SMB technical

pI received this press release from a href="http://www.nuancesoftware.com"Nuance software/a, maker of PDF conversion software and Dragon Naturally speaking, speech to text software. /p pThe release was so well written, meaning it's a TRUE STORY, that I'm publishing it here in its entirety. Sure, it's a press release, but it's a great story of how a small realtor moved their business to being a "paper-less" office. /p pWhen economic conditions created an #8220;upside down#8221; housing market in Las Vegas, Nevada, The Karten Group at Realty Executives of Nevada saw this as an opportunity to leverage their commitment to quality and client service to focus their business on short-sale housing transactions./p pA short sale is a highly specialized transaction. For the homeowner, it can be an extremely emotional process where delays and uncertainties generate anxiety. For the lender, it is a complicated procedure, requiring extensive layers of paperwork that need to be complete and managed in an exacting way to work within short-sale guidelines./p pIt was this combination of demands that led Mark Karten, Realtor at The Karten Group, to search out a software tool to streamline the paper-intensive process - to make creating and managing the documentation associated with a short-sale painless for the client and efficient for the lender./p p#8220;Most real estate agents don#8217;t want to handle short-sale transactions because of their complications. Realtors are sales people, not paper pushers. We adopted Nuance PDF Converter software because it allows us to work and collaborate in a paperless way,#8221; said Karten./p pNuance PDF Converter Professional 7 software enables The Karten Group to create PDF files from virtually any PC application and also convert PDF files back into fully formatted, editable Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint, and Corel WordPerfect documents./p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/8TztDx6zgIBGnUhDuZ817Winq9M/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/8TztDx6zgIBGnUhDuZ817Winq9M/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/8TztDx6zgIBGnUhDuZ817Winq9M/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/8TztDx6zgIBGnUhDuZ817Winq9M/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=Fr7Fceiocjw:xZT1F0PPvSg: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=Fr7Fceiocjw:xZT1F0PPvSg: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=Fr7Fceiocjw:xZT1F0PPvSg:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=Fr7Fceiocjw:xZT1F0PPvSg:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=Fr7Fceiocjw:xZT1F0PPvSg:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=Fr7Fceiocjw:xZT1F0PPvSg:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight/~4/Fr7Fceiocjw" height="1" width="1"/

pThere are some great contests and competitions going on for growing companies over the next few months. Don#8217;t wait till summer is over to think about it - there are some deadlines coming up soon./p pThis list of contests, competitions and awards is brought to you by a title="Small Business Trends" href="http://smallbiztrends.com" target="_self"Small Business Trends/a and a title="Small Biz Technology" href="http://smallbiztechnology.com" target="_self"Smallbiztechnology.com/a./p div style="text-align: center;" *********/div pbr / a href="http://smallbiztechnology.com/media/secondchance.JPG"img alt="secondchance.JPG" src="http://smallbiztechnology.com/assets_c/2010/08/secondchance-thumb-150x97-2041.jpg" width="150" height="97" class="mt-image-right" style="float: right; margin: 0 0 20px 20px;" //astronga href="http://secondchance.onlinepromo.com/"Second Chance/a/strongbr / emEnter by August 23, 2010/em/p pSecond Chance is a 7-part web series on BusinessonMain.com that will feature 4 entrepreneurs, whose first attempts at having their own business failed. They will compete against each other in challenges for a second chance to start a new business. During each episode, the entrepreneurs will be given a fake business concept that will test the skills that contributed to the failure of their previous companies./p pAlong with the $150,000, the Second Chance winner will have the opportunity to present their business concept to a team of Angel Investors who may invest even more money and their expert knowledge in the business./p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/1Y_Dnf0YcOF0PTWpifwy-M28B9g/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/1Y_Dnf0YcOF0PTWpifwy-M28B9g/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/1Y_Dnf0YcOF0PTWpifwy-M28B9g/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/1Y_Dnf0YcOF0PTWpifwy-M28B9g/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=UtRNUSXKyiE:IByqAg3s3wE: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=UtRNUSXKyiE:IByqAg3s3wE: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=UtRNUSXKyiE:IByqAg3s3wE:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=UtRNUSXKyiE:IByqAg3s3wE:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=UtRNUSXKyiE:IByqAg3s3wE:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=UtRNUSXKyiE:IByqAg3s3wE:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight/~4/UtRNUSXKyiE" height="1" width="1"/

pbBrent writes in Inc Technology how Google is a pretty neat tool for Social CRM.../b/p pOver the past 12-18 months, major customer relationship management (CRM) players like Salesforce.com, Sage, SAP and others have been adding "social" abilities to traditional CRM applications -- like viewing social profile information from Twitter and Facebook. Additionally, newer services such as BatchBook, BantamLive, and others are creating CRM applications on a social foundation aimed at the small and mid-sized business market. And with every passing day, social technologies are merging with traditional CRM functionality, giving companies more efficient ways of transforming clicks into valuable customer relationships. /p pA little over two years ago I wrote about the Three A's of Social CRM. Back then most people were focused on social media, but not so much on its impact on customer relationship management tools and strategies. Even a year ago when I compared traditional CRM with Social CRM the interest was pretty much limited to industry insiders. That's not the case today, as the topic of Social CRM has become the focus of many in business. /p pHaving focused on CRM for almost two decades -- as an application developer, early Salesforce.com certified implementation partner, and finally as an industry watcher -- this may be the most important development I've seen. I say this because technology has amplified the voice of the customer, and given them greater control over who they engage with, when they do, and how they do so. This in turn is forcing those charged with engaging them to change their approach: in order to connect with customers who Tweet to thousands of followers, watch videos on mobile phones, and form their own online communities. This also is forcing CRM vendors to provide services that do more than just store customer information and track activities./p pa href="http://technology.inc.com/managing/articles/201008/leary.html?partner=newsletter_Technology"Check out his full article here. Excellent read./a/p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/gtp5KiEU4eL9teR49C5xcU7EKY8/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/gtp5KiEU4eL9teR49C5xcU7EKY8/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/gtp5KiEU4eL9teR49C5xcU7EKY8/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/gtp5KiEU4eL9teR49C5xcU7EKY8/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=-k5-pteI_EE:98-hSmsDEBc: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=-k5-pteI_EE:98-hSmsDEBc: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=-k5-pteI_EE:98-hSmsDEBc:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=-k5-pteI_EE:98-hSmsDEBc:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=-k5-pteI_EE:98-hSmsDEBc:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=-k5-pteI_EE:98-hSmsDEBc:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight/~4/-k5-pteI_EE" height="1" width="1"/

pThe iPhone is hugely popular, we all know that. We also know that there are hundreds of thousands of applications for this popular platform. But here's the real question, should you build an application for the iPhone?/p pMarketing Sherpa offers some guidance:/p pIn March 2010, the law firm Morrison Foerster LLP became one of the first professional services firms to create a branded iPhone App when it launched "MoFo2Go." The application put news, attorney bios, a GPS-based location finder and a simple game directly onto customers' iPhones, giving them new ways to connect with the firm while they are away from the office./p pLaunching the app was both a test of a new channel for the firm's marketing team, as well as a complement to the firm's reputation and market share among high-tech companies, says David Harvey, Senior Marketing Manager./p p"It was a combination of wanting to make something that was useful for our clients, but also that lived up to our brand as a firm that 'gets' tech," says Harvey./p pSince then, there have been more than 1,500 downloads of the app -- not to mention positive feedback from clients and press mentions about the firm's foray into new technology. /p pa href="http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article.php?ident=31694"Read the full article here./a/p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/IXkkhQmkGoN3IEtu46zdW6RMvKw/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/IXkkhQmkGoN3IEtu46zdW6RMvKw/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/IXkkhQmkGoN3IEtu46zdW6RMvKw/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/IXkkhQmkGoN3IEtu46zdW6RMvKw/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=QnPH0ECLh5o:fQ_Vn_nFq6g: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=QnPH0ECLh5o:fQ_Vn_nFq6g: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=QnPH0ECLh5o:fQ_Vn_nFq6g:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=QnPH0ECLh5o:fQ_Vn_nFq6g:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=QnPH0ECLh5o:fQ_Vn_nFq6g:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=QnPH0ECLh5o:fQ_Vn_nFq6g:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight/~4/QnPH0ECLh5o" height="1" width="1"/

pMany of you use, or at least have heard of location based services like a href="http://www.foursquare.com"Foursquare/a, which help you let your friends know where you are and engage in local businesses that you frequent./p pOf course a href="http://www.8coupons.com"8Coupons/a, a href="http://www.yelp.com"Yelp/a, a href="http://local.google.com"Google Local/a and similar local, location based services are ideal for finding local businesses to frequent./p pLet's not forget that for LOCAL BUSINESSES you can use these services to market your businesses to local customers right at the time they're interested in your service./p pa href="http://www.facebook.com"Facebook /arecently released a new local service, Places. /p pThe NY Times a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/19/technology/19facebook.html?_r=1nl=technologyemc=ctb2"writes /aiUsing Places on hand-held devices like the iPhone and other smartphones, users will be able to check in, for example, at a restaurant, bar or museum, alerting their friends on Facebook of their presence. They will then be able to see, using the service, any friends that are nearby, as well as other people who have checked in at the same location and have agreed to have their location broadcast widely. /i/p pSure, becoming an "expert" in every new service that launches is not possible, for most of us. But at least being informed of the new services and working with an expert (or encouraging some on your staff to be that expert) is possible./p pLocal marketing is VERY powerful. Get with it. Learn it. And see how you can use it for your business./p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/XqJv1-RVcynlJgaEWiJHKcNTIxo/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/XqJv1-RVcynlJgaEWiJHKcNTIxo/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/XqJv1-RVcynlJgaEWiJHKcNTIxo/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/XqJv1-RVcynlJgaEWiJHKcNTIxo/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=NycG8MYwEIY:UwLFLIaY3rU: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=NycG8MYwEIY:UwLFLIaY3rU: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=NycG8MYwEIY:UwLFLIaY3rU:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=NycG8MYwEIY:UwLFLIaY3rU:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=NycG8MYwEIY:UwLFLIaY3rU:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=NycG8MYwEIY:UwLFLIaY3rU:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight/~4/NycG8MYwEIY" height="1" width="1"/

ul liNew Campaigner Features Simplify Adding Images, Contact Information and Reporting in Small Businesses Email Marketing Campaigns /li liIntel Buys McAfee: How Does This Affect Your Business?/li liPlustek Announces SmartOffice PS286 Plus Document Scanner/li liContent Marketing 101: Content Is NOT King. Content Distribution Is King./li liSerious About Social Media? Never Visit Twitter.com (Video interview with Postling)/li /ul div style="text-align: center;"*****/div pstrongNew Campaigner Features Simplify Adding Images, Contact Information and Reporting in Small Businesses Email Marketing Campaigns /strong/p pimg alt="Thumbnail image for Campaigner-Logo-Final.jpg" src="http://smallbiztechnology.com/assets_c/2009/05/Campaigner-Logo-Final-thumb-150x28-1186.jpg" width="150" height="28" class="mt-image-left" style="float: left; margin: 0 20px 20px 0;" /Ottawa, Ontario (August 18, 2010) - Campaigner, a leading email marketing service provider, today introduced new features aimed at making the service even faster and easier for small businesses to use, regardless of their level of marketing expertise. Chief among these is the ability to edit images directly within Campaigner, eliminating the need to use a separate image editing program. Other features include auto-template personalization, allowing customers to include a standard set of information in every email template; the ability to import email addresses from popular email services; and the opportunity to preview emails before sending. /p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/5bI6NmuccYl2ehpe2cORobLJJlg/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/5bI6NmuccYl2ehpe2cORobLJJlg/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/5bI6NmuccYl2ehpe2cORobLJJlg/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/5bI6NmuccYl2ehpe2cORobLJJlg/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=z_0zijXRfgI:uoH0q36dzyc: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=z_0zijXRfgI:uoH0q36dzyc: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=z_0zijXRfgI:uoH0q36dzyc:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=z_0zijXRfgI:uoH0q36dzyc:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=z_0zijXRfgI:uoH0q36dzyc:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=z_0zijXRfgI:uoH0q36dzyc:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight/~4/z_0zijXRfgI" height="1" width="1"/

pThere are at least 7 main vendors selling security solutions to growing businesses:/p pa href="http://www.symantec.com"Symantec/a, a href="http://www.mcafee.com"McAfee/a, a href="http://www.trendmicro.com"Trend Micro/a, a href="http://www.microsoft.com"Microsoft/a, a href="http://www.ca.com"Computer Associates/a, a href="http://www.kapersky.com"Kapersky/a and a href="http://www.avg.com"AVGbr / /a./p pI'm sure there's more players that I'm not remembering right now, but these seven come to mind. /p pWith Intel's purchase of McAfee, Intel is doing a few things:/p ul liBecoming a competitor of all the other security vendors they might have partnered with in the past/li liSolidifying their reach into the security space/li liEnabling McAfee to expand its reach into areas beyond computer and network security/li /ul h2What does this mean to you?/h2 pYou can expect to see McAfee offer more and more powerful solutions to protect your data beyond just the computer and your local network. When companies buy vendors you rely on, it is very important to look carefully at who is buying them and why to ensure that your interests will continue to be served. In this case, I would expect Intel to provide McAfee with the resources to be an even better company./p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/TmbfikSw3kVXFK-5SQ7zBtVOPyE/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/TmbfikSw3kVXFK-5SQ7zBtVOPyE/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/TmbfikSw3kVXFK-5SQ7zBtVOPyE/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/TmbfikSw3kVXFK-5SQ7zBtVOPyE/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=M3xF-RGeam0:-duNZzcEWBg: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=M3xF-RGeam0:-duNZzcEWBg: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=M3xF-RGeam0:-duNZzcEWBg:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=M3xF-RGeam0:-duNZzcEWBg:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=M3xF-RGeam0:-duNZzcEWBg:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=M3xF-RGeam0:-duNZzcEWBg:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight/~4/M3xF-RGeam0" height="1" width="1"/

pYou can easily tell those who are new with social media. They don't use third party tools to manage their social media outreach and listening. Instead they go directly to Twitter.com or Facebook.com to make their posts and join in on the conversation./p pThis is a decent start, but to really maximize your use of social media it's important to leverage 3rd party tools./p pFor example, a href="http://www.tweetdeck.com"TweetDeck/a is an application that helps you listen to Twitter conversations and post to more than one social media account. There are many other great tools./p pMeasuring your social media outreach is also important. a href="http://www.tap11.com"Tap11/a, a href="http://www.klout.com"Klout/a and a href="http://dlvr.it"dlvr.it/a are three companies that help you measure your social media outreach./p pIf you want to maximize your use of social media, do two things: /p ul liUse 3rd party applications that enhance the basic social media web sites./li liEnsure you and/or someone in your office (or a consultant you hire) can dedicate their time to help you use social media, listen to the conversations and join in on the discussions./li /ul pI spoke with David Lifson, CEO of a href="http://www.postling.com"Postling/a, about his service, which helps users track information about their company online, post about it and more./p centerobject width="425" height="344"param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Wlnds98SUX0hl=enfs=1"/paramparam name="allowFullScreen" value="true"/paramparam name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"/paramembed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Wlnds98SUX0hl=enfs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"/embed/object/center pbRead the video summary/transcript below:/b/p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/4xO0bfHCJdl8b4AJwct6CAQTgy0/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/4xO0bfHCJdl8b4AJwct6CAQTgy0/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/4xO0bfHCJdl8b4AJwct6CAQTgy0/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/4xO0bfHCJdl8b4AJwct6CAQTgy0/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=nnklSxELfQw:EqAY770ECY8: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=nnklSxELfQw:EqAY770ECY8: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=nnklSxELfQw:EqAY770ECY8:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=nnklSxELfQw:EqAY770ECY8:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=nnklSxELfQw:EqAY770ECY8:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=nnklSxELfQw:EqAY770ECY8:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight/~4/nnklSxELfQw" height="1" width="1"/

pPrinters are important for all of us. Even for those who say they are "paper less" they still need to print - an invoice, a receipt, 50 pages to read at home - everyone needs to print something at some time./p pWhen you hit the print button, it's important that your printer, prints quickly, that the output looks good and that the overall use of the printer is easy to use and highly function./p pOn the occasion of Epson releasing a new line of printers this Fall, I spoke with Epson product manager Robynne Lee about a href="http://www.epson.com"Epson/a's vision for small business printing needs:/p centerobject width="425" height="344"param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/FPQQpb2P9vEhl=enfs=1"/paramparam name="allowFullScreen" value="true"/paramparam name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"/paramembed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/FPQQpb2P9vEhl=enfs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"/embed/object/center pbVideo summary/transcript:/b/p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/DqgSoEm70FutfM4OD3bjcBfL1wQ/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/DqgSoEm70FutfM4OD3bjcBfL1wQ/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/DqgSoEm70FutfM4OD3bjcBfL1wQ/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/DqgSoEm70FutfM4OD3bjcBfL1wQ/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=iRvVsvSfjlA:otMCNodsijo: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=iRvVsvSfjlA:otMCNodsijo: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=iRvVsvSfjlA:otMCNodsijo:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=iRvVsvSfjlA:otMCNodsijo:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=iRvVsvSfjlA:otMCNodsijo:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=iRvVsvSfjlA:otMCNodsijo:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight/~4/iRvVsvSfjlA" height="1" width="1"/

pHaving content is great. I've written almost 8,000 blog posts on Smallbiztechnology.com, but just having CONTENT does no good if no one is reading it./p pThere are a LOT of dentists in your local community, but the only one that matters to you is the one you find, use and like. And guess what, for all those dentists, nothing else matters, if people in need of their services do not know about them!/p pWith social media, web sites and blogs (and any other venue for content distribution) all of these media rely on content. /p h2Small businesses often fail, because a) they don't have content and b) even the content they have is not distributed to the right person, through the right medium at the right time./h2 pFurthermore, being able to strategically leverage content means that instead of just Tweeting out about your company, it might be best to Tweet out about something your customer is doing that other customers might find of interest./p pIt's about enabling customers to visit your web site and read your most recent blog post and also see related content that might be of interest to them./p pI interviewed Paul Kenjora, Founder and CTO of a href="http://www.arkayne.com"Arkayne/a which has an amazing set of tools to help growing (busy) businesses leverage content as a tool for powerful online marketing./p pKeep in mind, content marketing can also be used for product sales. Imagine someone buying a hand bag from your web site, why not help them know what other products go with that hand bag or read about other accessories that might compliment it!/p centerobject width="425" height="344"param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/pNgHAeADE5ohl=enfs=1"/paramparam name="allowFullScreen" value="true"/paramparam name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"/paramembed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/pNgHAeADE5ohl=enfs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"/embed/object/center p/bVideo interview summary/transcript/b:/p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/OtpEvXEvWArWV8knbh-DDg4uy_0/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/OtpEvXEvWArWV8knbh-DDg4uy_0/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/OtpEvXEvWArWV8knbh-DDg4uy_0/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/OtpEvXEvWArWV8knbh-DDg4uy_0/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=XnoH7oPdYmk:GwIy2sMkwPg: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=XnoH7oPdYmk:GwIy2sMkwPg: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=XnoH7oPdYmk:GwIy2sMkwPg:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=XnoH7oPdYmk:GwIy2sMkwPg:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=XnoH7oPdYmk:GwIy2sMkwPg:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=XnoH7oPdYmk:GwIy2sMkwPg:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight/~4/XnoH7oPdYmk" height="1" width="1"/

A truly excellent piece by Patty Azzarello  titled; Uncertainty is Expensive

Every unanswered strategic question leaves legions of people in your organization, less productive and more expensive than they would be with clear direction.

And I have to agree with that statement.

Nature, business & IT abhor a vacuum

When people have no specific instructions or direction,  what happens?

More aggressive managers start to push their own – often conflicting agenda’s.

Disconnected and competing silo’s start being built.

And IT costs?

They can grow by staggering amounts as managers with clout want duplicate IT infrastructure, software or tools that they believe is best for them. Not what is necessarily best for the organization.

Along with these duplicate or unnecessary expenses, some IT investments can be made that may run counter to your strategic direction.

I have witnessed enterprise class software purchased, installed and training being performed – then canceled for a competitive product due to lack of communication and decision on strategic direction.

I have witnessed the most insignificant and minor issues take days or weeks to resolve because the silo’s built by those managers with clout refuse to talk to each other, or provide clear direction on strategies and goals for their parts of the organization.

The SMB Takeaway

Ms. Azzarello says it perfectly; Uncertainty is expensive

Eliminate uncertainty. Ensure that clear direction is available for everyone in the organization, and lastly – make sure that you have the governance and management processes to ensure that decisions meet these goals.

Photo Credit Eirikref via flickr

Filed under: business, IT, IT Costs, leadership, Real SMB IT, SMB, SME, technology Tagged: IT, IT Costs, leadership, SMB, SME

pThis week's list has some really good opportunities to learn and network, whether you get our there to one of the big conferences or log in from your desktop. /p pThis list of events, conferences and webinars for growing small businesses and entrepreneurs is brought to you every other week by a href="http://smallbiztrends.com/"Small Business Trends/a and a href="http://smallbiztechnology.com/"Smallbiztechnology.com/a./p div style="text-align: center;" * * * * */div pimg alt="Thumbnail image for business_matchmaking.GIF" src="http://smallbiztechnology.com/assets_c/2010/02/business_matchmaking-thumb-150x41-1554.gif" width="150" height="41" class="mt-image-right" style="float: right; margin: 0 0 20px 20px;" /stronga href="http://www.businessmatchmaking.com/events.shtml"Western Regional Business Matchmaking/abr / August 17, 2010, San Jose, CA/strong/p pPresented by HP, American Express OPEN and American Airlines in cooperation with the California Governor#8217;s Office of Economic Development and the California Small Business Development Centers, the Business Matchmaking Western Regional Face-to-Face Event will be hosted at the Doubletree Hotel San Jose located in San Jose, CA on Tuesday, August 17, 2010. Participating firms will receive advance education and tools to prepare for face-to-face meetings with buyers from federal, state and local government agencies and major corporations./p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/5ZU0D1EVcJ3AvVIDGNJmrtiDsGg/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/5ZU0D1EVcJ3AvVIDGNJmrtiDsGg/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/5ZU0D1EVcJ3AvVIDGNJmrtiDsGg/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/5ZU0D1EVcJ3AvVIDGNJmrtiDsGg/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=vH9JrpjvZ98:wO3Y5S3J-38: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=vH9JrpjvZ98:wO3Y5S3J-38: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=vH9JrpjvZ98:wO3Y5S3J-38:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=vH9JrpjvZ98:wO3Y5S3J-38:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=vH9JrpjvZ98:wO3Y5S3J-38:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=vH9JrpjvZ98:wO3Y5S3J-38:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight/~4/vH9JrpjvZ98" height="1" width="1"/

Unless you are living under a rock, you have heard about the situation where a JetBlue flight attendant lost his temper at the years of boorish behaviour and abuse he’d taken and quite dramatically quit his job.

I  don’t want to rehash that here.

Our Behaviour

I ask you; why do so many of us feel that customer service staff are our personal pinata’s to beat and smash at will?

Here are two incidents I have witnessed just in the past few weeks.

1) A suite in my office complex houses a customer service desk for a government department. Now we can make all government service jokes we want, but I watched flabbergasted as a woman chewed the head off of a service staffer because she thought the signage on the building was not big enough!!

She then called a supervisor, yelled, screamed and went into some more histrionics and stated she was going to escalate this ‘incident’ right to her member of parliament.

Excuse me?

Because she perceived that the signage on the building was not big enough? Yell and scream at staff? I believe that any reasonable individual (assuming there are any of us left) would agree that the staffer at the front desk has truly negligible input on the building signage. I can just imagine;  “Hi this is Elliot in customer service – can we re brand the Goodyear blimp and hang it over the building please??”

That is just being an ignorant asinine individual – period.

2) I was behind an individual at a retailer – that individual ripped apart the cashier because some product was out of stock.

Man – that must be some critically important part of your life if you feel screaming and yelling at the 16 year old part time student at the cash register is required.

I am truly certain that young woman at the cash has complete input and visibility into that retailers supply chain and stocking processes.

(forgive the sarcasm)

As a historical note, in the mid ’90′s I worked customer support under contract to a large software company and experience some of that bull crap myself.

Customer Service

Yes – we can all understand that we dislike some below par service we have experienced – I am no different.

When it happens – make your opinion known – make it known logically and reasonably.

But leave the bloody vitriol, ignorance and boorish behaviour at home. I know I sure as hell don’t want to listen to you – and I bet that staffer does not either.

Rant over

Filed under: business, service, support Tagged: business, customer service

Yes it is Friday the 13th – and my wife broke a large mirror today – so if you are superstitious, stay home in bed!

Forbes has a good interview with both the CIO and CFO of an organization titled; The Perfect IT Department

In a larger context the article discusses several of the business / IT issues I have written about here for SME business managers. I want to pull out one really good quote;

Because when I look at the maturity of an IT organization it’s not about infrastructure. It’s not about apps. It’s really about information

The SMB Takeaway

Technology by itself should be last on your agenda.

Photo Credit norrix via flickr

Filed under: business, IT, IT Costs, IT Strategy, Real SMB IT, SMB, SME, technology Tagged: CFO, CIO, Information Technology, IT, IT Leadership, IT Maturity, leadership, technology

ul liTechnology Basics for Business/li liIntel's Evolution: From Chip Speeds to PC Maintenance and Uptime/li liLatest Awards and Contests for Small Biz/li li9 Minutes 12 Seconds: What Is CRM? Mr. CRM aka Brent Leary, Answers/li liIP Telphone Systems: When Telephones (Voice) and Computers (Bits) Work Together/li liManaged Telephone Service. Why Would You Want Anything Else?/li /ul pstrongbr / Technology Basics for Business/strong/p pColleen DeBaise is one of the premier journalists focused on the issues of small (growing) businesses. Read an excerpt from her book The Wall Street Journal Complete Small Business Guidebook a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703309704575413563940231170.html?mod=WSJ_hps_sections_smallbusiness"here/a. /p pTechnological advances have greatly increased the ease with which you can run and grow a small business. If only technology weren't so complicated./p pThese days, it's tough for any entrepreneur to make it#8212;let alone succeed#8212;without a heavy dose of tech. You need a well-designed and easy-to-use website (that's a no-brainer), plus you might benefit greatly from software, Web applications and equipment that allow you to manage inventory, track customers' purchases, process invoices, manage payroll and communicate with staff. Most entrepreneurs want the freedom to leave the office yet still stay connected, meaning they (and key staff) need to be outfitted with cell phones, laptops and wireless devices./p pNot long ago, the latest technology was only available to the biggest companies with the deepest pockets. Read more a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703309704575413563940231170.html?mod=WSJ_hps_sections_smallbusiness"here/a./p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/6ttrU0ub6_ajHgk5dw_3SLyiLPM/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/6ttrU0ub6_ajHgk5dw_3SLyiLPM/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/6ttrU0ub6_ajHgk5dw_3SLyiLPM/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/6ttrU0ub6_ajHgk5dw_3SLyiLPM/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=o5SlX3ZkehI:r01TAcDNnlY: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=o5SlX3ZkehI:r01TAcDNnlY: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=o5SlX3ZkehI:r01TAcDNnlY:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=o5SlX3ZkehI:r01TAcDNnlY:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=o5SlX3ZkehI:r01TAcDNnlY:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=o5SlX3ZkehI:r01TAcDNnlY:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight/~4/o5SlX3ZkehI" height="1" width="1"/

In last weeks book review about ReWork by Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson I mentioned that you may not agree with every point the authors mention.

I think the one point in that text I don’t fully agree with is the one on meetings.

The authors, to paraphrase slightly, state; don’t have meetings at all, except in an emergency.

For most of us SME’s, there are good reasons that you should have meetings.

1) In many small to medium businesses here is the primary disconnect I often see when dealing with IT staff or suppliers.

The business management responsible for IT?

Well, they never speak to technology staff unless something is broken. For non-technology managers (ie COO, CFO etc) responsible for their IT, if you are not in regular communication and demanding both tactical and strategic updates, I consider you to be abdicating, not delegating your technology function.

2) You know the old story of the blind men trying to identify an elephant when they can only touch very small pieces?

In our fast paced world, many of us travel, many of us also work solo – often not even in the same location. We can begin to get a feeling of disconnect, a feeling of absence. We begin to lose sight of the bigger picture. We begin to be like the blind men, never seeing that bigger picture.

An occasional meeting (even with only video) can help keep people feeling connected and ‘in the loop’. Enabling them to take a look at that elephant.

3) Simply enough – Ambiguity.

Have you every been caught in email CC (carbon copy) hell as people argue, negotiate or discuss?

I am sure most of us have!

Email or other non-visual methods of communication when the issue is explicit instructions or a request, I agree – no need to waste time on a meeting.

But if there is any form of ambiguity? if participants need to negotiate? to discuss? to resolve? (even on a one to one basis) Get it on the table, and get it cleared up quickly. Don’t sit through eight hours of back and forth email hell.

The Caveat

With the above being said, I disagree with vague, useless, time sucking meetings just as much as any body else!

You don’t need everybody in the company to attend a meeting, only the people required for a decision.

Proper agenda, and follow it. Don’t wander off track.

Explicitly clarify and repeat what was decided – and what was not decided – and summarize the  next steps and each deliverable.

The SMB Takeaway

There are many really, really bad meetings going on in most of our businesses, yes – you need to fix them! but a blanket No meetings! is usually not the right response.

Photo Credit decafinata via flickr

Filed under: business, IT, learning, Real SMB IT, skills, SMB, SME Tagged: CFO, COO, David Heinemeier Hansson, Jason Fried, Managment, Small Business, SMB, SME

pBrian Betron director for a href="http://www.panasonic.com/promos/hdvisual-communications/hd-video-conferencing.asp"HD Visual Communication, Panasonic/a shows off his HD video conference system, in real time./p centerobject width="425" height="344"param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/8B63FUqJVZghl=enfs=1"/paramparam name="allowFullScreen" value="true"/paramparam name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"/paramembed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/8B63FUqJVZghl=enfs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"/embed/object/center pVideo summary:/p pYou are seeing a live demonstration of VC500 HD Visual Communications. Brian Betron is situated in Florida while Ramon Ray (Smallbiztechnology.com) is in New Jersey. /p pThey are seeing each other through a plasma HD TV with 1080i, 60 fps and they are using the 360° HD Audio. /p pFrom the customers' point of view VC500 HD Visual Communications is a great experience. /p pPeople feel like they are looking through a window./p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/KeFQYFq9wCRbEOvPl21l45st6Y0/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/KeFQYFq9wCRbEOvPl21l45st6Y0/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/KeFQYFq9wCRbEOvPl21l45st6Y0/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/KeFQYFq9wCRbEOvPl21l45st6Y0/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=W7SQE2x5PUQ:WJJ1AetpsKg: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=W7SQE2x5PUQ:WJJ1AetpsKg: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=W7SQE2x5PUQ:WJJ1AetpsKg:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=W7SQE2x5PUQ:WJJ1AetpsKg:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=W7SQE2x5PUQ:WJJ1AetpsKg:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=W7SQE2x5PUQ:WJJ1AetpsKg:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight/~4/W7SQE2x5PUQ" height="1" width="1"/

pimg alt="colleen-debaise.jpg" src="http://smallbiztechnology.com/media/colleen-debaise.jpg" width="78" height="117" class="mt-image-left" style="float: left; margin: 0 20px 20px 0;" /Colleen DeBaise is one of the premier journalists focused on the issues of small (growing) businesses. /p pBelow, from the Wall Street Journal, is an excerpt from a href="http://topics.wsj.com/person/D/colleen-debaise/5716"Colleen DeBaise/a's Book ia href="http://www.amazon.com/Street-Journal-Complete-Business-Guidebook/dp/0307408930/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8s=booksqid=1252939632sr=1-4"THE WALL STREET JOURNAL COMPLETE SMALL BUSINESS GUIDEBOOK/a/i/p pTechnological advances have greatly increased the ease with which you can run and grow a small business. If only technology weren't so complicated./p pThese days, it's tough for any entrepreneur to make it#8212;let alone succeed#8212;without a heavy dose of tech. You need a well-designed and easy-to-use website (that's a no-brainer), plus you might benefit greatly from software, Web applications and equipment that allow you to manage inventory, track customers' purchases, process invoices, manage payroll and communicate with staff. Most entrepreneurs want the freedom to leave the office yet still stay connected, meaning they (and key staff) need to be outfitted with cell phones, laptops and wireless devices./p pNot long ago, the latest technology was only available to the biggest companies with the deepest pockets. Now, prices have dropped as big players such as Microsoft, Oracle, IBM and SAP try to tap the small business market. Increasingly, software is becoming available via the Web as "software as a service" or SaaS, replacing more expensive boxed software that needs to be purchased outright and installed. Open-source software, that is, software whose source code is freely available on the Internet for anyone to use or modify, has made it possible for small business owners (usually with the help of developers or consultants) to customize software for their unique needs. a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703309704575413563940231170.html?mod=WSJ_hps_sections_smallbusiness"(Read the full article here, in the Wall Street Journal)/a/p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/SNEs91gJ1iOKncobqlV6rOofHhc/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/SNEs91gJ1iOKncobqlV6rOofHhc/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/SNEs91gJ1iOKncobqlV6rOofHhc/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/SNEs91gJ1iOKncobqlV6rOofHhc/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=b2gy5fOrMJI:TQ4XtUcfvJM: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=b2gy5fOrMJI:TQ4XtUcfvJM: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=b2gy5fOrMJI:TQ4XtUcfvJM:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=b2gy5fOrMJI:TQ4XtUcfvJM:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=b2gy5fOrMJI:TQ4XtUcfvJM:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=b2gy5fOrMJI:TQ4XtUcfvJM:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight/~4/b2gy5fOrMJI" height="1" width="1"/