Blogs

I often find it interesting when talking to many small business partners about their business. These people are often very credible and capable technically, but struggle when it comes to "running a business" especially on some aspects of "marketing". I have been wondering how to offer credible assistance to partners that see themselves in this space, as often described by the book E-Myth Revisited - Why most small businesses don't work and what to do about it - people go in to business for a multitude of reasons, often to make money out of their skills (technical in the case of small businesses) - not to run a business. While on my hunt for information around this area I came across another of Susanne's wonderful blog entries on marketing . She once again articulated that everything you do leaves your customer with an impression of you - so best ensure that every employee (from you down) knows what impression you want to leave. The next thing is to understand some basic tools of being...

So, having written about the Vista messages on the PTS TV Channel, I realised that there were a number of Information Worker related TV sessions, so here they are. These cover the areas in the titles, so here they are - this is about meeting the team too: PTS: Collaboration using Exchange and SharePoint Stream this video Download video (right-click/save as) Comment on this video View John Westworth's Blog PTS: Exchange Server 2007 Stream this video Download video (right-click/save as) Comment on this video PTS: Business Intelligence - Business Score Card Manager / Excel / SQL (BSCM Demo) with Chris Parkes Stream this video Download video (right-click/save as) Comment on this video View Chris Parkes' Blog PTS: Information Worker - how to get skilled up in IW and Office 2007 Stream this video Download video (right-click/save as) Comment on this video PTS: Information Worker - How important Search can be to your business Stream this video Download video (right-click/save as) Comment on this video PTS: Unified...

This is such a screaming laugh - " Silberbauer Says " have a published a picture of the Zune. Enjoy, but don't come whining to me that it is not like this when it is delivered!! ttfn David

Wow, what a questioning title. I am not a "business online" expert, but I did find this article rather interesting and worth a read. It has some nice reminders about the importance of doing the basics right, such as customer service, shipping and core "business" such as invoicing, accounts etc. just a quick one :-) ttfn David P.S. I could suggest that Office Live might be the answer, but for true transactional stuff you need a transactional hosting partner that provides a "basket" function for you - of course, there is Commerce Server 2007....

I don't know about you, but I often need to put a quick reminder in Outlook for tomorrow. Such things as "Phone Bill", "Feed the Guinea Pig" and "Get son to have bath" are the sort of essential things that make life slip along that little easier. A while ago I wrote a quick VBScript to do just that. Here it is: ' Written by Ian Watkins September 2002 ' This script creates an Outlook Appointment item to act as a reminder to the user Dim ol Dim olns dim olAppt dim olAppointmentItem olAppointmentItem = 1 ' Set the Application object. Set ol = CreateObject("Outlook.Application") ' Set the Namespace object. Set olns = ol.GetNamespace("MAPI") ' Create an appointment item and populate it set olAppt = ol.CreateItem(olAppointmentItem) olAppt.start = date + 1 & " 09:00am" olAppt.duration = 0 olAppt.ReminderMinutesBeforeStart = 0 olAppt.subject = inputbox("Please enter a subject", "Reminder Appointment") olAppt.BusyStatus...

Someone recently asked me my Myers-Briggs personality type and while I had taken this test a long time ago, I could not remember my type. I went to the Personality test based on Jung - Myers-Briggs typology and answered the 40 questions. It came back with the following information - always an interesting read. Purely for fun. Your Type is ENTP Extroverted Intuitive Thinking Perceiving Strength of the preferences % 22 12 38 22 ENTP type description by D.Keirsey ENTP type description by J. Butt and M.M. Heiss Qualitative analysis of your type formula You are: slightly expressed extrovert slightly expressed intuitive personality moderately expressed thinking personality slightly expressed perceiving personality ttfn David

Just a quick one to say that MS has discussed Vista Pricing in the US at CNet . While I have no idea how this translates to the UK, this is how it came out. More information is formally announced on the Microsoft site : Full retail versions of Vista Upgrades from XP Windows Vista Ultimate, $399 Windows Vista Ultimate, $259 Windows Vista Business, $299 Windows Vista Business, $199 Windows Vista Home Premium, $239 Windows Vista Home Premium, $159 Windows Vista Home Basic, $199 Windows Vista Home Basic, $99 A quick search of a US site showed XP Home @ $199, upgrade @ $99, Pro @ $299, upgrade @ $199 ttfn David

This one was a bit of a surprise to me, but my Dad, who is an IT Consultant phoned me up to explain that when he range business critical support for a customer down situation he was told that his registration had lapsed. He then had to go through a process to re-register before his call could be processed - and this all took valuable time. I put this down to my Dad's unique way of finding problems with systems, however the very next day I got a mail from another partner who hit exactly the same thing, so think of this as a warning, go give yourself the ability to call MS Support without them charging you when your customers are "down". To get more information and registration information (it is not a long process honest), go to Register for free- Business Critical Telephone Support for registration and http://www.microsoft.com/uk/partner/tech_support/b... for information. Once you are set up, you MUST note your Support ID - this is the magic that will make it work when you need it. ttfn David

I am someone who likes the best browser for me. While I have often tried other browsers, I have always come back to IE based ones. I say IE based ones as I was a Avant and Maxthon user for a good 2 years until IE7 came on the scene. I loved tabbed browsing and those browsers gave me that. The discussion can be found at the CRN web site and does an amazing job of describing the browser wars and talking about who won each round. What might surprise many is that MS has not won many, but does have a large base now and the verdict is open for the next round. For the record, I now use IE7, I still get tabbed browsing and quick tabs and I have not yet had a site I could not browse, so that is great. I LOVE the new security features - protected mode and anti-phishing technology. I save trees with the "about time" feature of shrink to fit for printing and when I start the browser, it opens up the 8 pages I want it to in tabs, so no longer choosing which page will be my homepage, I have 8. (as it happens, they are Valdville...

We are publishing a long list of mini-presentations, aka the virtual conference on 26th September. You will be able to hear loads about Microsoft, our plans and products from the managers and people in the know. Below are just some of the items I think might be of interest to you. For a full list, go to http://www.microsoft.com/uk/partner/partnerconfere... on or after 26th September. Some of the topics include: Karl Noakes introduces the Virtual Partner Conference. David James from Henley Management College talks about what successful businesses are doing today outside of our industry and within it. Hear a discussion between Nigel Montgomery of AMR Research and David James of Henley Management about the UK market trends, opportunity areas and how you can align your business to take full advantage. Steve Marsh talks you through the 2007 Microsoft Office System, addressing key areas including personal productivity, communication and collaboration, enterprise content management and business intelligence. Exploring...

I am not one to laugh at other's misfortunes... or at least not very often, but Chris had arranged to go to the Kent Partner Group meeting, when I asked him how it went he gave me some story about hit house falling down. Being the sport he is, this is part of his blog entry on the whole sad affair. I still say it is an extreme way to avoid meeting partners, but that is Chris for you! I am sure he will be at the group soon! Source: Chris Parkes: A PC is not just for Christmas... : A Day in The Life (of the People Ready Business) A Day in the Life of...Ken 8:00 - 9:00 AM Check email/voicemail messages 9:00 - 10:00 Review cash on hand and bank balances 10:00 - 12:00 PM Attend scheduled meetings 12:00 - 1:00 Have lunch 1:00 - 2:00 Meet with accounting staff 2:00 - 3:30 Review finances/prepare reports 3:30 - 5:00 Continue work on current projects/work on the To Do list generated from meetings 5:00 - 7:00 PM Review and respond to email messages/work on a facilities issue/go home A Day in the Life of...Chris 2:15 - 2...

If you have a customer who wants these capabilities, but does not have the resources or cash to buy it, then Office Live could be quite amazing for you. Microsoft Office Live is coming - what is it Today, more than ever before, an Internet presence is indispensable for small businesses. That’s why Microsoft is introducing Microsoft Office Live — a set of affordable business productivity services designed to help you grow your business more easily by establishing a professional presence online. Microsoft Office Live will provide your company with its own domain name, Web site, and company-branded e-mail accounts for free. Additionally, Microsoft Office Live will offer you and your employees expert business management applications, such as customer, project, and document management tools, and a security-enhanced private Web site — affordably managed and maintained by Microsoft — where you can work together and share information with your employees, customers, suppliers, and contractors. If you’re not at the stage...

Jonathan Goodyear Marks IIS7 as the "Difference" in Windows Vista There are many cool features in Windows Vista that might make one developer happy over another. For President of ASPSoft Jonathan Goodyear, though, it is clear he sees ... http://forums.iis.net/1392889/ShowThread.aspx#1392889 Shipped! RC1 Out-the-Door! Learn from the all-new Updated IIS7 Articles Windows Vista Release Candidate (RC) 1 is out the door with a fresh new build of IIS7. This is an exciting time for the IIS team as we draw near the full release i ... http://forums.iis.net/1391795/ShowThread.aspx#1391795