1. The site itself (www.solutions4tech.com) is written  with Blogger. While blogger’s primary purpose is to blog (thus the name) its pretty flexible, and with some settings changes, it becomes a decent platform for a small  (less than 10 pages) website. You can tweak colors,layouts, and backgrounds. Even with your own domain the Blogger is still free.
2. My response form. I built this with the forms option in Google Docs. Each Submission writes to a spreadsheet that is also on Google Docs. There are a number of themes, so all I had to to was add the fields, and select a theme.  To publish it, I used the share option, chose to embed it, and pasted the html into my site.
3. The terms and conditions are hosted on Google Docs, its just a shared document. The reader even has the option of exporting to various formats like a PDF or Word  if she likes.
4. The Slide show is also also built with Google Docs. After I created it, I used the handy share option to embed it on my site just like the response form.
5. Behind the scenes, my email is through Google Apps Standard Edition. (Its free too!!)

Google isn’t the only company on the block that offers a suite of offerings for free that you can use to present and run your business. Check out Zoho, and Microsoft Office Live as well. The web is ripe with opportunities for you to put your best foot forward while spending  practically nothing. (You do have to pay for domain registration no matter who you use though.)

Pluses:

1. Size–its a lot smaller and lighter than my MacBook Air.
2. Battery Life– It can go nearly 2 days with normal use in WI-FI mode.(I didn’t have  the 3g model and I didn’t use bluetooth so those battery hogs could effect battery life if used). Its a lot longer then any laptop or even my iPhone, for that matter.
3. Screen. Crisp and Bright.
4. Applications. Lots of them, specifically for the iPad. You have the force of Apple behind it and, with that, tons of iPad specific apps.
5. App Store. The App Store is easy to navigate, and does a great job of differentiating iPhone apps from iPad Apps.
6. Email. If you like the iPhone email you’ll love the iPad Email

Neutral

1. Web Browser. The iPad size browser is great. Its easy to read, and pages display properly on it (with the exception of Flash*). On the other hand  some advanced web features don’t work on the iPad,  for instance, Regular Google Docs won’t work properly on the iPad, so you have to use the less powerful the mobile version.
2. Keyboard. It’s a lot better than the small touch screen keyboards, but you still wouldn’t want to type more than a paragraph on it.
3. iPhone Apps, Yes, they load and work, but they are the same size as the iPhone. If you want to make them bigger, all you do is zoom in. (Yes, they are bigger after you zoom, but they look hokey.)

Bad

1. No Camera (Supposedly coming later in the year). I would be nice to use Skype for with video.
2. No External Memory. You get what you get when you buy it, and its not easy to move data.
3. No Removable Battery. Someday you will need a new battery, but when you do you’ll have to send the whole unit away.
4. iTunes. You still have to manage the unit with iTunes. iTunes never made sense to me before, and still doesn’t now.

I think that the iPad is great tool if you understand its limitations. It’s great for entertainment, light web browsing, and checking email. If you travel frequently, but don’t need a full laptop, the iPad is very convenient.  Make sure, however, you test any sites you need to use before get one so you are not unpleasantly surprised.

* Flash refers to Adobe Flash, a tool often used to add interactivity and video to websites.  Apple does not support, or currently plan to support Flash  on the iPod Touch, iPhone, or iPad

Anyhow, enjoy the mobile version of the site.

Other than presence on the web, what are some of the advantages of having a website?

• It makes your company appear more legitimate.
• You can use your web address on marketing materials and advertising to point people to more information about your company.
• If you start listing your business in on-line directories, you can point to your site for more information.
• Someday (soon) the yellow pages will go away.

What do you do next?

1. Register a domain name. If at all possible get a .com, but .biz addresses are good too.

2. Find a web host. Microsoft Office Live will host your site for free  (yes, free). They also have templates you can use to build the site.  Currently I use GoDaddy.com‡ for my site and blog.

3. Design your site. Most hosting companies offer either free or paid packages to help you design your site.

(By the way,  when you setup your hosting, you can usually setup an email address that uses your domain name. Do that. Nothing screams ‘fly-by-night’ more than an @hotmail, @gmail, @aol, or @yahoo address for a business)

If you don’t want to do it yourself, hire someone to do it for you (like my company‡), it won’t be that expensive, and it will be worth it in the long run.

Resources

Solutions4Tech for for Website Design (Thats me!)‡

GoDaddy.com for domain registration and hosting‡

Microsoft Office Live

My backup plan is simple and cheap. If nothing urgent is happening I can use my iPhone to keep up with email.  If I have a major project on the other hand, our local library has free Wi Fi,  so I can pack up my laptop and go there. Its not complicated, but I’ve thought it out in advance so I don’t have to panic.  (I just checked mail on my iPhone this time since nothing urgent was happening.) You need a plan too.

Options include:

• A list of internet cafe’s in your area
• A list of free Wi-Fi locations in your area
• Tethering your phone
• Dial-up
• A Wi-Fi modem from your wireless carrier
• Verizon’s MiFi cellular modem (It lets you setup a mini wireless network)
• Wi -Max (a long distance high speed wireless service available in a few large cities)

Consider these, and see what available and feasible for your  business — and make a plan. I recommend a two phase plan, since sometimes ‘Plan B’ fails, and you need to try ‘Plan C’. (For instance, if the phone and the DSL are both out,   dial-up as your ‘Plan B’ won’t work.)

Good Luck.

If you are like me, when you started your home business, you used your current personal financial software, I used Quicken, but both Quicken and Microsoft have business features. Now, you have a  couple of options, replace MS Money with an equivalent copy of another brand of financial software, or upgrade to a full-fledged accounting software package. Here are some questions you need to ask yourself to help make this decision:

1. Does your Accounting Software handle expense/revenue categories the way you want?
2. Is it difficult to enter transactions?
3. Are you able to easily get accurate reports on profit and loss, net income, and margin?
4. Do you need online integration with a web store?
5. Do you need customized invoices/easier email delivery?
6. Do you want to better segregate business and personal activities?
7. Do you need to track inventory?
8. Do you need to support double entry/accrual  accounting?

Some options to consider are (this is by no means a complete list)

Outright — Fee basic online accounting. (Well reviewed)

Quickbooks Online (Both Free and Paid Versions)- A next step from personal financial software. (I use this for my consulting business)

Quickbooks – Also free and paid versions — Also easy to transition to, lots of free templates and wizards

Peachtree – More advanced for a businesses that need full support of double entry/accrual accounting

If you have an accountant,  consult him or her, before you make a decision about acounting software (I’m not an accoutant so they will know better then I.) Also since this is in no way a complete list, so please feel free to add your own suggestions in the comment section.

(OK, this site is called Irunabiz:Technology, and these sites are about marketing, so how do I justify this post. First, They are on the Internet, that’s technology, isn’t it? Second, sometimes they talk about technology subjects like Twitter and Facebook. Third, this is my blog and I can write about anything I want to, so there!)

• Copyblogger. While ‘blogger’ is in the name, this site is about a lot more than blogging. Its about good writing, with a focus on persuasive, and engaging copy. I pick up great tips almost every time I go to it.  It’s also organized very well, so it’s easy to get lots of information on a specific subject.

• The Duct Tape Marketing Blog. This blog is written by John Jantsch (who also has  books and related media on this subject). His blog has a lot of cutting edge information on marketing in general with a focus, lately, on Internet and social media marketing. I think I have referenced material from his blog more than any other. He is well worth reading regularly.

Take some time to let me know about any site you think are worthwhile below.

Related Posts

• Figuring out Twitter when you can barely figure out email.
• Fast Read: Sales and Marketing

One of the most critical things I am going to need is some type of store to sell stuff. In comes an email from Auctiva with an offer to use the “pre-release” version of their new web store application–Auctiva Commerce . I looked at the store and and the promotional offer, which means that in my case it will be essentially cost free until April, and decided to try it out. (Markters let this be a lesson to you that sometimes timing is everything.)  Auctiva is a company that specializes in tools for ebay sellers. I’m guessing that with the change in the way the eBay does business with its eBay Stores sellers, they tried to create a product that better meets those sellers’ needs. The product has a number of nice features (like sophisticated sales tax setup, and shipping integration) and is still missing some stuff  (an About Me page or a Terms and Conditions Page) All of these issues are being worked on in some way or another, and are to be expected in a new product, none of them are show-stoppers and the product is very usable in its current state.

See my Store as its built here: solutions4tech.auctivacommerce.com

Having worked extensively with the Google Applications, my general feeling is that it is good for basic word processing and spreadsheets, but if you are interested in slightly more sophisticated formatting, you will be disappointed.   Google Does not allow you to create columns, and embedded table formatting is quite limited. 

I’ve looked at Zoho as well, and tried some basic formatting on it as well and came to the same conclusion. While the tables have more formatting options, it also doesn’t support columns. Overall, I think that Zoho has better features than google, and its worth a look.

While I don’t do the most sophisticated formatting on my documents, I do like to have a certain level of features,  and I don’t feel that either of these free suites will suite meet my needs. If you choose to use them for your primary office application make sure that they will do what you need before you throw away your PC based software. I think I’ll stick with OpenOffice for now.

If you know of any other suites, please feel free to let me know in the comments.

This is the third post in my series on Cloud Computing. Click here for the introduction and index.

Email is the obvious place to start with cloud apps because its both one of the oldest cloud based applications, and because its one of the most common. Almost every email provider has a web based email program, so its pretty easy to get your mail on the web. the problem with most of those web based applications is that they only allow you to read one email account at at time. Since I have personal email address, a business email address, a blog email address, and an email address that only my in-laws use, I don’t want to be going 4 different places each time I check my email.  PC based email programs like Outlook Express, and Mozilla Thunderbird let you pull and send from different accounts in the same program, I want to be able to do this on the web too.