Small Business Computing Staff

Open Forum: Seven Simple Website Improvements That Will Increase Sales Ivana Taylor’s suggestions for sprucing up your website to increase sales range from putting an identifying tagline at the top of the home screen and always answering customer questions right away to including at least one call to action on each page and reducing the […]

PCWorld: Review – Acer Aspire One 522-BZ897 Netbook Reviewer Yardena Arar praises this Acer netbooks long battery life (7 hours), good screen and attractive price, but points out that it scored poorly on benchmark performance tests. “The Acer Aspire One 522 (model BZ897) delivers a good, classic netbook for a very reasonable price ($330 as […]

Laurie McCabe’s Blog: Planning Is Everything With Social Business Laurie McCabe blogs about a recent survey of small and medium business owners about how they are using or perceive social media. The results underline the importance of planning to ensure optimum results from social media programs, McCabe says. “Good plans shape good decisions. That’s why […]

PCWorld: Review – Verizon HTC Thunderbolt 4G Smartphone The Thunderbolt is the first smartphone available that takes advantage of Verizon’s very high-speed 4G LTE network. An Android phone with a 4.3-inch screen, it costs $250 with a two-year contract. “The HTC Thunderbolt, which went on sale March 17, is the first phone available in the […]

Open Forum: How To Hire The Perfect Web Designer For Your Small Business Jolie O’Dell pumps Garry Tan for advice on criteria small businesses should use when selecting a Web designer. “If you’re looking to hire a Web designer, you probably have dozens of questions swirling around in your head: How do I really know […]

Wired: Preview: Nexus S 4G, Integrated Google Voice Service From Sprint The Nexus S 4G is an Android 2.3-based smartphone that works on Sprint’s 4G and 3G networks. Sprint also announced Google Voice, the voice over Internet service, would be available and integrated on all models. “Sprint users have something to be happy about today: […]

Small Business Trends: Roundup – The Evolution Of Small Business Marketing Small Business Trends rounds up articles about changes in the way small businesses market their brands and products – from changes in regulations governing online marketing, to data mining and search engine optimization. “From changing policies to changing technologies, marketing is in a constant […]

Wired: Reviews – An Android Phone Retrospective Wired looks at 11 of the best Android phones it has reviewed since the beginning of the year, shows pictures and gives an overview of each and links to the full review. “We’ve seen a flood of Android phones so far in 2011. We got our first whiff […]

PCmag@Work (Small Business): Roundup: Data Backup, Social Media Marketing And More PC magazine summarizes and provides links to four recent stories about data backup, social media marketing, using photo sharing sites to promote brands and special visas for business startups. “Britain Woos Entrepreneurs With Its Own Startup Visa America’s Startup Visa Act, which was first […]

PCWorld: Free Hard Drive Repair & Testing Software TestDisk and PhotoRec are two utilities that run in a DOS box or from the command prompt and help you test disks for errors and recover data. Reviewer Jon L. Jacobi liked them and says they work well. And they’re free. “If you’re a fan of character-based […]

AllBusiness: Preview – New Dell Vostro Small Business PCs Fredric Paul points out the features that make these new laptops (and one all-in-one) with Intel’s latest, greatest Sandy Bridge processors “small business PCs.” Features include built-in Skype. “I’ve often questioned the idea of what it means to be a “small business PC” but that doesn’t […]

Open Source: Facebook Social Plugins For Your Small Business Website Leyl Master Black rounds up four social plugins small businesses can add to their websites to let customer interact with Facebook, and explains how and when to use each. “While many companies’ early social marketing efforts were limited to social media sites such as Facebook, […]