Wireless small business, get one for free

Have a company? Have more than one employee? Get a BlackBerry. Now.

In a (possibly) unprecedented and quite charitable move, RIM have announced that having a wireless small business is now totally free, if you use their BlackBerry handsets.

What does this mean for you? Well, it means you can link up you and your employees quickly and easily. In other words, you get a wireless small business for nothing. Nada.

What the new deal means

The announcement was made today at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. This latest addition to  small business applications fits in neatly between the personalised plans that companies take from communication companies, and the industrial strength server deal that RIM offers to the larger companies out there.

It’s called BlackBerry Enterprise Server Express, and it offers synching of email, calendar, contacts, notes and tasks. Small business users can also manage their email folders and search emails too.

There is a facility to book meetings and forward calendar attachments as well.

While this newest of small business applications will not offer the top level stuff they give to large companies, the fact that it is free, and allows for the running of a small business, makes it something you may well want to investigate.

Oh, and you can manage and edit Office documents too.

It’s out in March. Call BlackBerry now. If you run a small business and want to keep operations smooth, can you argue with free?

Until next time, work smart.

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Protect your business

Maybe you own virus protection software for your computer, maybe you don’t.

However, you are a customer. That is one thing that will never change. I recently received another of those red-bordered reminders from a very well known virus protection software company, informing me that my computer will soon be unprotected, and that unless I send them some money, it will be exposed to ’security threats’. In other words, the world is going to end soon, and it is probably going to be my fault.

The other day, however, some sunshine entered my life. I found an article that sang the praises of Microsoft’s firewall and protection suite, called Security Essentials. Microsoft are not, as you know, famous for loving the customer, but the one thing that immediately made me sit up and take notice of this product is that it is free.

The reviewer in the article enthused about the comprehensive levels of protection the software gave, and was pretty clear that it provided all the defences a home computer user would ever need. I’ll be downloading soon.

Not because it is free though. Well, not wholly because it’s free anyway. I just like the fact that, in this increasingly bleak world, a major corporate giant has remembered it’s roots.

Microsoft have gone back to business basics. They have illustrated, via Security Essentials, one of the core factors that are present in successful business offerings. While all the other ‘protection’ rackets (sorry, software firms) are offering safety at a price, Microsoft offer it free. The key emotional button of protection (of our photos, music, work etc.) is allied with the other emotional button of safeguarded income.

This works. And it is an important lesson for all business owners. If you can find a product or service that hits at least one emotional button (fear, love, anger etc.) then you have something that will grow.

Thank you Microsoft. And I’m sorry for any Bill Gates jokes I may have made in the past…

Until next time, work smart.

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I love my iPhone.

You may know this already, but I am a total iPhone nut.

This list of new apps that have come out this week http://gizmodo.com/5449457/the-weeks-best-iphone-apps/ is already making me salivate with excitement. And the news that there is a new ‘iteration’ of the phone due to come out soon? Well, even though I can’t touch it due to my contract not expiring for two years, I’m happy the iPhone has a long way to go.

As my business starts to enter a new phase, I thought it was time to get a phone that could sustain my communications (intense, frenetic at times) while I was on the move. The mobile internet does that, allowing me to check and respond to emails, tweet, and basically do anything I want to (now that Social Oomph has gone for scheduled blogging).

I think anyone who makes/provides/sells for a living should have an iPhone. It is completely intuitive, within a few hours you will be weilding it like a pro.

This evangelical post was brought to you by someone who is in no way going to profit from any mention of the iPhone. I just love it, I’m in love. It makes me blush.

Until next time, work smart.

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I’m trying to buy a new phone, and it’s Hell.

You see, I know exactly what I want, and at the moment, that gets you nowhere in the world of mobile communications.

It started off easy enough.   I began to research using the Internet, using sites like CNET, which, to be honest, couldn’t do much more to help their visitors.   They even offer video reviews of phones.

As my research continued, I managed to mentally rid myself of a huge number of phones.   First of all, I realised that I needed what is known as a ‘smart phone’.   It needed email, messaging, and Internet access.

All good so far.   I then started looking for smart phones and then realised that there was one very famous smart phone.  

After discounting the iPhone due to the fact that I wanted to listen to Windows music on the phone – and because I am starting to think Apple are becoming increasingly creepy – I continued with my search.

After a while it became apparent that there is no such thing as the perfect phone.   Now, I know that it is way too much to ask for a customised phone and that even if you had the ability to procure a totally bespoke solution you would have to pay a lot for it, but I am still here without a phone, and wondering why I can’t have one that is at least nearly perfect.

Surely someone out there has responded to some customer survey somewhere in the world with: “Well, I want a  phone that has speedy internet access, a touch screen that is responsive enough for me to type quickly and accurately on, with fast email that I can use easily, a long battery life, small overall physical size, no camera (don’t need one), a big memory, the ability to write and access documents and files, in a neat black casing, and with a 3.5 mm audio jack.”

Obviously no one has.   I need a consultant to help me on this, a personal phone shopper.

Or maybe I just need big companies to realise that the absolute Nirvana for customer experience is being asked, and then being listened to…

It’s why customers bother to go into shops and talk to sales assistants.

We just need to feel special.

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A recent study has shown that improving small business productivity could be a lot easier than we think. The study has shown that by simply turning off or altering the email and other messaging alerts that we have on our desktops, we can save minutes when completing tasks.

The study, authored by Helen Hodgetts and Dylan Jones of Cardiff University, found that on screen notifications tended to cause a break in the focus of the person who was working at the computer.

Hodgetts, talking to Live Science, said: “Email notifications and instant messages all cause a break in focus of the task in hand, even if they are attended to very briefly. We might find ourselves needing a few moments to re-gather our thoughts, and remember what it was we were about to do before we switched our attention to the interrupting on-screen notification.”

Another recent study found that it takes the average person over a minute to return to a satisfactory work rate after reading an email.

This has obvious implications for home workers. Improving your small business productivity is all about getting the little things right enough times, and being able to minimise distractions in a disciplined way, over time, may even show up in your bottom line.

The study suggests making your alerts audible rather than visual, but I’m suggesting a much more satisfying method. Whatever you are doing whether it is writing an email, an article, or preparing a presentation for a client, turn your email off and focus on that one task. That truly is the only way to get things done.

If, however, your addiction is chronic, use something like Gmail Notifier, which notifies, but does it in a very discreet way.

Otherwise, you are just literally wasting time.

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