Small Business Tech

It is strange irony that Americans are lined up to purchase a $500 to $600 telephone, and Iranians are lining up to purchase a couple of liters of fuel.

Labels: cell phone, iPhone, phone

Google has announced that they are purchasing Zenter. What does it mean to you? You are that much closer to using an equivalent to the Microsoft Office suite as an online service. Zenter offers an online service that allows its users to create PowerPoint like presentations.

This acquisition now gives Google the following in their office-like suite:

• Email client
• Calendar
• Word Processor
• Spreadsheet
• Notebook for reference notes
• Blogger to publish on the web
• Presentation development (Coming Soon)

This comes on the heels of the purchase of another PowerPoint type of presentation software company - Tonic.

You can read the official release on the official Google blog.

Here is Garett Roger's take on it:

Google acquires Zenter for presentations by ZDNet's Garett Rogers -- Obviously, online presentation tools are important for Google — they have been on a shopping spree for these types of services lately. Today they are announcing the acquisition of Zenter and about a month ago, the company du jour was Tonic. Tonic has spent much time figuring out how to be 100% binary [...]

It is funny that I spent last evening setting up a new Dell with Windows Vista pre-installed. Ed Bott of ZDNet has been doing the same thing this week. I skipped the BIOS update. He did not as you can read in his blog. I had slightly better luck than Ed.

Day 2 with a new Dell and Vista by ZDNet's Ed Bott -- I’m documenting my experience with a new Dell C521 that arrived last week. Day 1 was uneventful, as I unpacked the pieces, backed up the original hard drive and replaced it with a new larger drive, and installed a few updates. Well, uneventful except for the BIOS update I left running overnight… On Day 2, I get to put Dell's support to the test as the system is completely unresponsive.

I have always been hesitant to update ROM in anything from computers to MP3 players. Updating ROM is usually referring to rewriting the instructions that are written onto a chip on the device. As the acronym implies, it is Read Only Memory. Writing to this memory was not intended when it was made. You never have a small problem when you are rewriting ROM. If there is a problem, then it usually really goes badly. Usually it is the death of the device.

To straighten out a couple of terms quickly here. The BIOS is the Basic In/Out System in a computer that is written in the ROM (Read Only Memory). The BIOS handles running the computer until the disk start spinning and feeding instructions to the processor.

The only time that I suggest updating the BIOS of a computer or ROM of any device is if there is a troubling problem or you really want a new feature.

A couple of examples:

1. I recently worked with a computer that had a bad time with USB devices. The printer/scanner/fax would work intermittently and the external hard drive used for backup would disconnect every couple of days. I tried software driver updates, but the problem persisted. A BIOS update was available, but I left it as my last resort. The BIOS update has appeared to correct the problem.

2. T-Mobile offered an update to version 6 of Windows Mobile for my HTC S620 PDA/Phone. Being a gadget junky and a sucker for anything free - I did take the risk of applying this update. On a serious note - I did need to test this update for a roll out at a company that uses many of these devices. It was fun trying out the new features, though.

If you do decide to perform a BIOS or ROM update do the following:

1. Be sure that you really, really need the update. I equate a ROM/BIOS update with heart surgery. It either goes or not. There is no in between.
2. Print and carefully read the manufacturers instructions all the way through and then download the update.
3. If you are using a notebook computer or PDA or MP3 player be sure that you are using AC power. If you are using a desktop computer then be sure that you are using a battery backup or uninterrupted power supply.
4. Disable any screen savers and turn off power management tools on your computer. Do not use any other software during the update process.
5. Be patient. Let the update runs its course for a long time. I would wait for at least hour if things look like they are stuck. Your last resort is to stop the update process. Your device may never work again if you interrupt the update.

For those in the Orlando, Central Florida area...

Fairwinds Credit Union is offering a free introductory course to using QuickBooks. I have heard good things from others about Fairwind's seminars.

I currently use a stripped-down version of QuickBooks. I am going to pass on this particular seminar, because I am weighing my accounting software options as my business expands. What are your thoughts on your accounting software? Give me the pluses and minuses in the comment section below.

Fairwinds.org

Occasionally, I will submit stories about web design, search engine optimization, and sponsored search because I feel that it critical in small business technology.

I received notice this morning that Yahoo is going to cut costs for clicks from lesser known web sites. In other words, less pay for web sites that are not as popular. As an advertiser, I appreciate any price cut to stretch the budget a bit further. As a publisher this move is confusing. Obviously if you are generating less traffic then you will get paid less overall anyways. Is this a push to get advertisers to feature Yahoo advertising more prominently on a web page?

This is the key paragraph in the email that they sent this morning-

With quality-based pricing, you may be charged less for certain clicks than you otherwise would pay, depending on the overall quality of the traffic source the web site your ad appears on.

What is quality? It seems to be based on conversion, the ratio of clicks to site visitors.

I do know one thing. Google started this trend of non-transparency in paid search engine sponsorship. Yahoo jumped on the band wagon earlier this year when they saw Google's success with the methodology. At one time, you simply had a matrix of your keywords along with your current highest bid and the three highest bids for each word. It was easy to check it several times a day to position yourself in relationship to competitors. Those days are gone on the large engines such as Google and Yahoo. The smaller engines still offer this flexibility, but they also do not offer much in the way of traffic. If you want big traffic then you must play in Yahoo and/or Google's sandbox. It is like that abusive childhood friend who had all the cool toys.

More information about Yahoo Quality Based Pricing. The Yahoo Quality Based Pricing FAQ.

Steve Litchfield has the top-10 run down on his video podcast. The iPhone rant begins about 5 minutes into the video.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=-xnFAngx3UQ

Labels: Apple, iPhone

Apple ran an ad during last night's episode of 60-Minutes on CBS. June 29th is the day.
ars technica

Labels: Apple, iPhone