For technology and systems consultants, it's a temptation to cut your rates in today's economy.

Don't do it, before you check out this read on one of my favorite blogs, Sandhill.com.

A survey of smaller technology service providers showed that discounting by as little as 5% versus as much as 30% netted about the same ratio of bids to new clients.

It also showed that specialized services can still get away with charging at a premium regardless of the current price of gas. In other words, if they need you then they need you.

Setting prices is tricky business. Another blog I recommend is Reuben Swartz's pricing blog, "Dollars and Sense". Reuben's company, Mimiran, actually develops and sells pricing analytics software, also a worthwhile consideration in today's economy.

For those of you that read this blog frequently (Hi Mom!), a couple of weeks ago I mentioned a new (and free) e-mail add-on for Outlook that I absolutely love.

It's called Xobni. I've been using it for a few weeks now and have turned on numerous others who are doing the same, who all say they love it.

Xobni tags all the keywords in the mountains of e-mails sitting in your cue and folders and then offers search capability. It sits vertically on the right side of the screen (it's pretty too, lots of colors). You can search by topic, like "fiscal year end", and call up all the e-mails that include that phrase. No more searching through old e-mails trying to remember the obtuse subject lines of important e-mails you now need to retrieve.

But wait there's more...

You can also call up people in your address book and see all the attachments they've sent you (my favorite feature; finding old attachments) or all the e-mails sent and still saved.

This little app, I believe, is the best innovation for the e-mail interface in years.

I've been keeping an eye on Xobni's blog. As a total aside, I wanted to link to their posting on the evolution of their company name and logo.

Every start-up goes through this kind of angst;

- What to name the company?
- Is there a domain available that makes sense in relation to it?
- What should the logo look like? Is it okay to refine it as we go?
- How should we pronounce the company name and what if people tend to pronounce it another way?

The Xobni posting is a good journal of one start-ups process through those early days and how they didn't allow themselves to be locked down into anything immediately. Kudos to them for letting their name, logo, etc. for growing organically.

Last June, the big launch was the iPhone. So far, this year it's Firefox 3.

Ho hum! What a difference a year makes.

For those of you keeping track, Firefox 3.1 (the version that will include extensions) won't come out until the end of the year sometime.

In other words, who cares until the holidays.

IT people and HR people don't always get along in small companies. In working with our customers I've come to the following conclusion:

The leader of IT needs to talk to the leader of finance and HR and say essentially:

We are cost centers and we shouldn’t be. We should be helping to move the company forward positively and treat the rest of the business like a customer and value our efforts on a per-project basis that way - so that we are doing the things together as a team that are going to make the company move forward...

... and the HR and finance people should have the same view that they want to execute on the right projects and move the company forward.

In order to do that they need to understand the business value delivered by each of these things that they are working on. So that is the R in ROI, right? And they need to understand the cost. That is where my company, Journyx comes in. We are the time sheet software company that is going to help you understand that cost. We are the I in ROI. The R is they have to come up with some sort of metric that describes what value is being delivered by executing all of these things.

That is a paradigm shift. Instead of just, “Oh, I am the IT guy. I am going to sit here and figure out how to make things cheaper and get the same amount of work done.” That is a totally different way of thinking than, we are going to look at how we can deliver big business value and do it with the right ROI. I think that the IT people are probably a little bit ahead of the finance and HR people in this way of thinking.

So that's my big insight for the day. Stop treating your department like a cost center. Treat it like a business and change its paradigm so that you are measuring the business value delivery to your internal customers and work to improve it. Commit to this right now. And soon you will be arguing about what piece of big business value to deliver and how much it's worth instead of how to pinch a few more pennies.

Most likely it's 2.4 ghz or 5 ghz and thus today I'm passing on a little tip to anyone in the market for portable phones for the office.

2.4 ghz is a very popular frequency for microwave ovens, phones and Wi-Fi. 5 ghz is increasingly popular with the soon-to-be new Wi-Fi standard, 802.11n (currently known as pre-n). It's also popular with other wireless technologies like Wi-Max.

I recently moved into a new apartment and at the same time had to invest in a new portable phone for my home office. Not knowing what signals may be beaming through my common walls, I made a point of buying a 6.0 ghz phone to avoid interference.

The new "n" standard is becoming increasingly popular and, unlike it's predecessors, is more likely to cut through common walls and across parking lots to infiltrate your space.

For those of you who found my headline a little obtuse today, it's a reference to Dan Rather's mystery mugging back in the late 80's. He claims a crazy man jumped him on the street's of Manhattan screaming "What's the frequency, Kenneth?". The band, R.E.M, immortalized the event with their hit song by the same name.

DWI as in "Driving While Intoxicated"; we all know that one (and hopefully don't do it).

Could DWT, "Driving While Texting", be the next thing to make those MADD moms even madder (new chapter; MATD?).

All this is leading up to yet another study. According to a new survey, just under 30% of all mobile users text while they drive. Yipes!

Other findings in the study; those that 'fessed up apparantly know better. Some 78% of those surveyed believe driving and texting at the same time should be illegal. 85% say they would stop doing it if it were illegal (Why use common sense now? Just wait for a law to be passed!)

Now all that being said, this is one of those dubious studies that makes me wonder.

It was put out by Vlingo, a software company that specializes in voice recognition applications for mobile devices.

Let me write that one more time...

voice recognition applications for mobile devices

Self-serving perhaps? I always wonder what companies like this would do if the results didn't go their way. I'm guessing we'll never find out.

Regardless, I can't disagree with the spirit of the survey's findings. I would rather take my chances in oncoming traffic against a driver who's just had two beers at the local bar, rather than someone texting they're on their way to the bar.

Up until the mid-90's, phone was king. Have your person call my person and let's do lunch. Then along came e-mail. Then everyone got sick of e-mail and how unwieldy it was, and is, for both quick and detailed communications. Those of us who still use e-mail as our primary platform for work communications are considered old fogies now.

The new king of interpersonal communication on the job is... text messaging, and the cell phone, and still e-mail, and instant messaging, and, oh yes, that plastic hunk of junk still sitting on desks (known as a phone, the kind that still actually plugs into a wall). In other words, there is no king of communication platforms.

What does this mean? As someone who wants to communicate effectively with both colleagues and clients, you not only need the people skills to do so; you also need to know each personal contact's personal preference for communication.

If you're juggling a lot of contacts, you may need to organize this information somewhere other than your head.

A little black book perhaps. Retro, but effective!

p.s. The flip side to all of this; Be clear with those contacting you how you are best reached. If you're all thumbs, for example, make it clear text messaging is the best way to reach you.

1. More working from home. If you allow all your employees to work-from-home one day a week, you're cutting their gas bill for commuting by 20%. That's the same as dropping the price of gas from $4 a gallon to $3.20 a gallon (for commuting miles, at least). This is a raise they don't have to pay taxes on; you either!

2. IT access from anywhere. I've been talking to companies like Bomgar, who sell remote access equipment for an upcoming story. Bottomline: if your IT staffer or consultant can get into any piece of gear on the network from anywhere, everyone saves on gas to deliver IT help to the source.

3. Bench the road warriors. Save on gas commuting back and forth to airports to fly on rising fares driven by rising fuel costs. Have the traveling team work remotely, use more online collaborative software like Wikis or Zoho to connect with faraway team members or clients, and trade in web conferencing for face time.

What will you do when it goes to $5 a gallon? Start forming a plan now.

I don't think that I'm going out on a limb to say our government hasn't done a very good job taking care of our returning troops from the war. In fact, it's a national disgrace. Leave it to small business to take care of big problems, like this.

SCORE (the non-profit agency that offers small business counseling to entrepreneurs) has helped me many times over the years as a source for stories. I owe them a plug and can't think of a better time than now. Just in time for Memorial Day, it has launched a set of online resources for veterans and other members of the military community trying to rebuild their lives by starting their own business.

Those resources include articles tailored to the special business challenges and opportunities for the military vet turned entrepreneur, links to other resources and information about a variety of business loan programs for our men and women trading in their uniforms for a business plan.

I wish them all much deserved success and thank you SCORE.

The proposed Microsoft/Yahoo! deal is starting to feel like an umpteeth sequel to Friday the 13th. Jason just won't die and, apparantly, neither will Microsoft's efforts to get its hands on Yahoo!.

Jerry Yang may have to put out a restraining order (those never work, however).

You may recall a couple of weeks ago that after three months of haggling (read that: three months of Yahoo! saying "no".), Microsoft finally gave up and announced it would not sully itself with a hostile takeover attempt to buy up Yahoo!

45 billion dollars and no place to spend it! What's a meglo-ware, multi-national company to do with such mad money laying around the office. You can only buy the staffers so many free soft drinks and foos ball tables.

So, the pursuit of the deal is on again; sort of.

Check out this "what are they saying?" press release from the 'softies over the weekend.

As best I can tell from reading the lines and in between the lines;

- Microsoft doesn't plan on trying to buy all of Yahoo!
- They do hope to buy part of Yahoo!

Can you say advertising?

Every once in a while I run into another CEO who seems like he's on to something.

The other night at a speaking engagement I ran into just such a person.

Danny Weidig is running a small company creating technologies to automate school bells and PA systems of all things. He has hundreds of customers for his technology.

It's another one of those things where you say, "Who knew there was a market for this?"

So if you have a crazy idea out there, just keep in mind what focused attention on an underserved market can accomplish. AcroVista Software provides just such an example.

Curt runs a timesheet software company in Austin.

Another day, another survey. Some are worth quoting and noting; others not so much. Still others may be of value, but only if you put the results into context.

Case in point, ComScore put out a survey this week on online video metrics. According to their results, Americans viewed some eleven billion online videos in March of this year. That was a 13% jump just from February. February is also a slow sports month, while March has the NCAA playoffs, as in March Madness. That being said this March's numbers of online videos downloaded is a 64% gain from March of 2007. Now that's significant.

All this is very interesting... if you work at youtube, or one of the entertainment sites like Fox Interactive.

What you should not take away from these results;

- If I have a video of a keynote address I made at the sheet metal industry's national conference in Boise last month, I should put it up on youtube. Everyone watches youtube. True, youtube is popular. But the average bear is watching clips from Stephen Colbert or guys dancing on treadmills. Very few people are going to youtube and conducting searches that involve the word " keynote".

-

Apparantly most small to midsize business owners seem to think so! A new survey from Register.com shows that 70% of small business owners expect online sales to increase or at least remain steady, despite an increasingly shaky economy.

Perhaps that's because you don't have to drive to the Internet to go shopping? (Couldn't resist. I paid four bucks a gallon this week to fill up my mini-van.)

Of those surveyed, most were smaller companies (45% only owned one domain).

Also interesting; a big chunk of those surveyed are not primarily reliant on ecommerce. (59% only get 25% or less of their total revenues from web transactions. 20% aren't even tracking what percentage of the business comes from online sales.)

Maybe these companies aren't so worried about declining eSales because they're too worried about their bricks and mortar storefronts.

If your company hasn't diversified at least a chunk of its revenues from online, now is the time I believe.

Diversification is the key word in all this. Expanding your business online means you can do business with markets not necessarily as affected by economic conditions weighing down revenues in your own neck of the woods. Maybe it's time to jump into the global economy.

Other things to remember: people don't stop buying stuff during a recession. They just buy less and tend to bargain shop for a cheaper price.

Hmmm.. can you say eBay?

Listen up! If you owned an Apple Powerbook around 2001, you may be eligible for a $25 to $75 rebate that is part of a class action settlement over fritzy power adaptors that came with said Powerbooks at the time. The ink should be dry on the settlement around mid-September. About two million people would be eligible for one of those little checks (down payment on an iPhone, perhaps?).

The second item applies to Apple customers in Canada, not the United States. Apple is handing out $45 rebates to any Canadian who bought an iPod prior to June of 2004 after getting thumped for misleading customers with advertising claiming a longer battery life than delivered. Good for Canada for keeping Cupertino honest. Too bad more tech companies aren't held accountable more often.

$25 - $75 checks may not sound like much (and it isn't if you've ever gone shopping in an Apple Store). But, it makes a point and all those little checks add up to one big hand slap on Apple.

What does a hardware company do when hardware becomes a commodity and margins dry up?

Just what IBM did several years ago when they bought Price-Waterhouse Coopers, apparently - you get into the services business in a huge way.

But since then IBM has cut its services business quite a bit and is moving in with a new strategy towards the middle market.

Is HP going to run into the same problems and end up chasing the small to midsized market in a few years (like IBM is now). I'll bet they do. Giant consulting businesses have alot of issues and these are not issues that a hardware company typically has the culture to solve.

I'm puttin my money on IBM.

Curt runs a timesheet company in Austin.

Check out KinetiCast. KinetiCast has a slick little easy-to-use tool to put together online presentations, send them out by e-mail and then track feedback.

It's a rich tool that allows users to incorporate files, streaming video, power point slides, graphics and text, of course. I signed up for the free 15 day trial offer (no credit card required, just contact information).

I can imagine KinetiCast being used in a variety of ways. It would be a great way to send out online presentations to a team of colleagues that you need to work with collaboratively online. It would also work with clients.

I went to the example page showing various presentations and how different businesses are using KinetiCast. I was particularly intrigued with the real estate example. In this market, real estate agents need every marketing tool they can get their hands on to actually make a sell. Buyers love looking at properties online. This takes it to the next step; the ability to send multimedia listings to prospects. See what this Century 21 agent is doing with KinetiCast.

All that being said, here's some areas that need work.

- It takes too long to upload files. I tried to upload a powerpoint file and after a several minutes, canceled the upload.
- I don't like the fact that the user has to click on the "next arrow button" at the bottom, rather than timing it to change screens on its own.

Pricing packages start at $10 a month and ranges up to $60 a month.

KinetiCast is a little start-up company based in New York state. Let's see who buys it up a year from now.

Check this out. The online Apple store is out of iPhones!

When it comes to launching a new product, no one does it better than Apple. They are, if nothing else, marketing geniuses when it comes to that. Apple could sell coals to Newcastle (just call them iCoals or something). But, uh oh, while Apple marketing has got game; distribution may be another story.

Or...

Big or...

does the "currently unavailable" status have anything to do with the anticipated launch of the new iPhones next month?

Hmmm...

Yahoo! has announced a new partnership with security software maker, McAfee. The two companies are now in cahoots to provide a safe searching feature to Yahoo!'s engine.

Here's what it does;

When you pull up search results, links are flagged with warnings in three areas.

1. Sites that attach malware unwittingly to the passive visitor who just clicks on the site.
2. Sites that offer dubious downloads.
3. Sites that send unsolicted e-mails.

You can read more about it on Yahoo!'s official blog.

It might be wise to steer your employees towards Yahoo! as the search engine of choice and give the company network an extra layer of security.

While you're at it, consider turning off the "cookies" feature on as many work stations as possible. Cookies are the little piece of code web sites attach to the computers of site visitors. It cuts out a lot of risks, but it also cuts out a lot of surfing features most folks can't live without - like logging into a frequently visited site, accessing content at a trusted news site or shopping online at a favorite store.

In fact, we're looking pretty lame for a so-called super power, folks. The internationally renowned organization "The Information Technology & Information Foundation" has put out it's annual broadband rankings report (by country). It's based on a composite score from three criteria; speed, household penetration and pricing.

In 2001, we ranked number four. Here it is 2008 and we sit at #15.

The good news; we beat the pants off the Slovak Republic and Mexico. The bad news; Iceland and Luxembourg beat the pants off us.

What's the matter with us? Check out the detailed analysis from ITIF from it's research. It makes for interesting reading.

In the meantime, why should we care?

- Companies are increasingly relying on richer online media to successfully connect with their online customer base. With that in mind, wouldn't it be nice if more people were able to access all that richer media and at fast enough speeds to enjoy it?
- To quote the song; it's a small world after all. Want to be a part of that big fat global market? At what speed?
- Pride! C'mon, we're home to Silicon Valley, Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, etc. Al Gore didn't invent the Internet, but we did. The Internet was begat by Arpanet, originally developed by the U.S. Department of Defense way back when during the Cold War.

For those of you that read this blog on a regular basis (Hi Mom!), you know I rant and whine on a regular basis about e-mail and how we all struggle to manage it.

I caught wind of a new plug-in this week that's in beta that has given me hope. Check out xobni.com (that's inbox backwards). Xobni has a plug-in you can download for free that works with Outlook that will definitely improve your outlook on e-mail.

I love it because..

- It tags keywords in all my saved e-mails (about 2000+, I confess) and has a search engine so I can pull up all my past e-mails on, say, this blog.
- It has a profile of everyone I e-mail. I can scroll through every e-mail they've ever sent me that I still have or I can scroll through every attachment they've ever sent that I haven't deleted. This is one of my favorite features. I am forever going back trying to find attachments from three months ago and it's a pain.
- Geeky stuff that is just fun information to have; it ranks all my contacts according to the frequency we e-mail each other. There are analytics to show me times of day we correspond most often. Crazy data!

Xobni is trying to mash e-mail with social networking. So far, this is in beta. It's worth taking a look see. For what it's worth, I've been playing with it all week and have shared it with a half dozen friends and colleagues. They all thought it was cool and downloaded too.

The bad news; so far, it only works with Outlook. But the Xobni folks say they plan to expand it to other popular e-mail clients like Thunderbird.

stay tuned...

Okay, maybe that's stretching it a bit. But a new survey, put out by Rapleaf ,involving no less than 30 million people who use social networking sites like Facebook, Flickr, Myspace, Bebo, etc. found that men are more likely to use social networking for business than women, even though more women are into social networking.

This is a classic Mars-Venus thing. The survey shows women spend more time interacting with their contacts on social networking sites; implying their relationships are more involved and, perhaps, social. Men tend to be more transaction oriented.

The survey breaks down social networkers into four categories.

Social networkers (one to 100 contacts)
Connectors (100 - 1000 contacts)
Super Connectors (1000 - 10,000 contacts)
Uber Connectors (10,000 plus contacts)

More women, than men, are social networkers and connectors. More men, than women, are super connectors and uber connectors.

Someone please explain to me what is to be gained from 1000 plus contacts on your Facebook. That's a lot of pokes.

Last week my partnership director, Amanda, connected with the leadership at IBM Partnerworld and had the pleasure of hearing IBM CEO Palmisano and Google's CEO Eric Schmidt talk about their joint future together.

The subtext was that both companies want Microsoft dead of course.

But the basic idea is that IBM will push hard into the small and midsized company market
with technology that requires little or no help from the customers' IT shops and keep
many applications and data and content in Google's "Cloud".

Google gets access to huge customers that IBM "owns" and IBM gets to be connected
to someone cool and fast.

The partnership conference was not attended by the usual gang of endless IBMers but
only by the top leadership of the partner firms and of IBM.

This time they're serious guys.

Luckily for us our project execution technology already runs on all IBM's favorite platforms.

Happy Monday. While we were all out golfing, going to our kids' soccer games and shopping at Costco; negotiations in the deal of the year ended in no deal.

After three months of back and forth, Microsoft finally got tired of being told "no" by Yahoo! and released this press release on Saturday. It includes a copy of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's letter to Yahoo! CEO Jerry Yang.

What does this mean to you and me?

- Our free Yahoo! accounts will remain free and free of requiring a Windows Live login and password.
- Google just dodged a bullet.
- Google may get shot out of the saddle anyway in the long run now that Yahoo! is free to be what it is: Yahoo!
- It's getting increasingly easier and more desirable to walk away from the Windows world. Microsoft needed Yahoo! bad; mostly to shake its dinosaur image in the Web 2.0 world. Now, it's really going to look like a dinosaur.

Caveat: Remember, it took the dinosaurs 65 million years to actually become extinct.

Everything is getting smaller, meaning everything's getting easier to lose.

Think about it; any combination of your cell phone, Bluetooth, thumb drive, memory stick, digital camera, PDA and iPod could easily fit into one pouch.

I say get a pouch (No guys, not a purse, not a man-bag; a pouch). Get a pouch that fits easily in your briefcase, or purse (ladies!). Have a locking drawer at the office and at home and get into the habit of immediately tossing the pouch into that drawer (and locking it!). If you don't have a locking drawer, get a lockbox from Staples for $50 -$60.

This will train you to keep all those little gizmos in one place and keep them away from the sticky fingers of children, babysitters, shady office visitors, etc. When you're on the road, don't leave the pouch in your hotel room unattended. Drop it off at the front desk safe or stow it in the trunk of your car. There's no such thing as a good hiding place in a hotel room. Anyone tossing a room for bootle knows them all.

Bottomline: think pouch! An old money pouch will work just fine.

Browsers are obviously on my mind this week, given yesterday's posting "Two Browsers Are Better Than One,"

There's much obsessing about browsers which become increasingly irrelevant as Web 2.0 (blogs, social networks, wikis, web-based applicaitons, etc) continues to emerge.

Here are five things a business owner or web master should consider about browsers today versus even five years ago..

1. There are more solid alternatives to Internet Explorer emerging and lots of people are turing to them. Look at your web site with as many diferent types of browsers as possible. The colors of your company logo will look slightly different on each one. What widgets work best on which browsers?
2. It's not just web browsers anymore. People are surfing via mobile device these days. Have you ever looked at your company web site on a Nokia. Is it time to get an alternative site optimized for browsers on smart phones, etc.
3. Which browsers are your customers using to view and/or shop at your site? Cater to them accordingly.
4. Experiment with new browsers. See what you think. You can always uninstall the ones you can't stand.
5. Recommend the browser that is best optimized for your site; on your site! Also, reassure your web visitors they can still use any browser on your web site.