Small Business Computing Staff

New York Times: New E-commerce Initiative At Twitter Twitter is borrowing the idea behind private and limited-time sale sites such as Gilt, Groupon and Woot. Followers of its @earlybird Exclusive Offers tweets get special deals. “Last year, we wrote that Twitter was considering e-commerce as one of its revenue models. On Tuesday it unveiled its […]

Small Business Trends: Why Customers Don’t Trust Your Website Lisa Barone’s 11 hallmarks of an untrustworthy small business website include that it’s written like a brochure, hasn’t been updated in five years, doesn’t have an About page or give a mailing address… You get the idea. “While it may be hip to say otherwise, your […]

ComputerWeekly: Whitepaper – Symantec SMB Security Guide The main message is that small businesses can’t do everything and need to prioritize where they expend their security effort and resources. “IT security can seem like a mountain to climb. It is not possible to do everything, so how do you prioritise your security resources? Where do […]

PCWorld: Painless Migration To Windows 7 For SMBs Some of these seven steps are fairly self-evident but others you may not think of – such as backing up all your data. “Windows 7, Microsoft’s latest PC operating system, has proven popular. A stable, good looking OS with a host of bells and whistles. But if […]

Entrepreneur: Checklist – What Customers Want On An SMB Website Some in this list of 10 should be fairly obvious (contact information, a clear sense of what you do), but others may be less obvious to small businesses starting in e-commerce, including some form of third-party validation and SSL encryption. “So you want your website […]

PCWorld: How To Stay Safe At Wi-Fi Hotspots Describes the risks involved in using public Wi-Fi hotspots and what you can do to counteract them, including turning off Wi-Fi and Bluetooth when you’re not using them. “Wi-Fi is everywhere. Whether you travel for business or simply need Internet access while out and about, your options […]

Small Business Trends: Power Management For SMBs: Saving Money And The Planet The daily savings from turning off or setting computers and other devices to go into sleep mode aren’t huge, but over a year, they add up. And with the price of electricity rising, this will become more important. “We all know small businesses […]

InformationWeek SMB: Study Says Windows 7 Cuts SMB IT Costs The automation and other new features in Win7 mean fewer headaches for IT staffs and less downtime for users, IDC says, and that means lower over-all costs for IT. “Small and midsize businesses that upgrade their PCs to Windows 7 can cut their support costs […]

CNet: How To Get Started With Google Voice Google Voice offers so many features, it can be confusing for newbies. CNet gets you started and points to Google’s own excellent Help pages. “Google Voice is best known for its visual voice mail features. If you miss a call, Google Voice uses computers to transcribe the […]

Engadget: iPhone4 Reception Problems Explained By Apple – Sort Of Apple says the reception problems have to do with the phones mis-reporting the strength of radio connections, not that their antenna is poorly engineered. Engadget suggests this doesn’t really explain the dropped calls and other reported problems. “Whoa, Apple just admitted that there’s an issue […]

ITBusinessEdge: SMBs Should Be Using Full-Disk Encryption Tools Paul Mah looks at LOK-IT secure flash drives; and IronKey encryption software, discusses why SMBs need products like this and quotes from a recent article debunking myths about full-disk encryption. “Small and mid-sized businesses are paying a lot more attention to security now than in the past, […]

ComputerWeekly.com: Preview – New SMB Security Benchmarking Tool From Symantec The Symantec benchmarking kit is in response to recent studies showing small businesses are just as much at risk as big ones and many have never tested their disaster recovery plans. “Symantec has launched an online tool to enable small businesses to see how their […]