Are Hosted Software Applications Good for Small Businesses?

A few months ago I wrote an article at Associated Content on whether a small business should consider a hosted software application.  At the time I identified a number of factors that a small business should consider before deciding to rely on a hosted software application.  Some of the factors I discussed included reliability of the provider, cost analysis of ongoing fees versus an outright purchase, ownership and control over your data and the stability of your business’s connection to the Internet.  Since that time, a number of things seem to be making hosted applications more attractive for small companies.  There are now a wide variety of free hosted software applications and broadband access continues to be more widely available for small companies at ever reduced cost.

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Tags: hosted software applications, small business, web

Is the Music Industry Driving Itself Out of Business?

Ars Technica ran an article yesterday about Pandora, the popular Internet radio service.  The article discussed how royalties being charged by Sound Exchange had risen steeply and were set to double again by 2010.  As a result, Pandora can’t make money and may pull its own plug.  Sound Exchange offered a potential loophole to Internet radio stations by requiring DRM in exchange for lower fees.   They argue that Internet radio can pay these higher fees.

SoundExchange also argues that Internet radio stations could do a lot more to increase their revenue, become profitable, and pay their (arguably high) fees. As much as it pains us to say it, there may be a point here.

I think a bigger issue here is whether the music industry really represents musicians anymore and how disconnected they are from modern paradigms.

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Tags: music industry, online business models, Pandora

Leave Windows Alone

I’m currently consulting for a very large corporation.  They use Windows.  I don’t mind using Windows.   In fact, even though I prefer a number of open source alternatives, I am a firm believer in using the right tool for the job.  Sometimes, that tool is Windows.  What drives me nuts though is that apparently, they didn’t feel that Windows was the right tool for the job.  Instead of selecting a new tool, they bolted third party utilities onto Windows until they had some kind of Frankenstein’s monster.  It takes no less than 6 minutes for my company supplied laptop to boot up and logon to the network and that’s assuming that it does so on the first time.  Most mornings, I suffer at least 3 blue screens of death before I successfully startup and get logged in. 

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Tags: third party utilities, windows

Microsoft (Still) Doesn’t Get The Web

Microsoft has a long history of releasing “not ready for primetime” products.  I recently tried to add this blog’s xml sitemap to their “webmaster tools” on Windows Live Search.  I would have to say that their new “webmaster tools” is another in a long line of Microsoft failures. 

When going to the site to add a sitemap, the user is presented with a simple form.  The form asks for the web site address, the address of the sitemap, how you want to verify ownership of the site (the usual meta tag or by uploading an xml file), and the webmaster’s email address.  Seems simple, right?  Not so fast!  Entering http://www.julianhilltech.com gives an error that says “Invalid web address”.  Dropping the http:// at the beginning yields the same result and adding a “/” on the end yields the same result.  Putting http://www.julianhilltech.com/sitemap.xml as the location of my sitemap yields an error that says my sitemap must be in the root of my web site.  Huh?!  Did you look at the URL? 

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Tags: Live Search, Microsoft, web, Webmaster Tools

Corporate Courtesy Is Dead

A little over a week ago, I had one of the worst job interviews I’ve had in a very, very long time.  I’m not going to name names* but I wanted to take a moment to discuss this particular experience because I think there’s a couple business lessons to be learned here. 

This experience started, like so many of them do, with a phone interview with a human resources person in the main office of the company.  That went well and the hr person I spoke with was very professional.  He called back to schedule the interview and after we selected a time, he said he’d send email to confirm once the interviewer accepted the appointment.  This ended up taking a few days which should’ve been a big red flag.  (more…)

Tags: arkadin, corporate courtesy, employee loyalty, employee morale, job interviews

Post Con Crud

I was in California for the past week attending Pantheacon.  I now have one of the worst colds I’ve had in a long time.  Which is one of the reasons I hate to fly.  Flying is basically agreeing to sit in a huge hollow petri dish with wings for 5 hours.   

Tags: cold, flying, pantheacon

Why I Love My Employees

I’m a small business owner.  I’m the CEO of Purple Squirrel Group.  We use a number of Wikis internally to collaborate on various projects, capture our collective knowledge and since we’re small and don’t have an operations manual, to document company policies and procedures.  (By the way, we use Trac for this.  It’s open source and a great tool!)  On one of the internal Wiki pages, everyone in the company has a personal page with a little bio, notes, etc.  Today I was looking at the Wiki and noticed that my page had been edited.  Here’s what it says now:

Julian

CEO: Noun meaning a very lifelike robot. British. Generally an unfeeling bastard but usually friendly enough.

I love my employees.  They’re so creative. 

Tags: entrepreneurship, purple squirrel group, small business

Creepy Ads: Is It Just Me?

Is it just me or is anyone else completely creeped out by the weird little dancing figures in the lowermybills.com ads on sites like weather.com?  It’s almost made weather.com unusable for me because they’re distracting and well…just plain creepy.  The one in particular has curved legs that just looks like something from a horror movie.  Awful!

Tags: , creepy ads, dancing ads

Paypal Sent Me the Mark of the Beast

I’ve had a Paypal premium account for many years now. In fact, I signed up for Paypal when they were so new that if you signed up on a referral you and your friend got $5. I have a premium account because I sell online. One of the features of the Paypal premium account is that you can get a debit card. This debit card can be used to spend your Paypal balance. Recently, they added a bank account as a “back-up fund” for the debit card. I decided to use this feature and occassionally use the Paypal debit card for small purchases.

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Tags: business requirements, credit card security code, itunes, paypal

Offshoring Schadenfreude

Dictionary.com defines schadenfreude as satisfaction or pleasure felt at someone else’s misfortune.  That pretty much describes what I felt today when I read on CNN that an undersea cable break had crippled telecommunications and internet connections in areas of the Middle East and Asia.  Now I love my internet connection so I wasn’t feeling pleasure at the pain of the people overseas that lost their connectivity.  What I was enjoying (and still am) was the frantic handwringing on the part of American companies that had decided to send their jobs overseas to save money. 

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Tags: costs analysis, disaster recovery, economic impacts, offshoring