Small Business Computing Staff

PCWorld: Review – Google Desktop Search Engine Desktop search tools let you find stuff fast on your hard drive. Since Microsoft’s built-in search tools in Windows improved, third-party tools like this one have arguably become less important, but may provide a productivity edge for small business employees with lots of data to search. “Google, like […]

PC World: Hands On With New Gmail Voice Feature Harry McCracken says the quality of Gmail voice calls to regular telephones is quite good, but finds a few annoyances, flaws and areas that could be improved. “I’ve been using Gmail’s new free voice calling feature over the past couple of days. For a while, I […]

New York Times: Location-based Marketing – Will It Work? Times reporters cite market research data about usage levels, and interview users and advertisers. So far location-based services mainly reach young urbanites. “Internet companies have appropriated the real estate business’s mantra — it’s all about location, location, location. Elizabeth Aley scanning the bar code on laundry […]

PCmag@Work (Small Business): PC Mag Roundup Of Hot Business Tech Links Other topics covered include simple project management tools used by start-ups, lessons from IBM’s social media guru and new social media features in Box.net’s online storage and file sharing service. “Welcome to Business Bits, a collection of hot business technology links from around the […]

PCWorld: Review – HP LaserJet Pro P1606dn Monochrome Laser Printer PC World says this printer, priced about $200, is suitable for small business and home office users, but notes that you get speed and auto-duplex printing at the cost of high-priced toner. “The HP LaserJet Pro P1606dn monochrome laser printer aims at small offices and […]

PCmag@World (Small Business): Building A Private Cloud With Cisco Quad Cisco’s Quad is a new collaboration platform that combines unified communications (UC) and business social networking. “Murali Sitaram, Cisco’s Vice President/General Manager of Enterprise Collaboration Platform and Doron Aronsin, Cisco’s Public Relations Manager of Corporate Communications stopped by PCMag’s offices today to introduce me to […]

ITBusinessEdge: Wi-Fi 101 – Choosing The Right Gear Paul Mah looks at how to select Wi-Fi networking gear and recommends a couple of products. “Last week, I wrote about some facets of Wi-Fi that SMBs need to be aware of before deploying Wi-Fi networking. As I noted then, while wireless technology offers a world of […]

SMB News From NetworkWorld: How To Reduce Energy Waste Modern surge protectors and smart chargers can help reduce energy waste from devices drawing power even when turned off. “It’s 1 a.m., and everyone in the house is asleep. The television is off. The computers are off. Your cell phones and MP3 players are plugged in […]

Smallbiztechnology: Protect Your Customer Data – Or Else One way data can leak is through outgoing e-mail. ComplianceSafe is a new product that helps protect small businesses against inadvertent disclosure of private or sensitive data. “Large businesses have large systems in place to monitor and block unauthorized information from leaving their companies. But even with […]

New York Times: Tricks Google Docs Can Do That Office Can’t Can your office productivity suite do this? Paul Boutin spotlights four cool capabilities of Google Docs: group editing, OCR, language translation and self-updating spreadsheets. “It’s been a year since Google formally released Google Docs, a free Web-based competitor to Microsoft Office with parallel applications […]

CNet: Google Gmail Adds Voice Presumably based on technology Google acquired when it bought Gizmo, the new voice chat feature lets you call directly from within Gmail, with automated dialing to existing contacts. “With Google’s rollout Wednesday to Gmail, the built-in Google Talk chat app is finally getting its own voice. Specifically, a plugin that […]

ITBusinessEdge: New Hosted VoIP Service From Intermedia ITBE columnist Paul Mah looks at a new hosted VoIP service from Intermedia that can be coupled with hosted Microsoft Exchange to deliver a full unified communications package. “Small and mid-sized businesses considering hosted PBX service just gained one new option as of the beginning of this month. […]