© quartermane


How often do you visit Wikipedia on a daily basis?

It's a question you might not have considered before, but is worth asking. Why? Because you may not be visiting it but a substantial number of your customers probably do.

This post isn't to discuss whether Wikipedia contains accurate information or not. Plenty of other blogs and articles do that well enough already. The point I want to make here is check your facts.

Wikipedia and those "text your question" numbers and even Yahoo answers exist because we live in an information age. We can easily look up or find facts with a simple Google search. So if you put out numbers in a presentation, or on your website, be sure someone out there will compare and fact check you. It can be quite embarrassing if your facts don't check out.

Even facts about your own company need to be double-checked. Thirty of forty years ago what the public took what a company said about itself at face value. It took hours of digging to find evidence to the contrary. Now, you can just surf the better business bureau or review sites to see if you're buying from an honest business or not.

You can't control what people say about you, but you can make sure that the facts match across the board. Think of it as an incentive to stay true to good business values.

How do you fact check numbers your company releases? Have you ever been called out?

(Secondary note: if your company or field is prominent to have a Wikipedia article, double check to make sure those facts check out too!)

© DeclanTM


Biggest personal obstacle many business owners have: clutter. We are inundated with paper, files and business cards. Our desk or our cars become filled with the little extras we don't have time to organize properly.

For some people, organization is never a problem. I personally can't stand my files out of place. I installed little systems to keep me on track. (I've talked about using Linked-In as my rolodex in the past and throwing away all the business cards I get.) Its best to find a system that works for you, too.

Completely on accident I found something that might help others with office clutter. The company is called The Neat Company. They make a number of products that you can use to scan in papers and file with software that comes as part of the scanner. The scanner works with receipts, business cards and documents. It comes for Windows and Macs. There is a system for any need. They even offer a mobile version you can take with you. The prodcut costs about $200.

I've seen companies that offer similar systems but nothing quite as complete as this one. The big pluses being the built in filing software and the ability to scan multiple kinds of documents.

While you're planning your budget for 2010, you might want to consider investing in some organizational help. Check out what other people had to say on the Amazon review page.

What do you do to keep you and your company organized?

© dean_dave


There are a number of great tech events going on in the Manchester area in February. While you're in town, keep your costs low with Manchester airport parking. As always, you should shop online for the best deals and do price by price comparisons.

Consider staying at one of the airport hotels in the area, since most of the events will be nearby. Finally, don't forget holiday insurance as we talked about before, just in case.

Here are some of the tech events were excited about:

GeekUp (Manchester) - Feb 9th:
GeekUp is a grassroots meeting promoting "geekery" in the UK. This meetup knock off meets across the United Kingdom but has strong support in the Manchester area. Certainly a great place to get connected if you're a tech pro or a newbie. GeekUp has regular events in the area.

IET Lecture on Next Generation Networks - Feb 16th:
The Institute of Engineering and Technology does a number of free events and lectures every month. This talk will cover the future of networked technology by phone and computer.

iT Show Case Live (Manchester) - Feb 23rd:
This exhibit will mostly showcase software providers for engineering, design and manufacturing companies. You can contact them to exhibit your business, or just go to learn.

Start Up 2.0 (Northern Ecosystem for Tech Start Up) "Mobile Revisted" - Feb 24th:
This day-long seminar will cover the largest mobile technologies and business. It will be one week after the massive mobile conference in Barcelona and will cover the highlights from that event. (Start Up 2.0 is from by eOffice Manchester and has multiple other events.)

Do you know of other events in Manchester?

© websuccessdiva


Is checking up on your employees a broach of privacy? How about checking in on potential hires? Microsoft recently released a study that says that 70% of HR departments reject applicants for something in their online history.

The upside of this is that a good social media "resume" can lead to positive hires as well. But how sensitive are these HR departments taking a personal account? Are silly things a person did in college still up for consideration when you hire them eight years later?

We all want to know our employees aren't doing anything stupid and social media is a great way to make sure someone looks as good in person as they do on paper. Its a given that most companies check your profile before they hire you. So what about current employees? Is it appropriate to check up on them on a regular basis?

Certainly, social media can help you make sure people do what they're supposed to do. Of course, you might not always do what you're supposed to do either. Is it acceptable to expect your employees to be perfect? But if they post their outside activities online, that makes it fair game, right? Where's the line? That's what you need to discover for yourself. Privacy is a personal issue but your company should decide as an organization how much they want to rely on the social media profiles of their employees.

Have you checked your employee's social media profiles? Have you ever not hired/fired someone because of what they posted?

© Marit & Toomas Hinnosaar


I'm going to share a brilliant idea with you. What I want you to do with this idea is to either take it and try to recreate it for your own business, or you connect with the basic idea of offering what your clients want. The idea I want to share is a mobile app for Netflix.

If you don't know Netflix, it's an American company that ships DVDs directly to your house. You can keep the DVD as long as you want with no late charges. You only pay a monthly fee for how many DVDs you want to have out at one time.

Netflix lets you put all the movies you want to watch into a queue and automatically ships the next one on your list (there's only a 2-3 day turn around). The point of the app would be to be able to access and change your queue from your mobile phone. So if someone is talking about a movie over dinner you can add it to the queue right then. Or you can check to see what is next on your list.

Here's the brilliant bit. Most apps come with a downloading fee. You pay by credit card or have it added to your monthly bill. But the Netflix app could be paid for a different way. The average app in the U. S. costs less than $10. But I would gladly add an additional charge to my monthly bill to get the app, maybe twenty-five, or fifty cents every month. I wouldn't even blink. Netflix could easily bring in far more money having people paying monthly for their app as opposed to having a download charge.

If you offer a monthly service, imagine adding an app fee on top of that? People wouldn't care; they'd think it's fair because you are offering a service they want. So take a minute to think what kind of useful mobile service you could offer your customers.

What do you think of my Netflix idea? Heard of anything similar? How would you make it work for you?