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Small Business Tech

By James E. Gaskin

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James E. Gaskin writes books (16 so far), articles, and jokes about technology and real life from his home office in the Dallas area. Gaskin has been helping small and medium sized businesses use technology intelligently since 1986. Contact him.

This column is also available as an e-mail newsletter.

Choosing Between Netbooks and Notebooks: 07/01/09; What goes up must come down, and lately what's coming down are netbooks, as more and more articles talk about the compact computers disappointing customers. However, we can't blame netbooks for that. We can only blame vendors who overhype and customers who underbuy. Before you buy a smaller, cheaper and less powerful netbook, determine if you need a notebook instead. If so, you can spend about the same money and get more power, albeit in a larger package.
Do Telephone Calls over the Internet Still Confuse You?: 06/24/09; VoIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) is a terrible acronym but a great technology. But the industry thinks many people still believe many “myths” about running telephone traffic over the Internet. If Internet telephones don't work in your situation, that's one thing, but don't let old information keep you from leveraging new services and cost savings.
Why Is the PC vs. Mac war still raging?: 06/17/09; Macs vs. PCs vs. Linux arguments are dominating two mailing lists I'm on. The vitriol may be slightly less than in the past, but many of the same attitudes exist with subjective arguments trumping logic on both sides.
Digital Literacy: Buzzword or Job Requirement?: 06/10/09; Graduation season just finished and the air still rings with bad advice given to bored students. Calls for “digital literacy” filled many auditoriums as speakers unclear on the concept tried to hype technologies such as Twitter without understanding the technical details they struggled to explain. That made me wonder what people mean when they say digital literacy, because I can think of a dozen definitions. So I asked around, and my suspicions were confirmed: if you demand digital literacy for your employees, be prepared to define exactly what you expect.
Project Manager Gets Social, Social App Gets Organized: 06/03/09; LiquidPlanner is adding more collaboration tools to its online project management application because people, not tasks, create most of the problems in project management. And PBworks is adding task management tools to its wiki (originally PBwiki) because when people collaborate, they usually have shared tasks to accomplish. It looks like these Software-As-A-Service companies are meeting in the middle, but really they are just pulling good features from each other's bag of tricks.
Transferring Files Without E-mail: 05/27/09; E-mail and the Mazda Miata are both great examples of successful products, but they share a similar weakness: neither can carry much baggage. If you want to carry two people in a Miata, you're good. But if each of those folks has a big suitcase, you’re in trouble. And if you want to send a file via e-mail that's more than a few megabytes in size, you also need another option. Say hello to FTP (File Transfer Protocol) and the new ways you can use one of the oldest Internet protocols.
Adventures in e-mail marketing: 05/20/09; A writer's group I belong to wants to put on a conference this summer. Since I've written about two of the leading e-mail marketing services, Constant Contact and VerticalResponse, I volunteered to manage the messaging process and send out the e-mails. It's been interesting, meaning there's both good and bad details to report, but mostly good in that the messaging part of my job was pretty easy. The non-technical parts got a bit wonky, however, and I have three lessons to pass on.
Full Disk Encryption Comes to Workgroups: 05/13/09; Losing your laptop can be expensive in three ways. First, you'll spend hundreds or thousands of dollars to replace the hardware. Second, you'll suffer the time and aggravation of restoring your data, all the while hoping you have everything backed up properly. But most expensive? Surviving the backlash and legal consequences of losing customer data, financial records and private company information.
More e-mail for less money: 05/07/09; There is no recession if you're a certified and experienced Microsoft Exchange administrator. Headhunters tell me these techs are earning up to the $100,000 in some parts of the country. So if you or your management have been avoiding hosted e-mail because those services cost money and the belief around your shop is e-mail is free, think again. Then take another look at hosted e-mail services in general, and hosted Exchange services in particular.
Solving problems graphically: 04/30/09; Businesses, especially white collar businesses, are all about "processes and information" (thank you Michael Dortch). But what do you do when you find yourself looking at the same processes and the same information and can't improve your results? Try looking at things in a new way, graphically, using tools such as MindManager or TheBrain.
New surveys on small business security and success: 04/23/09; Understanding small business is tough because there are so many of them and they vary so widely. But all small businesses share certain problems, attitudes, and approaches to those problems. Let's give a hand to Symantec and Network Solutions for doing their part to discover the state of security and creating (and studying) the Small Business Success Index.
Improving local storage capacity and flexibility: 04/16/09; I said it years ago, but it's even more true today: you can never be too rich, too thin, or have too much data storage. Now that you can buy hard drives holding a terabyte of data (1,000 gigabytes) for a little over $100, you might think storage isn't a problem anymore. But upgrading storage across various desktops and laptops isn't really data storage, it's just data scattered. Organized storage takes some planning, so let's talk about three new products that will help you intelligently increase local storage capacity.
One foot on the ground and one in the clouds: 04/09/09; The early adopter "cloud crowd" makes the most headlines, but they're only the tip of the small business iceberg. Looking at various data storage vendor customer numbers has convinced me 90% of small businesses are still mostly land (or LAN) based. Some people don't yet trust Internet data storage, and some like to wear data storage suspenders with their data storage belts. The good news for both? Options for combo cloud and local storage hybrids continue to grow.
Project Spring Cleaning 2009: 04/02/09; Technology needs spring cleaning just like rugs and garages. The trick today is to focus on security and maintenance issues that get ignored during normal work days. Set aside some time now to clean up and your technology will support you much more smoothly through the summer.
Web 2.0 works to solve problems: 03/26/09; Every marketing firm must have the same set of buzzword stamps they use, inking every product with Green and Collaboration and Easy to Use and Do More With Less, often tagged additionally with the ever popular Web 2.0. Since the Web 2.0 buzzword long ago became so vague as to be useless, let me introduce you to three companies that solve Real World 1.0 problems with the help of Web 2.0 technology: YouSendIt, EchoSign, and Casdex.
The three cornered Symantec yellow blanket: 03/19/09; For some reason, Symantec's corporate yellow color always reminds me of a blanket. But unlike some companies that seem to plot global domination at every turn, Symantec seems happy with its three cornered blanket. Executives expect to do more in the areas of security, backup, and storage management rather than take on new markets. Growth by improving on its strengths, rather than by chasing new markets.
Wiki: Silly name, useful technology: 03/12/09; First appearing in 1995, the "wiki" approach to creating interactive and collaborative Web pages quickly became the star format for social networks, but too often business also-rans. Part of the problem comes from top-down managers uncomfortable with underlings making changes without authorization, and from stories of update wars on the most famous wiki, Wikipedia, the encyclopedia written by users. But successful corporate wikis abound, including SamePage from eTouch Systems.
Network management for the masses: 03/05/09; The old saying that "you can only manage what you can measure" happens to be true, so what can you see inside your network that allows you to manage it properly? If you can't see much, you'll be glad to know network management tools are reinventing themselves constantly. Let's take a look at three options, one traditional (PacketTrap) and two (Paglo and ManageEngine) using the software-as-a-service model.
CDW plays technology deus ex machina: 02/26/09; Online IT products and services reseller CDW ran a contest last fall called Project Upgrade, sponsored by HP and Microsoft. Small businesses with 50 or fewer employees entered the contest to win $50,000 worth of hardware and software, along with help setting it all up. My advice? Don't fall into such a deep technology hole you need a benevolent force to float down from above to rescue you.
Trends coming together make a plan for small businesses: 02/19/09; George Peppard said as his character Hannibal Smith on The A-Team, "I love it when a plan comes together." Several trends, if not a plan, are coming together in interesting ways in technology for small businesses. Mix equal parts of online applications, netbooks, and constant wireless networking together, and you get new ways to do more work in more places for less money.
Upgrade, repair, replace, or limp along?: 02/12/09; When money's tight, how do you keep things going and save money at the same time? I think you need a process to decide what to do with equipment that dies. When are you better off repairing/replacing, when to upgrade, and when to just let it die and do without?
The approval process goes Web: 02/05/09; Growing businesses often catch the dreaded "bureaucrat" parasite that suck the fun, energy, and life blood from the company. Decision processes that once snapped and crackled now groan and sigh and stop. The more parasites, er, bureaucrats you have, the harder it is to get work done. Proposals go out, but approvals disappear into an alternative universe like stray socks from the dryer. If you have this problem, instead of an exterminator perhaps you should call Zapproved.
New Year's Resolution 4: Backup, backup, backup: 01/29/09; The last of our resolution reminders this year is backup, because that's too often when people think of backup: at the end of the planning process. I understand, because thinking about backup makes you realize how fragile and fleeting our data can be, a distressing thought. But every dollar spent on data backup returns tenfold in peace of mind while protecting your business. After all, if you don't have your data, you don't have your business.
New Year's Resolution 3: Improve your e-mail: 01/22/09; Why are so many technical advances a constant balance between useful and frustrating? I nominate e-mail as one of the most helpful yet aggravating advances when you judge easy communications against spam and mail-borne viruses. Make another resolution to improve your e-mail situation this year.
New Year's Resolution 2: Better sales compensation management: 01/15/09; Figuring a good sales compensation plan is like making oil and water blend smoothly. Sales people always think management is cheating them out of commissions. Management always thinks sales people are stealing them blind. Owners of smaller companies who manage the sales people themselves often focus on the dollar paid in commission rather than thinking of the associated $20 of company revenue.