My Comments

• Online Stores - 12/21/2007
  Matt, what in your experience is the absolutelyl cheapest way to sell online. For instance, if one wanted to sell exacty one eBook, and expected slow sales for some time, what is the best route?
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• Small Business Online Banking - 07/31/2007
  In my experience, the single biggest reason that anybody resists technology is inertia. What they have works for them, and change means ... change. I don't believe that security is truly the issue. It's more a matter of incentives to deal with change, which are already common in the industry. When you see major banks working with QuickBooks, perhaps even a big bank buying Intuit and incorporating QuickBooks, then you'll see a major shift toward small business accounts online, I think. That plus incentives -- carrots or sticks, like fees for sending statements by regular mail -- will do the trick.
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• Hard Drives - 05/23/2007
  I bought a 40 GB Apricorn external hard drive just for keeping photos backed up. I like it because it's small, the cord stores inside the base and because it runs on power from the USB connection. No cords, no batteries. The actual drive inside is made by Hitachi. They cost about $100 and work just fine. All you can do wrong, really, is misplace it.
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• Wireless Internet Service Providers - 04/26/2007
  Yep, Spanish company (thus the name). Whatever you think a phone is right now, kiss it goodbye, that's for sure. While you're at it get ready to stop paying phone bills, too, for most consumer calling. My bet is the major fixed line ops will have to start giving away landlines, long-distance or both to convince you to bundle in pay TV and wireless through them. AT&T already has stopped charging their customers for land to cell/cell to land calls inside the network.
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• Hiring and Using Interns - 03/29/2007
  Increasingly, the world of one-size-fits-all job boards is giving way, logically, to industry-specific sites. We posted an internship position on JournalismJobs.com, for instance, and it has been consistently filled for several years running. Look for the appropriate job board first, then take a listing. They're usually cheap or, perhaps, even free for intern-only listings.
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• Satellite Internet Providers - 03/20/2007
  Not sure about the satellites. If I were concerned about gaming, I would be absolutely looking at coax cable and the highest possible speed package, without a doubt. Pushing polygons takes a fat pipe.
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• Long Distance Phone Service - 03/20/2007
  I left Skype out of this guide only because it's not quite ready for prime-time as a business solution. Mostly, this is because of the handset vs. headset issue, and because most office PCs are so stripped down they don't handle audio well or, often, even have speakers. Forget microphones of any quality. That said, Skype can be hit and miss. We use it to call South America regularly and for a free or nearly free (2 cents per minute) service, it's amazing! I also bought an excellent Logitech webcam (1.3 megapixel QuickCam Ultra Vision is the model) which allows my sons' grandma in Chile to see them in super high resolution live video. Very cool! There are handsets, even wireless Bluetooth handsets, for Skype, so we're getting closer, but for a small business this is better as a Web conferencing tool or for a single executive who makes lots of international calls -- hopefully riding along on someone else's bandwidth -- than for an entire workforce.
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• Executive Recruiting Services - 03/09/2007
  There's a pretty big gap between true executive search (i.e., expensive headhunters) and what most small companies actually do (advertising on the Web, relying on their own managers or just sourcing from staffing companies). I've tried to fill in a bit with a new entry on finding an industry-specific recruiter. There are likely hundreds, more than the physical space Work.com guides comfortably allow, but the sites listed go to great, searchable databases, as well as your own much-more detailed site on this very subject.
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• Satellite Internet Providers - 03/05/2007
  The consensus seems to be "worse than what?" Many cable users complain of regular, explained outages. Weather is a factor, but the sat-geeks seem to believe that it's 99% poor installation, exacerbated by weather. Another crack on satellite is that it's slow, but again, "slower than what?" Top speeds are be slower than top potential speeds on cable, but those top speeds are in the priciest bracket and faster than most people will pay for or, frankly, need. A bit like owning a Ferrari in a town with a max speed limit of 30 mph. Always, talk to current customers. If the local satellite provider is awful (and they're all local resellers), the technology won't be the problem. It will be the installation and, later, customer service.
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• Firefox Extensions for Productivity - 01/22/2007
  Oh, there's tons more, and people write new ones all the time. One of the better ones I didn't mention, since it's very Webmaster oriented, is About this Site by LifeHacker editor Gina Trapani. One right-click and you can see the relevance of any page on the Web through Google, Alexa, Yahoo! and bunch of other tracking services, including Who Is queries.
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• Building an Online Community - 01/22/2007
  Great stuff, Shara. Do you know of any hosted forum or community providers that are as easy to use as, say, Blogger or Typepad?
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• Business Etiquette in Mexico - 12/28/2006
  Point taken. I had avoided using Spanish-language sources on the assumption that most Work.com users are not conversant in Spanish. However, to Scott's list I would add Expansión, the major business magazine, and Reforma, one of the two major dailies in Mexico City.
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• Self-funded Health Plans - 12/26/2006
  I take your point. This is exactly why self-funded plans usually work best for larger workforces, like county governments. However, the purpose of stop-loss policies is to protect small businesses from one-off cases that can ruin an otherwise functional plan. Somewhere between sure losses (ie, premiums) and predictable losses (claims) is a theoretical healthcare nirvana. It's worth considering.
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• NAFTA for Small Business - 11/21/2006
  State economic delegations vary, of course, in seriousness, quality and activity. It helps to focus on border states, but even then it's a moving target. Florida's group is very concerned with agriculture, banking and tourism in Brazil and the Caribbean, while New Mexico, Arizona and California, understandably, are concerned with northern Mexico issues, and that means industry and some ag. Who is governor can affect budgets, as do national political cycles on both sides of the border but, in theory if not practice, they are a great networking opportunity and a chance to reduce costs by sharing resources.
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• Finding New Business Opportunities - 10/21/2006
  Nope, not messing at all. I got no problem whatsoever with people selling to people -- having seen it be the savior of many folks in the developing world, for instance. I take your point however about PS Parties. Any reasonable suggestions/alternatives are welcome. These were meant only as illustrations, not endorsements.
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