business

No, I have not drunk any strange Kool-Aid lately; I am both an optimistic and realistic. I am adaptable enough that when life hands me lemons-I WILL find a way to make lemonade. Recall the blog about Jemma “failure is not an option” and “gentlemen I believe this will be our finest hour”. Regarding “Commit and Providence will Move” and “I refuse to allow outside influences determine my level of success”.

The current economic crisis has given me some astounding, unbelievable gifts. Gifts like time and reflection and I don’t mean the kind of reflection Narcissus enjoyed. Let me explain.

As a business owner, when economic times are good, how much time to you spend wondering what your bank merchant card fees are? Tell the truth now, if you aren’t personally checking on the fees, do you know

“Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves as well. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now.”

This quote is most often attributed to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Goethe lived from August 1749 until March 1832. He is quite an interesting fellow who studied and influenced numerous things from philosophy, eroticism, law, poetry, drama,

From The movie Wall Street Bud Fox: “How much is enough? “ Gordon Gekko: It’s not a question of enough, pal. It’s a zero sum game, somebody wins, somebody loses. Money itself isn’t lost or made, it’s simply transferred from one perception to another.” This quote applies to this article in two ways. First it begs the question how much technology is really necessary to run a business or your life for that matter? Second is the zero sum game where someone (insert your company name here) wins and someone (insert your competitor’s name here) loses. At least everyone hopes it works out that way. I have been pretty old school in my thinking. I only learned how to IM last week. Didn’t see the purpose. Why not use technology I already know, like email or cell phone. Then I don’t have to learn anything new. Frankly I am not the smartest or coolest crayon in the box and like most humans I don’t like change

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a very popular thing right now. Small businesses are depending on search engine listings to either grow their business or to even get business at all. As a web developer, I get a lot of questions about SEO and how we (Rain Networks) can help people get listed on Google and Yahoo! Q: Can you get my website listed at the top of Google’s list of search results? A: Yes and no. We design websites with search engines in mind. We make sure that if Google visits your website, they will be able to get the information they need. We do not, however, guarantee that your website will be listed at the top of the search results. Search engine results are determined by the search engines themselves. We can only give them what they want and hope they put you at the top of the list. Q: What does Google use to determine your ranking on search results? A: They use tons of factors (some of which we have no control over). Probably the most

Last summer a terrible thing happened at Connectzone.com. A truly vicious horrible thing happened. A catastrophic, mind bending, corporate wide devastating event. An employee opened an email. Opening an email shouldn’t be dangerous…..

It made sense-it was from UPS. We have daily pickup and delivery from UPS-they email us all the time so why not open it. Guess what? It wasn’t from UPS, that email came from the devil, not “a devil” but from “THE DEVIL”. Yes, it was from Lucifer also known as Satan, Angel of the bottomless pit, Antichrist and The Prince of Darkness. Here is what the attachment in that email really was: http://www.snopes.com/computer/virus/ups.asp

Of course once you open the email you gasp and realize you just shot your computer in the head and are

In a word, extraordinarily. But if you are reading a blog like this, you probably already know that. Social networking has become a critical part of the business landscape and it is only going to get bigger. The more technology we get it, only makes sense that what we used to do at old fashion cocktail parties and discuss on the golf course, will migrate online. It used to be places like MySpace were for teens to hang out at, that idea evolved into facebook where an older group hangs out. Now with sites like Biznik and LinkedIn, social networking for business has exploded. As it has always been, it’s all about leverage. On Wall Street leverage means borrowing money to invest in something that will have a good profit to risk ratio. In social networking for business it means gathering groups of people together with similar interests but possibly vastly different skill sets to provide a better product. This is not a new idea, just a little different spin on it. From the moment