Small Business Tech

As more of us use online software applications such as Yahoo mail or Google mail or Google Docs the questions and concerns about safety come up. This is a common discussion among not only IT people, but also among business and even casual users. Peter Nulty of Wells Fargo recently had an discussion about the subject and his first question was about security. There are three main concerns that come to mind.

1. Accessibility - Will we always be able to access our data when we need it?
2. Security - Will our data be protected from prying eyes?
3. Exit Strategy - What if the provider goes out of business?

Accessibility is usually stated in the service level agreement. Keep in mind that often quoted 99.9% up time does not mean all the time. If you do the math that level of service could equal up to some serious downtown:

Number of Minutes For Given Period
Day Week Month Year
1.44 10.08 43.2 525.6

This level of service could result in up to 8.76 hours of downtime per year. You could lose slightly more than a workday of service. On the plus side it is statistically impossible that your downtime would happen on a business day and encompass the entire time from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM.

Security is more important than ever. Security of data and even data stored online is the responsibility of two parties. It is your providers and your responsibility. The provider should store your data in a hardened data center with around the clock monitored physical security. The stream of data should also be encrypted. Most studies of big name application and storage providers have demonstrated security measures that far outweigh the security found at even the largest enterprises.

Your responsibility falls in the areas of strong access controls, good password policy, and using secure networks. Be sure that each user as a separate login and password. This way you can more easily track data changes and more easily make personnel changes. You might also be able to set access rights based on each users identity. Also do not fall short in choosing passwords. Choose random strings of letters, numbers, and symbols that are at least eight characters long. Always consider the network that you are using to access your data. Try not to access sensitive data on public non-encrypted networks such as those found in coffee shops and etc.

In this economy it is more important than ever to have an exit strategy. It has been discussed that like many other types of businesses that not all online application providers will survive this economic downturn. You should be aware during the evaluation stage what mechanisms are in place to migrate your data to a different provider or even your own premises if necessary. Nothing would be chilling than the thought of going to the provider web site one day to find an apology about their recent closure.

Labels: Cloud Computing, Google Docs, Remember The Milk, SaaS, thin client, zoho

I have embraced cloud computing fully. I manage most of documents online using Google Docs and all of my finances are managed online using a couple of services. Google has been making the most noise in the cloud-computing space with their suite including word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation software. Other well-known players include Remember The Milk and the suite available from 37signals.

One company that has been quietly building a stunning collection of applications is Zoho. They now offer an impressive array of software including office applications, invoicing, project management, and customer relationship management, database, and more. They have formed world-wide alliance partnerships around the globe to assist small business with using their products. They seem much more serious than others about developing a cloud computing business beyond the geek crowd.

The latest addition to Zoho is the ability to sign-in using your Google or Yahoo credentials, so you will have one less user name and password to remember.

In the coming weeks, we are going to dig more deeply into each of the Zoho applications and compare functionality with other online-based products.

Labels: Cloud Computing, Google Docs, Remember The Milk, zoho

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