Creative Niche

Tagged! Picasa's It!

noreply@blogger.com (Literati) — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 19:18:00 +0000

I'm not ashamed to say I don't know everything. It's kind of exciting that I don't - it means there's always something new and exciting out there for me to discover.

I recently (today) discovered how awesome Picasa is. Yesterday, my business partner and I went to Venice, Louisiana. For those of you unfamiliar to Venice, you go to the end of the world. Then turn left.

I love field trips, so in addition to the business recon trip for a potential customer, I also stopped along the way to take pictures of the road less traveled (with my iPhone, of course). I decided to give Picasa a shot - both versions. (There's the PC version and then the web version, both of which can work independently of each other.)

It doesn't quite have the same Google-feel that Google's other products do, but it was pretty easy to download my pics from my iPhone, edit them, and upload them to the web album. I also put them on the business's Facebook page quickly.

Looking at the online album, I noticed "Photo Locations" in the bottom right. Naturally curious, I clicked on it. Wow! A Google map overlaid with thumbnails of my pics at the spots they were taken! No effort on my part! I saw a virtual recreation of our trip right down Highway 23 all the way to Venice. (Technically, you go to the end of the world and turn right.)

Bar Pilots Recon Mission & South Louisiana Field Trip

What an awesome way to share a trip with the rest of the world - a recreation of the entire route along the way. Think of marketing for a marathon, a Chamber of Commerce scavenger hunt, a delivery route for a business, or any number of business uses. Think of a tour business marketing a particular route, or a number of routes. And these are only ideas involving trips, not the whole geo-tagging spectrum. Wow.

Perhaps I should get that uneasy feeling that Big Brother is watching, but I'm too awestruck to worry about him right now.

WorkingPoint Works!

noreply@blogger.com (Literati) — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 20:02:00 +0000

Simple things amuse simple minds.

....or so the old saying goes. Regardless of whether that applies to myself or not, I am amused and amazed at the bookkeeping program my business partner and I are using to keep track of our business.

Program: WorkingPoint

Rating: great! (okay, so that's not really a rating, but it is really great...)

Still in love with the idea of cloud computing, my partner and I wanted a program that was

Accessible by both of us 24/7 (web-based)
Low-cost/cheap/free
Easy to navigate/user-friendly
Great to recommend to other small business owners, especially mobile entrepreneurs.

WorkingPoint has received big check marks for all four points from us. In about 10 minutes we were signed up (the "first user is free forever"), uploaded our logo, and had a professional invoice ready to go.

I love the fact we can create quotes and email them directly from the program, which dovetails very nicely with our cloud-computing/paperless orientation. (After all, you have to practice what you preach.)

Caveat: We don't have a large number of users, customers, items, or invoices so I can't vouch for using WorkingPoint for mid-size companies or even small companies with a large database of one kind of another. But I do know we have very please with the program so far.

Did I mention the first user is free!? I love that word.

Big Brother, Big Brother, Send Latitude on Over

noreply@blogger.com (Literati) — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 02:07:00 +0000

I watched Conspiracy Theory and loved it...but mostly because I'm a Julia Roberts fan (and I like Mel Gibson, too). I am emphatically not a conspiracy theory buff. I think it's a miracle that anything gets accomplished on a daily basis, much less an extensive master plan that has been in the works for years by a select group of...I'll just stop.

New web toy: Google Latitude

In Google's words...

See your friends' locations and status messages and share yours with them. Enjoy Google Latitude on your phone, computer, or both.

Not everyone sees your location - only those you choose to share with. I plan to share my wife's location so I don't worry about her when she's driving late at night through cell phone dead spots - as long as I see the dot moving I know she's not stuck on the side of the road.

For small business owners:

I'm not an advocate for Big Brother-like oversight of your employees. If you don't trust your team is doing their job, then you don't have the right relationship or the right team members. I would not use Google Latitude to track their locations for nefarious purposes.

I can immediately think of the benefits for the construction industry, delivery services (like florists or hot-shots), or anyone with a sales force. If you need to keep up with your team members' locations, you can use Latitude instead of having to guess where they are or distract them while they're trying to do their job. It's also one less distraction for them while they're on the road.

And, of course, it's free. I love Google.

(You think they would have offered me a job by now...maybe I need to do a Google SEO, and then anonymously send an email from an Apps account, and then...)

Can You Hear Me Now!?!

noreply@blogger.com (Literati) — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 02:06:00 +0000

Three words: Google Voice...wow!

I've had Voice for a week and a half now, and I'm not disappointed. (See my previous post - One Number for Every Number - about its drop-dead awesome features - for free! I cannot emphasize that this an awesome service I almost feel guilty for using with no charge.)

Example of awesomeness:

Midnight, hotel, iPhone dead, no charger in sight. No prob - just jump on Google Voice and texted (sp?) my wife the rest of my IHOP order.

I tried out the listen-in-real-time feature - it works! If you don't feel like talking, you can send someone to voice mail and listen as they leave the message on your cell phone. It's like having an answering machine all over again.

Left a message for myself and read the transcribed voice mail as an email - not a bad job, even while playing around with a horrible, wispy accent.

Many more features to blog about (like the option to have a call button on your webpage for your guests to call you instantly), but I wanted to get the testimonial out.

Get Google Voice - it works!

eFax - Isn't Technology Great?

noreply@blogger.com (Literati) — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 02:45:00 +0000

Would you believe yesterday I was asked to fax something!? I responded that I could, but...did they happen to have an email? She replied, "Oh, yes, but I'd have to go into his office and start up the program and do all of that to get to it - fax is just easier."

Wow. This is why IT support techs will always have jobs. I mean, we're about to be finished with the first decade of this millennium - can we just agree on email?

If I run into very many more of this situations, I'm seriously considering MyFax or eFax or something of the like.

In a nutshell: they think you have a fax machine, but all you use is email.

They (the unfortunate, email-less soul) fax to a regular number. You receive it as an email. You reply to their fax number via email, and they receive a regular fax. They never know the difference.

Is a service like this perfect for small business? (Hint: the answer is spelled y-e-s.)

Benefits:

Cheaper
No need for dedicated fax line
No stupid fax machine (as a member of Generation Y, I officially despise fax machines)
No toner, no paper jams, no fax machine repairman bills
Email-like management
Search through old faxes just like searching old emails
Store faxes virtually - no need to keep up with scattered papers
Send to multiple recipients easily
Send/receive via mobile device (wow!)
Save a lot of space on your desk
Block junk faxes! (I hated checking the fax as an intern - 3 out of 5 faxes were vacation ads)
Green - no wasted paper and other fax supplies

And all of this for $10/month (or even less, depending on which service you go with).

Disclaimer: I have not actually used one of these services. If you have had experience - positive, negative, or indifferent - please let me know.

The beauty of it all: services like these are, in my very humble opinion, what IT is all about - making life/communication/collaboration easier. Less time, less money, less wasted resources and a more efficient way of going about your business.

I think I'm going to apply as a spokesperson for one of these places...

In Sync

noreply@blogger.com (Literati) — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 03:02:00 +0000

Here's the latest I-love-Google-and-my-iPhone report.

I recently became "separated" from my employer. (Isn't that a nice ambiguous phrase?) I had amassed quite a few contacts during my time there and had become quite spoiled to having them all on my company iPhone. Imagine my dismay when I thought about trying to put them all into my new iPhone (I almost went 24 hours between handing in my company iPhone and getting my own - it was an excruciating time, believe me).

My IT friend came to the rescue and reminded me that I could export my contacts in a CSV file. I came home and imported them into my Google Apps domain in no time, then sync'd (synced? synched? synchronized?) Google Apps and my iPhone.

Awe-sum! All 422 of my contacts were in my iPhone within 3 minutes and all of my calendar events, too. Now, I can update my contacts and calendar events from a regular computer or my iPhone and it shows up on the other within minutes.

Let me be explicit about why this is very, very cool: companies pay thousands upon thousands of dollars plus hours of work to set up Microsoft servers and Microsoft-compatible devices so that you can have copy of all of your emails on your BlackBerry instantly.

Not spending thousands of dollars + not buying Microsoft Office + not waiting for an IT specialist to sync my devices = one very happy Derek

P.S. To be fair, Google doesn't have a sync option for email - my iPhone only checks it every fifteen minutes. I guess everyone around me will have to live with a fifteen minute delay on my emails. ;-)

Netbooks and Notebooks and Desktops - oh my!

noreply@blogger.com (Literati) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 20:32:00 +0000

Necessity is the mother of invention.

My computer is about to die. More factually, my hand-me-down desktop from my wife's college days is getting too slow to handle the amount of processing it takes to run much of anything these days.

Problem: home PC nearing functional obsolesence

More problems: household budget doesn't allow for a new top-of-the-line...well new anything, really

Solution: go cheap and mobile

I wanted to share the probable outcome of said situation. I plan to buy a $400-$500 netbook. They're the kid brother to a full-fledged laptop, so of course they're smaller, less powerful, less versatile, less everything - but they're a heck of a lot cheaper, too.

I'll get around the small keyboard/monitor/mouse issues by having a docking station in my home office. That way I can still enjoy a full size keyboard, ergonomic mouse, and 17-inch monitor, and the netbook would just be a processor at that point.

In this blog I've been preaching about the virtues of the cloud (read Gool-Aid). I plan to keep everything possible in Google Apps - contacts, calendar events, tasks, projects, files (as email attachments in my inbox) - or in my regular Google Account (bookmarks, Reader, Blogger). That will minimize the files and downloads on my netbook.

So this, then, is what we're talking about:

Netbook: $450

Dock: $60

Monitor: $100

Keyboard/mouse: $50

New toy: priceless

Total: about $700

I could get a $700 desktop - but then I'm chained to the desk. I could get a regular laptop - but I'd pay a lot more.

I like the idea of $700 for a pretty decent home workstation plus great mobility.

Now we'll see what my wife says...

Eternity...in an App

noreply@blogger.com (Literati) — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 18:38:00 +0000

We usually wonder, "Where did all my money go?" And, yes, there are pretty simply ways to track it: keeping all of your receipts, writing down everywhere you spend a dime and why, making sure you balance your checking account every day/week/month, etc.

Thankfully, we have software to help us do all that: QuickBooks, Mint.com, our online banking account, etc.

What about, "Where did all my time go?" And, yes, there are pretty simple ways to track it: noting every time you start/stop an activity, recording times and tasks, etc.

Thankfully, we now have software to help us do that (as an iPhone app!): Eternity. Set your categories, then just push start/stop. The software tracks it and creates an Excel-friendly version for you so you can track how you spend your time (you knew it was coming) over time. There's even a free (lite) version.

What it means for business: knowledge - and knowledge is power. Knowing how you spend your time - as an entrepreneur, as a business owner, as a person trying to balance work and life - is powerful, because you can see for yourself where your priorities are. It's just like tracking how you spend your money shows where your financial priorities are. They almost go hand-in-hand.

I have surprised myself in the past when I recorded how I spent my time. Although I try to be an objective person, I really fool myself by thinking I spend more time being productive and less time goofing off. Tracking my time doesn't allow me lie to myself.

Wouldn't it be great for an entrepreneur to know how much of their time is spent billing customers, marketing, and working on their business (instead of in it - that's a favorite quote of mine from Micheal Gerber of The E-Myth) - to know whether you spend more time doing the real work or doing the other work in order to get to the real work?

Even if you only use it for a week, I promise you'll be surprised at how you really spend your time, especially when it comes to your business.

Thanks for the tip from Josh Kaufman at The Personal MBA.

Great Social Media Article

noreply@blogger.com (Literati) — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 18:20:00 +0000

Here is a great post on creating a social media marketing plan, on American Express's OPEN Forum like my last post.

Social Media Business Plan in 5 Easy Pieces

This is a much better and more detailed explanation than my previous post Social Media and Tim Berry did a great job reinforcing the idea that it's not just a neat tech toy - it's a useful piece of your overall business strategy - whether it's primarly used for marketing or customer service or any use you may gear it towards.

The Bloggin' Basics

noreply@blogger.com (Literati) — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 18:12:00 +0000

In the vein of social media marketing (see previous posts: Plastered on Facebook and Social Media), I found a good post on the rules of thumb as a blogger on American Express's OPEN Forum.

How to Set Up Your Small Business Blog

Great basics to help you get up and started.

Daydreaming about Google Voice

noreply@blogger.com (Literati) — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 15:47:00 +0000

Again: Your Marketing Sucks

The author, Mark Stevens, has a main point in his book: every dollar you spend in marketing has to return more than $1 in sales.

So that means you have to measure - dollar by dollar - what each and every marketing effort brings in. If you advertise in the yellow for $5,000 per month, your yellow page customers have to buy at least $5,000 in services from you.

Mark suggests one way to track where each of your phone calls comes from is to get different phone numbers for each source - ex. 494-2341 for the yellow pages, 494-2382 for your webpage, 494-2193 for you radio ads, etc.

If you couple this idea with Google Voice, you get a pretty powerful way to track your marketing efforts. Google Voice can track how many calls come in from each source - even though they all ring your central office line - so it's easier to see which/when certain marketing tools are generating leads.

Of course, we still have to record when each lead turns into a sale (and for how much) to really track the effectiveness of our marketing.

However, Google Voice may be another tech tool to add to our toolboxes and make our lives easier.

One number for every number - Google Voice

noreply@blogger.com (Literati) — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 20:35:00 +0000

Google is about to do it again...again.

Wouldn't it be great to have one number people could call that would ring all the numbers you have? Personal cell phone, home phone, home office phone? And one voice mail that you could access from all of your devices? And being able to quickly read the transcript of a voice mail instead of having to listen to it? And for SMS text?

And, and, and?

Of course, it's here through Google (or nearly so): Google Voice

Currently only available for GrandCentral customers, but sign up for notification when it's available for the rest of us.

This would be an awesome tool for home-based offices or on-the-go entrepreneurs.

Keep one phone number, regardless of if you move or change cell phone numbers
Be available immediately to customers/contacts, regardless of what method they use to communicate
Set up rules - phones ring according to who's calling, block certain callers, assign different greetings to different groups (family vs. customers)
Able to manage/organize communications
Able to better manage work-life balance

Oh, almost forgot - IT'S FREE!

Wholeheartedly looking forward to this service.

Plastered on Facebook

noreply@blogger.com (Literati) — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 16:21:00 +0000

There are indeed a of lot drunk pictures on Facebook.

But I'm talking plastered in the marketing sense: Wow, their logo is plastered all over the place.

In a previous post, I suggested using Facebook as your company's webpage. Let's look closer at the advantages and disadvantages of having Facebook as your virtual home instead of your own custom site.

Pros:

Easy to find and link to existing/potential customers
Instant updates sent to linked friends
Easy to get in touch with your customers (on Facebook) and get feedback
No set up or web design - just plug in your content
Super-convenient for your customers to access posted videos, pictures, news articles etc.
Doesn't rely on customers to actively visit a web site - passive delivery
Accessible by non-Facebook web surfers
Free

Cons:

Doesn't allow you to brand/customize your site with your colors, feel, font, etc.
Restricts you to a Facebook page - no splash and dash or original design
Orients your web reach to the Facebook community, as opposed to the general online community
Lends a more informal feel to your business (which may actually be an advantage, depending on what you're doing)

Deciding factor: how much time and money do we want to spend, and how much will it contribute to our bottom lines? If the answer is, "Well, probably nothing, really," then we're better off spending the time and money on thank-you cards.

Recommended reading: Your Marketing Sucks

Social Media: Facebook, MySpace, Twitter...what's the hype? (updated)

noreply@blogger.com (Literati) — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 21:29:00 +0000

In marketing I've seen only one strategy that can't miss - and that is to market to your best customers first, your best prospects second and the rest of the world last. - John Romero

Hypothetical client: "OMG! Everyone has a website - I guess I need one!"

Hypothetical designer: "Okay - what do you want your website to do?"

Client: "I don't know - I just don't want to be behind!"

The most important consideration with some facet of web marketing is why? If the answer is:

"because it's cool" - you're better off spending that time and money elsewhere.
"everyone else is" - see above.
"my customers and/or potential market is online" - you're talking business.

Sure, being up with the latest trends in technology is cool - but does it provide a return on the resources you put into it?

If Twitter facilitates better communication with your customers, then tweet away. In many ways, Facebook is better than a webpage for small businesses - it's as if all of your "friends" have instant email subscriptions to your webpage, and so instantly see your posts, changes, etc.

...but that's only if they're already on Facebook and are inclined to let you link to their page. If your market is senior lawyers at the most prestegious firm in town, I doubt you'll encounter much success.

I am a big fan of Your Marketing Sucks: if you can't measure what your marketing does for yor business - in dollars - then STOP. If you can't put your finger on what your social media endeavors are doing for your bottom line - by bringing in sales, creating an e-commerce division, driving foot traffic to your store (with people that actually buy stuff) - then do something else.

You know your customers and, as a business owner or simply a customer, you know there is no substitute for real customer service. If you have an awesome focus on your customers but don't have a Twitter account, I'm choosing your business over your disinterested-but-tech-savvy competitor any day of the week.

Updated - article: http://smallbiztechnology.com/archive/2009/06/creating-your-own-social-netwo.html

$99 iPhone special!

noreply@blogger.com (Literati) — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 19:58:00 +0000

Apple has lowered the price of an iPhone to just $99!

If you've read my previous blog on iPhones + small business you understand why this such great news for you.

You can nearly have the abilities of a laptop + cell phone in your palm for $99 - that's a great deal for any small business, regardless of size or revenue.

(Of course, for a few hundred bucks more, you could the next latest-and-greatest generation of iPhone...)

Put Yourself on the Map!

noreply@blogger.com (Literati) — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 21:51:00 +0000

You have a sign at your business, right? People going by know what you do.

Um, what about your virtual sign? Do you have a big red pin on every digital map that says, "HEY! HERE WE ARE! COME BUY FROM US!"?

Honestly, neither do I -but we should! Google makes it super easy (like nearly everything else Google does). They've recently unveiled their Local Business Center webpage that lets you - well, I'll allow to let Google speak for themselves:

Free listing - Local customers already search Google for the products and services you offer. Create a business listing to be sure they find you
Free updates - Keep your address, phone number, hours of operation, and more up-to-date. Even create coupons and display photos and videos, all for free.
Free insights - Use the power of Google's data to learn where your customers come from and what they search for to find you

Free market research, free advertising, free communicating, and directly target the people trying to find you - awesome!

I just took four (literally, four) minutes to do it myself. Take advantage of the awesome resources at your fingertips - free!

How much easier can they make it for us?

"The books" - online

noreply@blogger.com (Literati) — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 19:27:00 +0000

Profit is like oxygen [...and water...]; they are not the point of life, but without them, there is no life. - Jim Collins, Built to Last

Some say capitalism came about, in part, when we started keeping the books. That is, when we started really tracking profit and loss somewhere before the 1400s.

Would you believe, 600 years later, there are still some businesses - actual, support-my-family type of businesses - that don't keep the books? They just do and hope there's more money at the end of the day than the start.

Quick fix: QuickBooks online. (You can test drive it for free - I love that word.)

What I love about Intuit (make of QuickBooks, TurboTax, Quicken) is that they strive to do more than just accounting software. As I see it, their goal is to be your portal to a comprehensive array of small business tools.

Example: marketing software tied to your customer list in QuickBooks - you can use all of your customers' info on file (ex. email) to start a marketing campaign.

Heads-up: I highly recommend QuickBooks for microenterprises (maybe 1-2 people using the program) - it might be the best bang for your buck (and time), especially if you take advantage of all the offers through QuickBooks' partners.

However, I have worked with companies with hundreds of customers and thousands of jobs - and they try to do it all through QuickBooks. If your business grows to this level, you really should upgrade. Intuit targets individual users and very small businesses - their programs are not the best solution for organizations larger or more complex than that. (At least, not in my experience.)

BTW, when/if you get QuickBooks, you'll probably want to pick up QuickBooks: The Missing Manual.

Now - to the books!

Not Office - but still worth it

noreply@blogger.com (Literati) — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 00:43:00 +0000

The honeymoon with Google Apps isn't over, but I have modified my stance.

I know Google's versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and InfoPath are the lite versions of their heavier-hitting cousins, but they take care of the majority of what the average user needs. However, I am somewhat spoiled by all the quirks MS provides, so I'm sometimes disappointed when I want a feature that isn't there (like delaying sending an email).

Also, there are a couple of features Google should have that it doesn't - emailing a pdf from the Docs Center, for instance. I uploaded the file to docs.creativeniche last night so I could email it this morning (I didn't want to share this particular pdf - I wanted the recipient ot have their own copy). Unfortunately, Google doesn't support pdf emailing (that was a few minutes ago - it may have changed by the time I post this), so I had to download to my local machine, then open mail.creativeniche, then browse to find the attachment.

Point: be forewarned that Google Apps isn't the absolute full replacement for the Microsoft Office suite...yet.

(But it's still worth it.)

But is it worth it?

noreply@blogger.com (Literati) — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 11:00:00 +0000

If it's on paper it'll never get erased.

People can steal it if it's on the internet.

Every time I call, they say their computer's down.

Stupid phone - never works when I need it to.

To those of us IT-friendly, this is talk straight out of the Stone Age. But I've personally heard these comments and I know I'm not the only one. Even though we're in the Information Age, many of the general populace still have a distaste for computers. (Okay, I'll admit I'm even kin to a few.)

And it's true that computers, networks, the web, etc. do fail - sometimes spectacularly. There are the horror stories of identities being stolen from federal agencies, credit card companies, and the like.

Here's the key question: is it worth it?

I think we've already answered the question.

Electricity: I mean, if the power goes out, we'll lose everything in the freezer, plants and offices without generators come to a halt, traffic accidents happen with traffic lights - on and on. But we have obviously decided that particular technology is worth it.
Air travel: when it fails, it's awful. But no one is calling for a halt to the aviation industry and the number of people in developed countries who haven't flown is shrinking. We've decided to keep going forward with kind of technology.
Cars: one of the most dangerous things people use on a daily basis. The number of people who have been seriously injured (or worse) by cars all over the world is mind-numbing. When your car breaks down, it can cost you quite a bit - including losing the sale, the costs of repair - even your business, depending on how critical (and expensive) your choice of automobile is. But, again, the world has wholeheartedly embraced this type of technology .

Can you imagine running any kind of business without access to a car? Worse - can you imagine a business without electricity?: "Hello, welcome to our shop. Better hurry - we've only about 20 minutes more sunlight!"

The point: in business, IT is now almost as critical as cars and electricity.

I'm not sure many small businesses see IT being on the same level as the other two, but we are rapidly approaching that point.

The plead: we cannot ignore the role IT is plays in our lives, and we have to fully embrace it as an integral part of our daily lives and work.

Small biz tech tools

noreply@blogger.com (Literati) — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 01:41:00 +0000

Here are two comprehensive lists of web-based business tools - 500+ all together.

While I cannot personally vouch for most of the programs, I wanted to at least share the list. When/if you use any these programs, please let me know.

Original list (some links may be out of date)

Additional list

Good luck! Go get an edge with technology!

iPhone: "The book that should have been in the box"

noreply@blogger.com (Literati) — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 00:40:00 +0000

Great books: The Missing Manual Series

I've used this series for Excel 2007, Google Apps, and Access 2007 - David Pogue is really great. Realistic examples, humor that's actually funny, and concrete walk-throughs.

If the 2009 iPhone Missing Manual is anything like the others I've used, I would highly recommend it for you (if you take my advice on getting an iPhone for your business - see my earlier blog)

Good luck!

iPhone + small business = WOW!

noreply@blogger.com (Literati) — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 01:20:00 +0000

You know how computers are getting smaller & cheaper every year? Like a basic laptop/netbook for $400?

Honestly, you get something better than that for the same price - maybe cheaper: an iPhone.

After falling in love 6 months ago, the honeymoon is far from over. Were I any kind of entrepreneur - from an IT startup to selling Avon out of my trunk - I would have an iPhone. The applications available are simply amazing. I feel safe in saying that, with a few tweaks, a number of self-employed people could run their entire business from their iPhone. It's really just a handheld laptop (pardon the oxymoron) with a cell phone function.

Let me list some of the apps I can see your Avon lady using:

Any/all of her 3 email accounts: the one through Avon, her Gmail account, & her old AOL account
QuickBooks, web-based: instant access to "the books" & each of her client's account
Google Apps: anywhere access to her personal intranet
Safari: access the entire internet - regardless of whether pages are configured for a mobile view or not (unlike when I would surf the web with my BlackBerry - if it wasn't BB configured, you could forget it)
Credit card terminal: she can take credit card payments in the parking lot
FedEx Mobile: keeps track of her inventory - coming & going
Mint.com: keeps track of all her banking accounts, investments, etc. in one central place
Facebook/MySpace/Twitter/Blogger/etc.: she can keep up with her clients & vice-versa
Google Maps: she'll never (btw, never say never) be late again - her iPhone knows where she is (exactly where) & can plot a quick course from her current location to her next client's home
iPod: her own "drive-time university" with all those great audio books like The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

And honestly, this doesn't scratch the surface. After having one for 6 months, I can't imagine not having it. It really is that awesome.

Of course, the flip side is that it still has the weaknesses of both a computer & a cell phone. Sometimes it's slow in processing a program, sometimes there's no signal, & sometimes it just freezes. The flip side of the flip side is that it has still been better than any of my old cell phones, runs circles around my old laptop, & is super-cool to boot.

Point: mobility is the way the world is moving. Jump on the bandwagon.

.com? .net? .biz?

noreply@blogger.com (Literati) — Fri, 29 May 2009 21:21:00 +0000

1-800 became the standard everyone remembered because it was the first. Once the general populace got used to 1-800-whatever, the number became even more valuable and it wasn't too long before there were so many 1-800 numbers that the telephone industry had to start using others like 1-888 and 1-877.

Perish the thought! People were too used to 1-800! They'll never get the hang of, "What was that number? Was it 800 or 888, or..."

In 2009, 888 and 877 are pretty common, and I personally don't think twice about it when I'm getting a number. If it's a company I really want to contact, I note the entire number, including whether it's 800, 888, or 877, etc.

Point: if you're delivering something really great, it's not going to matter whether it's .com, .biz, .mobi or .whatever - it's what you're offering as to whether you'll truly build a relationship base.

I mean, who wants to build a business model on, "Oops - I accidentally went to creativeniche.com instead of .info - oh well, I guess I'll just stay on this site instead..."

Who's smarter?

noreply@blogger.com (Literati) — Fri, 29 May 2009 20:57:00 +0000

New book: What Would Google Do?

One great idea so far: No one can keep secrets anymore.

With the advent of the Information Age, no one company/individual/group controls information - it's all on the web, probably forever. And with awesome search engines (cue: Google), chances are you'll find it.

Businesses can't focus on keeping their customers in the dark anymore, or relying on their ignorance. Our focus has to turn to questions like these:

1.) How can deliver more, not less, info

2.) Is there some way I can make better sense of their options?

3.) How can I turn their knowledge into a better opportunity for them and my company?

A real-world, down-to-earth example of this can be found on my friend John Spence's blog: http://johnspence.com/blog/?p=101#more-101

Future = mobility

noreply@blogger.com (Literati) — Fri, 29 May 2009 19:07:00 +0000

Get your own domain.

If MySpace, Facebook, or AOL goes down - whoops! - there goes your account with everything on it. And if that was the only way some people knew how to contact you...oh well.

But if you have your own domain you can switch wherever it's pointing. If Google goes under (perish the thought), I'll just change where my domain points. Instead of blog.creativeniche.info pointing to ghs.google.com behind the scenes, it'll just point to whatever.googlesreplacement.com.

The point is - we're keeping cell phone numbers, even if we move across the country. If we have our own domain, we can keep a unique address that stays with us, regardless of the website(s) it ultimately points to.

Get your own domain.