This month, I pick up where I left off in our Special Wine issue and present the last 13 of 26 technology-related topics I think you’ll find interesting, informative or useful.
Ning: Co-founded by Marc Andressen, the man who brought you the Internet browser, Ning (www.ning.com) is a platform for creating your own social networking site. If you have a network of people who are related in some way, Ning gives you the tools to create a website with the same features as sites like MySpace, Facebook or LinkedIn. Ning’s basic services are free, with additional premium services at a cost. It’s a great way to investigate and leverage the social networking aspects of your customer community.
OLPC: One Laptop Per Child is a program that seeks to bring computing to children in the developing world. To do this, they’ve developed a rugged, low-power, low-cost computer called the XO, along with innovative software to go with it. The original target price was $100, and the design had a crank to generate power. Now the computer, minus the crank, is $200. You can donate that amount at www.laptop.org and provide an XO to a child. Starting November 12, you can “give one, get one” by donating $399.
Phishing: Phishing is the practice of sending what looks like an official email from a bank, credit card company, eBay, PayPal or other organization in an attempt to fool you into revealing your login information. Once the “phisher” has that information, they log in as you and (for example) transfer funds out of your account. The easiest way to avoid getting scammed is to never, ever, ever click on a link in an email that asks you to log in. Visit the site directly, and log in normally.
Quickbooks Alternatives: Quickbooks from Intuit (www.quickbooks.com) is the market leader in small business accounting systems. It has a new competitor based in the North Bay, NetBooks (www.netbooks.com) of Rohnert Park. The difference is that NetBooks claims to be a “small business management system.” Most small businesses suffer from not having an affordable, integrated, comprehensive set of management tools from day one, which leads to growing pains. So, NetBooks is worth a look (although it’s unproven). Certainly, it’s affordable at $200 per month for up to five users, although more expensive than a three-user copy of Quickbooks Pro ($400 at Amazon.com). NetSuite (www.netsuite.com) is a more established (and more expensive) offering in the same “software as a service” vein.
RSS: If you haven’t seen it yet, go to www.CommonCraft.com and watch its clear and entertaining video, “RSS in Plain English.” RSS stands for Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication. It’s a basic format for sharing content among different websites. If you regularly visit certain websites (and those sites publish an “RSS feed”), you can make your life easier by learning how to use an RSS reader, either the one built in to Internet Explorer and Firefox, or a Web-based RSS reader like bloglines.com. Similarly, if your business wants to regularly notify customers about things, you should investigate what RSS can do for you.
Sex: Not really, just checking to see if you’re still with me. But Singularity, as promoted by Ray Kurzweil (www.singularity.com), is the idea that, by 2045 (based on his estimates of technological improvement), intelligence will no longer be biological, resulting in a rapid (but nonbiological) evolution of intelligence, leaving humanity—as we think of it today—behind.
TED talks: The TED Conference is a pricey, invitation-only, annual event in Monterey, Calif., focusing on technology, entertainment and design. Fortunately, you don’t have to pay a dime to see the presentations, which are collected at www.ted.com. Most talks are about 20 minutes long, and they’re a great way to spark discussion and bonding with your team over a brown-bag lunch.
Uninterruptible Power Supply: A UPS is your best friend if you have a desktop system (laptops switch to their internal battery when power fails). If you only save one hour’s work by being able to save your files and shut down gracefully, it’s paid for. I’ve always been happy with the American Power Company (APC) units, but almost any of them will do the job. You don’t need to run more than a few minutes to avoid lost work.
Virtualization: This hot new trend is something to watch. The basic idea is, instead of having several small servers, each dedicated to one task, you can have one larger server that appears as several “virtual” servers, which is more cost-effective. We use virtual servers at my company to test new services. As always, Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org) has a great introduction.
Winery (and Wine Industry) Blogs: I try to maintain a comprehensive list of wineries that have blogs, so if you’re interested in seeing what wineries are up to with blogs, visit www.winerywebsitereport.com/blogs.html. Two wine industry blogs to check out are Tom Wark’s Fermentation and Inertia Beverage’s REthink Wine blog. You can find both on my list.
X: I couldn’t think of any interesting business-related technology that starts with X. Can you? But Halo 3 from Microsoft will sell a lot of Xboxes this Christmas.
Yelp: If you own a business that serves local customers, you should check out www.Yelp.com, which lets your customers rate your business. It’s just another part of managing your online reputation, like having a Google Alert set up for the name of your business. For example, search Yelp for “ice cream” in Sebastopol and you can see the reviews for Screamin’ Mimi’s. You can also add your business, so Yelpers will at least know you’re there. A similar service is Yahoo Local, and the same recommendations apply.
ZP4: If you need to standardize mailing addresses, this is a terrific low-cost solution from Semaphore Corporation. It takes an address like 3565 Airway, Santa Rosa (the NorthBay biz office) and turns it into the USPS-standard 3565 Airway Dr, Santa Rosa CA 95403-1605. This is a great way of scrubbing addresses in a database (standardize them all, then compare for duplicates). You won’t find any software this good for $99, and you can pay a lot more to a service bureau. You can try it free at www.semaphorecorp.com.
As Elmer Fudd used to say, “Th-th-th-that’s all, folks!” Let me know if you found this two-column series interesting or not. See you next month!
