As you may know, our slogan here at BP is “making the Internet an effective business tool.” With that in mind here are some online tools that I’ve found useful lately:

• Google Voice – http://www.google.com/voice/about
  This is a free service from google that allows you to have a single phone number that rings to any/all of your phone numbers.  Depending on who the caller is you can have different phones ring, and have different voicemail messages. Voicemails are delivered via email with a written transcription.  The transcriptions can be pretty bad, but you can also listen to the actual recording.  My favorite use for this service is to make notes to myself when I’m on the road.  I leave myself voicemails and the messages pop up in my email when I get back to the office.  There are many more useful features of Google Voice.  Go to their website to check it out.
• Remember The Milk – http://www.rememberthemilk.com
  This is another free service that allows you to keep your to-do list online.  It offers many options and many interfaces.  I’m a list guy so this is a very valuable service for me.
• Free Conference Call – http://www.freeconferencecall.com
  As you may have guessed, this service will allow you to run conference calls with no fees other than the cost of the call.  My experience has been good call quality.  They also offer the ability to record phone calls which is a feature I’m going to be using in the near future when I plan to conduct an interview with a client that I’ll want to share with my staff.

That’s it for today.  Please feel free to call me if you’d like to discuss more ideas about how we can make the Internet an effective business tool specifically for you.