Small Business Computing Staff

Small Business Trends: Roundup – Getting Started In Ecommerce This roundup includes articles on tools, marketing, design, using social media and ways to avoid wasting money when starting up in ecommerce. The articles summarized and linked come from specialist blogs and ezines. “E-commerce offers a rapidly expanding opportunity for small businesses and entrepreneurs online, but […]

ITBusinessEdge: Managing Passwords In Small Businesses Paul Mah says small businesses need to implement self-service resetting of passwords and then clearly explain and enforce rules about password complexity. “Bloomberg Businessweek recently published a short fact sheet on the state of password management in business. Titled ‘The Problem with Passwords,’ the short piece relied on data […]

Smallbiztechnology.com: Preview – GumNotes Sticky Notes Freeware If you ever want to add notes to files – not in the file – GumNotes may be what you’re looking for. This post includes a link to a video about the new freeware produdct from Axonic Information Systems. “Sometimes you’re working on your computer and want to […]

Small Business Trends: How New Privacy Laws Could Impact Customer Care Small Business Trends rounds up articles from a variety of sources about proposed legislation that would make it possible for customers to opt out of being tracked. How will it effect your small business, the publication asks? “Small business is all about customer care. […]

Small Business Trends: Mobile Marketing With Yelp Internet marketing consultant Lisa Barone analyzes recent data from Yelp showing how often the service is used to find local businesses and concludes that small businesses must be using this service. “With the rise of local, mobile and the social Web, small business owners have a lot on […]

Open Forum: Business Training On Your iPhone Using your iPhone to learn how to be a better small business manager in spare moments makes sense, says Sharlyn Lauby. And there are plenty of apps that can bring out the iPhone’s educational potential. “Companies are always looking for effective and efficient ways to conduct training. We […]

Smalll Business Trends: Review – Followup.cc Online Todo List Service TJ McCue says Followup.cc could be a small business’s best friend. It’s simple to set up and easy to use, but might take some thinking to understand its structure. Price: $5/month and up. “Crossing an item or task from a to-do list can be pure […]

Laurie McCabe’s Blog: Integrated Payment Solutions – Do You Need One? McCabe says integrating payments processing with other business functions brings a bunch of benefits including saving time, reducing errors, saving money and increasing financial visibility. “What are Integrated Payments Solutions? Integrated payment solutions are tools that your business can use to integrate accounting, customer […]

Small Business Trends: Email Marketing vs. Social Networking – Is One Better? Internet marketing consultant Taylor Garns analyzes recent trends in online marketing for small businesses and concludes that email marketing and social networking arent’t really that different in the end. Which you should use will depend on your needs and your customer base. “As […]

Open Forum: Free Tools To Help Your Small Business Site Rule The Web John Jantsch finds a treasure trove of tools that can help you analyze why some sites rank higher than others in search engines. They include Website Grader, Wordtracker and KeywordSpy. “Like many things in business, and perhaps in life, one of the […]

ITBusinessEdge: Preview – New Microsoft Small Business Essentials Server Software SBS Essentials is the edition of Small Business Server for smaller firms with 25 users or less. But Paul Mah questions whether companies at the low end of that range need a product like this. “Microsoft has announced the availability of the Release Candidate (RC) […]

Entrepreneur: Review – Fuze Meeting Web Conferencing Service Jonathan Blum liked Fuze’s easy initial set-up, cool look and feel and cost-saving potential, but notes that it’s not as intuitive as it looks. He recommends it for small firms with some tech skills inhouse. “In a business made up of six people across five states, my […]