My New Virtual Office

In my preparations for the transition out of being a student and back into the professional world (in Colorado), I�ve decided to go �all virtual.� I have used a virtual fax/voice mail number through a company called j2 for years with great success. Now I am taking things a step further and I have signed up for a Colorado Vonage number. I will be picking up my new product next week in Colorado and I will be testing it out � both in Colorado and during other periods when I am in Belgium.

There are, of course, other products available. Earlier I mentioned Skype (inspired by an interesting article written by co-blogger David Brunnen). Skype is a free peer-to-peer product that is made by the same people that wrote KaZaA. The reason why I chose Vonage, however, is because they issue me a phone number in Colorado. Also, Vonage offers a number of call-management features, which means that I can confidently issue the number to business associates. For example, if the service does not work well, I can use call forwarding, and because of the number portability rules I believe I could even transfer it to a fixed line later if things do not work out. Finally, Vonage has already survived some legal disputes in the United States, they are a market leader, and for these reasons I think it is best to start with their product.

So I�ll be blogging my experience with this Vonage product over the next few weeks here, as I try out the various functionalities of my new virtual office.

Disclaimer: I endorse no product, and have no conflicts of interest, own no stock, receive no paychecks from any of these companies (j2 or Vonage). So I guess I really have nothing to disclaim, but wanted to make this clear since product reviews are sometimes shrouded in conflicts.