar to nag me into getting the work done. But now it’s done I’m filled with excitement and can’t wait to see the finished product.   Stay tuned!

Tags: Author's Thoughts, Writing by Kathie Thomas
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As a Virtual Assistant, I love exploring new programs but am sometimes skeptical towards some until I hear from others of their own personal experiences. Free programs I do view warily until proven otherwise, I don’t want to get caught with something I wished I hadn’t downloaded.

However, recently my team were discussing a photo storing program called Picasa which is a free download from Google and it is worth checking out. It does a full scan of your computer or will only scan the sections you specify. So, if you have photos you don’t want suddenly exposed using this program, it would be best if they were not in your My Documents folder or any of the folders you want the program to go through.

Once it’s collated all that information you can view them in year order or alphabetical order and sort them into categories, or whatever. It has this great facility for collecting your chosen pictures for emailing them, or create an html file which you can upload to a webspace (your own webspace that is) for sending out to anyone. It has 3 different background colours (grey, black and white) and 2 different layouts. I expect since it converts them into html you could fiddle with them afterwards and make changes – I haven’t done that yet, but I like how easily it creates the thumbnails with a viewing screen.

This program could save you a lot of time if you work with images for clients and need to quickly upload images in a suitable format for viewing. If you also work with photo blogs or other sites that have a lot of images in it, this would be a worthwhile tool to work with. I had a bit of fun with it as you’ll see if you click on this link. KMT

Picasa, images album, photo blog, free download

Tags: Author's Thoughts, Technology by Kathie Thomas
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