So for those of you not camped out at an AT&T or Apple store right now waiting to buy an iPhone - all both of you - here's a little roundup of useful things to make your workday more productive.

- From Web Worker Daily, here are 10 ways to use Google docs more effectively. Great tips!

- Podcast with your phone. As simple as that! Check out Yodio.

- From Mimiran, pricing analytic software now offered through Salesforce.com so you can use it where you need it most - on sales calls. Here's an interesting little demo that provides a nice little introduction on pricing analytics, an often neglected part of business strategy. For more information on pricing software, here's an article I wrote earlier this year.

- Hey Linux users, miss your WingDings? There is a way to export Microsoft's fonts to Ubuntu (or Mint). Here's a tutorial from Linux Mint.

Weekend Bytes

And for your downtime pleasure... check out the Mac versus PC rap video on youtube.

Last word...

For those of you heading out to buy an iPhone at six p.m. your time. Here's one last useful thing for the road:

Ahem, the lines are shorter at the AT&T stores than the Apple stores.

Have a great weekend. We'll get back to business on Monday. - Renee O.

Imagine it this way. What if your car manufacturer developed new technology making it impossible for you to buy parts (like tires and windshield wipers) from any other vendor other than them? Gee, what would Toyota charge you for a new set of snow tires next winter for your Highlander if they were the only game in town?

The printer manufacturers are currently getting a little assist from a San Francisco-based company, Cryptography Research, to do just that with ink cartridges. It just kills the likes of HP, Lexmark, Cannon, etc that you would buy one of those cheaper, recycled ink cartridges from Staples, rather than their overpriced bill of fare. Are you one of those people that refills your cartridges yourself? Perish the thought!

Cryptography Research is hard at work developing a chip to stop all that nonsense, which they refer to, as yes, piracy.

"We're not saying we can end piracy, but our system is designed to recover from failure." - Kit Rogers, VP of Business Development Cryptography Research, to CNet

We all know that the companies that make printers make their real money off selling the ink cartridges. Believe me, none of them are starving either. The small minority of customers that take the time to shop with their conscience for recycled cartridges, often to save a buck as well, are just that - a small minority.

It's an even smaller minority of that small minority that do so by illegitimate means (counterfeit cartridges, counterfeit ink, remanufactured cartridges labeled as new, etc.).

Memo #2 to tech industry: Lighten up! It's one thing to crack down on counterfeiters. Cracking down on fair, legal, healthy competition would be something else - unsavory!

* Improve employee buy-in by clarifying rewards.

Choosing the appropriate time management SaaS solution will only benefit your company if you can get your employees to actually use it. Hourly workers are easiest to convince because they want to be paid, so they already have an incentive. And yet, everyone regardless of status should want the company to be a success, so once they understand that using time tracking to automate billing—thereby making it more accurate—leads to more revenue, they should become more open to it. (If your employees do not care about the success of your company, timesheets won't help you. In that case, you’d better go back to the basics of creating a moral, compelling vision of how your company makes the world a better place.)

Project accounting is more abstract than payroll or billing, and you don’t want to wind up with unnecessary overtime, stressful blown schedules, bad estimates or cancelled projects. Try relating specific examples where good time collection could have prevented problems in order to make that connection in the minds of your employees.

Time tracking and SaaS solutions are the tools that will see your business through to the next level of profitability, and in today’s competitive environment, thoroughly understanding your costs is no longer an option.

Curt is the CEO of Journyx in Austin, TX.

Okay, true confessions. Right now, I have 1203 emails in my inbox, 523 unread. I have folders. I just rarely use them. That makes me a piler, I guess. I'm reacting to a post I read this morning on Web Worker Daily (great blog by the way).

Although I hate theories that begin with "there are two kinds of people in the world....", well, let's just go with this one for awhile. There are two kinds of people in the world, pilers and filers. Pilers, like me, rely on search (or just live scattered and disorganized, as I do) to find their information. Filers rely on file folders to organize and retrieve their data. Which one are you?

I love the idea of file folders. I just don't have time (mainly because I am too busy living my scattered, disorganized life from being a piler).

If you have time, here's an interesting piece put out by MIT on how people manage their electronic information.

For filers, or filer-wannabes (like me), there's good news this morning. Google has just added file folders to its Google Docs & Worksheets online applications. Hopefully, they'll add it to Gmail post haste, as well.

In other news...

The techorazzi press continue to lose its collective mind overhyping the launch of the iPhone (coming Friday, oh my!).

Remember the days when Washington Post reporters made a difference in the world by exposing corruption at the highest levels of government and evne once brought down a president? Okay, those days appear to be gone. More recently, Ernesto Londono, made headlines sharing his "Hints from Heloise"-esque method of saving his Blackberry that fell in the toilet (gross!).

The solution: rice. Check it out for yourself.

I love these kinds of low tech tips and tricks. Here's a roundup of some of my favorites that I've bookmarked in the past and thought would be worth dredging up on a slow June Tuesday. You can bookmark these tips or print them off and put them under a strawberry magnet on your refrigerator door (Hint from Heloise-style!)

- Attention road warriors: Have you ever overslept through that wimpy excuse of an alarm clock on your cell phone? Here's a great way to give some gravitas to the little guy for next time. Leave your cell in a wine glass on your bedside table. The wine glass will amplify the ring and, believe me, you won't sleep through it.

- What do with those skinny Dell mousepads that come with the computer. What? You'd rather hang on to that dogs playing poker mousepad (me to!). But don't throw away the freebe mousepad. Put it in the breakroom. They make great jar openers.

- Don't let your laptop get overheated. Here's a four dollar solution to keep your most important tool cool all summer. Give it some air circulation sitting atop a baker's rack.

- There's cleaning your keyboard (blasting it with an air cannon or running a credit card through the cracks to bring up the dust bunnies) and then there's spring cleaning your keyboard. That involves actually removing the keys and then blasting away with the air cannon. If you eat at your computer, like the other 99% of the world's work force, you probably need to do this from time to time. For that reason, take a quick snap of your keyboard and print off the picture first. Hang on to that picture for future reference. Otherwise, you'll be crying when it comes time to put the keys back and can't remember where they all go.

- Today's plastic CD holder is tomorrow's bagel sandwich keeper. Brilliant! Not sure about the toxicity of the plastic. Best advised for folks who've already done thier reproducing.

Admit it, you love stuff like this too!

* Consider SaaS (Software-as-a-Service).

We’ve already covered the need for an automated time tracking system. A Software-as-a-Service or SaaS solution may be just what you need to increase profitability through time tracking. Consider the following:

It removes much of your IT cost.

It reduces the risk involved in acquiring new software.

It allows you to influence product and service quality via an ongoing relationship with the vendor.

It gives you the flexibility to change usage commitments as business circumstances change.

It allows you to predict more accurately your ongoing expenses as your IT budget is tightened and scrutinized.

Curt is the CEO of a time tracking company in Texas

Microsoft has a new startup for startups. Not to be confused with its small business center, which is actually a very robust resource that I highly recommend.

Startup Center, as its called, is a joint effort with MasterCard, FedEx and Bank of America. In other words, the site is brought to you by a lot of people who want you to succeed in business so they can do business with you,

I got sneak access to the site over the past few days, before today's launch. For what it's worth, here's one woman's view:'

I like the layout. It's like an online workbook for starting a new business. The navigation tabs flow in a step by step chronology of what to do.

Cindy Bates, GM of Microsoft's small business division was doing the pre-launch back-to-back interviews with press last week (I was 11am on Thursday). What I got out of my 20 minutes was primarily two words: comprehensive and actionable. I like the site, but I'm not sure it fully delivers on either.

It's exactly one week until the iPhone hits the market and right now the hype is at fever pitch. Not so on this blog. I've purposely avoided the iPhone and only bring it up now to caution entrepreneurs, startups and small to midsize business owners to not get caught up in the iTide of the iPhone.

Here's why:

- Let someone else be the early adopter, aka the human guinea pig. New technologies come with bugs, limited uses and stiff pricing. Stick with tried and true mobile devices that are competitively priced. The iPhone may be a great tool for your business - in a couple of years. But, not now.

- The iPhone comes with a hefty price tag starting at $499 and that doesn't include the price of the subscription plan for using those much ballyhooed web features that will surely bump up the monthly nut. That's a lot of corn you could probably put to better use elsewhere.

- AT&T is the sole carrier offering plans. If you use another carrier for other mobile plans within your organization, then you will be committing to multiple carriers and exponential headaches.

- Looking forward to accessing your corporate email from your iPhone? Think again, it's a secuity nightmare and your IT guy is already losing sleep over the pressure you'll put on him to do something about it.

- No one does bling better than Apple. (Remember those candy colored iMacs in the mid-90's in biondi blue and tangerine). From the limited peeks at the iPhone, thus far, they look every bit as cool and sleek. But check out what's not under the hood, starting with no GPS and no replaceable battery.

- If you don't like it, it'll cost $175 to cancel your plan early. P.S. AT&T is requiring a two-year committment, up front. Ouch!

Other Tidbits to Chew On

Kudos to Dell

Okay, I'm really starting to like IdeaStorm (Dell's online customer forum). It appears the folks in Round Rock, TX really are listening and responding to customer feedback. Case in point, Dell has heard your cries and announced this week it will now give customers the ability to opt out of all that pre-bundled bloatware on certain models. Sounds good to me. May all the other PC makers soon follow suit.

Have a great weekend! We'll get back to business on Monday. - Renee O.

* Effectively manage PTO.

Controlling and understanding PTO expense allows you to recruit better talent. You can promise people more vacation than your competitors if you know that it's controllable. This tips the balance in your favor, allowing you to build a better team. It’s another way to win.

The first issue businesses need to address when creating their PTO plan is what to do about employees who quit or are terminated. Many states require that the balance of vacation pay be paid when an employee leaves the firm unless the company has a policy that states otherwise. If you choose to disallow vacation time to resigning employees and you run a company of high turnover—a fact of life in certain industries, like retail or food service—this allows you to reallocate the PTO that those who leave might have used in favor of those who stick around. In essence, you can offer more generous PTO packages when recruiting than your more lenient competitors can offer, at no additional cost. Considering the fact that employees deserve benefits commensurate with their loyalty, it is also arguably more ethical.

According to a recent Expedia.com study on U.S. vacation habits, in 2002, a typical American was granted 16 vacation days, but only took 14 days off. Consequently, American workers handed back over $21 billion in unused vacation days to employers that year. So be generous when you hire. They probably won’t use it all anyway.

Curt is the CEO of Journyx in Austin, TX.

At the risk of sounding like a latter-day Andy Rooney, have you ever noticed how many web services are priced at a mere $9.95 a month? Hosting packages, sitebuilding tools, monthly subscriptions to premium content areas: it's no accident, of course. $9.95 must be the most-beloved price point of marketers everywhere.

$9.95 on the Internet is the new millineumm version of the 20th century dollar store.

Here's a couple of $9.95 a month web aps that have recently tempted me:

- Blinksale: It's an online service for customizing, tracking and trafficking your invoices. Technically, it's free, that is if you only send out three invoices a month. Of course, if you're sending out only three invoices a month than free is probably all you can afford. The up to 50 invoices option is, you guessed it, $9.95 a month. I almost bit. As my editors know, I clearly need an intervention in managing my invoices. After playing with the customization candy on a free account, I sobered up realizing I could use the invoice feature on my Quicken softwware. It doesn't have all the pretty skins to choose from, but its part of my financial software and I don't have to pay a $120 a year for the honor of using it.

- SimulScribe: Everybody and their brother is writing about this one, from PC Week to the Wall Street Journal. SimulScribe is a monthly service that uses voice recognition technology to transcribe your voicemails into text (delivered via email, mobile device, etc.). Sweet! But again, $9.95 a monthl.

It may not sound like much, but one of the sidebars to the Web 2.0 revolution is that with all these nifty little tools and toys often comes a nifty little monthly nut. And, it can kill your bottomline if you're not careful.

Remember:

* Ensure that your company complies with SOX, DCAA and/or other relevant standards.

When payroll executives implement time and attendance systems to automate payroll, they often miss the chance to facilitate greater profitability throughout the entire company. These payroll executives are, of course, payroll experts. They are usually not, however, experts at project accounting or billing automation.

However, the time data, if collected appropriately, can also be used to automate project management, project accounting, project tracking and project estimation improvement, as well as for internal, external and reverse billing automation -- and any of these can become SOX concerns. Most payroll and HR executives know little about these subjects, but increasingly, they are being asked to rise to new challenges with federal regulation requirements being just one of them.

Curt runs Journyx in Austin

We've all heard the horror stories of one lost laptop putting the personal information of thousands, even millions, at risk. For example, a Veterans Administration employee lost a laptop last year that had the personal information of more than 26 million vets. Yipes!

Bill Watkins, CEO of Seagate, has written a guest column on CNet today looking at legislative efforts and why they, so far, fall short. Watkins advocates hard drive full disc encryption claiming software encryption just doesn't cut it. It's worth a read!

But better yet, a modest proposal to companies who deal with large databases of personal information: How about this? Don't let it out of the house in the first place!!

I hear a story like the VA security lapse and I have to wonder what in the great wide world of sports was someone doing out and about with 26.5 million account records on a laptop in the first place?

Call me crazy, call me madcap, but....

Just because you can fit that much data on a single laptop, doesn't mean you should.

Does the average diamond dealer tool around town with his highly portable inventory in a little felt bag on the front seat of the car, while running errands? No! Just because diamonds are highly portable, we all know that stuff doesn't leave the building unless absolutely necessary and only then under armed escort in a Brinks truck. Organizations and businesses that traffic in personal information would do well to take their cues from the jewelry business.

I am all for IT professionals aggressively imposing strict security measures on mobile workers to protect data (especially if it happens to be my social security number). Encrypt the software, encrypt the hard drive, go for it, I say. However, the killer ap of security is common sense. If you don't bundle that one into your security suite, your company could have a starring role in the next horror story making headlines.

This story makes my blood boil. For those of you who read this blog on a regular basis (Hi Mom!), you know I have little patience for the craven pricing and environmental abuse that comes with the ink cartridge business.

Now here comes a new study from testing laboratory TUV Rheineland comparing inkjet printers when it comes to ink cartridge efficiency. The results were disgraceful, bordering on immoral.

Here are some of the highlights (lowlights) of the study:

*Up to 60% of the ink in the average ink cartridge is wasted, as in thrown out with the cartridge. Why: because most people throw out the cartridge when the printer tells them they are out of ink. Gee, how does that happen?

*Multi-ink cartridges are some of the most inefficient. The reason being, one color runs low and the whole thing gets replaced. Take this with a grain of salt, however. The study was sponsored by Epson, who is currently pushing it's single ink cartridge technology.

*Photo printing is more ink efficient than printing documents. Photos averaged 58% in ink efficiency "(not exactly anything to brag about). Document printing was an abysmal 47%.

*Of the brands tested (HP, Canon, Lexmark, Epson, Kodak and Brother), Kodak EasyShare 5300 had the worst score at 40% ink efficient. HP and Epson models performed the best averaging 80% efficiency.

So, why is my blood boiling?

* Automate your time tracking system in order to reduce errors in data collection.

Not only should you track time within your company, but you should find the appropriate time accounting platform to automate it for you. According to an IT research organization (that starts with a 'G' but doesn't like to have their name used), fully automating the timesheet process reduces errors and staff time by 75 percent or more. Automation technologies and practices reduce improper time tracking activities and associated costs by validating project/cost code lists and monitoring approval processes electronically. Additional savings are realized by eliminating paper costs, and policy and regulatory compliance is improved.

Curt runs a timesheet software company in Austin

No, my favorite diva will not be buying your next shipment of Dell computers. Read on and the headline we'll start making sense, now that I have your attention.

Just on principle, I'm posting this. A popular customer-centric web site, aptly called The Consumerist, published a article on it's blog last week entitled 22 Confessions of a Former Dell Sales Manager enumerating in as many ways how to dicker for the best price on your next Dell order.

The tips are great, including ways to beat the promotion cycle and why small business packages are better than home office packages.

The article is so handy, in fact, that Dell had a hissy fit as soon as they got wind of it. Letters from lawyers flew. The Consumerist was ordered to take it down or else.

"Harumph!" to quote Mel Brooks from Blazing Saddles.

The Dell folks clearly forgot the online phenom known as The Streisand Effect.

What's The Streisand Effect?

Google (that's Webasaurus Rex from the Latin) is big. We all know that. In fact, something like 47% of all web searches generate from its engine nowadays. Yahoo!, Ask, MSN and AOL are nothing to sneeze at, either.

But what many people don't realize is there's a whole gaggle of Google wannabes out there nipping at the heels of the big search engines, especially now that its not just about searching anymore.

One such company is PowerSet, a new search engine hoping to launch by September. I'm less interested in what PowerSet plans to do to set itself apart from other search engines. What intrigues me more is their strategy as an entrepreneur. PowerSet has taken a pledge of total transparancy in sharing all of its in-house product design and product launch documents. The same raw spreadsheets and project management documents PowerSet employees are working off of to prepare for launch will be laid bare on the Internet for all to see.

I haven't quite figured out what PowerSet hopes to get out of all this (except some up front PR and buzz from online lookey-loo's). But, this could be a great teaching tool for other startups who follow along learning from successes and failures as they unfold.

Is this the natural next step to the open source movement?

* Track time in order to manage project risk.

Time data can make a fundamental difference to your company if collected and used correctly. One of the ways in which time tracking can lead to success is by using it to plan for projects and then follow their progress along the way. Knowing a project is behind schedule or over budget towards the end of the project’s life span does no one any good. Knowing this information sooner, however, will help you act accordingly and stop wasting time and money.

How can you do this? It is quite simple. The early phases of a project are usually referred to as ‘requirements,’ ‘design,’ or ‘specification.’ Let’s say that after carefully tracking time on a batch of similar projects you find that the first two phases take approximately 10% of the project time. You can then use that data to predict the length of future projects. I’ve found this project estimation technique to be extremely accurate, regardless of whether your company’s magic number is 3% or 30%.

Curt runs a time tracking software company

I honestly can't think of one.

I'm one of those all-in-one printer kind of people. I recently bought my fourth one. Like it's predecessors, it includes a printer, copier, scanner.. and FAX! I almost let it go this time and, honestly, I already regret the decision. It's just plain silly to have a fax (much less that second phone line). I can count on one hand the number of times I use it annually. It's just one more way spammers can find me (and eat into my ink and paper supply like wharf rats).

There are plenty of companies online that will send attachments out as a fax for you, plus there's always Kinko's when I'm in a pinch.

I think it's a generational thing. People of a certain age, and older, still remember the pre-PC, pre-Internet world. We're not very good at backing up our hard drives, but we're really good at clinging to our old luddite technologies. C'mon, raise your hand! How many of you hung on to your IBM Seletric well into the 90's (just to type envelopes, I swear!).

Without giving my age away, I believe the line of demarcation falls somewhere around here: whether you had a metal lunch box or softsided lunch box as a kid. Lunch boxes went to soft sides around 1985.

If you grew up, as I did, taking a metal lunch box to school then I'm guessing you, too, have reservations about giving up your fax binky. I'm not the only one angsting about this. There's a great little posting about this very topic on Web Worker Daily.

* Use Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to gauge success.

KPIs are used to measure the performance of an organization, frequently through measuring activities such as performance improvement derived from training, labor utilization rates, or customer satisfaction. KPIs are often tied to strategy through techniques such as the Balanced Scorecard, but they don’t have to be as complicated as that to be useful and effective.

As with most things, simplicity increases efficacy.

KPIs can differ depending on strategy. They help an organization to measure progress towards their organizational goals, such as increased penetration of existing customers or markets, on time delivery or reduced scope creep.

A KPI is a key part of a specific measurable achievable relevant time-based goal (a SMART goal) which is made up of a direction, KPI, target and time frame, e.g. "Increase Average Revenue per Sale to $10,000 by December." In this case, 'Average Revenue per Sale’ is the KPI. The above mentioned goal wouldn’t be SMART if it wasn’t an achievable goal. Nor would it be SMART if the word ‘December’ was left out or if it was not relevant, e.g. if this was a portion of the organization that had nothing to do with sales or marketing, like HR.

Curt is the CEO of a online timesheet company

Special thanks to my friend Frank Scavo, president of Computer Economics, for sharing his most recent survey, hot off the presses this week, of IT security professionals on the financial impact of malware attacks.

It makes for interesting reading.

The Good

For the second year in a row, malware attacks worldwide are down again. 2006 figures dropped to 13.3 billion dollars in damages. It was 14.2 billion in 2005 and a record 17.5 billion in 2004.

The study cites two reasons for the falling numbers: first, anti-malware technologies are more widely deployed and, businesses in particular, have shifted to a subscription plan with their security software vendors allowing for a faster and more seamless response to new threats.

The second reason for that number, however, leads to....

The Bad

Damage figures are down because malware authors have shifted in their reasons for launching attacks. It's not about random acts of cyber vandalism anymore. It's about money. Simply put, the bad guys are using their malware to quietly infect machines and networks for forwarding spam, stealing financial information or breaking into networks. The damages are less obvious, but undoubtedly more devastating in the long run.

The Ugly

Here are some other fast facts from the report:

- The average organization experiences at least five malware attacks a year.
- Despite improvements in anti-malware software and deployment, businesses see attacks as a greater threat than they did a year ago.
- No surprises here. Email is still the greatest vulnerability when it comes to malware attacks, followed by stumbling upon malicious web sites.

There is a mantra in the venture capital community and it goes like this:

"If you build a better mousetrap, nobody will give a damn because the ones we have already work fine."

I however am generally not well liked by VCs for some reason, perhaps in part because I have always felt that if I built a better mousetrap, that the world might in fact actually beat a path to my door.

How about a rat trap with its own webserver that tells you where the mice are headed and where their base of operations is and which traps are full that you forgot to go check? How about a mousetrap that interacts with your staff to save them time, increase health and lower costs?

Apparently I am not alone in this supposition because a British firm has in fact gone and done just that. The Economist magazine (the NPR of magazines - in the sense that the signal to noise ratio is higher than most due to fewer dumb writers and dumb ads) has published an interesting article about the better mousetrap.

I just can't say enough good things about Score, the nationwide not-for-profit agency that helps entrepreneurs and start-ups get their businesses up and running. If you haven't turned to their web site for help then, please, run, don't walk to www.score.org. It's a treasure trove for business owners. Score also offers counseling services in many, many cities and towns across the country helping out with business plans, etc.

I bring it up because Score has just added a couple of online courses that you can take for free right off the front page of their site. One is entitled Technology for Your Business, the other ECommerce for Your Business. I just found out about them and will try to take at least one of them over the next week and update you about the experience afterwards.

Safari on Windows: It's a jungle out there

Word to the wise, if you're thinking about downloading the new Windows version of Safari (made by Apple) - don't! Apparantly, it's awful.

There are numerous reports today reporting various bugs and security vulnerabilities, all within hours of its beta release. This is not news for the Mac crowd already using Safari. Many of them say Safari just stinks, period, on any platform.

I haven't been able to use mine in several days. First it was the reader and now I can't even access my iGoogle page. Whatever the problem is, it is affecting users in a variety of ways. Just take a look at the long list of comments on Robert Scoble's blog addressing the problem.

As much as I loved my little teahouse theme on my iGoogle page, I have no patience for this kind of thing. I've already migrated over to Pageflakes, which by the way has a much more elegant reader interface anyway.

There's a lesson in here somewhere about using a web toy as a business tool. I'll let you know when I figure it out.

In case you were wondering...

If you're a Soprano's fan still reeling from Sunday night's final episode (Don't get me started. I'm bitter David Chase, very bitter!), you probably spent the better part of yesterday with that oldy moldy Journey song Don't Stop Believing rattling around in your head. It was the song abruptly cut off in the last scene when the show cut to black leaving fans to wonder for all eternity (or until a movie deal is announced) whether Tony got whacked or merely shared the rest of his onion rings with daughter, Meadow.

Don't Stop Believing was a huge hit - when Reagan was in office. Thanks to Sunday night its on the iTunes chart at #30. Let's see how much it climbs this week as the show repeats almost nightly.

Consider how many people are now juggling at least three phone numbers: the office, the cell and the home line. It can get more than a little confusing keeping track of who should call what line and when to get hold of you, especially when you're on the road.

Today's tip: Grand Central. It's a handy little piece of webware still in beta. With Grand Central, you get one universal phone number that rings all your different phone accounts so you never miss a call. You can customize it as you see fit, with even uniquely programmed messages for specific phone numbers (i.e. "This is Daddy.. for when the kids' call to something more official for your boss.).

The feature that appeals to me: during any call you can hit #4 and it automatically records the call. No more fishing around for a pen or getting nailed for half-listening through critical information. I also like the fact it offers a phone spam filter and what is called the ListenIn feature that allows you to listen to voicemail being left as its recorded. You can opt to listen in and deal with it later or interupt and take the call after all.

Another practical application: it allows you to save minutes and battery time. If someone calls on your cell phone while you're sitting in your house, just pick up the cell call on the house land line.

Grand Central is, so far, free and claims it will always offer a free version even when it comes out of beta.

With the pending launch of the IPhone from Apple that promises to revolutionize our world, I thought I would broach the topic of just how the heck a small business is supposed to support such a wide array of devices that long to interact with your business network one way or another. After all, these devices are targeted at your employees and your business. With all the promises of how they will make you more efficient, make your customers love you more, and generally improve your life, how can one resist? Truth is, with a small business, you need to take some time to figure out how you will incorporate these devices into your IT department, or even if you will do it at all. My organization is a very "virtual" one, with over 40 employees wandering the globe at any time; wireless is the only feasible way to stay connected. As my IT staff constantly warns, however, that doesn't mean it's easy. I'm writing this entry while connected via my Sprint Broadband card, reading email on my Blackberry, and connected to an instant messaging client, all via my Virtual Private Network client software on my PC. Our experience has been that if you are going to allow your employees to access their email wirelessly it is best to standardize on a device and support methodology like you would commonly do with personal computers. If not, you're exposing your network to risk. This is true with any device that connects to your network. As a company we decided that all users would have limited access to our network with their wireless devices, enough to keep them connected, but not enough to expose our network to serious potential for breach. Since this is supposed to be an interactive medium, I'd like to hear from others of you out there how you support or standardize on wireless devices.

Web 2.0 social networking sites have morphed into whole new experiences.

Myspace is all about pictographic diaries with music online.
Facebook is similar, as are a number of others.

Digg, and Helium are specialized versions of web2.0 social networking
aimed at helping the best news items bubble into your view.

Just in time for Father's Day

The first Dell computers are hitting the shelves of Wal Mart. Here's a peek at the ad.

Everybody's favorite ad campaign to parody

You guessed it. It's those Apple v. Mac ads. You know! The ones with the fashionably shaggy young guy who is a Mac and the portly, nerdy guy who looks like someone's Match.com reject representing PC.

Here are some of my favorite knockoffs:

Novell's Mac vs PC... versus Linux ad

Facebook versus MySpace

and my personal favorite, Mac versus PC: The South Park version

I had a fascinating conversation with Ajit Jaokar, author of the popular blog Open Gardens and Mobile 2.0 guru, this morning. Talking with Ajit is like a trip through the brain candy store: it's a feast for the mind.

Among the many topics discussed, almost as an aside, we took a little detour talking blogs - one blogger to another. Ajit made the wonderful point, "A blog isn't just a blog. Because it is so incestious (meaning: we are always referring to each other's content to the point it moves in almost in an infinite loop), a single blog really represents a whole network of blogs behind it. It's a great example of collective intelligence."

Collective intelligence! That's really the benchmark difference between the web as we've known it and what it is quickly becoming. Amazon, as Ajit points out, isn't a trailblazer for selling books or anything else. That's just a new version of moving a commodity. What makes Amazon unique is the collective intelligence of it's customer reviews and sellers. You can get the latest copy of the new James Patterson novel anywhere. You can't get the collection of reviews and sellers anywhere else, however.

Blogs work in a similar way. In addtion to the unique content you're putting out there in your postings, you're also aggregating with other content in a way that makes it unique and specific for your customers.

Ajit also offers one last nibble of food for thought for small to midsize business owners on the blogging fence. Once you do commit to a blog, have it sit as a subdomain of your company site. Don't go the Blogger route. An active blog roping in eyeballs will rise up in the Google ranks. You want to be sure it takes your corporate site with it. Think about Wordpress or Moveable Type instead.

It's all anecdotal at this point, but I keep hearing my Blackberry/Crackberry friends tell me they've all but chucked their laptops. It's a perfect storm of factors:

*More web-enabled cell phones
*Post 911 pressure to travel as light as possible
*So-called smartphones are getting really, really cheap

Subsequently, I got a sweetheart deal on a laptop a few months ago. My shopping experience reveals two trends in PC sales.

Here's what happened. I was toying with the idea of getting a laptop for the purpose of working room to room (I work from home and frequently have to follow the kids with work materials in tow). What started out as a recon mission at my local computer retail outlet to just compare models and features before buying online, quickly became an impulse purchase.

I walked out the door with a $499 notebook.

What two trends in PC sales does this illustrate?

1. Laptops have gotten really cheap. Tons of sub-$1000 models to choose from.
2. Traditional bricks and mortar retail PC sales are up and direct online PC sales are down. Hence, Dell was recently dethroned as King of PC sales by HP.

The answers why are all right there in my shopping experience. More people are buying PCs the old fashioned way at the store. Lower prices mean more impulse purchases like mine. Dell gets it. That's why they're now rolling back the prices with the rest of 'em at Wal-Mart. Meantime, I have this relatively new laptop that in a matter of weeks has become my defacto desktop. I hopped back and forth between the two for about a week or so and now my desktop functions as a very large paperweight (I've decided to donate it to a local non-profit).

Conclusions:

The mobile device is the new laptop.
The laptop is the new desktop.
Retail is the new Direct.
Laptops are cheap because they're competing with smartphone prices... and desktop prices.

Craig, my buddy at our partner IDE has written a fabulous article aimed at the CIOs of big companies. While I know that the audience of this magazine and website are probably not mostly from large companies, the principles underlying his comments indicate how your small company can adapt to the trends he's talking about to grow.

Although he never mentions web 2.0, he principles he's describing are all about it.

Curt's the CEO of Journyx in Austin and has lots of time tracking partners.

It's not just web sites and other new media providing a richer interactive experience these days. There's never been a better time to take a meeting or give a presentation.

Just recently, I've noticed a number of new online tools to pump up your pow wows.

Here's a roundup:

Vyew

Just announced this week: Vyew has just come out wtih a new version of collaborative webware that now includes free web conferencing. This is in addition to the many other features that allow users to develop their presentations online, collaborate with others remotely and call it up on the road for the big presentation. It's a very robust tool that allows you to use not onliy PowerPoint and other Office applications, but audio and video too. You can even turn your presentation into a widget and embed it on your web site.

Meeting Tomorrow

Situation: you're flying into Austin, Texas tomorrow to give a big presentation. You're going to need a USB projector that works with your notebook, a screen and, oh yeah, a power strip and one of those plug in remotes to flip through your PowerPoint slides, so you dont' have to stand by your computer the whole time. It's definitely more gear than you want to cram into your carry on luggage. Enter Meeting Tomorrow. Ripping a page out of the Netflix playbook, Meeting Tomorrow has a similar business model only it's A/V gear instead of movies. You order what you need online, including when and where. They deliver (same day service in some cities, otherwise at least 24 hours notice elsewhere). The gear comes with return packaging that includes prepaid postage, etc. You throw it into FedEx on the way out of town. Although pricey, it's still much cheaper than renting gear from the hotel with far more choices and more quality assurance that it's well maintained.

Beyond Bullet Points

Authored by the president of Social Media, Cliff Atkinson's new book Beyond Bullet Points is a self-proclaimed revolutionary approach to producing PowerPoint presentations. Atkinson poo-poo's the old bullet point approach, saying it's actually the worst way to distill lots of information down into one unified message. Bullet points by their very nature break down information, not aggregate into cohesive messages. Atkinson advocates presentations that are more narrative in nature. His book by the same name lays out ways to do that. His web site offers free downloads of templates and tutorials to get you started.

Like my earlier post that explained the history of pay per click advertising, Stuart Brown has explained (in terms that Gartner would be proud of) the history of the web2.0 social neworking phenomenon. It's an interesting read.

Curt runs a time tracking company in Austin, TX

Want a way to manage your projects without spending lots on software, that appeals to our new way of interacting on the web, and that creates a searchable database of best practices almost by accident? Here's a great article on how to use blogs to create project management discussion rooms in a consistent manner across your company. Very well done.

You've got your firewall installed, along with the anti-virus software, not to mention popup and spam blockers loaded on every laptop and desktop and still the company network is still not particularly safe. What's the weak link? Most likely, your employees and the bad choices they make online. It should come as no surprise that email is the biggest vulnerability. Search engines, however, are number two.

Some 80% of all web traffic flows in from search engines. The question is how safe are the big search engines and how often are they giving your mouse a bum steer leading you to unsavory sites that will make you a target for spam, phishing attacks or popup overload.

Here's a little FAQ on search engine safety I've written up for you to share with staff, thanks in part to a new study put out by McAfee.

Are sponsored sites safer than organic results?

Actually no! McAfee found 8% of all sponsored sites are risky. That's three times as much as organic results. McAfee also found MSN to have the highest percentage of trouble-making sponsored sites at 10.7%. Ask had the lowest at 6.5%.

Who has the safest search engine?

AOL with a return of only 3.6% of sites deemed fishy.

Which engine has the most shady sites?

Yahoo! at 5.1% in overall searches.

What kinds of searches are the most risky?

Here's a interesting little bar graph from the Google folks of their riskiest searches. Top of the charts: free screensavers. 64% of all sites that pop up are dubious. Other common risky items to search: anything to do with screensavers, free ringtones, file sharing sites like Bearshare or Limewire, music downloads and male singers (phew! I'm still safe combing the web for more Dixie Chicks' sites).

What's the most dangerous word to use in a search?

Free! No surprises there. Just by adding that one word to any search, on average, 14.5% of the sites that crop up will be harmful.

No one really knows just how big the Internet is. Estimates range from 15 to 30 billion web pages. One thing we know for sure: Hewlett Packard would like for us to print a copy of each and every one of those pages using one of their printers and a lot of their ink cartridges.

Hewlett Packard recently unveiled what it is calling "Print 2.0" at it's annual imaging and printing conference in New York. By it own's admission, HP says about half of the printing jobs done at the personal user level are of some sort of web content. When you think about the increasing popularity of Web 2.0, it's easy to see that figure may be in trouble. Web 2.0 means an increasing popularity in web pages populated with impossible-to-print content like widgets, live RSS feeds and streaming video.

Duh-Doh, as Scooby Doo would say!

Robet Soloway, the so-called King of Spam, is finally facing the music. Soloway appeared in a Seattle, Washington court room this week where he pled "Not Guilty" on a 35-count indictment that includes mail fraud, aggrivated identity theft, email fraud and money laundering. Prosecutors allege Soloway is responsible for more than 200 million spam messages sent worldwide. They also say one of his favorite tactics was duping business owners to hire him to increase traffic to their web sites and then turning around to use their servers and good name to send out more spam.

Imagine that happening to your business for a minute. First of all, it meant having your web site
hijacked. The only alternative would be to actually cancel your domain name and IP addresses. Next, you've paid for services not rendered. And lastly, your online reputation is shot as you take the fall for thousands, if not millions, of spam emails.

Assuming this man is guilty, you can see why people are really, really mad at him. In fact, there are entire web sites and blogs devoted to spreading the word of his alleged spamming deeds.

If convicted, he faces three quarters of a million dollars in fines and 65 years in jail. He also faces previous judgements in civil actions. A couple of years ago, Microsoft won a seven million dollar judgement against him (don't mess with Hotmail) and an Oklahoma ISP won a $10 million dollar judgement against him, as well.

Soloway is 27 years old and was represented by a public defender at his court appearance this week.

If you'd like to see a list of other notorious spammers believed to be inflicting the most damage on the Internet, check out the list on The Spamhaus Project.

In the beginning, There was GoTo.com, the first PPC (pay per click) advertising vendor I ever heard of. They had a trademark dispute with the Go Network which was owned by Infoseek because of the similarity of their logos.

So GoTo, which was already a publicly traded company by that point, changed its name to Overture. Overture was a crappy name. What GoTo invented was an incredibly brilliant business model. Instead of placing crappy banner ads that annoyed everyone all over the screen, they would orient search results in their engine based on who paid the most.