Call-Me-Quick

COMING SOON

Call us to get your advertisers included in the search!

Connecting Buyers and Sellers

in Moments

Call-Me-Quick is an app where a buyer selects what he needs, and in moments, receives calls from sellers of that product or service. The app shows popular categories for one-touch selection as well as a search box to find other yellow pages categories. 

When a category is selected, the user has an opportunity to state exactly what he wants, the three closest sellers in proximity to the user are selected, and the system simultaneously places automated calls to the selected suppliers. The suppliers receive the calls and hear an announcement that the publisher has someone who needs the product or service and to please press * if they would like to be connected. When a seller pushes *, a call is made back to the user and the seller is connected. 

The user can see which sellers were called and monitor the progress of these calls. Moreover, they will see other nearby sellers that they can manually dial.

  

If the caller is in an area that is covered by a subscribing publisher, the search is made against the publisher supplied database. But if the area is not covered by a subscribing publisher, the results will be chosen from a national database. 

When a call is placed to a publisher‘s advertiser, the announcement will tell the business that the call was generated from the publisher’s directory.

The Call-Me-Quick app will be available nationwide on the app stores. 

Benefits

• Promotes your directory by telling the business that the call was generated by you
• Users get what they need – fast
• Use a single app that works everywhere in the US.
• Generates real-time sales leads for your advertisers and provides you with tracking data to know what calls the app generated.
• Sales leads are generated and responded to in real-time and the publisher gets the credit for making the connection
• Promotes usage of your directory
• Generates good will
• New revenue potential 
• Publishers can see when and where the app was used and can download an activity report that details all calls.

 

Features

• One-touch dialing for urgent situations
• Search for urgent categories
• The user can choose to describe exactly what he/she needs and the business will hear it 
• Provides you with a national app that works with your data when the user is local and uses a national database when they are not in your publishing area
• Available as Apple and Android apps
• By including only businesses that advertise with you, you are providing added-value and more incentive to advertise
• User can use their current location or choose the center of proximity to sellers

Monetizing Call-Me-Quick

Here are many ways to turn Call-Me-Quick into profits, but here are a couple of ideas. First, sell participation in the service for a dollar or two a month. Or, use it as an incentive to buy advertising and include it for anyone that buys a quarter column or more.

The goal is to increase awareness that your directory is delivering qualified leads and to augment revenue with an advertising product that is easy to explain and easy to sell.

Who Is Yellow Magic Incorporated?

Many people know who Yellow Magic is, but not everyone knows our roots or even the variety of our products and services.

What is now Yellow Magic started out over 40 years ago as a programming consulting company called Consulting Resources Incorporated.  At first, we were developing just about anything our clients wanted, usually in either IBM Assembly Language or COBOL.  In time we started to specialize in database publishing related projects such as directories, catalogs, manuals, bank checks, time tables, TV guides, and just about anything that was maintained in a database and published in some format.  And we changed our name to Composition Technology International.

In the 70's and early 80's, we were always developing systems for our clients, but we had no products of our own.  We had developed a number of yellow pages systems for large companies on mainframe and mini computers, but the advent of the micro computer, we bought an IBM PC and started developing a PC-based yellow pages system.  It was first called Yellow Cash, and soon became Yellow Magic.

We were the first company to offer a PC-based yellow pages solution complete with pagination, and with the success of the Yellow Magic product, we decided to change the name of the company to Yellow Magic Incorporated, and as they say, the rest is history.

We have made a video that you can see on YouTube to get an overview of the company and its products.  I hope you enjoy it.

See it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-iIQcrClYc

Ron Mintle

Try Merlin for Free

Background

A number of years ago we developed a batch pagination system for large publishers having many books. Each one of them required their own custom pagination rules that are very difficult and time consuming to implement, and as a result, the cost of licensing Merlin and customizing it was very high.

As a result, we do not license it very often. So we decided to make a generic version that incorporated the most common pagination rules used in North America and make it available to all of our customers at a greatly reduced price.

In order to make the price affordable, we are not able to make any changes to the pagination rules for anyone under any circumstances. What we are offering is a potential to greatly reduce the time spent to paginate a book, and as a result, to increase the amount of time to continue selling.

How it works

Today, after typesetting yellow pages in Yellow Magic, the operator opens the book in Sleight-of-Hand and interactively paginates the book. Depending on a number of factors, we see books paginated with Sleight-of-Hand at rates between 40 and 600 pages an hour, but Merlin can paginate yellow pages at 15,000 to 50,000 pages per hour!

With Merlin, after typesetting in Yellow Magic, the user runs Merlin, imports the book from Yellow Magic, paginates the book, and then exports the book into Sleight-of-Hand. Once that is done, the user can open the book in Sleight-of-Hand and see that the pagination has already been done.

The next step is to review the results of Merlin’s pagination and to use Sleight-of-Hand to re-arrange any pages on which you would prefer a different ad or filler placement.

If you would like to see Merlin in action, please go here:

http://youtu.be/uXcI-43ecA4

How do I know it will work for me?

The best answer to that is to try it. We will install it on your system so that you can use Merlin for a free 30-day trial. If you find that it would make sense for you to use Merlin in conjunction with Sleight-of-Hand, then you can license it. If not, the license will simply expire.

So what you need to do is to run some tests with books that you have already typeset using Sleight-of-Hand. If the book you want to use for the test is still a “typeset-able” book in Yellow Magic, then all you have to do is to typeset the book again, run Merlin, import the book, paginate it and export it to Sleight-of-Hand. Then open Sleight-of-Hand and either print the book or review the pagination results in Sleight-of-Hand to determine how many differences there are between how you would have liked to paginate the book, compared to what Merlin did for you.

Be sure that your pages are locked before rearranging the ads.

Now please remember, that the goal would not necessarily be to determine how much work it would take to reproduce the book you published, but rather, to see how many changes it would take to create a layout that you would be willing to publish.

If the book you want to use for the test is an older edition and is no longer “typeset-able”, then please contact Yellow Magic technical support and we will sign-on to your system and typeset the book for you.

Please note, Merlin will only work for 3, 4, or 5 column books. It will not work on 1 or 2 column books.

How do I override what Merlin has done?

After pagination with Merlin, open the book with Sleight-of-Hand. You will notice that the galleys are locked. Do not unlock them.

If you want to review Merlin’s pagination results on screen, you can flip thru the pages by just tapping the key, which will take you to the next page spread. Use F7 to see the previous page spread.

In most cases, all you will want to do is to relocate where Merlin placed either ads or fillers. In either case, left-click the ad or filler. This will take it off of the page and place it in the galley or the filler window. It will be automatically selected, so to place it back on the page in a new position, left-click where you would like it to go and then flow galleys.

Please be aware that since Merlin was attempting to minimize filler, moving something may result in some galleys left in the galley window due to widow/orphan rules. When this occurs, you can use negative leading to remove as much of the galleys as you would like and re-flow to make it all fit again.

If you have any questions about this process, please contact technical support.

Magic Club

Because we will not be evolving Merlin or modifying it at all, if you want to add Merlin to Magic Club support, it will be at half-price. Support will be limited to answering questions and helping you get your book paginated, but will not supply any updates.

How do I get started?

If you would like to take advantage of this free 30-day trial, please contact technical support to get it installed. We will have to connect online to your workstation on which you use Sleight-of-Hand to install it. Once installed, we will test it by paginating a book and making sure it works, and then provide some online training so that you can do your comparative testing.

New Infographic Reflects Yellow Pages Directory Demographics and Usage Facts

Yellow Magic recently published a new Infographic that compiles several recently published factoids from different sources.  Sam Pretorius, Director of Program Development at Yellow Magic, explains that "the Infographic is a great tool to share with advertisers," and offers an easy at-a-glance visual aid to help understand Yellow Pages Industry usage and strengths.

Please feel free to access a large file of the Infographic off  Yellow Magic's Power of Yellow website at http://www.yellowmagic.com/Power_of_Yellow and it is posted here, too, for convenience.
 Please share the Infographic! 

If you would like an extra large file, just contact us at Yellow Magic. 

Magic Club 2013 in New Orleans September 22-25th

Yellow Magic is pleased to invite all Magic Club members in good standing to Magic Club 2013, in New Orleans, LA, September 22-25, Sunday - Wednesday, at the Maison Dupuy Hotel in the French Quarter.

To RSVP, email Paula Menard at  paula@yellowmagic.com

or give us a call at  951-506-4005 ext 118.

 Invitation:  http://www.yellowmagic.com/magicclub_2013.html

 To reserve hotel nights at the Maison Dupuy Dial 1-800-535-9177,  be sure to mention “Yellow Magic” for group rates. Hotel Website:  http://www.maisondupuy.com/

Hotel room nights are $129 per Deluxe King or Deluxe Queen Double room per night, group rate. Both Deluxe rooms come with views, marble baths and full amenities. Free wireless Internet is offered for our group, and each member will receive a 2 for 1 drink ticket per day at the Bistreaux Restaurant and Bar. Group parking rate is $25 per day. The Maison Dupuy is located in the French Quarter in New Orleans, only 2 blocks from the excitement of Bourbon Street and within walking distance to all major attractions. Located at the corner of Rue Toulouse and Rue Burgundy in the French Quarter, it is also only a few blocks northeast of the Central Business District (CBD) and the Mercedes-Benz Superdome. Everything fun is within walking distance or near street cars. Yellow Magic kicks off the meetings with a hosted Evening Reception and Mardi Gras-Style Party at the hotel. The following days, breakfast, lunch and snacks will be provided, all with vegan options, and you will have evenings on your own to explore! We hope to see you there—it will be a beautiful venue! 

 Hope to see you there, up to 2 employees per company may attend at no charge.

 Have a great day and happy 4th of July weekend!