Small Business Tech Notes
January 05, 2006
1/05/06
New products galore, or at least the promises of new products, are rolling out in Las Vegas at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) event this week. Yes, the hype flows freely, but some of these products will actually prove useful. See the top story in the list on the right for some official news coverage.
Many people feel CES killed Comdex, the computer-focused show that also used to overwhelm Las Vegas every year. That's a shame, because too much of CES covers "concept electronics" that never make it to reality, like those tantalizingly cool cars at auto shows that never hit the streets. And what does hit the streets tends more toward consumer geegaws I can't afford, so I avoid the show. But since Comdex is no more, many technology vendors head out to CES and brave the crowded casinos, er, crowded convention center, so the news must be covered.
Of course, new products in the consumer space overlap quite well into the home office, small office, and small business markets. We'll see plenty of new products from the usual suspects in small biz networking, for instance. An area that never quite took off, HomePlug, runs Ethernet over home and office electrical wiring. They have new players in the market, and a new version that promises to run faster and jump higher.
Keep those cards and letters coming,
James
Comments (0) | Permanent link
January 03, 2006
1/3/06
Good news: enough of you gave this experiment a thumbs up (keep those e-mails coming) that we can keep going. In other words, small/medium business technology people now have a permanent home here.
New year, new resolve to get organized. In an effort to be a good role model for my son in college (so he doesn't ask any questions about what I did in school), I went looking for an easy way to track hours spent on various projects. Even if you don't need to be a good role model, you may want to work smarter in 2006 than you did in 2005.
I found free personal time tracking software from Advanced Time Reports. So far, it's doing what I need and the free version works well for me.
About 60 percent of small businesses are interested in "software as a service" products (according to a Yankee Group survey). Now SaaS, these are the ASPs (Application Service Providers) from the 90s with a new acronym. Paying a third party a small fee per month to provide and host your applications means less outlay upfront for you, and less ongoing maintenance as the vendor must keep the app updated and server security holes patched. Advanced Time Reports has a hosted version, also free for testing with a limited number of users.
I've been testing HyperOffice for a few weeks. They offer a complete suite of applications every business person in companies small and large need. More on this soon.
More on other hosted apps soon, including a profile of a hosted application that allowed a New Orleans business to keep running even when all their employees were scattered around the country.
Keep visiting, keep writing, and feel free to make more noise. The asylum run by inmates received official blessing, so let's talk SMB technology until the Power That Be come to their senses.
James
Comments (0) | Permanent link
December 29, 2005
12/29/05
Thank you, readers, for sneaking around quietly. None of the Powers That Be have caught us yet, so we can continue this discussion.
If you have money left and need a hot-shot laptop computer (I still can't get used to calling them notebooks, because I think a notebook holds paper), the folks at PC World have info you need. Read their list of Top 5 Power Laptops and yearn along with me.
Analysts now say laptops (notice PC World called them laptops and not notebooks) outsell desktop systems. Why? Because power laptops like these work great for people who take their laptops from one place to another, like home to work to home. These are too heavy for regular travelers, but fine for carrying back and forth between home and office.
Everyone needs to laugh more. The Joy of Tech site sees the world through the i's of Apple fanatics, but they are funny. Here's their Tech Commandments (a little sacrilege only makes things funnier, right?). Notice Number One? We'll talk more about this soon.
Thanks for reading, and remember to stay quiet as you sneak around. We'll probably get busted on Monday, but let's have fun as long as possible.
James
Comments (0) | Permanent link
December 26, 2005
12/26/05
No one's watching, since this is the dead week between Christmas and New Year's, so no one has shut me down. A coup (like this one of the inmates taking over the asylum) even on such a small scale as taking over a portion of the web site here at Network World, works best when those in power don't notice. So far, so good.
On January 2nd, my Small Business Technology newsletter will discuss some of the best business ideas for small businesses in 2006. The list comes from Entrepreneur Magazine, and I focus on their technical business ideas. I'll add some of my ideas to their list, so if you have some ideas, let me know.
One of the ideas on the list, recycling, has a related story I just listed as one of the SMB News stories just to the right. The landfills are so full of gift packages right now we want to keep as much computer equipment out of the dump as possible.
In case you forgot from last week, here's a paragraph of introduction for me. I am James Gaskin, head inmate. I write the Small Business Technology newsletter each week for Network World, and just to keep myself confused, I also write the Enterprise Networking newsletter for ITworld.com. That actually works out well, because many small and medium business products and services fit well within enterprise departments and remote offices, and many enterprise vendors modify products for the booming small and medium business (SMB for shorthand) market.
If you're reading this before January 1st, take a look back at my Calendar Cleanup column. You can save yourself some tax dollars, thanks to a government mistake actually granting some tax relief to "sub-millionaires" like us.
Remember, sneak around quietly so no one notices.
James
Comments (0) | Permanent link
December 21, 2005
The Inmates Take Over
Welcome to the new Small and Medium Business Research Center (SMBRC for the acronym junkies). What appears in this space over the next few weeks and months will demonstrate what happens when the inmates take over the asylum.
I am James Gaskin, head inmate. I write the Small Business Technology newsletter each week for Network World, and just to keep myself confused, I also write the Enterprise Networking newsletter for ITworld.com. That actually works out well, because many small and medium business products and services fit well within enterprise departments and remote offices, and many enterprise vendors modify products for the booming small and medium business (SMB for shorthand) market.
Expanding our confines a bit, I will regularly point out interesting articles in partner publications, like PC World's list of Top 10 Notebook PCs. Sometimes, I'll point out books and articles on technologies I haven't had time to cover yet, such as Ted Wallingford's book Switching to VoIP from O'Reilly, the small business companion to my consumer VoIP book, Talk Is Cheap: Switching to Internet Telephones. Ted's excellent article on VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol, an acronym I really hate and believe sounds too stupid to define a useful technology, but it does) on the O'Reilly site is called What Is VoIP?.
I want to hear from you, and I'll start ongoing coverage of hot button areas like rebates and other lousy business practices that have generated plenty of angry responses in the past. Often, readers write to me describing their technical problems and ask for help solving them. We will figure out a way to open the discussion to the readership, so those of you who have made mistakes already can save the others from making the same mistakes.
This spot now becomes center stage for articles, information, and jokes about technology. OK, small business technology doesn't sound like a party, but we'll change that. Properly applied, technology will save you time and money. That, friends, is cause for celebration.
Welcome aboard.
James
Comments (0) | Permanent link
