Do.com Adds New Tools to Help Your Business Stay Productive

Enterprise cloud computing company Salesforce has recently updated its social productivity app Do.com with a new social contacts feature and tracker for ongoing deals, among other changes. The company hopes the new changes will help companies and individuals complete necessary tasks more seamlessly than ever before.

Do's new deal management capability gives users the opportunity to set up a sales process and track the progress of their company's current deals. They can assign tasks and reminders to the deals to better manage what tasks need to be accomplished to make each deal successful.

Do is also adding social integrations with Facebook, Google, Twitter, and Salesforce. Its new contacts feature lets users import their contacts from sites like Google or Facebook, and then send messages to them and collaborate with them within the app. And when contacts from these sites update their information, it is automatically updated within the Do app as well.

Launched last year, Do is an HTML5-based app that offers various productivity tools for small and medium sized businesses. Users can create tasks and prioritize them, make assignments for other team members, take notes, and track progress. All of the tasks a company adds to Do are updated in real time, so business owners can stay on top of their company's to-do list and know what projects are showing progress.

Currently, the app is free for all users, but once the new features move out of the beta stage, users will be able to use parts of the app for free, but pay for premium features like deal management. Do, especially with the addition of these new features, aims to improve productivity and organization all while helping to create a sense of community within a team or company.

Do is currently available as a web or iPhone app, and has a beta version of an Android app in the works.

You Shouldn\'t Be Your Own Registered Agent

Deciding to take your small business to the next level by incorporating or forming an LLC is an important step in the lifecycle of any company. If you've recently incorporated or formed an LLC, you'll realize that one of the prerequisites to becoming a corporation or LLC is designating a registered agent in the state of incorporation.

If you're not familiar with the term, a registered agent receives important legal and tax documents on behalf of a business in a given state. This includes important mail sent by the state (annual reports or statements), state tax documents, as well as any Notices of Litigation.

Individuals can act as a registered agent for a business. If you have a physical address in the state where you incorporate or foreign qualify, you could name yourself as the agent. While it may be tempting to take on this role for yourself, here are five reasons why you should think twice:

1. The registered agent must have a physical address in the state of incorporation or qualification: A registered agent is required to have a physical address in the state; post office boxes and private rented mailboxes won't suffice. If you incorporated or formed an LLC in Delaware, but you live in California and your company is physically located in California, this means you cannot serve as a registered agent in Delaware. In this case, you'll need to use a professional third party as your registered agent in Delaware.

2. Your company does business in multiple states: When you register your company to conduct business in other states besides where you incorporated, you'll need a registered agent in each of those states (unless you have physical offices in each state).

3. You don't maintain normal business hours: The registered agent needs to be available during normal business hours to accept important documents from the state. If you set your own hours or aren't tied to an office (i.e. you're a real estate agent or landscaper), you should consider a third party service so you never miss an important communication from the state.

4. Your address is likely to change: A registered agent's address must always stay current in the state records. Any changes to the address require a formal state filing, which is often accompanied by a fee. By using a professional third party service as your registered agent, you never have to worry about updating the state records â€" no matter how many times you move over the years.

5. The registered agent's address is of public record: Since the registered agent's address is publicly available, anyone has access to it… including marketers, mailing lists, and spammers. Registered agents often receive unsolicited junk mail for their business. If you wish to keep your company or personal address information confidential, opt for a third party registered agent. You'll get an extra layer of privacy and won't have to deal with as much unsolicited mail.

While a registered agent may seem like a trivial formality, it actually plays an important role in receiving communications and keeping your corporation or LLC in good standing. The last thing you want is to miss an important filing date or fail to respond to a litigation notice because you didn't receive the notice on time.

Reading Mail Photo via Shutterstock

Low-Tech Shredding: Simple Security For a Small Investment

I've harped on how high-tech security for your small business is a big deal. But not all thieves are tech-oriented hackers getting into your computers, stealing your secrets.

There's not much high-tech about jumping into a dumpster and sifting through the garbage to find nuggets of information. The fact that garbage is disgusting and normal people wouldn't immerse themselves in it is exactly the reason why someone out there would do it just to find one sheet of paper with an account number or Social Security Number on it. It happens often. In 2010, it was reported that more than a quarter of a million Americans had their ID stolen. Shredding documents is a simple solution to save you from this possibility.

A basic six-sheet shredder costs only about $25-30 from most office supply outlets, so the price is right for your security. The down sides â€" no staples or paper clips; they might jam if you do stuff six pages into it at once (clearing a jam on an el-cheapo shredder is NOT fun); and having a couple hundred pages to shred means working for a while to get the job done. Shredding will help secure your information, but with a lower-end model, it'll impact your time and productivity significantly.

If any of that is an issue, consider investing in a more practical and functional shredding machine. What do you need to consider? Two things:

• Cost. What's your budget like? A simple question with no simple answer. The costs of identity theft for your customers and your business, though, could be in the stratosphere compared to what one of these things cost. A higher-end model can go from $250 anywhere up to a couple of thousand dollars.
• Capacity. This is related to cost â€" the more paper it takes, the more it'll cost. Again, it's a question of productivity and what your time is worth; no matter how much fun it is to shred, it will get boring fast. Do you just want to plop it in there and forget about it? Some can take up to 500 pages, including staples and paperclips, too. For most, you'll have to manually pull the staples out and remove paperclips, though.

Here's a pretty cool little shredder by Swingline, the same company that makes the awesome red staplers (made famous by ‘Milton' from the movie Office Space). I say ‘pretty cool' because they make a couple of models that you just put your stack into and it does all the work â€" paper clips and staples and all. They also have a PIN combination that lets you secure the lid until the job is done.  Better yet, it will shred CDs and credit cards, which are both a major pain to destroy. The 250X model will do 250 pages at a time, while the 500X will do…wait for it…500 pages.

There's other models, of course, and other companies, and a wide range of features and costs. But even an inexpensive model is worth its weight in information-protection gold.

Reuters Web Site Was Hacked. One Tiny Mistake You Can Avoid.

Our lives are filled with software â€" online software and software we install on our computers and servers.

We try our best to learn how to use the software. We try out best to be careful not to click on links in emails that we are not familiar with. We try, we try.

Well Reuter's tried too, yet just last Friday their web site, based on WordPress, was hacked.

The Wall Street Journal reports that this was because they did not update Wrdpress to the latest software.

There are three things to keep in mind:

• Good software vendors always update their software to add new features, to fix bugs and/or to plug security holes.
• Companies who want to be secure will regularly update their software and monitor when new software comes out
• Keep in mind, some upgrades cause conflicts with other software or apps. You might upgrade to the latest version of WordPress only to find that it causes one of your plug-ins to crash.

Work with a professional to a) always update your software b) ensuring that update won't cause problems for other parts of your technology.

 

7 Ways To Educate Your Way Into Making The Sale

Why does selling continue to get such a bad rap?

Success Magazine

Not only do I totally agree, but can't stress enough that the “key driver of sales is educating your way into making the sale.”

The pressure, hype, arm-twisting and flat out manipulation approach is out. Today's selling environment and sales experience is about education, illumination, stimulation and inspiration. People want the story, the results, the value and the benefits â€" not the empty hype.  Education is selling, and selling is educating, so the more you teach people about the value, benefits and results the more sales you will inspire and close.

Here are 7 ways to educate prospects into making the sale:

Inform People About Your What

What do you do, or what can and does your product do that can help someone? Share as much information as you can consistently about this.

Generate Interest

When you know the  psycho-graphics of your customer you can craft the language and messaging targeted directly to them making the case for why what you have is a great fit or opportunity for them. 

You Are The Value Add

Create more than just the “selling” of  the product or service. Add in YOU, your experience, expertise and your connections as value add.

Share Your Point of View

Talk about your unique point of view about what you do, why you love your business and how it has impacted others.

Inspire Action

Ultimately, you want to inspire people to take more action, be it request more information, ask more questions,  generate interest with others or the ultimate goal-making the sale.

Leverage Results and Testimonials

Always educate prospects using results and testimonials. Satisfied customers that become your  advocates and cheerleaders are gold!

Develop Referrals

Spend more time asking for and developing referrals from your community. Ask for referrals but be generous in referring and connecting others.

John C Maxwell, a leadership expert and author of 20 million books, who has trained governments, the NFL and United Nations reminds us:

“The more you rely on technology in your personal interactions, the less personal and less effective they become.”

Get personal with people off line. The heaviest thing for most salespeople is the phone. Build in phone time as well as face to face meetings to advance relationships. Educate people more personally.

Without sales there is no business. Sales is an opportunity, not a punishment or obligation.  It's time to stop giving selling a bad rap, shift your attitude and educate your way into making the sale.

Educate Sales Photo via Shutterstock

All-in-One Workstations: Can Your Business Ditch the Tower and Save Space?

It seems hard to believe that less than a decade has passed since a computer monitor took up a large part of a person's desk, with the tower stored below the desk, where it took up even more space. I.T. staff were forced to withstand (literally) back-breaking labor to move these items and users were forced to work around them.

In many offices, those large CRT monitors have been replaced by flat-panel monitors and large towers have been replaced by small form factor designs. As PCs have shrunk with each passing year, many have wondered how much smaller things can get. With the release of all-in-one PCs, the answer is clear. All-in-one PCs incorporate the hard drive and associated components into the monitor itself, meaning each user only needs a monitor, keyboard, and mouse. And while you may assume this advanced technology comes at an advanced price, that's not true at all. In fact, all-in-one PCs are priced as low as $700.

If you're still weighing out the benefits of an all-in-one workstation, there are plenty. While at first reviewers panned these as noisy and prone to overheating. This was due to the complex issue of where to place fans. The only choice, of course, was in the monitor, close to the user's face. Technology has taken care of that problem, with reviewers now impressed with these systems' ability to cool quietly.

“All-in-one PCs are expected to grow in popularity, accounting for 27 percent of worldwide desktop PC sales by 2016,” Danielle Levitas, group vice president for IDC states. “In a recent commercial PC buyer study in the United States, IDC found that the purchase intent for all-in-ones was up across the range of small to large businesses. This trend puts vendors with a broad offering of all-in-one products and options â€" like HP â€" in a very good position to meet that growing commercial demand.”

Several manufacturers now offer all-in-one workstation options. Below are some comparisons of the latest and greatest to help you make a more informed decision.

• HP's line of all-in-one PCs start at $689 and include 8 GB of memory (upgradable to 16 GB in the higher-end models) and a hard drive of 250 GB to 1 TB. The upcoming HP Envy 23 will come with Beats Audio, 1080p resolution, 23-inch displays, multi-core processors, and up to 2 TB of hard drive storage.
• Dell Inspiron One All-in-One PCs come in two versions: one $499 and the other $749. The lower-end version has a 20″ display, with the higher-end offering a 23″. The low end may be all your business needs, with up to 6GB memory and a 1000GB SATA hard drive.
• Apple iMac All-in-One. For those who prefer the Mac, OS, this all-in-one boasts some pretty impressive specs. While pricier (prices start at $1199), the iMac All-in-One offers three times faster graphics, 500 GB-1 TB hard drive, and Thunderbolt, which bills itself as the “fastest most versatile I/O on a desktop.”

There's no denying all-in-one desktops will be the future of desktop computing. By getting in on the front end, you'll be able to start saving space without spending more than you would spend on a traditional desktop.

Mimecast adds functionality for end-users and administrators to email security suite

Mimecast has added new functionality to its email security software to allow further control for end-users and IT teams.

According to the company, the additions will give employees more control over their email, with them no longer having to leave Microsoft Outlook to report spam or manage their blocked sender lists, while user-defined message encryption allows users to choose from available secure delivery options manually.

These include Mimecast's Closed Circuit Messaging (CCM), in which an email can only be viewed by the recipient through a secure online portal and cannot be forwarded. Also added is a user-activated ‘strip and link' functionality where users can replace attachments with links to downloadable files, securely hosted by Mimecast.

For the IT department, additions include granular permission controls for system administrators to activate functions for individual employees or subsets of users as required and control over all default settings, allowing administrators to continue to set and manage security policies.

A new deployment tool will allow a client-side installation to be effected through existing software management systems, streamlining the rollout process for both the IT department and end-users, according to Mimecast.

Grant Hodgkinson, product director of unified email management at Mimecast, said: “It is no secret that the trend towards the consumerisation of enterprise IT has seen end-users becomingly increasingly vocal about the need for greater control and flexibility when it comes to core business technologies.

“From talking to our customers, it was clear that they wanted to find a way to empower users, without compromising on the overall security of the business. By building granular controls and permissions into Mimecast Email Security and adding functionality, we want to help IT departments find a balance between productivity, flexibility and control.

“This technology is designed to allow IT teams to retain visibility and control where it is needed, while giving individual users greater power over their own email in a way that makes both sides more productive.”

Easily available tools, botnets contribute to DDoS rise

Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against websites or web services continue to grow in volume and complexity, and are also increasingly being used as a distraction from other criminal activities, security firm Arbor Networks warned this week.

An analysis of DDoS attacks around the world show that they are getting bigger, more frequent and more complex thanks to the general availability of botnets and toolkits, according to the company.

There are even DDoS services that, for a set fee, offer to attack telecommunications providers, Curt Wilson, an engineer with the Arbor security engineering and response team, said in a blog post. The team observed advertisements on underground forums offering phone attack services starting at $20 (£12.80) per day.

The ambushes are not just being readied to cut off website accessibility, he said. They also are serving as a diversion for more malicious activity, such as network intrusions.

Attackers no longer require large botnets at their disposal to launch DDoS attacks. Along with the services offering attacks-for-hire, cloud-based service provider Incapsula has reported in the past how ready-made botnets are available for rent.

Prolexic, a mitigation services provider, has issued several advisories warning about toolkits that can launch large and complex DDoS attacks, such as Dirt Jumper, that are readily available on the underground.

There are many types of DDoS attacks. The most well known form is network flooding: attacks that consume all bandwidth and prevent legitimate requests from reaching websites and systems. These infrastructure incursions, also known as Layer 3 and Layer 4 attacks, are still pretty common, accounting for 81 per cent of total attacks in the second quarter of 2012, according to Prolexic. Application layer attacks, or Layer 7, made up the remaining 19 per cent.

However, miscreants are increasingly targeting applications instead of just clogging up the internet pipe, Neil Roiter, research director of Corero Network Security, told SCMagazine.com on Friday. Network flood attacks are declining, as adversaries shift toward application-layer attacks that are harder to detect because they are crafted to look like normal requests. Also, they wind up being computationally expensive for the server, preventing it from processing other legitimate requests.

DDoS attacks have grown 82 per cent since June 2011, according to the latest 'Worldwide Infrastructure Report' from Arbor Networks, which covers the first half of 2012. The average size of attacks have gone up 27 per cent, and attacks are now consistently more than one gigabits per second in size, according to Arbor Networks.

Where Small Business Owners Get The Money They Need

Many entrepreneurs, policy makers, and academics wonder where small business owners get the money to expand their businesses. Thanks to the efforts of researchers at the Census Bureau, we know the answer.

Source: Created from data from the Survey of Business Owners, U.S. Census

Above, I have created a chart that shows the fraction of small businesses with employees in need of expansion financing that obtain different types of capital, using data from the 2007 Survey of Business Owners (SBO), an effort to collect data on:

“. . .more than 2.3 million nonfarm businesses filing 2007 tax forms as individual proprietorships, partnerships, or any type of corporation, and with receipts of $1,000 or more.”

The SBO reveals seven important facts about small business financing:

1. The majority (51.2 percent) of small employers needing money to expand use either their own or family members' savings or assets.

2. Business profits or assets are a key source of money to expand; 29.1 percent of small employers use this source of expansion financing.

3. Banks are an important source of expansion capital for small businesses; just shy of one-third of small business owners report using a bank loan to finance expansion.

4. Credit cards, both personal and business, are a common source of money for small business expansion, with one quarter of small employers needing expansion funds obtaining at least some of it from this source.

5. More than one-in-ten (11.4 percent) of small business owners report using equity in their homes to finance small business expansion.

6. Government-guaranteed loans and loans from the government, such as SBA loans, aren't a source of expansion capital for many businesses; the SBO data show that less than 3 percent of small businesses needing expansion capital get money from this source.

7. Almost no small employers use venture capital to expand; the SBO data reveal that only about 0.5 percent use this source of financing.

Throw Away Those Post-It\'s! Jotting Down Things Has Never Been Easier!

You're now living in a world where you can put down the notebook and actually jot down your notes in Microsoft Word. But did you ever think that you could actually clip things from the web and plop them into an interface that replicates the content exactly like you found it?

Perhaps you'd like a version of OneNote that doesn't have the exorbitant price attached to it, but still has the same functions. There are many different ways of replicating notes and content freely, depending on what you'd like to do with it. Each of the services we're about to discuss brings its own contribution onto the table. Because of this, you might find it difficult to know where to begin!

Here is a list of services and applications that can let you clip your own notes and share them:

If you haven't heard of Pitnerest yet, by the way, you should start thinking about it especially if you think you can use rich media to benefit your business. Interest from people at Pinterest can help spark up your sales if you post good high-definition images of a very eye-catching product you sell. That's just food for thought, but take some time to see if it can work for you.

Google Announces Service Shutdowns

Google announced it will soon be discontinuing some services in order to focus on others that are much more popular with users. If some of these lesser-used services happen to be among your favorites, we're sorry to be the bearers of bad news, but you may be interested to learn about Google's many remaining services and how you can leverage them for your business endeavors.

Google Changes Coming

Less is more. At least it is sometimes, that's why Google characterized its cutting of services like Google Apps for Teams, Google Listens, Google Video for Business, and some of its 150+ regularly maintained blogs as a positive thing, making way for a new and better Google. Hope you agree! Google Official Blog

Cleaning house. The service shutdowns Google recently announced are only the latest of a house cleaning that began after Google co-founder Larry Page took over as company CEO last year. The aim has been to merge, shut down, or donate under-performing services in order to focus on high-performing ones instead. TechCrunch

Plus and Minus

Dead and gone. Certainly Google isn't alone in killing off unsuccessful products and services. Matt McGee reports that Facebook Questions, a feature that at one time had been touted as a means for the social networking giant to challenge not only Yahoo! Answers but all other sites in Q&A space, has vanished without a trace. Marketing Land

Spreading like wildfire. Google is not just getting rid of programs and services. It is adding them too. Take the company's recent acquisition of Wildfire, a four year old social media marketing company with 16,000 customers, including 30 of the top 50 brands. Wildfire Social Media Marketing Blog

How Google Helps Your Business

Mastering Websites with Google tools. Google's tools are a big help to other small businesses too, especially businesses that operate online. Here are Arelthia Phillips's tips for using those free Google Webmaster Tools to make your online business shine. A great Website is the first step in a building an online business. Create a Website Kit

Other Google tools you can use. Don't wait around for policy changes to improve the environment for your business, says blogger TJ McCue. Instead, look to “The Click House” as McCue calls Google. From Google Now to Google+ and Google Local, McCue talks about the Google tools you should be using for your business. Forbes

Google in the Clouds with Business. You can't spend long talking to business leaders these days without the phrase “cloud computing” coming up. Another batch of services Google is introducing to help those business customers is cloud computing via the Google Cloud Platform Partner Program. PC World