Small Business Computing Staff

Small Business Trends: Roundup – Better Blogging & Social Media For Small Businesses From the basics to advanced blogging and social media marketing, this roundup culls articles from some funky, out-of-the-way sources – eg. MyWifeQuitHerJob.com – and provides summaries of and links to each. “Improving your blogging and social media efforts can be the key […]

Open Forum: How To Use Online Video To Reach Your Customers Rohit Bhargava, a drummer himself, explains how The Memphis Drum Shop created an online audition room for drummers to try out different cymbals – making it possible to sell the products online. Bhargava analyzes what makes the site so successful. “I spend hours listening […]

Entrepreneur: Can Tablet Computers Help Reduce Printing Costs? ChildNet in Fort Lauderdale, Florida is equipping mobile case workers with Android tablets for reading case files that run to hundreds of pages. The hope is the strategy will reduce print costs that the organization’s CEO describes as ‘a lot of money.’ “As the mobile workforce increasingly […]

Open Forum: Small Business Sales Strategies For The Internet Era The main message from marketing expert Jon Miller is that the Internet has empowered customers to take control of the sales-marketing process and business-to-business marketers and sales people must adjust their strategies accordingly. “The Internet and search providers such as Google have revolutionized the way […]

Small Business Trends: The Most Beneficial Social Media Sites For SMBs The research, based on a survey of over 700 SMBs, ranks social media sites such as Facebook and Yelp based on how much they’re used and how much benefit respondents thought they were getting. Lisa Barone questions some of the results. “Coming into the […]

Smallbiztechnology.com: How To Reach Your Most Profitable Customers? Use CRM Ramon Ray reveals the CRM package he uses in his own business – BatchBlue – and links to a recent Small Business Trends article that rounds up nine more. “It is impractical and nearly impossible to personally reach out and touch all of your customers. […]

ITBusinessEdge: Preview – SMB-Targeted Network Storage Device From Tandberg The QuickStation has eight bays for RDX cartridges – 2.5-inch drives in hardened cases that make the disk safely transferrable – or a combination of disks and tape drives. “Tandberg Data earlier this week unveiled its RDX QuikStation, which the company says is the world’s first […]

Small Business Trends: Google Preparing To Launch Online Coupon Service Google Offers will work very similarly to Groupon and LivingSocial, with business members identifying items or services to be discounted and Google preparing the ad and offering it to consumers at the website. If enough buy in, the deal goes through. “There was a time […]

Wired: First Look – Google Cloud Print Online Printing Utility Unlike Apple’s AirPrint which works over Wi-Fi networks and requires special printer drivers, the only catch with Cloud Print is that you have to install Google’s Chrome browser on the computers with printers you want to use.It works over the Net. “Google’s Cloud Print is […]

Entrepreneur: Social Media For Presentations? Among Chris Brogan’s suggestions for using social media to support presentations: research event attendees at social media sites to figure out how to pitch your presentation and write a blog post timed to hit just as the event begins and refer attendees to it – to quickly communicate baseline info […]

PCWorld: Software Review – LibreOffice Productivity Suite According to reviewer Keir Thomas, it’s buggy and the functionality and interface are little different from OpenOffice, the open source suite from which this one was developed. “The LibreOffice project came about late in 2010 when it became increasingly uncertain what Oracle’s intentions were for OpenOffice.org, which it […]

PCWorld: Review – Rating The Latest Antivirus Software PC World lab tests the latest versions of the major antivirus products and ranks them. The top-rated product: Symantec Norton AntiVirus 2011. (With links to full reviews of each product.) “If you haven’t bought a new version of your antivirus software in a couple of years, now […]