Lauren Simonds

Last November, Microsoft broadcast the first episode of its Small Business Show, an hour-long program styled in the TV talk-show tradition. Instead of tech geeks touting the latest gizmo – or worse, droning executives – the show features interviews with successful small business owners, helpful tips and inspiration to help you keep your eye on […]

Providing a host of services and what you might call a digital version of a safe deposit box, iForem, a Calif.-based digital archiving company, says it adds a new twist to online storage: peace of mind. Behind its core offerings lies an irrevocable trust that, according to iForem’s CEO Stephen Pieraldi, ensures that your data […]

For the past four years, Dell and the National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB) have co-sponsored a contest aimed at recognizing – and rewarding – small companies that use technology in innovative ways to improve the customer experience. In this its fifth consecutive year, the Small Business Excellence Award program is expanding to include other […]

Keep the customer satisfied – it’s a familiar adage to anyone who runs a business. But in the Internet age, small business owners need to do more than keep customers satisfied, they need to keep them safe, too. That means protecting your critical business data — which includes your customers’ financial information — and your […]

Organizing your receipts, flossing your teeth and backing up your data – three of the top should-do tasks that rarely get done on a regular basis. Setting tax woes and personal hygiene aside for now, let’s look at results of the 2007 AT&T Business Continuity Study, which found that a significant number of small business […]

It’s no secret that lots of companies want to sell to the small business market — including other small businesses. After all, 24.7 million such companies make a sizable piece of financial pie. If your income depends on selling to this market, a recent study conducted by Bredin Business Information shows that when it comes to […]

When you run a very small company, a professional image makes it possible to compete against much larger companies. A PBX phone system with sophisticated call-routing and auto-attendant features is one way to let potential customers know that you’re a serious business, but the cost can leave a small guy out in the cold. However, companies such […]

Must-See TV is so 1990s. In this jargon-crazed Internet age, we’ve moved on to what you might call Must See TV, 2.0. Cultural reference jokes aside, if you’re a small business owner, Microsoft is airing a Web cast — in the form of a TV-style talk show — that you don’t want to miss. Welcome […]

Blackberry envy. It’s a phenomenon that can afflict small business owners who believe the highly popular (and some say addictive) smartphone is intended only for corporate giants with well-funded IT departments. You may be surprised to know that RIM provides wireless software applications designed specifically for small business, including its most recent offering, Blackberry Professional […]

It’s an age-old business dilemma: You’ve got to spend money to make money, but you also need to keep costs under control. Marketing materials especially can put a bite in the budget, what with the price of printing and postage. But YUDU Media has an alternative way to get your message out into the world. […]

If you’re the person responsible for keeping your small business safe from Internet attacks, you face an endless task worthy of Sisyphus himself. Ever-changing threats, tight budgets and employees who inadvertently introduce security problems into the company network can challenge even the most experienced IT guru. WebSense, a Web and desktop security software company, commissioned […]

While the Simple and the Pro drives feature a single hard drive, The Duo Pro drive comes with two, and it can support RAID 0 (data spans both disks for faster performance) and RAID 1 (one disk holds an exact data copy of the other for data security). Simple Drive USB 2.0, Fabrik Local Backup […]