Small Business Tech

Amazon has announced that they are lowering prices for data transfer to their servers. Amazon is the service that stores backup data in the background if you use Jungledisk.

You can see more information about the price decrease at the Amazon Web Services web site.

Labels: backup, Jungle Disk

I attempt to be a guiding light on technology that affects your small business. As you can see by two references to soap operas - I do not know where this Windows saga will lead. There are many differing opinions and news stories about the future of Windows. Even Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said this about extending the life of Windows XP, ""If customer feedback varies, we can always wake up smarter."

As it currently stands, Microsoft will stop selling retail versions of Windows XP on June 30th of this year. Microsoft has indicated that they will extend sales of XP for small, low-powered notebook computers to a later unspecified date. It is entirely possible that it will extend sales to PC builders for longer as indicted by a recent admission by Dell.

Windows 7 is the next version of the operating system. Bill Gates of Microsoft has hinted that it could be available in 2009. If they can turn around a good product that quickly it will be an absolute miracle. Some have predicted that Microsoft will leap-frog Vista much like they did Windows ME. (Count your blessings if you leap-frogged Windows ME. Holy Cow)

Your decision should be based on your current situation:
You have a mix of Windows 2000 and Windows XP workstations - I would recommend upgrading the Windows 2000 computers to Windows XP before the June 30th cut-off. Even if you are unable to upgrade all of the Windows 2000 computers at least have copies of XP in hand. One word of warning about the upgrade is memory. Be sure that each computer has at least 512 Megabytes of memory or plan to add memory before you apply Windows XP. This will protect you against upcoming software upgrades that could leave Windows 2000 out of the requirements list.

Everything is Windows XP - This is the common scenario. If you are happy then I do not see any reason to not just sit tight for the next year or two. If it appears that Windows 7 will not become available in 2009 then you can begin transitioning to Windows Vista. With a couple of possible exceptions, I see software companies including Windows XP on the requirements lists for some time.

Adding new workstations - I would still tend to lean towards Windows XP unless you are spending a lot of money on very powerful workstations. If you are making an investment of more than $1500 workstations, then their longevity could pay-off in taking the plunge to Windows Vista. They also will be powerful enough to take advantage of the Vista eye-candy.

Buying new low-cost notebook computers for salespeople - Definitely try to purchase these with Windows XP. I have recently worked on a couple of low-end ($500) notebook computers with Vista. It was a nightmare. To allow a boot-up in less than five minutes or any reasonable operating speed it required shutting off any Vista eye-candy features. When we were done it actually looked a lot like Windows 2000.

Ultimately you usually cannot go wrong in technology with a wait-and-see attitude. Holding back a bit usually gains you a better product at a lower price. This has even held true in the past year for Vista. Microsoft is nearly ready to release the Service Pack 1 upgrade, and they have recently lowered the price for off-the-shelf Vista. I like the mindset of staying one version behind the market. You will usually have a product that has been vetted and is more supported.

Labels: Bill Gates, Microsoft, Steve Ballmer, Vista, Windows, XP

In our last post we covered organizational tools available on the web. I mentioned the Jott service.

Jott is a free service that allows you to perform various tasks using your voice and your telephone. I think of Jott as a high-tech variation on calling yourself and leaving a voice mail. Jott will transcribe your voice into text and do with it as you please. Currently Jott will email messages as well as interface with Twitter, Yahoo, Jaiku, Zillow, Thirty Boxes, Blogger, Live Journal, Remember The Milk, Sandy, Xpenser, Trapster, BackPack, and many more.

I have used Jott for more than a year - before I began using Remember The Milk or Google Calendar. At that time, I just emailed messages to myself that would later be added to my task list. I use it now with Remember The Milk to note tasks when I away from a computer or paper/pencil. I admit that I have never spent much time using the email function.

The latest product from Jott is an interface for the Blackberry that allows a user to reply to email using voice. Jott will then transcribe the email and send it onto the recipient. Your boss might wonder how you find the time to "thumb" such long replies. Jott has setup a special web site that presents Terse Reply Syndrome much like other syndromes commonly advertised on television. Compare the sites. They look eerily similar.

Is Jott perfect? Absolutely not. It is darn close, though. It has gotten words that I never figured it would spell correctly. Other times it has butchered seemingly easy language. It is usually close enough to remind you what needs to be added to the task list. Email would probably function well if you stick to low-rent verbiage. The largest problem seems to be background noise. Those situations can give you some strange results.

Jott is free, so it is harmless to try it out. You will need to associate it with your telephone number. This way you will not need to sign in when you call. It simply answers the phone and says, "Who would you like to Jott?"

Labels: Google Calendar, Jott, Remember The Milk, RTM

For years I have searched for the ultimate system to become more organized. Of course it all started on paper in the early 90's using the various brands of planners.

In 1992 I moved to a Casio electronic organizer. What a nightmare. These little devices did not have any method for backing up to a computer, and they were somewhat fragile. I owned a couple of different models, and I remember the chore of typing the data on the very small keyboard.

I sort of gave up for a while and used a combination paper and desktop PC system through the mid-90's. There was a Toshiba notebook computer in the mix for a while as well.

In 1998 I discovered the ultimate - the Palm Pilot 5000. This little monochrome-screened wonder not only could store an immense amount of data, but it would backup everything to a computer. The computer software was not fantastic, but it was usable. I quickly picked up the special handwriting language that was used by the Palm. I never did have any luck trying to read email, but as a basic organizer it did very well. I owned two Palm products moving forward.

Sometime around 2000 I purchased a Dell Axim, because Windows CE looked like it might beat the Palm operating system. The Dell Axim used Outlook, which would ultimately be my personal information organizer for many years. I also went through a couple of Dell Axims. I actually still use the X30 to this day. The 624 MHz processor and SD card expansion are great for watching videos.

In 2007 I began to yearn for an online solution to organize my life. Late in the year, I moved my personal finances online with mvelopes.com. All of my banking and bill pay have been online for years. This portion of my life was ready for the Internet.

I looked at several online organizers, but settled on testing iScrybe and Google Calendar.

iScrybe:
I had followed iScrybe for many months following a video that I had seen on YouTube. It appeared to be an amazing way of organizing your life, thoughts, and projects. It relates well to how humans can look at a big picture and then focus on more granular details. The Thoughtpad is great for gathering information from the web and then storing in a controlled manner for a later project. The task list is located right along the calendar, so it is easy to schedule tasks.

I had two problems with iScrybe. One is that it is still in beta so one does not know if it will survive and how much it will cost if it does. The second problem is that iScrybe does not work well on the small screen, and they do not have any provision for mobile access. They do have a provision for off-line access, but I needed access from a PDA.

The developers of iScrybe could fix these problems by indicating how they plan to support the company long-term. I could then feel more comfortable as to how this project will shake-out in the future. The mobile access problem could be tackled by just having a simple WAP sight that lists my schedule for the next few days.

Google Calendar:
I had dabbled with Google calendar for about a year, but the show-stopper for me was the lack of a task list. I know that there are plenty of online task lists, but I wanted one that would integrate with the calendar. Rumors have been abounding that Google is going to add a task list, but Google had never confirmed the rumor.

I then discovered Remember The Milk and more importantly that it would integrate into Google Calendars without an add on. Let me explain that last bit. There are several types of applications that promise to integrate into Gmail and other online services. The problem is that you need to download a small software extension for your browser. This is all fine and good, but it is not good when you need to jump on a public computer. It is also trying when you need to redo your computer. I "redo" my computer about every other month.

Remember The Milk integrates into Google Calendars by showing up as a calendar. This is one of the joys of Google Calendar. If you would like to add the schedule of a favorite sport you just search for that calendar. In my case, I enjoy a NASCAR race on Sunday afternoons. I searched for a 2008 NASCAR Sprint Cup schedule, and all of a sudden I have the whole schedule on my calendar. The same can be done for holidays of differing religious persuasions, countries, etc. You can also share your calendars with others and vice-versa. They can just viewers or they can add items to your calendar.

The other plus for Google Calendar is integration with Gmail. An example would be that I recently signed up to attend a conference. When they sent my confirmation email, I had an option on the rights bar to add it to my calendar. Google calendar filled in all of the information from the email and even provided a link to Google Maps for driving directions. I had invited someone else to attend the conference as well, so I simply shared this event with them. They were able to indicate in their Google Calendar if they did indeed plan to attend with me.

Mobile access for Google Calendars is okay. It is not entirely straight forward, but it works. You can view a simple listing of your events by day on a mobile web device. To add new tasks you can "text" them to your calendar using SMS.

Remember The Milk:
Remember The Milk (RTM) is a very sophisticated task manager. You can do just about any operation with tasks, and they have various options for listing or tagging tasks. The search is also very intensive.

Mobile access for RTM is amazing. You can do just about any tasks on a mobile browser that can be done on the desktop computer. You can complete tasks, add new ones, or even delete them. They have great search such as "shopping" when you step into the store and for the life of you cannot remember why you are there. They offer off-line support using Google Gears. The service is generally free, but they do reserve some services for Pro accounts which cost $25 per year.

Another great way to use RTM remotely is to tie it to a Jott account. That is a tease for a service that we discuss more in a later post.

Overall, I am happy with the conjunction of Google Calendar and Remember The Milk. I am still curious to see how or when Google will integrate a task list into Google Calendars. I would have a suggestion - Google please purchase Remember The Milk.

Labels: Exchange, Google, Google Calendar, iScrybe, Jott, productivity, Remember The Milk, RTM

Many have fallen in love with Google Apps including Gmail and Google Calendar, but there are those that still have gotten used to the Outlook interface and folder work flow. Good news for Outlook lovers. A start up called Cemaphore is developing an plug in for Outlook that will interface with Google Apps in much the same way that Outlook interfaces with Microsoft Exchange server.

Robert Scoble has a demonstration video. The execution is still a bit shaky in this video, and they have user preference issues to work out. Overall, the product looks very promising.

This will place Google into a position to be a killer-application for business users. One instance where I can see this to be useful is where Outlook is the bridge between a business application and email. Much software today relies on Outlook to manage email such in sending quotations or communications directly from the software. This will free companies up to use centralized, always-available email with their business applications.

This tool will also eliminate the need for expensive and IT-task-intensive Microsoft Exchange. This will satisfy the same 24/7 email access without the need for a server in the office running day and night. The main advantage of Exchange has been the always backed up central repository of email and scheduling. Google will be able to satisfy this need even more readily with their massive data infrastructure.

Some will argue that this is already available with hosted Exchange. That is true, but the pricing cannot even compare. I have reviewed hosted Exchange plans that cost from $10 to $12 per month compared to Google's $50 per year. The other problem is that a hosted Exchange provider does not exist that can offer the data integrity and availability that is available from Google.

All right. Enough Google-loving for one day.

Labels: Cemaphore, Exchange, Gmail, Google