Lauren Simonds

Have you ever wished you had a crystal ball or perhaps telepathic superpower so you can understand what your customers want? Every small business owner needs insight into his or her customer base, and the good news is you don’t need superpowers to get it. One of the easiest and most effective ways to gauge […]

Online banking and electronic bill payment make life a lot easier for consumers, but that’s not a service banks typically make available to small businesses. Fortunately, software-as-a-service companies, such as Bill.com, are stepping in to fill the gap. With its ePayment service, Bill.com enables its small business customers to pay employees, individuals or vendors through […]

Cutting costs in this economy is a no-brainer for any small business, and just about every expense is subject to at least a close trim if not a complete shave. One place you might not expect to find any wiggle room, however, is your wireless bill, but upon closer inspection, there’s money to be saved […]

Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) are used by many organizations to connect remote networks together and to securely access the network when away from the offices. Thanks to Google’s network services and a third-party company, Gbridge, you can have your own VPN. Figure 1. You can install the Gbridge software (see Figure 1) on all your […]

Quick, what’s the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word, netbooks? Odds are you pictured the lightweight mini-notebooks that are so popular and so cheap you can practically get one at 7-11 with the purchase of a Big Gulp. The meteoric rise of this new product category caused quite a problem […]

A loyal customer base forms a solid foundation for any business, and e-mail marketing is one of the most affordable and effective tools to keep your customers coming back for more. The trick, of course, is sending out information your customers actually want. Last February we spoke with Mélanie Attia, the product-marketing manager for Campaigner, […]

Whether your company generates just a few gigabytes of data or multiple terabytes, backing it up regularly is the most crucial step you can take to protecting your business. Concentric, a company better known for providing hosted IT solutions, such as Microsoft Exchange, offers a new option: Concentric Managed Backup. Concentric partnered its hosting-platform expertise […]

Software-as-a-service (SaaS), generally referred to as cloud computing, offers small businesses a way to gain a range of enterprise-quality technology such as software, services, IT infrastructure and data backup. Even better, business owners can access it all without having to invest in, deploy or maintain the technology that makes a business run efficiently and effectively.  […]

Netbooks, also sometimes called mini notebooks, still enjoy white-hot popularity to the point that even non-PC companies, like Verizon, are hawking them. Now along comes Toshiba with its version of the compact computers. While the company seems a bit late to the party, it hopes to differentiate the Toshiba mini NB205 by offering features that […]

For all the talk about protecting small business data, e-mail remains the big pachyderm in the security room. Think about it. You spend hours preparing confidential business proposals, price lists or designs. Once you send them out into the world electronically, you no longer have control over who views, forwards, prints or copies them.  A […]

Protecting your company against Web-based threats, i.e., malware and spam, isn’t always easy, efficient or affordable. The folks at NetGear have recently designed the ProSecure UTM appliance, a box that ties in to your network, to provide enterprise-class security without compromising on functionality or performance. Reliance on Web technologies has become commonplace: from accessing software […]

Technology is a double-edged sword that allows small companies to succeed against much larger competitors, though at a cost of often mind-numbing complexity and frustration. Dell hopes to put an end to the mind-numbing piece of the puzzle by providing Web-based managed IT services and letting small business owners retire their IT hat and do […]