Small Business Computing Staff

Small Business Labs: Roundup – Is 2011 The Year Of Mobile Payments? This roundup summarizes and links to recent articles on mobile payments, including a few that look at the solution Starbucks implemented. Sources include BusinessWeek, CNN and MSNBC. “There is so much going on in the mobile payments space it’s getting very hard to […]

ITBusinessEdge: Web Search – Improving An Essential Business Skill Google engineers who spoke at an event in Singapore recently say many users continue to use the same search techniques despite getting consistently poor quality results. Paul Mah shares some of their tips for improving search results. “I attended a short workshop conducted by Google research […]

Smallbiztechnology.com: Great New Small Business Technology From CES Ramon Ray’s CES favorites include a tablet from Toshiba, a printer from new brand Memjet, new versions of Skype, a shredder from Black & Decker and Microvision Showwx+, an all-in-one device for projecting slideshows from a mobile phone. “Thousands of journalists, thousands of products, thousands of steps, […]

Small Business Trends: Roundup: Social Media & Blogging For Small Business The roundup includes recent articles from large and small publications covering various aspects of social media and blogging, including how-to information, success stories and trends. “Social media and blogging have become such an important part of small businesses, particularly those operated online. So we’ve […]

InformationWeek: New Box.Net Software Woos Sharepoint Users The announcement of a redesigned interface, back-end security and admin for IT , plus integrations with cloud vendors Netsuite and VMware is designed to appeal to existing users of Microsoft Sharepoint. “Taking repeated potshots at the bloated, feature-heavy Microsoft Sharepoint, Box.net on Thursday in Palo Alto, Calif., announced […]

Entrepreneur: New Research Confirms Benefits Of Telecommuting The research, conducted by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and published by the National Communication Association, found that telecommuting employees job satisfaction was higher because working at home created less stress. As technology evolves, many of the barriers that have traditionally limited telecommuting continue to disappear. The tedious standard […]

InformationWeek: New Intrusion Prevention For Wi-Fi Networks From Cisco The new software will be a boon in particular for retailers because it will help them comply with credit card company data security standards. “On Wednesday, Cisco announced a free software update for its 11n Wi-Fi access points that will enable them to run in a […]

Small Business Trends: 9 Small Business CRM Solutions TJ McCue divides his survey of CRM solutions into three categories: e-mail-focused apps, apps with a social collaborative orientation and sales-focused solutions. “Customer relationship management has always felt like the wrong term to me. You don’t “manage” customers. You don’t “manage” your relationship with a customer. You […]

Smallbiztechnology.com: Roundup – Latest Tech News For Small Businesses Stories include news of a new Small Business Authority website, a look at 4G mobile, Corel’s new mobile app for viewing WordPerfect Files on iPhone and iPad and more. The Small Business Authority, Powered by Newtek Launches New Website Newtek Business Services, The Small Business Authority, […]

Entrepreneur: Choosing An Online Shopping Cart For Your SMB E-commerce Site Jonathan Blum looks at four shopping carts: PayPal Payflow Link, Checkout by Amazon, Google Checkout and Authorize.Net Payment Gateway. “Ah, the siren call of striking out with your own e-commerce website. You create the better mousetrap, find the right keywords, Facebook pages and Foursquare […]

PCWorld: Google Docs Keeps Improving As A Small Business Tool Keir Thomas notes that Google Docs has recently added new fonts, the ability to drag and drop files, auto-correct functions, better charting and other features. It’s still free for individual users. “Google has been quietly adding a raft of new features to its Google Docs […]

ComputerWeekly.com: Cash-strapped SMBs Not Spending On PC Upgrades Recent reports from IDC (focused on Europe, Africa and Middle East) and Gartner show a marked disparity between enterprise and SMB spending on PC upgrades. “IDC’s latest research into the state of the PC market has shown that enterprise users are spending but SMEs are still under […]