Before smartphones were mainstream, Microsoft's Windows Mobile was considered the OS for business smartphones. RIM's Blackberry stole away its market by becoming a better communication hub. iPhone and Android have since buried Blackberry by extending a phone's functionality with apps.
Google revealed its Google+ Pages for business this week. While they are a must for any business playing in the online space, however, they still leave a lot to be desired when stacked up against arch-nemesis Facebook Pages. We are only seeing the first stages of Google+ and the network may develop over time into something more useful for business, but for now the service doesn't even come close to the services that Facebook offers business.
First there were sewing-machine sized portable PCs, then laptops, the Newton, the Palm Pilot, and phones with built-in PDA functions. The iPhone led the way to the ubiquitous smartphone, and the iPad ushered in an era of tablets. Now wireless hotspots, printers, storage, and a variety of other devices are making their way onto your office network, possibly without the knowledge of managers.
Google has spent more than $1.4 billion on online properties and businesses in the last nine months. The Web has been buzzing about its purchase of the Zagat restaurant review brand, but the true goldmine for small businesses is with the new Google Offers.
If you're in the business of making presentations, you know what a time-suck it can be to work with PowerPoint on a laptop. You have to connect a projector, wait an eternity for the PC to boot, run PowerPoint, load your slide deck, switch the laptop's video output to projector mode, and on and on. It's easy to blow 10-20 minutes just getting set up for your presentation--not a productive use of your time.
Tablets rocking Android increased shipment volume by 27 percent in the third quarter over the same period last year, according to a report last week by Strategy Analytics. However, while <a href="http://www.pcworld.com/article/242360/report_apples_ipad_dominance_fades.html">Android's market share jumped</a> considerably, Apple smoked Android on sheer numbers of tablets sold.
AMD's latest-and-greatest chip may lag slightly behind Intel's competing Core i5, as initial PCWorld performance-testing indicates. But these disappointing results hide benefits that AMD's "Bulldozer" FX CPU will likely offer, especially for cost-conscious small businesses.
Android and iPhone devices were already destroying RIM’s BlackBerry market share. But the outage that has spread from Europe and Africa to North America and South America may be the final straw for millions of formerly loyal users, who previously relied on their Blackberries as a robust and ultra-reliable way for always-on push email and Web access.
If you use your Android smartphone for both business and pleasure, a product introduced today at a trade show in Germany appears to be worth following. A version of Android called BizzTrust creates two partitions in Android--one for personal use and another super-secure one for business.
All the major Web-based email services have junk mail folders and spam filters that strain out obvious offenders. Categorizing messages and filtering out those you don’t want may help, but limits control. It would be nice just to tell your email program which messages you want to receive and when--and dump the rest. Windows Live Hotmail may be coming a step closer to that, with changes announced this week.
There are so many different ways to communicate with partners, customers and co-workers--by phone, email, instant messaging, fax, video conferencing, and social media. Managing each system separately is not only inefficient, but can cause conflicts since they all use the same underlying technology--the Internet.
Whether you're running a business out of your den or from a penthouse in the sky, you don't have time or money to waste on second-rate tools. These well-designed services and resources are among the best the Web offers for small and midsize businesses. Some include apps for smartphones and downloads for your desktop, but all of them provide the bulk of their features within a Web browser.
Telecommuting, which allows people to work together from different locations, offers a wealth of opportunities for small businesses, including cost savings and the ability to quickly add specialized temporary workers. Telepresence tools, such as video conferencing, make telecommuting possible.
The America Invents Act has been widely described as the biggest reform of American patent law in some 50 years, and that's certainly true. An overhaul of our patent system was long overdue, and there have been high hopes as to what it could accomplish.
With 120 million users, LinkedIn has become for business professionals what Facebook has long been for everyday consumers. It's increasingly rare, in fact, to meet a professional contact who isn't on the site.
