Office Max!

A third element in your strategy is how will you close and execute the sale. Will your website contain a shopping cart? What about a secure server certificate? Will you accept major credit cards or will you work through a third party? Designing your website with the customer’s ease in mind will make them want to return the next time they are interested in purchasing.

So we’ve kind of decided that I’ll go on a course to learn how to use Sage (the accounting software) properly, then I’ll do the books while I’m at the garage on the two days I’m there at the moment. Should be plenty of time, I waste loads at the moment, and our current book-keeper does it in half a day a week, so no worries there. Then once a month if we need to, we’ll ask Russ to take the kids instead of being at the garage (hopefully a benefit of him being Grandpa as well as employee) and spend a day in the office together doing end of month stuff.

Development time costs money. That money should be tied back to a specific project or task. Free floating development costs are a black hole, and black holes are no longer acceptable. You can emply some kind of standard accounting tool to keep track of this, or you can invent your own. Trouble is, if you invent your own you are subject to an audit every year. Accountants probably won’t be very impressed with a homebrew system that works on index cards, and so using some kind of standard will save a lot of trouble. The change management tool vendors love this of course. Tying version control check-ins to requirements tools is the kind of stuff that cash cows are made of. Tool vendors are spreading the word.

Give Democrats the task of measuring the health of the nation's small business climate during a time when Republicans are in control of the Oval Office and Congress, you are bound to get a skewed result.

So this morning I have an interview with a great company. An environmental non-profit that I would be proud to work at (with, of course, a little disillusionment with how the sausage is made) So I had to once again do the dance. You know, the dance of interviewing for one job while still at another. Little things like trying to find someone in a small office who can serve as a reference, yet not let everyone know that you are interviewing make the dance very complex. Oh, and finding ways to take the time off to go to the interview (which is scheduled to be almost 2 hours long! So much for sneaking out at lunch..) are a whole nother dance.

Yesterday morning, I was sitting at the computer, when the computer all of a sudden started making a hellish racket. It happened every 30 seconds or so. After awhile I became convinced that their was a loose wire inside the case which was hitting one of the fans. After awhile of listening, it became apparent that the wire/fan collision was taking place within the power supply. So, I started poking around in the power supply with a paper clip while the computer was still running.

Offering free shipping to customers that order $100 or more of merchandise is another no-brainer. These are the customers you want to cater to. They’ll come back to you because they know you do free shipping (that’s one of the reasons why we always get our office supplies from staples though it may be cheaper elsewhere).

P.S. The patch Sony is offering may be worse than the original [Corante Copyfight]. It includes new versions of many of the files people already have on their computers. Maybe you should sweep up the glass yourself, instead of inviting the burglar back for a second shot at the stuff they missed.

First, I think Bill sets the stage nicely by explaining the age of software on your PC is over. There is an explosion of devices, and the only way to tie them together and give the next wave of features that people want is with software as a service. I don't feel the discussion of this as a "sea change" is very convincing -- as he mentions, this vision is a lot like the 1999 company meeting, and the decks look a lot like many of the .NET decks. Maybe it comes from having worked in Netdocs and MSN and seeing lots of "service-izing" of Windows and Office firsthand, but it doesn't seem all that new to me.

Everything we have done on MSN fits the live software model,” Gates said. Live software also extends to managed services for enterprises, with Microsoft running SharePoint or Exchange for customers. Small business software connecting to ADP payroll service, for example.

The boss at a marketing company called a spontaneous Staff meeting in the middle of a particularly stressful week. When everyone gathered, the employer, who understood the benefits of having fun, told the burnt-out staff the purpose of the meeting was to have a quick contest. The theme was Viagra advertising slogans. The only rule was that they had to use past ad slogans,originally written for other products, that captured the essence of Viagra.Slight variations were acceptable. About 7 minutes later, they turned in their suggestions and created a Top Ten List. After all the laughter and camaraderie, the rest of the week went very well for everyone. The top ten:

Keeping your energy and your focus is more likely to be consistent if you have a clear workspace with only the essentials on it. Piles of work and office supplies, are desk top distractions that do not add to your focus equation and could have you feeling like you have double the workload to complete. If you’re looking for great resources to help you get more organized, check out Staples and Office Max.

According to a new proposal being considered by a suburb of New York City, any business or home office with an open wireless connection but no separate server to fend off Internet attacks would be violating the law.

I’ve been talking with friends and colleagues for he past couple of years about starting a business based on the idea of human filtering - the idea that there are certain tasks that humans, working in parallel, will do better than computers will, at least in the forseeable future. I wrote a bit about this when I first applied for a fellowship at Berkman - part of my application included a section on research interests, where I listed “human filtering”:

I’m sure everyone’s aware of our larger cities across America selling the naming rights for pubic buildings built with taxpayers funds to private corporations…… I, personally, think this is criminal and should be viewed as a “conflict of interest” in that it is nothing more than an unfair business advantage and not only gives the impression that the particular city approves this corporation’s product over its competition, but also gives the impression that the corporation built the building (i.e. “The Ford Centre” in OKC) and is doing severe damage to small business and only goes to prove that America is run by big business and we’re in big trouble…… We have laws that concern separation of Church and state because of the reasons I mentioned above……. So-o-o, where are laws that apply to the separation of business and state or did our forefathers just not think we could possibly get this greedy?……….

Automated article creation software will soon be banned… most of the Search Engines are already starting to block these types of pages from being listed in their results. Why do people still buy them?

Microsoft Small Business has written an article on the five most Wi-Fi friendly cities in the United States. The 5 cities are: