There’s a fun conversation happening on Quora about the worst product design of all time. The nominees include such ubiquitous products as umbrellas, bras, cigarettes, PT Cruisers, sofa beds, and that infamous Florida butterfly ballot. And from the annals of tech, come several celebrated flops—including one from those design geniuses in Cupertino. READ MORE
Until recently, evaluating her business technology needs didn’t seem like a priority for Kendra M. Coleman. “As a small business owner in consulting with a do-it-yourself IT department, I spend most of my time traveling and working hands-on with clients,” explains Coleman, who runs Chicago-based Kindred Organizational Consulting, Inc. “The last thing I have time for is a proactive technology review.” But then Coleman started thinking about “how much time, money and space I am wasting relying on old technology systems and applications, including landlines, fax machines and laptops.” Coleman decided to block out time to analyze her use of technology. As a new year begins, it’s a good time for all small to mid-sized businesses to do the same. Emerging technology today offers you powerful tools to compete against bigger players in the marketplace. But managing those tools can be difficult, unwieldy and time-consuming, and many small business owners, like Coleman, are still trying to handle the tech side of the business on their own. It’s time to make new resolutions about how you’ll handle your tech needs. IT and cloud computing experts and consultants say you should target these five areas in 2011: 1. Consider hiring outside IT help If you’re spending more time on tech needs and woes than on your business mission or if your tech systems are hampering your business mission, it’s probably time to find help, say the experts. “For businesses smaller than 100 employees, it typically makes no sense to hire an in-house IT guy,” says Bobby Kuzma, who works with small businesses as president of Orlando-based Central Florida Technology Solutions, Inc. “Most business professionals aren’t technology professionals. They don’t live and breathe this stuff.” You’ll also need to evaluate how much of your IT operations you want to outsource. “We can be their entire IT department or we can work with an organization where we augment their internal IT,” notes Jim Lippie, president of Thrive Networks, the IT network service business of Staples Advantage. 2. Evaluate the cloud Cloud computing will continue to dominate headlines in 2011. “The advent of inexpensive cloud-based solutions mean that owners have access to enterprise-class, robust and reliable services on a small-business scale basis,” says John Baschab, senior vice president at Technisource, which provides IT solutions for business. You’ll find your best opportunities to maximize the cloud in e-mail solutions, back office help, sales force automation, remote backup and file-sharing, advises Baschab. Look for ways you can replicate “Fortune 500″ functionality, says Scott Albro, CEO of Focus, which offers free business advice and consulting. Take a look at what the big players in your industry are doing and see if you can find cloud solutions that help you compete. Pull together a plan that considers potential security and backup exposures or gaps, and have a professional review that plan. “Make sure you’re completely educated before making any drastic decisions,” cautions Lippie. “The cloud movement is still maturing.” 3. Focus on business first “Don’t focus on the technology,” advises Connie Certusi, General Manager for Sage Business Solutions’ Small Business Accounting Solutions. “Know what your business needs and then consider the supporting technology to answer those needs.” Businesses can become enamored of the latest tech gizmos, says Certusi, without thinking about how the technology will fit with their tech needs. “Know what you need, then look for the solution — not the other way around.” 4. Have a back-up plan “I’ll often ask new clients, ‘What was the result the last time you tested your disaster recovery plan?’ knowing that the answer will usually be ‘What plan?’” says Kuzma. “Seventy-five percent of small businesses that I see in disaster-prone Florida have no concrete disaster recovery plan, and half of those don’t even have a good working backup.” Without a disaster recovery plan and a backup solution, your business’s existence is on the line. Consider automating your back process, advises Lippie. The cost is dropping for data backup appliances, and the cloud also offers back up alternatives. 5. Invest in sales and marketing tech The ongoing challenging economic climate means weak demand, says Albro. So it makes sense to target tech investments that help you improve sales and marketing. “Understand the key moments of truth where customers make decisions about doing business with you,” says Certusi. “Analyze where your processes fail to meet customer expectations and target technology that can create tangible improvements.” Once Coleman committed the time to evaluating her usage of technology, she made what she considers another wise decision. “I leveraged my network,” she says. “I’m pretty decent technology-wise, but I don’t have time to stay on top of market trends. To supplement my own knowledge, I reach out to others to find out what works for them. I also know a few key IT experts who provide me advice.”
KaBloom is a Massachusetts-based online florist in business since 1998 that has a patented technique for shipping fresh-cut flowers in water overnight. The company found that sales increased dramatically after switching to a new online payment platform that allowed the firm to better communicate with customers and allowed customers to more easily process payments, CEO David Hartstein tells IncTechnology.com. Elizabeth Wasserman: You have a patented system for sending fresh flowers in water to customers over night. How did that impact your technology decisions? David Hartstein: We’ve been in business since 1998 and our business has gone through different cycles. Today we have over 30 stores but our business model right now is focused on mainly selling online at KaBloom.com. The majority of our stores are in Massachusetts. We also have stores in Chicago and Florida. But we deliver nationally. Fresh cut flowers that are delivered over night are usually delivered by FedEx without water. When you go through the rigorous distribution and logistics within FedEx, you can not pack flowers in water. Think about taking a bottle of water and putting stems inside. If this ends up on its side or upside down, the water will be all over the place. We have a patented technique where we are the only one in the world that can ship fresh flowers in water via FedEx. Our flowers can be in any position, upside down and sideways, and no water will spill. When we started offering this to customers, we needed a new platform, a new way to communicate with our customer and tell them about what we do, what we have, and why we are different. Wasserman: What did you decide to do? Hartstein: We decided to implement a new payment platform called whizPay mainly because it provides reliability and ease of use. It provides a very easy customer checkout process. The back office that we have with it has very rich functions. It assists us with product description, with the content, with our stores and our stores managing platforms. Each store has the ability to manage their orders. It’s a central platform that they can access from different locations. They get a notification when an order comes in for them. They have the ability to log in to the main platform, communicate with the customer, change the order, change the address. Without having to have an administrator do it for them. Wasserman: At the same time, does it protect your data? Hartstein: It’s all secure. There is information that can only be managed by the administration and not by each store. They can not delete a customer’s information. There are other benefits, too. For example, say we have a store in Virginia. That store knows their customer base and knows what the customer likes. They have the ability to display the designs that their customer likes so that when the customer orders a certain design, the system knows to go to that store to deliver that product. We have the ability to say that product X can only be delivered from Y location. Wasserman: What it easy to implement? Hartstein: It was easy — as far as anything in technology is easy. We launched Sept. 1, 2008 and we never had to during that process shut our site down and bring other alternatives online. There are always hiccups but we’ve never had issues. Wasserman: What results have you seen? Hartstein: Since February of this year, we have seen an increase of about 50 percent in orders through the new platform. That is quite astonishing in this market. There are two reasons for this. First, we have a product we sell that no one else sells and that is that we are the only one can deliver flowers in water from coast to coast over night. Second, our management function within our platform allows us to communicate with our customers in a much easier way.
Death by PowerPoint. We’ve all been there: forced to sit through one slide after another crammed with text, all those awful bullet points and no visuals for relief. B-O-R-I-N-G. If that sounds bad, imagine a PowerPoint presentation shrunken down and smashed onto the an iPhone’s 480 x 320 pixel screen. Well, get used to it because the more popular the iPhone and other smart phones get, the more people are using them for business, including presentations and Webinars. But by sticking with a few tried and true design principles, it’s easy to tailor PowerPoint decks for the small screen that look good, and even more importantly, get your point across, according to graphic design experts. Whether it’s a slideshow or Webinar, when you’re designing for the smart phone, the No. 1 rule is show, don’t tell. “If a picture’s worth a thousand words, it’s worth 10,000 on the small screen,” says says Paul Stannard, CEO at SmartDraw.com, developer of a business graphics software program that’s used for creating PowerPoint presentations. The ideal PowerPoint slide has three words and one or two images, says Rick Altman, a design guru who’s built a career teaching people how to fix what ails their PowerPoint presentations. “If you’ve got too much text on the screen, you can’t compel an audience in any emotional way at all,” says Altman, author of the just released Why Most PowerPoint Presentations Still Suck & How You Can Make Them Even Better. PowerPoint design tips Other suggestions: Bigger is better. Use a big enough type size so text you include are easy to read. A recent PriceWaterhouseCoopers study found that newspaper readers held extremely pessimistic views of reading papers on e-books or mobile phones due to the poor quality of the presentation, including tiny text. Include audio. Don’t mistake a slide deck for a presentation – the presenter’s own voice is the most important element of a presentation, so make sure whatever you’re creating includes some kind of audio track, Altman says. Otherwise you’re better off creating a Word document someone could download as a .pdf file, he says. Be creative. One option: enlarge a photo so it takes up the entire area of the slide, then run the text in black in a section of it, such as the sky. “Suddenly you have a slide that looks totally different and it creates a different experience for the audience,” Altman says. Use diagrams. Visuals don’t have to be just photographs, drawings or clip art. If you’re trying to describe how your company is organized or the process you use to ship products or solve problems for customers, use charts, timelines or other types of diagrams, SmartDraw.com’s Stannard says. For example, “You could create a map that’s integrated with Google Maps with data points showing all your retail outlets in southern Florida” he says. Use high contrast colors. Daylight or other bright light can make it hard to see what’s on the screen of an iPhone, so compensate by using a high contrast colors, Stannard says. Work back channels into your design. If you’re designing for a Webinar or other live presentation, consider that at least some people tuning in will use Twitter as a back channel to ask questions or live blog the event. If you want to encourage that kind of participation, create a Twitter hash tag for the event and include it your design, Altman says. Finally, don’t be intimidated. Altman works with small businesses on a weekly basis and at the vast majority the people creating PowerPoint presentations aren’t trained designers. “You’d be amazed at what people who think they can’t design their way out of a paper bag do when they’re liberated from thinking” they can only put text on slides, he says. “They think creatively for the first time and realize it doesn’t take that much.” SIDEBAR: PowerPoint Design Resources Here are some resources for learning how to create PowerPoint presentations for smart phones: Screen tests — If your presentation is stored somewhere on the Web, you can plug the page’s URL into a mobile phone screen emulator application to see what it would look like. This list from mobiForge links to nine mobile emulator sites for iPhones, Blackberrys, other smart phones and different mobile Web browsers. Presentation design blogs — Get PowerPoint presentation design ideas from experts on blogs such as Nancy Duarte’s Slideology.com, Presentation Zen or by looking at presentations on Slideshare, the YouTube of PowerPoint presentations. Training — Bone up on the subject by taking a class. SmartDraw.com, the business graphics software vendor, offers 14 free e-mail courses on subjects such as using PowerPoint and choosing the right visuals. Rick Altman runs an annual PowerPointLive conference, which features tutorials and presentation makeovers; the next meeting is Oct. 11-14 in Atlanta.
Death by PowerPoint. We’ve all been there: forced to sit through one slide after another crammed with text, all those awful bullet points and no visuals for relief. B-O-R-I-N-G. If that sounds bad, imagine a PowerPoint presentation shrunken down and smashed onto the an iPhone’s 480 x 320 pixel screen. Well, get used to it because the more popular the iPhone and other smart phones get, the more people are using them for business, including presentations and Webinars. But by sticking with a few tried and true design principles, it’s easy to tailor PowerPoint decks for the small screen that look good, and even more importantly, get your point across, according to graphic design experts. Whether it’s a slideshow or Webinar, when you’re designing for the smart phone, the No. 1 rule is show, don’t tell. “If a picture’s worth a thousand words, it’s worth 10,000 on the small screen,” says says Paul Stannard, CEO at SmartDraw.com, developer of a business graphics software program that’s used for creating PowerPoint presentations. The ideal PowerPoint slide has three words and one or two images, says Rick Altman, a design guru who’s built a career teaching people how to fix what ails their PowerPoint presentations. “If you’ve got too much text on the screen, you can’t compel an audience in any emotional way at all,” says Altman, author of the just released Why Most PowerPoint Presentations Still Suck & How You Can Make Them Even Better. PowerPoint design tips Other suggestions: Bigger is better. Use a big enough type size so text you include are easy to read. A recent PriceWaterhouseCoopers study found that newspaper readers held extremely pessimistic views of reading papers on e-books or mobile phones due to the poor quality of the presentation, including tiny text. Include audio. Don’t mistake a slide deck for a presentation – the presenter’s own voice is the most important element of a presentation, so make sure whatever you’re creating includes some kind of audio track, Altman says. Otherwise you’re better off creating a Word document someone could download as a .pdf file, he says. Be creative. One option: enlarge a photo so it takes up the entire area of the slide, then run the text in black in a section of it, such as the sky. “Suddenly you have a slide that looks totally different and it creates a different experience for the audience,” Altman says. Use diagrams. Visuals don’t have to be just photographs, drawings or clip art. If you’re trying to describe how your company is organized or the process you use to ship products or solve problems for customers, use charts, timelines or other types of diagrams, SmartDraw.com’s Stannard says. For example, “You could create a map that’s integrated with Google Maps with data points showing all your retail outlets in southern Florida” he says. Use high contrast colors. Daylight or other bright light can make it hard to see what’s on the screen of an iPhone, so compensate by using a high contrast colors, Stannard says. Work back channels into your design. If you’re designing for a Webinar or other live presentation, consider that at least some people tuning in will use Twitter as a back channel to ask questions or live blog the event. If you want to encourage that kind of participation, create a Twitter hash tag for the event and include it your design, Altman says. Finally, don’t be intimidated. Altman works with small businesses on a weekly basis and at the vast majority the people creating PowerPoint presentations aren’t trained designers. “You’d be amazed at what people who think they can’t design their way out of a paper bag do when they’re liberated from thinking” they can only put text on slides, he says. “They think creatively for the first time and realize it doesn’t take that much.” SIDEBAR: PowerPoint Design Resources Here are some resources for learning how to create PowerPoint presentations for smart phones: Screen tests — If your presentation is stored somewhere on the Web, you can plug the page’s URL into a mobile phone screen emulator application to see what it would look like. This list from mobiForge links to nine mobile emulator sites for iPhones, Blackberrys, other smart phones and different mobile Web browsers. Presentation design blogs — Get PowerPoint presentation design ideas from experts on blogs such as Nancy Duarte’s Slideology.com, Presentation Zen or by looking at presentations on Slideshare, the YouTube of PowerPoint presentations. Training — Bone up on the subject by taking a class. SmartDraw.com, the business graphics software vendor, offers 14 free e-mail courses on subjects such as using PowerPoint and choosing the right visuals. Rick Altman runs an annual PowerPointLive conference, which features tutorials and presentation makeovers; the next meeting is Oct. 11-14 in Atlanta.
When Peoples Trust Insurance was four months old, the Boca Raton, Fla. homeowner’s insurance company brought a previously outsourced call center in house. Before long, the company’s lone fax machine was overwhelmed, in use four times more than before as telemarketers sent and received page after page of insurance quotes and forms. It fell to Peoples Trust IT manager Brian Alldread to figure out how to upgrade. After weighing all the options, Alldread chose an Internet-based service that employees could use to send a fax to an e-mail address or vice versa. The service cost less than buying multiple fax machines or installing a fax server on the company’s intranet, and the vendor Alldread chose had the service up and running in a few hours. Since making the switch in May 2008, Peoples Trust’s call center has jumped from 10 employees to 80. Although he’s dealt with a lot of technological challenges as a result, faxing hasn’t been one of them, Alldread says. One of the toughest jobs for an Internet fax vendor is adding and deleting users as employees come and go, but the vendor Peoples Trust uses, Seattle-based Concord Technologies, processes requests in minutes. “It’s been one of the easiest parts of running IT,” Alldread says. “Especially in a growing company, it takes the burden off of you.” Like Peoples Trust, more small businesses are switching to Internet fax services that give them the convenience of sending and receiving fax transmissions without the hassle of maintaining the equipment. Since it first appeared more than a decade ago, approximately 30 percent to 40 percent of small businesses have adopted some form of Internet-based faxing, according to Peter Davidson, a long-time fax industry watcher and head of Davidson Consulting in Sturgis, Mich. Many businesses still use fax machines Despite that progress, approximately 25 million U.S. businesses — large and small — still use traditional fax machines, according to Davidson. Insurance, real estate, and manufacturing industries are big fax users as are other businesses that deal with contracts and paper forms, he says. But even companies in fax-heavy industries are starting to look for alternatives, especially those adopting sustainable business practices such as reducing the office paper they use, Davidson says. Prices for Internet fax services range from $10 to $15 per month per fax line and 6 to 12 cents per transmission for a home-based or small business to $6 to $9 a month and 4 to 8 cents per transmission for larger companies with dozens or hundreds of fax users, according to Davidson. By contrast, a company could spend $600 to $800 per port setting up a phone-based fax server, not including charges for software or phone lines, or close to $1,000 for an Internet-based fax server on a company intranet, Davidson say. To determine if Internet faxing makes sense for your business, figure out how the cost compares to what you’re using now as well as to the capital expense of buying and maintaining a fax server, he says. If you’re a medical practice or other business that faxes a lot, an Internet fax vendor’s reliability could be just as important as cost. Concord Technologies, for example, has two data centers “so if one blew up our customers’ fax numbers would keep working,” says Ralph Musgrove, the company’s executive vice president. As with other online applications, Web-based fax gives people the flexibility to use the service from anywhere, says Mike Pugh, senior vice president of marketing at a href=”http://www.j2global.com”>j2 Global Communications, which runs eFax, eFax Corporate and a handful of other Internet-based fax brands. “They can get a fax wherever they can open a notebook,” Pugh says. Many Internet fax services also have built-in administrative tools that allow a fax system manager to create policies, generate reports and manage individual users. Companies looking to make the switch will find many vendors now offer package deals of Internet fax and voice over IP services. If you’re in the market for fax, “It does make sense to ask them about voice as well right now,” says Davidson, the fax industry analyst. SIDEBAR: Internet Fax Resources and Providers Here’s a list of Internet fax resources and providers: FaxCompare.com — Comparison chart of seven vendors of Internet fax services for small businesses. BisCom — Offers range of fax services, from Internet-only to enterprise-level fax servers. Concord Technologies — Started in 1996 to run part of what used to be Delrina WinFax, the pioneering fax-modem software company. EasyLink — Offers Web-based fax, fax hosting, e-mail messaging, and other services to small business and enterprise customers. eFax Corporate — Business version of popular eFax consumer Internet fax. Protus IP Solutions — Offers fax, phone, and e-mail marketing products.
Ventura Sports Group, of Kansasville, Wis., owns three minor-league baseball teams and stadiums around the U.S. When the company built a new stadium for the Grand Prairie AirHogs in Texas last year, managing partner Roger W. Christoph tells IncTechnology.com that the decision to use IP phones allowed managers to increase functionality while allowing fans to order food and drink from stadium seats without missing a minute of the game. Elizabeth Wasserman: What type of technological innovations do sports fans expect from new stadiums these days? Roger Christoph: Customers going to minor league games now expect more. It used to be that a minor league ballpark was wooden benches, no suites, hot dogs, softdrinks and beer and popcorn. It was almost like going to the county fairgrounds. Today, they expect almost a micro major league park with suites, nice stadium seats and a variety of food and beverage concessions. When it comes to technology, they only expect a fancy score board and video board. But I think today’s society expects more technology in everything they do. Whether they’re in their car, in their office, or in a ballpark, people today are looking for and expecting more technology. With that in mind, I want to be able to provide those services. I want to be able to use tech as a business owner. Wasserman: Tell us about the tech components in the Grand Prairie stadium. Christoph: In the newest stadium that we built, we wanted to use the latest and greatest technologies to make our business more competitive and provide a better fan experience. It is unique in that there are several entertainment zones in the stadium that have nothing to do with baseball. It has a 17,000 square foot kids zone, for kids aged 2 to 14 with basketball hoops, soccer goals, climbing walls, jungle gyms, etc. It’s a place where kids want to hang out when they come to the game with mom and dad.. Out in right field, there’s a swimming pool and deck where you can watch the game. We also have IP phones from Cisco throughout, backed by software from IPcelerate – in suites and all over the stadium. We went for IP phones versus traditional phones because, why build two networks throughout the stadium for voice and data when you can build just one data network? The advantage of the IP phone system is that it’s one network, one maintenance bill. Because it’s connected to the network, we can push software to the phone. It was explained to me that some of the software I could put on the phone is similar to what is in my pocket on my cell phone or BlackBerry. I wanted to have the capability of doing something like that, taking a leap forward technologically. Wasserman: How are you using the IP phones? Christoph: What we did with the IP phones in the suites is we put four applications with icons on the display screen of the phones. One of them is a picture of a waitress. You touch that phone where the icon is and a waitress is notified and comes to your suite. The fan in the suite now doesn’t have to have someone knocking on the door all the time to see if they want to order anything. For me, I was able to reduce the number of waitresses I had serving the suite holders. The waitresses were able to be more effective and more efficient and they like that because the more suites they can work, the bigger the tip. The suite holder also wins because they get better service. The next application on the phone is a little microphone icon so when you’re inside the suite, you can choose not to listen to the game or choose to listen to the game. By pushing this button, the PA announcer comes over the phone and you can listen to the game. But some people don’t want to listen to the game. They want to have a meeting, or have it be quiet, or listen to the Yankees’ game. There’s also a food and beverage icon that lets you order right over the phone, instead of having a waitress come by. The fourth icon is really neat. It’s the team roster icon. You hit that button and up pops a photograph of one of the players and a voice recording. “My name is John Doe. I’m from Pensacola, Fla. I’m 6’2″ and weigh 210 pounds. My favorite place in the stadium is the sports bar because that is where I can get Guinness on tap.” Wasserman: What kind of results have you seen? Christoph: What we’re doing here is getting the fans acquainted with the players. It’s important in that it creates a sense that they know the team, know the players. The second thing it does is it lets the fan know what’s available in the stadium. Before I put any applications on the phone system, it just carried someone’s voice. But just by making an incremental increase in spending, I’ve reduced my labor costs, increased my revenues by selling more food and beverages, increase my fan experience and increased my fan loyalty. What we’re doing now is considering putting an ad or two on the phone displays — from Budweiser, Coca-cola, or a local Chevrolet dealer. So we’ll actually get paid to have their ads on that phone. Wasserman: Do you also use the IP phones to run your business? Christoph: We also have the same phone system, just a different display, in our offices. But we have different applications. If the general manager wants to call a meeting of sales staff, he hits one icon and notifies all the sales people. He doesn’t have to send an e-mail. If he wants to record a phone call, he can be half way through the phone call, and hit one button and the entire phone call is recorded. We can send out text messages to alert our season ticket holders and our e-mail database that tonight is “Thirsty Thursday,” our dollar beer night. The reason I went with the IP phone is that they’re smart devices. I can put software on them, and these phones — in addition to carrying voice and taking voice mail — generate more revenue, cut my expenses, make a unique fan experience and help with promotion and marketing. The incremental cost to do that is pennies. I made the decision to invest in a smarter network with smarter phones. That combination is generating revenue for me, and giving my fans a great experience.
Linda Musgrove never thought about hooking up a second screen to her office computer until the day her tech-savvy husband came home with a new monitor. She decided to have him install the new monitor alongside her old one — and voila — a convert was born. “Once I started using two, I couldn’t go back to one,” says Musgrove, proprietor of TradeShow Teacher, an Aventura, Fla., trade show marketing consultant. “Then he brought another one home and I started using three, and once I was using three he got me another one.” Today, Musgrove would be lost without her four-monitor arrangement: two standard 20” screens stacked one on top of the other and two 21” widescreens to the left and right. All are from Acer. Musgrove does a lot of graphic design work for her business and multiple monitors allow her to have a document she’s working on up on one, research materials on two others and her Facebook page on the fourth. “I can be working on one thing and while it’s saving I can jump onto something else,” she says. “I have ADD so I need to have a lot of things going on at once, and I really do work faster.” Musgrove powers her set up from a PC her husband modifiedwithanIntel Core 2 Quad 3 gigahertz processor and 6 gigabytes of RAM. Musgrove’s husband outfitted her computer with two Nvidia GeForce graphics cards, each with two digital video interface (DVI) outputs so there are connectors for each of her four monitors. Multiple monitor fans Multiple monitor, or “multi-mon” users as they call themselves, can be found in many information-heavy professions including graphic design, stock trading, software development, IT administration, and publishing. At one time, Ryan Thompson, owner of an independent IT business in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, at one time used five 19” to 21” standard CRT monitors lined up horizontally. It was a few too many monitors. “I started getting dizzy spells after a few days from turning my head too much,” he says. “I found I really only used the middle three effectively. The others basically devolved into scratch space and log output.” For Thompson, three feels about right, with a middle monitor rotated vertically for document editing. “Having a single monitor would be crippling,” he says. Like Musgrove, Tom Anderson stumbled onto using multiple monitors accidently. The last time that Anderson Analytics, his Stamford, Conn., boutique market research firm, bought computers he ended up with two extra flat panel monitors. He started using them and was immediately smitten. “It’s so natural,” Anderson says. “Whether you have e-mail up on monitor one and are surfing the Web or typing an e-mail response or other type of document in Word on monitor two, it’s so nice to have both there at a glance.” And like Musgrove, Anderson eventually upgraded to using more than two. Today he uses three identical 24” widescreen flat panel displays connected to a Dell Studio XPS 435 MT with an Intel Core i7-920 processor and uses a swivel office chair “so I can easily change my angle slightly,” he says. Anderson’s advice for anyone thinking about adding a screen? “Why wait, splurge, you won’t regret it.” SIDEBAR: Getting Started with Multiple Monitors If you’re interested in adding a second monitor to your desktop or laptop computer, here are some resources to get you started: Official Microsoft how-to guide — Step-by-step instructions for configuring and using multiple monitors with Windows XP. Linux user’s multi-monitor wiki — Instructions for setting up multiple monitors on Linux computers either in clone mode, where each monitor displays the same thing, or in “multihead mode,” where each monitor displays a separate session. Social Wallpapering — An online purveyor of background wallpaper with dozens of scenes suited to dual screens. Utility software — Multi-monitor utilities include programs such as UltraMon, which sets up a multi-monitor system, and Multi-Mon, which opens a new Windows task bar on a second monitor. Multi-Mon developer MediaChance also sells a heftier pro version that works with XP and Vista. Graphics expansion modules — External devices such as Matrox Graphics’DualHead2Go and TripleHead2Go connect two or three monitors to a PC or Mac, laptop or desktop computer through the VGA or DVI output.
Santa baby, slip an iTouch under the tree, for me Been an awful tough year, Santa baby, so hurry down the chimney tonight. This holiday season, the little somethings that small business owners are asking Santa to slip under the tree include lightweight notebook computers, next-generation smart phones, HD cameras, and more. With the economy in the doldrums, there’s not a whole lot to celebrate this year and not a whole lot of IT money left to celebrate with. But small business owners who’ve managed to squirrel away a little of their annual computing budget to spend on themselves or their employees before Dec. 31 have a sleigh full of electronic devices to choose from. According to a very informal poll of several dozen small business owners, here are some of the most popular items on their holiday wish lists: Little laptops Sallie Goetsch, a podcast producer at The Podcast Asylum in California, wants a UMPC — an ultra-mobile PC — the latest in lightweight computing. Also known as a tablet PC, netbook or subnotebook, the devices run 13” or smaller, weigh just a couple pounds, have touch screens and/or QWERTY keyboards and come with built ins like GPS and Wi-Fi and a variety of options. Goetsch wants something to take to conferences and events and prefers a UMPC over a smart phone. “I never did learn how to type with my thumbs,” she says. “I’m trying to decide which one, the new HP? The EEE?” Joe Pulizzi, owner of Z Squared Media, a Cleveland, Ohio, content marketing firm and founder of the Junta42 content marketing blog network, wants a mini laptop too. Pulizzi has a 17” Toshiba laptop in his home office, but it’s too big for the road. “Sometimes small is better,” he says. Pulizzi has his eyeona Toshiba Portege with a 12.1” display, built-in fingerprint reader, webcam, digital card reader, and 4 USB ports. Smartphones Linda Musgrove, owner of an Aventura, Fla., trade show consulting firm called Trade Show Teacher, already has a smartphone. But that hasn’t stopped her from lusting after the HTC Touch Pro, Sprint’s Windows Mobile 6.1 smartphone with a slide-out QWERTY keypad, touch screen, expandable memory, 3.2 megapixel camera, Wi-Fi, GPS, and Bluetooth support. The device will do double duty, managing Musgrove’s business and “my crazy family,” she says. Nancy White, owner of Custom Interface, a Bingen, Wash., custom electronics manufacturer, treated herself to an AT&T Tilt smartphone as an early Christmas present. It hasn’t been pure love at first sight — “It takes three screens to get to speed dial” — but she does love the fact that it comes loaded with Microsoft Outlook, “so the interface with my work desktop is fantastic,” she says. Cameras and gadgets When it comes to gadgets, former newspaper photographer Jay Bryant has a soft spot for cameras. This holiday, Bryant, now business development vice president at Live World, a San Jose, Calif., social networking company, has his eye on the Kodak Zi6 Flip Cam in HD. The palm-sized device has a 2.4” screen and weighs 3.8 ounces and has built-in USB port and editing software. “I’m going to try my hand at video blogging,” Bryant says. “And I’m going to start recording some of my presentations to review them afterward to see how I can do better,” Bryant says. Plus, at a suggested retail price of $180, “it’s cheap,” he says. After Andre Preoteasa, IT director at Castle Brands got himself an Apple iPod Touch, he was the most popular guy at the New York City fine spirits distributor. “Everyone in the office is asking to use it. Everybody wants one,” Preoteasa says. “It’s literally a computer in your pocket, and a very posh one.” Reviewers have dubbed the second-generation iPod Touch the iPhone’s baby brother, with many of the same features — music and video player, Safari Web browser, email, iTunes store, etc. — minus the ability to make cell phone calls. Prices run $270 to $400 for models with 8, 16 or 32 GB flash memory. Travis Isaacson, senior director of organizational development at Access Development, a Salt Lake City, affinity marketing business, doesn’t want anything that fancy, just an iPod Classic with 120 GB of memory instead of the old 80 GB model he has now so he can squeeze in more of the business books he downloads from Audible.com. Nov Omana, managing principal at Collective HR Solutions, a San Mateo, Calif. HR industry consultant, doesn’t like it when people sitting next to him at Starbucks or on an airplane peek at his laptop screen. So this holiday his wish list includes a pair of MyVu Shades, eyewear that looks like regular sunglasses but blocks out whatever is showing on a laptop or iPod screen for everyone except the person wearing them. The $199 device, which comes with built-in earbuds, is primarily sold as a way to watch videos in private but Omana thinks it has big potential with business travelers. “The next generation may allow us to just ‘see’ each other in a virtual world or over the net no matter where we are,” he says. John Klebes, business development program manager at Sig Sauer, the Exeter, N.H. gun maker, has his eye on the Livescribe Pulse Smartpen, a $200 digital pen with built in microphone, speaker, display screen and tiny camera. The Smartpen can record notes in written and audio form simultaneously when used with special “digital paper” embedded with microdots. “It sounds like a very useful tool and I wouldn’t turn down one for Christmas,” Klebes says.
The U.S. economy may be tanking, but Lilli Wiggins is as busy as she’s ever been. Wiggins, the vice president and customer care manager of Gainsville, Fla.-based Computer Network Experts, is taking in more business than ever. Small and mid-sized businesses are flocking to the nine-employee IT solutions company to find ways to make their existing network equipment and systems last longer. “Usually, when equipment gets to a certain age… about four years out, you’re on the edge, and thinking you’ll buy something new. Most people right now, though, are fixing rather than buying new. They’re not throwing anything out,” notes Wiggins, whose best customers are companies with fewer than 50 employees. October’s grim news of the housing market’s collapse sent stocks tumbling around the globe, creating recession woes and a credit crunch that’s making banks leery of lending to any but their best customers. Faced with the prospects of less available capital and fewer sales, businesses big and small are holding off on many major outlays, experts say. In a mid-October report, Cambridge, Mass.-based Forrester Research forecast that computer and communications vendors will “bear the brunt of IT cost-cutting” as companies tighten their belts. How to make your networks last But just how can businesses make their networks last longer? The experts offer these five suggestions: Be proactive. Smart companies are taking a look at their networks now to make any fixes so that crucial systems don’t fail, says Wiggins. Clean out the hard drive and take care of any basic maintenance. “In this economy, people can’t afford to have a crash,” says Wiggins. Keep malware and spyware up to date. Yes, it’s basic, but so important, and many companies forget to keep things updated, says Wiggins. For companies lacking the staff or know-how, hosted spyware solutions are offered by MessageLabs, Cisco’s Linksys, and others. Keep close tabs on Internet use. Hammer down those inter-office and remote-worker policies about Internet use, and make sure employees aren’t downloading freebies onto the network. “There’s a fine line between open-source and free, and people are still downloading things that carry viruses and malware. It’s a quandary for many businesses,” says Wiggins. Schedule a check-up. Consider bringing in a consultant to independently review your networks and make sure there isn’t something you’ve overlooked in terms of maintenance. Consider upgrades. Adding memory, adding CPUs, or switches may be a good option for some companies wanting to use what they’ve got for a while longer, notes Jennifer VanDerHorst-Larson, CEO of Minnetonka, Minn.-based Vibrant Technologies, a business-to-business IT reseller that offers technical support. Consider buying them from a reputable reseller: by buying used, companies can save 50-80 percent on quality parts, says Larson. CNE’s Wiggins notes that most of these suggestions “are just common sense.” But in this tough economy, common sense is something few can afford to be without.
