SMB technical

pWalt Mossberg reviews mini-cell towers which boost cell phone signals:/p pIf you have lousy cellphone reception in your house, you may have wished you had a cellular tower nearby. Well, now you can buy your own and plant it right inside your home./p pWalt Mossberg tries out the ATT MicroCell, a small gadget that acts as a personal cell phone tower in your home for areas lacking coverage. He says the device has some significant limitations, but more importantly, it raises the question of why you should have to pay to fix a service for which you're already paying./p pVerizon, Sprint and ATT all have started selling gadgets that act as mini-cell towers, broadcasting wireless phone service just like a real cell tower does, though over a much smaller area: a single house./p pI've been testing one of these devices, ATT's $150 MicroCell, in two very different homes#8212;my own house in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., and my son's basement apartment in New York City. I chose ATT for my tests because its network typically attracts the loudest complaints about bad coverage and dropped calls. a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703632304575451550096764346.html?mod=djemptech_t#articleTabs%3Darticle"(Read the full article here)/a/p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/jVRH2W5hTL71qUhAi6N-kkxUsVs/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/jVRH2W5hTL71qUhAi6N-kkxUsVs/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/jVRH2W5hTL71qUhAi6N-kkxUsVs/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/jVRH2W5hTL71qUhAi6N-kkxUsVs/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=i832hi6tV9g:mTyzKEqCNvE:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=i832hi6tV9g:mTyzKEqCNvE:qj6IDK7rITs"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=i832hi6tV9g:mTyzKEqCNvE:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=i832hi6tV9g:mTyzKEqCNvE:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=i832hi6tV9g:mTyzKEqCNvE:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=i832hi6tV9g:mTyzKEqCNvE:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight/~4/i832hi6tV9g" height="1" width="1"/

pSandy Carter has spent close to 10 years helping IBM navigate the world of social media. IBM's a HUGE company with a variety of products and services and it's not an easy task. There are a variety of customers to speak to and a variety of products to consider how best to market./p pYou can learn a lot from her experience./p pMarketing enthusiasts worldwide tout the benefits and necessity of social media in business. Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, LinkedIn, professional communities, blogs#133;and the list goes on. /p pSavyy SMBs know creating an online presence will heighten awareness and, ultimately, bring in new business. What#8217;s often ignored, however, is that without a clear plan and direction in place before a company begins using social media, it will surely fail. If you're going to invest in a social media plan, don't dabble. Do it strategically./p pAfter nearly a decade of driving social media programs and offerings within IBM, I#8217;ve learned a few, simple, yet often ignored #8220;Digital Before and After#8221; practices that when followed, show why SMBs should use social media. /p h2What Do You Want To Say?/h2 pTake a hard look at your business structure and current communications plan to determine what you want to achieve through social media. Is it a greater awareness of your brand, better communication with your customers, a way to communicate news, or to achieve greater sales leads? Also brainstorm ways one-way communications withinbr / your company#8212;newsletters, e-mail blasts, or annual reports -- can be transitioned into a two-way communication using social media to offer more value and a voice to your stakeholders./p h2Who Do You Want To Say It To?/h2 pDetermine who your audience is. White collar executives? Internet-savvy Moms? Millenials? A bevy of social media tools target varied audiences. There are obvious examples#133; MySpace for the younger generation, and LinkedIn for seasonedbr / professionals, but there are thousands of others targeted to niche communities, and identifying your audience and where they are communicating online is a crucial step. Our #8220;a href="http://www-2000.ibm.com/partnerworld/pwhome.nsf/weblook/pat_sw_social_media.html"Getting Started with Social Media/a#8221; guide on IBM#8217;s web site is a great place to explore this topic further./p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/nyej0xA_I5yWr46kh64nHxDe7eY/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/nyej0xA_I5yWr46kh64nHxDe7eY/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/nyej0xA_I5yWr46kh64nHxDe7eY/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/nyej0xA_I5yWr46kh64nHxDe7eY/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=O0TIC5XMuXA:mW57o3afR90:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=O0TIC5XMuXA:mW57o3afR90:qj6IDK7rITs"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=O0TIC5XMuXA:mW57o3afR90:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=O0TIC5XMuXA:mW57o3afR90:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=O0TIC5XMuXA:mW57o3afR90:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=O0TIC5XMuXA:mW57o3afR90:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight/~4/O0TIC5XMuXA" height="1" width="1"/

pHaving a remote or branch office is challenging enough, but when you have to think about managing a "dual" infrastructure - not just the employees in your main office, management, finances and a dozen other things - it's a double (or more) challenge./p pTechnology can help you ensure your branch office does not turn into a major headache./p pimg alt="robert-ciampa-marathon-technologies.jpg" src="http://smallbiztechnology.com/media/robert-ciampa-marathon-technologies.jpg" width="80" height="80" class="mt-image-right" style="float: right; margin: 0 20px 20px 0;" /Rob Ciampa Vice president of marketing at a href="http://www.marathontechnologies.com"Marathon Technologies/a said that there are five things you can do, technically speaking, to ensure that although your remote employees don't have access to a full time IT consultant, that their technology is just as good (or why not better) than their colleagues at the "main office"/p h2TIP #1 - Ensure Fast, Secure Networks/h2 pFor companies with a small branch office, secure internal (e.g., LANs and VPNs) and external networks are essential to effectively managing business-critical applications from anywhere in the world./p pMost internal network hardware is easy to set up and allows users to simply plug in and start using the network. However, you should take the extra time to configure the security features, as it may pay off in the long run. In addition, installing firewall software can help to secure an external network./p pThis is so important. Although it's a pain, to guests, to not allow them unfettered access to the Internet through your WiFi network, you'll be much more secure./p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/amIXaVyu5MOrCdErZS5Kz0zls8U/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/amIXaVyu5MOrCdErZS5Kz0zls8U/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/amIXaVyu5MOrCdErZS5Kz0zls8U/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/amIXaVyu5MOrCdErZS5Kz0zls8U/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=dx-gdF2Nm54:lV8Wct8WKME:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=dx-gdF2Nm54:lV8Wct8WKME:qj6IDK7rITs"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=dx-gdF2Nm54:lV8Wct8WKME:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=dx-gdF2Nm54:lV8Wct8WKME:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=dx-gdF2Nm54:lV8Wct8WKME:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=dx-gdF2Nm54:lV8Wct8WKME:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight/~4/dx-gdF2Nm54" height="1" width="1"/

pLarge businesses have large systems in place to monitor and block unauthorized information from leaving their companies. But even with these systems in place it's hard to monitor every key stroke that your employees are typing in email messages./p pHowever, you should be concerned./p pHaving personal or financial information of your customers (or employees) released (by accident or intentionally) could be an embarrassment but it could also be a criminal liability. Many of your industries are regulated and you could be held criminally liable for what information is publicly released. For those of you not in regulated industries you could still be liable.br / a href="http://www.palisadesystems.com/"br / Palisade Systems/a, recently announced the launch of a href="https://portal.compliancesafe.com/"ComplianceSafe/a, which helps protect small businesses against inadvertent disclosure of private or sensitive data that can occur through outbound e-mail data leaks./p pThe service is economical and pretty easy to use. You select from a list of data you wish to protect and what you want to do with it./p pimg alt="compliance-safe-Policies.png" src="http://smallbiztechnology.com/media/compliance-safe-Policies.png" width="388" height="140" class="mt-image-center" style="text-align: center; display: block; margin: 0 auto 20px;" //p pIf you have information that Compliance Safe does not monitor, you'll have to work with your IT Consultant to decide what solutions might be best for you to give you the protection you need./p pBeyond a technology service, it's really, really important that you train your employees to know how to safely handle customer information. They need to know what they can share and HOW they can share it. Should they use a consumer file sharing service? Should they use a highly-secure and encrypted corporate file sharing service?/p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/BDtotkUaJwGmkWMKKtsmTFNXquY/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/BDtotkUaJwGmkWMKKtsmTFNXquY/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/BDtotkUaJwGmkWMKKtsmTFNXquY/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/BDtotkUaJwGmkWMKKtsmTFNXquY/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=4KaTT_e7Juo:CXzzF7RqAmI:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=4KaTT_e7Juo:CXzzF7RqAmI:qj6IDK7rITs"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=4KaTT_e7Juo:CXzzF7RqAmI:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=4KaTT_e7Juo:CXzzF7RqAmI:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=4KaTT_e7Juo:CXzzF7RqAmI:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=4KaTT_e7Juo:CXzzF7RqAmI:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight/~4/4KaTT_e7Juo" height="1" width="1"/

pI'm looking forward to the national discussion that we'll be doing as part of the a href="http://www.smallbiztechtour.com"Small Business Technology Tour/a. One of the biggest challenges that the business owners I speak with express is that they KNOW they need to leverage technology but they express frustration that they don't know HOW or have the TIME to do all of these things./p pThe solution I tell them is to work with an expert. This need not be expensive, but can be quite economical. There's no excuse why you should not be doing more with new media, why your web site does not look better or why you're not leveraging more with social media./p pEllen Pack, Vice President of Marketing at a href="http://www.elance.com"Elance/a#8220; which provides solutions for finding gurus to help you in your business, said, "Frustrated by the traditional on-site staffing model, businesses are embracing virtual and hybrid work structures which allow them to tap into highly skilled online teams on a flexible basis. Talented workers with hot skills such as Google App Engine development, HTML5, SEO and Social Media Marketing are experiencing unprecedented demand for their expertise and can find steady work and growing incomes.#8221;/p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/G9KapGwh-DyQQxplbB5AcznXA7I/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/G9KapGwh-DyQQxplbB5AcznXA7I/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/G9KapGwh-DyQQxplbB5AcznXA7I/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/G9KapGwh-DyQQxplbB5AcznXA7I/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=kUdthJCcsU0:gOy_3uL3jUA:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=kUdthJCcsU0:gOy_3uL3jUA:qj6IDK7rITs"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=kUdthJCcsU0:gOy_3uL3jUA:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=kUdthJCcsU0:gOy_3uL3jUA:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=kUdthJCcsU0:gOy_3uL3jUA:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=kUdthJCcsU0:gOy_3uL3jUA:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight/~4/kUdthJCcsU0" height="1" width="1"/

pI've been online for a LONG time, like when Prodgy was hot and AOL was cool..../p pI remember when Internet Service providers and web hosts started offering "shopping carts" enabling us to sell online and it was like really neat to start selling online. Many of these providers have been bought out or are out of business./p pHowever, there's lots of new companies emerging (like a href="http://www.merchantcircle.com"Merchant Circle/a and a href="http://www.3dcart.com"3dCart/a) and older ones, like a href="http://www.netsol.com"Network Solutions/a, a href="http://www.godaddy.com"GoDaddy.com/a and a href="http://www.register.com"Register.com/a are still around and doing well./p pOne of the things that EVERY business must consider for their online sales is mobile sales. Your current web site is NOT optimized for mobile browser purchasing. This means that when customers want to buy from you from their smartphones (or other tiny screen devices) they are getting a pretty annoyed experience./p pIf you want to BOOST your online sales revenue, you've got to ready your web site to sell to mobile customers. If your e-commerce / web host can't help, consider switching./p pE-commerce provider 3dcart writes, the internet leaders like Amazon, Bestbuy, Walmart, Target and others have been exploring into the mobile arena for quite awhile now, and small online businesses might be losing out on this opportunity. Existing websites do not perform well on mobile devices, many elements cannot be displayed, sites get distorted and the variety of browsers and screen resolutions that exists between blackberries, androids, iphones and ipads, make imperative the need to optimize your site for mobile devices and avoid causing frustration to visitors./p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/BsuOuWvsBwRJNwKwq5se1mCcibc/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/BsuOuWvsBwRJNwKwq5se1mCcibc/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/BsuOuWvsBwRJNwKwq5se1mCcibc/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/BsuOuWvsBwRJNwKwq5se1mCcibc/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=nesCDWum2sE:_vdiDx-_v7s:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=nesCDWum2sE:_vdiDx-_v7s:qj6IDK7rITs"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=nesCDWum2sE:_vdiDx-_v7s:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=nesCDWum2sE:_vdiDx-_v7s:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=nesCDWum2sE:_vdiDx-_v7s:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=nesCDWum2sE:_vdiDx-_v7s:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight/~4/nesCDWum2sE" height="1" width="1"/

pI've been online for a LONG time, like when Prodgy was hot and AOL was cool..../p pI remember when Internet Service providers and web hosts started offering "shopping carts" enabling us to sell online and it was like really neat to start selling online. Many of these providers have been bought out or are out of business./p pHowever, there's lots of new companies emerging (like a href="http://www.merchantcircle.com"Merchant Circle/a and a href="http://www.3dcart.com"3dCart/a) and older ones, like a href="http://www.netsol.com"Network Solutions/a, a href="http://www.godaddy.com"GoDaddy.com/a and a href="http://www.register.com"Register.com/a are still around and doing well./p pOne of the things that EVERY business must consider for their online sales is mobile sales. Your current web site is NOT optimized for mobile browser purchasing. This means that when customers want to buy from you from their smartphones (or other tiny screen devices) they are getting a pretty annoyed experience./p pIf you want to BOOST your online sales revenue, you've got to ready your web site to sell to mobile customers. If your e-commerce / web host can't help, consider switching./p pE-commerce provider 3dcart writes, the internet leaders like Amazon, Bestbuy, Walmart, Target and others have been exploring into the mobile arena for quite awhile now, and small online businesses might be losing out on this opportunity. Existing websites do not perform well on mobile devices, many elements cannot be displayed, sites get distorted and the variety of browsers and screen resolutions that exists between blackberries, androids, iphones and ipads, make imperative the need to optimize your site for mobile devices and avoid causing frustration to visitors./p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/FP9p6jKsUlKNvra4q7ZSNdWkTDM/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/FP9p6jKsUlKNvra4q7ZSNdWkTDM/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/FP9p6jKsUlKNvra4q7ZSNdWkTDM/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/FP9p6jKsUlKNvra4q7ZSNdWkTDM/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=RS3GyQdwkLM:xTOBKc7QfbU:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=RS3GyQdwkLM:xTOBKc7QfbU:qj6IDK7rITs"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=RS3GyQdwkLM:xTOBKc7QfbU:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=RS3GyQdwkLM:xTOBKc7QfbU:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=RS3GyQdwkLM:xTOBKc7QfbU:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=RS3GyQdwkLM:xTOBKc7QfbU:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight/~4/RS3GyQdwkLM" height="1" width="1"/

ul liVerticalResponse Online Community Unveiled: Helping Small Businesses Grow Email Marketing Lists/li liSage Payment Boss Helps Small Businesses Get Paid Anytime, Anywhere/li liFree Shipping a Must for Small Business Online Purchases/li liIT Professionals Use Personal E-Mail to Hide File Transfer Activity from Management/li liNew Desktop Computer for Growing Small Businesses/li liNew iPhone Application Gives MyFax Customers Access to Faxes at Their Fingertips/li liHow to Use Email Marketing to Develop Customers for Life/li liTech Leaders: Should You Knock Them Down or Keep Them on Their Thrones/li /ul pbr / strongVerticalResponse Online Community Unveiled: Helping Small Businesses Grow Email Marketing Lists/strong/p pimg alt="Thumbnail image for verticalresponse.gif" src="http://smallbiztechnology.com/assets_c/2008/07/verticalresponse-thumb-150x59-438.gif" width="150" height="59" class="mt-image-left" style="float: left; margin: 0 20px 20px 0;" /SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 10 /PRNewswire/ -- Today marks the launch of a new community resource aimed at small businesses that are interested in growing their email marketing lists #8212; thereby increasing their sales. The VerticalResponse List Building Bank is a community for small businesses to post tips and tricks while learning more about new and improved list building tactics from their peers as well as the experts at email marketing company VerticalResponse. Following on from the success of the VR Marketing Lounge, a community forum for marketers to meet and share their expertise, VerticalResponse has launched this latest forum for small business owners. /p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/MGWs3MGBss9tadTLGDciUpUnTUY/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/MGWs3MGBss9tadTLGDciUpUnTUY/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/MGWs3MGBss9tadTLGDciUpUnTUY/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/MGWs3MGBss9tadTLGDciUpUnTUY/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=uQL-AQAc77g:zN5adC4J3f8:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=uQL-AQAc77g:zN5adC4J3f8:qj6IDK7rITs"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=uQL-AQAc77g:zN5adC4J3f8:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=uQL-AQAc77g:zN5adC4J3f8:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=uQL-AQAc77g:zN5adC4J3f8:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=uQL-AQAc77g:zN5adC4J3f8:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight/~4/uQL-AQAc77g" height="1" width="1"/

pLast week we hosted the latest webinar in our email marketing series with email marketing company a href="http://www.campaigner.com"Campaigner/a. Wendy Lowe, Regional Development Director, talked about the MOST valuable asset your business has - your customers - and how you can keep them loyal to your brand or company using email marketing. /p pWatch a video replay of the entire webinar: /p div style="text-align: center;" embed src="http://blip.tv/play/A42VcaCfYw" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="320" height="270" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"/embed/div pDownload a pdf file of the presentation slides a href="http://smallbiztechnology.com/media/Developing%20loyalty%20through%20email%20marketing-august-webinar.pdf"here/a. /p pWendy explained that loyalty to your brand or business goes way beyond having a terrific product or flawless service - it's the overall experience that a customer has with your company and how they relate to it on an emotional level. /p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/QXKG9yDt4Z_xOdBwlbQ4hBAV59o/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/QXKG9yDt4Z_xOdBwlbQ4hBAV59o/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/QXKG9yDt4Z_xOdBwlbQ4hBAV59o/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/QXKG9yDt4Z_xOdBwlbQ4hBAV59o/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=WNmWkr8pNJo:-NSYLJ349Ng:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=WNmWkr8pNJo:-NSYLJ349Ng:qj6IDK7rITs"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=WNmWkr8pNJo:-NSYLJ349Ng:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=WNmWkr8pNJo:-NSYLJ349Ng:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=WNmWkr8pNJo:-NSYLJ349Ng:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=WNmWkr8pNJo:-NSYLJ349Ng:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight/~4/WNmWkr8pNJo" height="1" width="1"/

pI've reviewed a lot of CRM services. Most all of them are hosted, online, and not software. The biggest competitor for these tools is one of two things: a) doing nothing or b) using Excel./p pAs most of us know, Excel is NOT the best tool for data management, but many businesses use it as it's simple to use, fast and already on their desktop./p pI was recently introduced to a $10 CRM application that's built within Excel - it's called a href="http://www.crm-on-excel.com/"CRMxl/a. It's NOT fancy and slick with Web 2.0 looking buttons. However, for $10 (one time payment) and for those who want a TASTE of better data management of contacts, leads and things like that, you might want to try it out./p pI would recommend it for the smaller businesses and solo entrepreneurs who are probably already using Excel and want a step up from Excel to Excel on steroids...with CRM./p pThe publishers of CRMxl have done a great job of taking the power of Excel adding intuitive and easy to use navigation buttons and turning Excel into something that most of us have not seen before and didn't know it was able to manage data in this way./p pCRMxl reminds me of the guys who take Twitter and use it to make telephone calls from airplanes. There's nothing to say but "wow". It might not be for everyone, but there's someone who could use it./p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/ro85kWxnv6bwk8I6x9w5nmLphs0/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/ro85kWxnv6bwk8I6x9w5nmLphs0/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/ro85kWxnv6bwk8I6x9w5nmLphs0/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/ro85kWxnv6bwk8I6x9w5nmLphs0/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=wPl-s90q1Vc:-Q1rPAnvaCU:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=wPl-s90q1Vc:-Q1rPAnvaCU:qj6IDK7rITs"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=wPl-s90q1Vc:-Q1rPAnvaCU:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=wPl-s90q1Vc:-Q1rPAnvaCU:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=wPl-s90q1Vc:-Q1rPAnvaCU:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=wPl-s90q1Vc:-Q1rPAnvaCU:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight/~4/wPl-s90q1Vc" height="1" width="1"/

pimg alt="sethgodin2.png" src="http://smallbiztechnology.com/media/sethgodin2.png" width="247" height="291" class="mt-image-left" style="float: left; margin: 0 20px 20px 0;" /Seth wrote in this blog that he's no longer working with traditional publishers. According to the Wall Street Journal, which covered this news, Seth will publish his own books and sell them directly to customers. He'll publish "books" in digital format according to what I've read on this./p pWhat does this teach all of us?/p pOnce you KNOW who your customers are, CAN DIRECTLY reach them and have a PROFITABLE number of them, you can bypass traditional channels of marketing and sales - bypass the "middle man"./p pSeth's a href="http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2010/08/moving-on.html"blog post read/a that the customers of authors are publishers. They (the publishers) pay money and distribute a book to readers through book stores. /p pHowever, if you have an author who has an audience that you can reach directly, why not leverage technology and sell a book (be it digital or otherwise) directly to your readers? Like Seth is doing. Of course, if you want a full media tour, fancy graphics in all the stores, book signings, you'll have to put a team together to help with this...you won't have a book publisher to help you do this./p pI told a friend of mine today that the most important thing he can do (related to marketing) for his business was to build a large database of customers (leads, potential customers). Everyone who walks into his door, he should capture their contact information (cell phone, email, all of it) and market to them, with permission. Once he builds a nice, large database of leads, he'll have a steady flow of customers (kiddies) to his day care week after week. He can spend less time handing out flyers and have customers beating a path to HIS door. Just like we beat a path to Seth's blog and events!/p pbSo what about you? Can you ditch the middle man and market directly to your customers? What's Seth's secret? Here's what I think./b/p h2Do Awesome Work/h2 pRule Number 9 of Ramon's Business Rules ( a href="http://www.ramonsbusinessrules.com"http://www.ramonsbusinessrules.com/a ) is "do awesome work". Seth has built a following of hundreds of thousands of readers, of his blog alone, who will buy from him, attend his events and more. He does not need any middle man to have them buy from him, because they TRUST him, ENJOY his writing and LEARN from him. His writing and speeches are the best. Period./p pIf you want to be able to bypass the middle man in your industry, do awesome work and stop doing work that's just "good enough"./p pPS - Keep in mind that the "middle man" is critical and very important for many businesses. Most businesses need some sort of middle man. Middle men are not bad. However, some people, like Seth Godin, once you reach a certain point of customer intimacy and volume can free themselves of middle men and communicate and sell DIRECTLY to their customers./p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/O9ka8zfs53vUOIv1JqS-DIqvkA4/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/O9ka8zfs53vUOIv1JqS-DIqvkA4/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/O9ka8zfs53vUOIv1JqS-DIqvkA4/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/O9ka8zfs53vUOIv1JqS-DIqvkA4/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=NBFJigZ4kh4:9BybHEGPFCQ:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=NBFJigZ4kh4:9BybHEGPFCQ:qj6IDK7rITs"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=NBFJigZ4kh4:9BybHEGPFCQ:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=NBFJigZ4kh4:9BybHEGPFCQ:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=NBFJigZ4kh4:9BybHEGPFCQ:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=NBFJigZ4kh4:9BybHEGPFCQ:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight/~4/NBFJigZ4kh4" height="1" width="1"/

If you aren’t telling me what your plans are?

My research, and my recommendations have to be based on what your strategic goals and tactical plans are.

If you are the CFO / CEO of a small to medium business and you are responsible for IT, yet in my IT leadership role I have no clue what your thinking?

Then I can’t support those tactics or plans can I?

Would I research and recommend an IT infrastructure upgrade if you have already decided that you have outgrown our facility and are planning to move?

Would I recommend deferring a particular expense if your strategic plan contains a new revenue generation activity where that cost would actually be an investment to get you there?

A simplistic example

If your primary revenue strategy is moving boxes by the truckload off a loading dock, fancy IT tools may be just an expense.

But if your strategy is changing to become the go-to business that gets every box off of that dock and into the right customers hands in the least amount of time – those fancy IT tools may become a critical investment.

The SMB Takeaway

IT investment needs to support your business goals and your operational strategies.

If your IT team has no clue what these are – you are not going to get the IT support you should be receiving.

If you disagree? tell me why!

Filed under: business, IT, IT Strategy, leadership, Real SMB IT, risk, SMB, SME, technology Tagged: IT Leadership, IT Strategy, SMB, SME, technology

pMicrosoft is a leader in software for businesses. However, they have been forced to AGGRESSIVELY shift their model to hosted applications and fight in the dirt (or marketplace) with Google and dozens of other hosted application providers./p pI was looking at a href="http://www.ticketleap.com"TicketLeap/a's ticket solution, which competes directly with the leader in event ticket sales, a href="http://www.eventbrite.com"EventBrite /a(which I use) and a href="http://www.constantcontact.com"Constant Contact's/a event system./p pI then got pinged from a href="http://www.shareddoc.com"SharedDoc/a and they're positioning themselves as cheaper and easier to use than a href="http://www.microsoft.com/sharepoint"Microsoft Sharepoint/a but more feature rich and robust than a href="http://docs.google.com"Google Docs/a./p pSo the dilemma you have is when do you stick with a market leader, even one that's good and when do you switch and/or at least try another vendor./p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/SBjxANKbWP6HI7OSLuPpupHnSJw/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/SBjxANKbWP6HI7OSLuPpupHnSJw/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/SBjxANKbWP6HI7OSLuPpupHnSJw/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/SBjxANKbWP6HI7OSLuPpupHnSJw/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=4ZGZ8aJQYL4:Hwe0bMn5QMA:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=4ZGZ8aJQYL4:Hwe0bMn5QMA:qj6IDK7rITs"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=4ZGZ8aJQYL4:Hwe0bMn5QMA:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=4ZGZ8aJQYL4:Hwe0bMn5QMA:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=4ZGZ8aJQYL4:Hwe0bMn5QMA:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=4ZGZ8aJQYL4:Hwe0bMn5QMA:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight/~4/4ZGZ8aJQYL4" height="1" width="1"/

pimg alt="phone keys.jpg" src="http://smallbiztechnology.com/media/phone%20keys.jpg" width="240" height="160" class="mt-image-left" style="float: left; margin: 0 20px 20px 0;" /I've covered virtual phone systems for years - Gotvmail (now a href="http://www.grasshopper.com"Grasshopper/a), a href="http://www.ringcentral.com"RingCentral/a, a href="http://www.my1voice.com"my1Voice/a, a href="http://www.virtualpbx.com"VirtualPBX/a, a href="http://www.google.com/voice"Google Voice/a and so many others make competing phone systems./p pThese systems are feature rich and help companies without a traditional phone system in their office, but maybe only cell phones or just separate telephone lines, can communicate just like a company with a fancy "please press 1 for sales" type phone system. And more./p pIt's about time to re-look at your virtual telephone system. I bet there are features they have which enable you to do more, including interacting smarter with your customers, including CRM and social media hooks./p pPersonalizing the customer experience for every call, a href="http://www.ringio.com"Ringio /a recently announced that it can automatically greet callers by name. It can also automatically route them to the person they spoke with last. The service can also reach employees on the fixed or mobile phones they desire. Calls can also be routed to a predefined list of employees -- for a particular skill set, language or marketing campaign, for example -- or evenly distributed to all employees to handle particularly heavy call volumes. Companies can also record, install and change custom greetings as often as they wish. /p pThis is all possible as even more than a system it's a CRM platform helping you serve customers more./p pWhatever phone system you choose, ensure it's working for YOU and YOUR not working for it. Ensure it's helping you do MORE for your customers and not less!/p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/Gb-GTVBf3Kh7PpHj-bWjCsP9nHo/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/Gb-GTVBf3Kh7PpHj-bWjCsP9nHo/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/Gb-GTVBf3Kh7PpHj-bWjCsP9nHo/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/Gb-GTVBf3Kh7PpHj-bWjCsP9nHo/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=3jUajHEg_cU:BoRH3alnat8:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=3jUajHEg_cU:BoRH3alnat8:qj6IDK7rITs"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=3jUajHEg_cU:BoRH3alnat8:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=3jUajHEg_cU:BoRH3alnat8:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=3jUajHEg_cU:BoRH3alnat8:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=3jUajHEg_cU:BoRH3alnat8:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight/~4/3jUajHEg_cU" height="1" width="1"/

pToday, I heard a sound clip of a lady who lost a home she lived in for only 4 months. She said, "we never new this would happen", talking about the floods in Long Island, New York, in which her entire new home was destroyed. a href="http://newyork.cbslocal.com/?podcast_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.podtrac.com%2Fpts%2Fredirect.mp3%2Fnyc.podcast.play.it%2Fmedia%2Fd0%2Fd0%2Fd0%2FdV%2FdE%2FdO%2FdK%2FVEOK_3.MP3%3Fauthtok%3D5561227672123783697_pFQ0QwQytfYbd2sdoLz7AosIf4podcast_name=Heavy+Rain+Leads+to+Flooding%2C+Forcing+Evacuations+and+Damaging+Homespodcast_artist=station_id=91tag=" target="_blank"You can listen to the sound clip here/a./p pThis was a home, but it I'm sure there were memories lost, not to mention much more if it was a home office or imagine if it was YOUR corporate office and you lost everything in a flood, fire, or man-made disaster./p pa href="http://kineticd.com/en/"KineticD/a gives some simple and very useful recommendations for backup and recovery strategies for your business. Hire a technology consultant to help you, but ensure they're following these 10 rules - at the very least./p h2Always On/h2 pLook for services that perform continuous online backup of files as soon as they are modified or updated. It is not enough to simply have an online storage space on the Internet. Periodically dragging files there will only work as a backup if it is done moments before a computer failure. Even if the service has a scheduled backup agent that runs weekly, consider how much data a business could lose since the last time it ran?/p h2Encryption/h2 pIt is important that files get encrypted before even leaving the original system, and that the account holder is provided a unique encryption key for authorized access. Even though most online backup services use encryption to protect data as it traverses the Internet, many do not use encryption when they store data on servers. This might be fine for saving MP3 music files, but is not sufficient for protecting private business information like customer data, banking records and emails./p h2Ease In/h2 pMany online backup tools are designed to be used by expert IT administrators. Many of these services require intimate knowledge of the operating system in order to perform a backup. For example, a Microsoft Outlook email file may be kept in a special folder hidden six levels deep in a PC. Look for systems that automatically determine where Outlook email, My Documents, Desktop, and Favorites are located to help ease the setup./p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/YhP8eQ2Dhgj1FfJAlHR0xKD1wDQ/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/YhP8eQ2Dhgj1FfJAlHR0xKD1wDQ/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/YhP8eQ2Dhgj1FfJAlHR0xKD1wDQ/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/YhP8eQ2Dhgj1FfJAlHR0xKD1wDQ/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=xR-5PQfdz2w:mUvCcRCt2Y4:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=xR-5PQfdz2w:mUvCcRCt2Y4:qj6IDK7rITs"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=xR-5PQfdz2w:mUvCcRCt2Y4:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=xR-5PQfdz2w:mUvCcRCt2Y4:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=xR-5PQfdz2w:mUvCcRCt2Y4:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=xR-5PQfdz2w:mUvCcRCt2Y4:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight/~4/xR-5PQfdz2w" height="1" width="1"/

pIt's pretty safe to assume that every business professional understands that cloud computing is "the way to go". Whether every business embraces cloud computing (online computer, software as a service) or not, is another story. However, I do think it's useful, from time to time, to review "hot" technology and really understand why we are investing in it and if we should keep doing so./p h2No Need to Buy Software/h2 pNick Vossburg is President of a href="http://www.alteritech.com/"Alteritech/a says that one benefit of cloud computing is that there is No Need to Buy Software. This sounds obvious, but not buying software means no procurement, no installation, no management of licenses, no surprise cost increases and no worries about if you should upgrade to the latest version of the software./p h2Easier connectivity of data to mobile devices/h2 Another benefit is the power of leveraging anytime, anywhere computing. With all your data and related applications in the cloud, you are free to use mobile products and still access your data and applications as long as you have access to the Internet. h2Better security/h2 Your computing platform, in some ways, is much more secure. If your computer crashes or otherwise goes down in a traditional software environment, you lose your data or hope that your backup works. If the only software you're really worried about is a browser, then your data and software are safely protected and you could just walk into your local Best Buy or Staples and buy another computer, and you're up and running again. h2With data living in the cloud you can easily share data across online services./h2 pRarely do you want your data to live in ONE application. But often times your customer names should be integrated with your financial application. Your product list needs to populate your e-commerce web site. /p pCheck out a href="http://www.thesmallbusinessweb.com"The Small Business Web/a/p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/wOaOz9f1bL8WqfGFBhxFFCgPXH4/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/wOaOz9f1bL8WqfGFBhxFFCgPXH4/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/wOaOz9f1bL8WqfGFBhxFFCgPXH4/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/wOaOz9f1bL8WqfGFBhxFFCgPXH4/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=2ZzFJ3uRCiA:8fkZLzVqQj4:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=2ZzFJ3uRCiA:8fkZLzVqQj4:qj6IDK7rITs"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=2ZzFJ3uRCiA:8fkZLzVqQj4:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=2ZzFJ3uRCiA:8fkZLzVqQj4:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=2ZzFJ3uRCiA:8fkZLzVqQj4:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=2ZzFJ3uRCiA:8fkZLzVqQj4:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight/~4/2ZzFJ3uRCiA" height="1" width="1"/

pimg alt="linchpin-book-cover-51fMyB3O1TL._SL500_AA300_.jpg" src="http://smallbiztechnology.com/media/linchpin-book-cover-51fMyB3O1TL._SL500_AA300_.jpg" width="200" height="200" class="mt-image-left" style="float: left; margin: 0 10px 10px 0;" /I've got a stack of great books to read and review. I'm so behind, but one must start somewhere. The first book in the "re-launch" of my review series, as it were, is Seth Godin's book, a href="http://www.amazon.com/Linchpin-Are-Indispensable-Seth-Godin/dp/1591843162"LinchPin: Are You Indespensable/a. I know the book is not "new" as in just printed, but it's been relatively recently, so it's "new" enough./p pbI'll grade books on a 1 - 5 rating. With 5 being "you've got to buy this book today and buy 20 copies for all your friends and keep your competitors from reading it." For books that rate a 1...../b/p pbI'd give this book a 3.5./b/p pI found the opening pages of the book great. The book gives us hope and insight that we all, whatever our profession and/or professional status, can be Linchpins. Seth is great at awesome anecdotes to illustrate his point./p pWhat's a Linchpin?/p pThis means that when we leave a job, people cry and mourn at the loss of seeing us go. /p pUnlike a cook at a McDonald's that's paid at or near minimum wage and is simply a cog in the factory. When they go someone else replaces him or her./p pSeth said that Sir Richard Charles Nicholas Branson, CEO of Virgin, is nothing special. Most of the work he does during a day, anybody can do. But the small percent of time that he really gets paid for is THINKING. It's his brain. His UNIQUE (Linchpin) way of thinking of great products, relationships, etc for Virgin to expand, grow and innovate as a company./p pWhy did I give the book a 3.5. I felt that a lot of the book was repetitive. In fact, I think Seth could have made this a much smaller booklet and got the insight covered just the same./p pIt's a great book. All should read it. But the repetitiveness left me annoyed after a while. /p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/Oe2VJHTZ7toNYrQQl0JBaVZ-xyA/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/Oe2VJHTZ7toNYrQQl0JBaVZ-xyA/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/Oe2VJHTZ7toNYrQQl0JBaVZ-xyA/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/Oe2VJHTZ7toNYrQQl0JBaVZ-xyA/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=Hkkd8WCRDHo:Xxbb0Q2Vl_g:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=Hkkd8WCRDHo:Xxbb0Q2Vl_g:qj6IDK7rITs"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=Hkkd8WCRDHo:Xxbb0Q2Vl_g:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=Hkkd8WCRDHo:Xxbb0Q2Vl_g:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=Hkkd8WCRDHo:Xxbb0Q2Vl_g:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=Hkkd8WCRDHo:Xxbb0Q2Vl_g:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight/~4/Hkkd8WCRDHo" height="1" width="1"/

pInc Magazine's written a nice article in how Cree, Inc, manufacturer of components for LEDs, hired their first social media guru. You'll learn from this story key insight into how your first social media hire can be the best!/p pEver heard of Cree, Inc.? It's a 4,500-person company that manufactures basic component LEDs, like chips and modules, which it sells to distributors who incorporate them into their products (digital cameras, flashlights, work lamps, etc.). You still awake? Stay with us. This company has more than 1,500 Twitter followers and 1,000 Facebook fans./p pWhat's the secret?/p pCree started a campaign last September called Lighting the LED Revolution, which markets itself as leaders of the revolution toward energy-efficient lighting. Its followers, in exchange for being online fans, have pledges to sign, videos to watch, before-and-after pictures to marvel at, and free lighting to win. In essence, Cree has given its audience a consistent, and interesting, message to stand behind. Surreptitiously facilitating these hundreds of comments and thousands of page hits is one woman. Her name is Ginny Skalski, and she is Cree's social media Specialist./p pa href="http://www.inc.com/guides/2010/08/how-to-hire-a-social-media-specialist.html"Read Inc Magazine's full article here./a/p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/IKuOwDcza4FWwxQbjgYYeWiuX8M/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/IKuOwDcza4FWwxQbjgYYeWiuX8M/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/IKuOwDcza4FWwxQbjgYYeWiuX8M/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/IKuOwDcza4FWwxQbjgYYeWiuX8M/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=d9KwiMKA4Ps:HB-3Rnk8y24:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=d9KwiMKA4Ps:HB-3Rnk8y24:qj6IDK7rITs"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=d9KwiMKA4Ps:HB-3Rnk8y24:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=d9KwiMKA4Ps:HB-3Rnk8y24:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=d9KwiMKA4Ps:HB-3Rnk8y24:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=d9KwiMKA4Ps:HB-3Rnk8y24:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight/~4/d9KwiMKA4Ps" height="1" width="1"/

We had some frustrating issues getting fonts that install with some Adobe products working in the 64 bit versions of Microsoft Windows. Both Windows XP and Windows 7 ( I assume Vista would be the same)

It took too much time finding the resolution – so this post is a little lower ‘techie’ level than what I normally write, but maybe it will save someone else some hassle

Problem

When installing certain Adobe products such as inDesign or Photoshop, the Adobe fonts that ship with these packages are not visible within the Adobe applications.

Details

This issue seems to ocurr with Adobe applications using older Adobe Type 1 fonts. Adobe Type 1 fonts consist of two separate files, the font_name.PFB file and font_name.PFM. Installing the fonts into the Windows Fonts folder will allow the font to work with Microsoft Windows products such as MS Word or PowerPoint, but will not be visible to Adobe Products.

NOTE: Installing the fonts into the Windows Fonts will generate error messages for each PFB file – these can be ignored.

Resolution

To have you fonts visible in your Adobe applications, manually copy both the font.PFM and font.PFB files into the \Program Files(x86)\Common Files\Adobe\Fonts directory (folder) on the drive where Microsoft Windows is installed (usually the C:\ Drive)

Note, both files must be copied into the directory, and there are both a Program Files directory and Program Files(x86) directory in 64 bit Windows. The (x86) one is the correct one to use.

Filed under: Software, technology Tagged: 64 Bit Windows, Adobe

pFor those of us in very populated areas of this great country, having broadband access to the Internet is pretty much expected - whether its through DSL or cable. However, there are hundreds of thousands of customers (and potential customers) that can ONLY get access to the Internet through a dial up connection./p pThe alternative is an often expensive and slow connection through satellite. This solution is better than nothing, but it's not as fast as the higher speeds of cable, DSL or fiber./p pThe NY Times reports that satellite providers are boosting their speeds and will be able to offer customers faster - much faster - speeds./p pThe NY Times writes iBut two companies, WildBlue and HughesNet, are now in a race to change all that. Both plan to launch satellites in the next couple of years that will dwarf their predecessors in space./p pWildBlue#8217;s alone will have 10 times the capacity of its three current satellites combined. Such behemoths, the companies say, will enable them, at prices similar to what they now charge, to provide Internet service at speeds many times faster than they now offer #8212; as fast, in some cases, as fiber connections. Further, the companies argue, satellites can provide service more easily and cheaply per subscriber than their earthbound cable and phone company competitors, particularly to the 14 million to 24 million Americans who live in areas without broadband service./i a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/16/technology/16satellite.html?pagewanted=1themc=th"Read the full article here./a/p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/76f49os6rz5xunwAUs2EJrXoStw/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/76f49os6rz5xunwAUs2EJrXoStw/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/76f49os6rz5xunwAUs2EJrXoStw/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/76f49os6rz5xunwAUs2EJrXoStw/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=Pmgkv2leGoY:UVlLifdAILM:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=Pmgkv2leGoY:UVlLifdAILM:qj6IDK7rITs"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=Pmgkv2leGoY:UVlLifdAILM:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=Pmgkv2leGoY:UVlLifdAILM:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=Pmgkv2leGoY:UVlLifdAILM:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=Pmgkv2leGoY:UVlLifdAILM:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight/~4/Pmgkv2leGoY" height="1" width="1"/