Lost a business card and need the email address?

How often have you met people and promptly lost their business cards? It happens to me all the time. Or I want to find the e-mail address of someone I've never met. Here is a Google search secret that will help you easily locate e-mail addresses by trying to find Web pages where an e-mail address is listed:

• First you need to know where the person works and find their company's Web address.
• In Google, enter an asterisk, followed by the @ sign, and then the company's Web address. For example, *@bankofamerica.com will locate Web pages featuring an e-mail address of someone who works at Bank of America.
• Once you find the e-mail naming convention, you can back into the e-mail address of the person you want to meet. For example, if your Google search returns John_Doe@bankofamerica.com, and you want to track down Sally Smith, her e-mail address is probably "first name" underscore "last name," or Sally_Smith@bankofamerica.com.

GoDaddy suffering from .me deluge

Registrar GoDaddy began offering the .me domains from registration, but the process overwhelmed the company with issues.

Failed registrations and multiple registrations of the same .me domain name cast a pall over GoDaddy's .me debut. The new domain, being sold for $19.99 per year with a required two-year purchase (privacy option extra), should end up a profitable venture for the company.

However it will be a bit of a joyless slog getting there. Mashable cited the problems with .me registrations, and one account arriving by Twitter looks like it won't be fun to resolve.
Several posts on Twitter report multiple registrations for the domain aweso.me. At least eight people may possess receipts for the desired domain.

"It appears GoDaddy is buckling under the pressure and is about to have an ugly mess on its hands," Adam Ostrow wrote of the .me problems. Meanwhile, the GoDaddy complaints from frustrated would-be registrants continue to hit the net.

Make the right impression in your office

The presentation of your workspace could be influencing decisions made about you regarding promotions and special projects. Be sure your office doesn’t fall into one of these classic cube categories:

• Kidding Around - Photos of your college “glory days” or posters of your favorite rock band hanging from your walls could be telling your boss that you’re still not ready to grow up.
  
• Mommy Mania - They are your pride and joy, but be careful that your work area doesn’t look like a shrine to your family. A few tastefully framed photos are a wonderful way to add a personal touch to your workspace. Just be sure not to overload your area, as this may indicate that your mind is at home, instead of on your work.
  
• Sloppy Sue - While you may think that your boss will understand that you’re working diligently and don’t have time to organize amidst your many tasks, they may see things differently. Instead of dedication, your boss may view you as a person who can’t keep their files straight – much less a big project.
  
• Clean as a Whistle - While you may think that a perfectly clean work area indicates that you’re amazingly efficient and organized, think again. A completely clear desk may leave your boss thinking that you have a clear calendar, as well.
  
• Power Position - Ever see a small, tattered chair in the President’s office? Of course not! A quality chair is a status symbol for power – not to mention the key to a comfortable and effective work environment. To show your boss that you mean business, place a request for budget to update your seat with a new quality option or take a stroll around the office to see there are any other chairs available to swap into your workstation. Or, even if you really want to make an impression, purchase a chair for yourself.
  
• Organize Your Organization - By establishing a few rules, you can raise your organization levels significantly. First, determine how you tend to organize. If your desk or floor tends to have stacks of papers, add bookcases or other storage units to keep paper off the floor and out of sight. Once you have your organizational system in place, set time aside each quarter to purge unnecessary clutter.
  
• Work-Life Balance - It makes sense that your workstation should reflect your personality, but remember to keep some “work-life balance.” Instead of displaying photos for the whole office to see, choose a few and place them facing inward for you to enjoy. While making your office more “homey,” be sure that your surroundings are giving what you want to portray.

Email Marketing Messages: How to Promote a Program

Email marketing messages are challenging. Everybody gets too much email, and each time you broadcast you get people who unsubscribe because they aren't interested or are annoyed. But you must send out enough messages to remind people to sign up, especially at the last minute. Otherwise you're leaving money on the table. It's a balancing act of risking so many unsubscribe requests and so many last minute registrations.

You need your email recipients to:

1. Open and read your message
2. Discover something important they can benefit from
3. Convince them they need to learn more about this
4. Trigger their desire to click over to the sales page to read details and register
5. Realize the some sort of urgency so they won't put it off and forget to take action

One of the best ways to make sure your email messages get opened and read is to deliver a tip at the same time you deliver the marketing message.

There's no better way to learn how to write great email marketing messages except to (you're not going to like this suggestion!) sign up for a lot of Internet marketing materials and start studying the email messages you get.

Good Luck :)

Business Would Be Boring If...

we didn't laugh a little. A very good friend once told me we should play as hard as we work. Since hearing that bit of wisdom I have tried to take it to heart. Perhaps you should as well. Here a some funny quotes about business to hopefully at least make you smile.

• "A criminal is a person with predatory instincts who has not sufficient capital to form a corporation." Howard Scott.
• "I'm spending a year dead for tax reasons." Douglas Adams.
• "I always arrive late at the office, but I make up for it by leaving early." Charles Lamb.
• "In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love; they had five hundred years of democracy and peace and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock." Orson Welles.
• "Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." Mark Twain
• "The definition of a consultant: Someone who borrows, your watch, tells you the time and then charges you for the privilege." letter in the Times newspaper.
• "In the business world an executive knows something about everything, a technician knows everything about something and the switchboard operator knows everything." Harold Coffin.
• "The first rule of business is: Do other men for they would do you." Charles Dickens.
• "Few great men would have got past personnel." Paul Goodman.
• "When I asked my accountant if anything could get me out of this mess I am in now he thought for a long time and said, 'Yes, death would help'." Robert Morley.

You(r)Tube Privacy at Risk

Yes, we know what you watched last summer, or at least Viacom's attorneys soon will.

The owners of Comedy Central and VH1 are attempting to prove that more people watch pirated clips of John Stewart and Behind The Music than, say, the Wii Fit Girl. In the aggregate, maybe more people are watching clips of The Daily Show on them Internets. But a viral video will still draw more eyeballs than any single thing the mainstream media can belch out, regardless of how clever Stewart is. Partly that's because most people who'd want to see it already have, for free, over the airwaves.

Trouble is, our video viewing habits are supposed to be protected by federal law. After a reporter went dumpster diving on Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork in 1987 and came up with Blockbuster rental receipts (he was looking for porn, but mostly he found Hitchcock and Fellini) Congress passed a law explicitly protecting the privacy of movie rentals. The judge in the Viacom case, Louis Stanton, decided that watching a YouTube video somehow qualified as less worthy of protection than Bork's VCR.

The usual answer from people who claim to be perfectly happy having attorneys rooting around their private lives like squirrels in a nuthouse is that they've "got nothing to hide." To which I usually say, "terrific, now drop your pants." Everybody's got something to hide, even if it probably isn't what they watched on YouTube.

The right to keep one's thoughts and interests private -- and by extension, things that indicate thoughts and interests, like books and movies -- is one of the keys to democracy. Nobody can demand to know what's going on between my ears (and trust me, you don't want to know). That's the way I like it.

The real problem here is the obsession with data collection that infects Google, Microsoft, and other major service providers. If there's a reason to keep a running record of every YouTube video I've watched or Web search I've run over the last 18 months, I can't see it -- and Google has done a p*** poor job of explaining why they need it. Because if a record is out there, you're almost guaranteed that some day a lawyer with a subpoena may come looking for it.

Do you YouTube?

Top Technologies You Need to Know About

Software publishers and hardware manufacturers are making significant efforts and progress on simplifying their offerings to the benefit of everyone. Simplicity is about “How do humans really work? What do they really need to do to accomplish a task?” These are very difficult questions to answer, but the answers are coming because a number of designers have been working on the question for some time.

Several technologies and products are examples of simplicity including SaaS and offerings like the Google search engine. What was the theme that came in second for this year. “You don’t know what you don’t know.” Clearly this is an issue as technology becomes more complex and good offerings become more plentiful.

So what are the current “hot” items from a short- and long-term perspective? The short-term technologies that business's should consider include:

Virtualization: All sizes of organizations should virtualize their servers and applications and that many publishers are responding by packaging their software in virtual appliances. Business's can adopt much of this technology now for servers, and over the next few years you will see your desktops, applications and storage all virtualized. VMWare is king of this space, but Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, Sun and Citrix all have reasonable options.

Software as a Service: Bill.Com, The Business Analyst, Capital Confirmation, GoFileRoom, MyPay, Run by ADP, PaySimple, SageWorks ProfitCents, SAP Business By Design, TimeBuilder and XCM all have offerings that can be installed quickly and run from a Web browser. In some cases, I do not know of a viable competitor with the same capabilities at any price. In other cases (unfortunately under nondisclosure) there are some superb offerings that you will see yet this year in addition to these new generation products.

Third-party products: These vendors expand and improve mainstream products by finding a need and filling it. For example, for QuickBooks alone there are: LeGrand CRM, MISys manufacturing, Fishbowl Inventory, BillQuick Time and Billing, Avalara AvaTax, SpeedTax, Softrak Adagio FX and Wasp Barcode just to name a few, plus thousands of others. Further, many of these products can work standalone or with other products as well.

Windows Server 2008: Windows Server has notable performance and reliability improvements including the supporting products of SQL 2008, Hyper V, ForeFront and improved Active Directory. SharePoint Services, PerformancePoint, Exchange 2007 and IIS are all becoming more widely deployed.

Windows Vista and Office 2007: The current technology is good, and ready to be deployed. I recommend using the 64-bit versions even though initial implementation may be a little more difficult. For most organizations using Open Licensing with Software Assurance is the best strategy, particularly after you have enrolled in MPAN. Remember that these technologies will be replaced by Windows 7 and Office 14 in 2009.

Improvements in scanners: Both Fujitsu and Canon have had notable and major improvements in their product lines this year. You should definitely take note and make your acquisitions from the new lines. The Fujitsu ScanSnap S300 and S510 are notable improvements as are the Fujitsu fi-6140 and fi-6240.

Reporting: There are significant shifts occurring in business reporting including Excel reporting tools like BizNet Software, Adagio FX, Crystal Xcelsius and the shift at Microsoft from FRx to PerformancePoint. Many of the business analytics companies and products have been purchased by larger companies, for example Business Objects being acquired by SAP, Cognos being acquired by IBM, and Hyperion being acquired by Oracle.

Voice over IP (VOIP): This technology has come of age. In doing the research for my own company this year, I was exceptionally pleased at how usable and affordable advanced features had become. I can see no condition under which a phone system should be replaced without at least some consideration for VOIP compared to traditional PBX or KSU systems. This applies to all sizes of companies.

Green: From the introduction of Intel’s Atom to the announcement by Dell about making their product line 50 percent more energy efficient over the next two years, being energy efficient is more than a fad. You can help your business save money by buying more energy-efficient products today, and by teaching your team about energy-saving steps to use with technology.

Security: Far from being solved, most organizations are just assessing their risks and choosing encryption software. We believe that encryption will be needed on all laptops, desktops, servers and backups by the year 2012, possibly sooner. Passwords still are sufficient today, but two- and three-tier authentication is also becoming more important.

Longer term technologies that will probably have merit include:

New generation communications: Including WiMax, 802.11n and soon-to-arrive on the desktop 10GB Ethernet.

Replacement cellular technology moving from 3G to 4G: Players will include Apple with the iPhone, RIM with new-generation BlackBerry products, Google Android and Samsung.

More SaaS and Utility computing: It should be possible to run an entire business with no servers in-house if you choose this strategy. Assume all current services can be hosted, virtualized or will be offered as SaaS.

Small portable devices replacing laptops: Prototypes have already been created using projection and other techniques eliminating laptop devices. Many of the new-generation cell phones are candidates to have enough computing power to serve as your access to information. Internet and cell phone convergence will lead to even bigger shifts in the way we use technology. Scorecard today: 3.3 billion cell phones, 1.2 billion laptops. I expect even more cell phones within three years and only moderate growth in laptops. I recommend the return to desktops at the office and home unless there is a need for portability. This strategy provides more speed and security at a lower cost.

Nanotechnology: I have long been a fan of this technology that crosses multiple industries. For computing, we expect smaller devices, security implemented via nanotechnology and flexible screen technology

Washington Online Sales Tax Now Law

Online shoppers who are residents of the state of Washington will now have to start paying sales tax on purchases made on the Internet.

Starting today Washington joins 18 other states that require some online retailers to collect sales tax. About 1,100 ecommerce retailers have agreed to collect taxes in exchange for the state not going after them for back taxes.

Last year Washington passed the law to require online retailers to collect sales tax. The new law changes the state's tax system from origin-based to destination-based. Taxes will be collected based on the location of the buyer, not the location of the seller.

"This is a very important step,"Mark Johnson, vice president of government affairs for the Washington Retail Association, told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. "It's a major changing of our tax structure." Brick-and-mortar stores support the online sales tax saying that it allows for fairer competition with ecommerce businesses.

Most smaller businesses do not support the new tax law. They will have to implant new software in order to identify Washington's 350 taxing districts. They are also concerned about the law becoming national, as they would then be required to sift through thousands of tax codes and file returns throughout the year for each code.

Online Shopping Getting and Keeping the Customer

There's good news and bad news…

The good news is there's a lot of opportunity for satisfying customers, even making them very, very happy. The bad news is three-quarters of online shoppers surveyed said website content is insufficient to complete research or purchase a product online most, or some of the time. Nearly 80 percent rarely or never purchase a product without complete information, and 72 percent will take off to a competitor that does supply that information.

It seems that consumers really want to buy online, but retailers aren't making it easy for them. Sometimes, it seems like retailers go out of their way to lose customers. In fact, it seems many sites are severely lacking in the customer service department. If customers don't prefer online shopping to brick-and-mortar shopping, it's because retail sites haven't done enough to make the online shopping experience a good one.

Here are some tips to help yourself to a satisfied on-line customer:

• The landing page is crucial. You should have a landing page relevant to the search term. Yes, this is going to take some time to develop. But it doesn't take any time for a potential customer to abandon you. Remember that information seekers scan from left o right, top to bottom, so keep those keywords to the left and not buried in chunks of text. Make sure it's clear where links lead, especially if navigating a customer away from a landing page.
• Product information should be complete, answering all the customer's questions. A survey found 77 percent said "buying from a particular merchant is 'very to somewhat' influenced by the quality of content (descriptions, copy, images and tools) on a particular website.
• Search is fundamental. Be there at every entry point possible.

The e-tailing group reports these ten features and functionalities as the most important to customers, according to a survey.

1. Product overview
2. Merchant's guarantee
3. Stock status/availability
4. Customer service links
5. Product specific information
6. Long description
7. Quality of image
8. Size chart
9. Toll-free number
10. Ratings and reviews

Take some time and review your companies website. Are the 10 most important things being offered? Are any of them? It is far easier to keep an existing customer than get a new customer.

Walking Around for the Right Reasons

Management by walking around (MBWA). This concept has been around for a few decades now. Management theories in the 2000's, such as "the Tipping Point" and "the Long Tail," are more marketing- and market-driven. The advent of communication by e-mail and IM has planted many a manager's butt in their seats. Still, there are plenty of bosses and managers wandering the hallways, patting themselves on the back because they think walking amongst the people is a noble act.

The thing is ... it could be. MBWA can pay off big, especially for entrepreneurial companies, but you have to do it the right way and for the right reasons.

If the point is to recognize and appreciate the employees who help make you successful, then what's not to like? Seeing you gives your staff the opportunity to see their boss as less the voice of authority and more a genuine human being who is invested in their ideas and opinions. The problem arises when those who walk the halls do it for all the wrong reasons.

Many business owners walk the floor only when a crisis has hit, and they think their presence will calm their employees. That's not effective if you've been hiding in your office before the you-know-what hit the fan. MBWA only works if you do it regularly -- and if you really want to know what's going on in your company.

Effective leaders (bosses) do more than just communicate with their employees; they encourage all employees to do the same. Open communication is key to business survival, particularly when times are tough. Chances are that some of your employees are concerned about their job security and the stability of the company. If you hide out in your office, rumors will only increase, as will the number of resumes headed out the door.

Real leaders are problem solvers. They don't abdicate responsibility, they don't expect others to make the tough decisions, and they don't shy away from accountability. W. Edwards Deming said it best: "If you wait for people to come to you, you'll only get small problems. You must go find them. The big problems are [the ones] people don't realize they have in the first place."

So be a good leader, be a good boss, get out there and take ownership.

Wi-Fi VoIp?

The Wi-Fi Alliance wants to make voice a part of Wi-Fi networks, and has introduced a program to certify products, it announced on Monday.

The Wi-Fi CERTIFIED Voice-Personal stamp of approval means a product is capable of making or handling good-quality voice calls in the home or a small office environment, according to the Wi-Fi Alliance. Access points, wireless routers, handsets (which are growing at a steady rate) and laptops can all be tested and certified.

The push is a way for Wi-Fi Alliance to keep femtocells and upcoming technologies such as WiMax, HSPA (High-Speed Packet Access) and LTE (Long Term Evolution) -- which lately have overshadowed Wi-Fi -- out of the home, according to Richard Webb, directing analyst at Infonetics. Webb thinks Wi-Fi, helped by a low cost and a large installed base, will be able to stay dominant.

"Wi-Fi performance has been continually improved, and this is another step along that road," said Webb.

In a departure from interoperability testing, which has always been Wi-Fi Alliance's bread and butter, it instead looks at performance. To be certified, products have to deliver packet loss of less than 1 percent with no burst losses, as well as latency and maximum jitter of less than 50 milliseconds, according to the Wi-Fi Alliance.

The first round of certified products include Intel's PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection (an embedded 802.11a, b and g PCIe Mini Card), Cisco Systems' Aironet 1250 and 1200 Series Access Points, and Meru's access point AP200.

Wi-Fi CERTIFIED Voice-Personal is only an option for vendors, so users will need to double check a special Wi-Fi product database to see whether a particular product has passed the testing.

Wi-Fi Alliance also has plans to introduce a program for enterprise environments, called Wi-Fi CERTIFIED Voice-Enterprise, early next year. It will be based on the Voice-Personal Program, and add support for bandwidth management, hand-offs between access points, enterprise-class security, network management and other features that are necessary in larger environments, according to Wi-Fi Alliance.

Enterprise adoption of IP (Internet Protocol) telephony over WLANs is growing, and vendors have put a lot of effort to improve performance, but many companies are still reticent about putting voice on it, according to Webb.

"Certification gives it a stamp of approval," he said.

Improve Business Performance

As a manager, one of your myriad duties is the professional development of your employees. Mentoring your employees helps them perform better, improves morale, and can help your business succeed. Most employees yearn to grow their skills with the aid of a knowledgeable, more senior member of their team. Want to take a more active role in mentoring your staff?

Try these tips:

Buddy up. Consider it a kind of matchmaking — send your staffers and more senior members, or mentors, off to discuss past experiences and future goals over lunch or coffee. Pairing those who have fewer years in the business with those who’ve got a wealth of proven experience is a great way to get a fresh exchange of ideas flowing. These pairings needn’t be exactly in line along the hierarchy; all that’s important is that the two parties can learn something from one another. It's also a good idea to take personalities into account, if possible, in matching employees with mentors.

Listen Openly. For one-on-one conversations between junior and senior staffers, encourage both parties to abandon their preconceptions. Instead of “right” or “wrong” ways of meeting challenges, encourage them to approach problems or projects by finding ways that work to replace ways that don’t. Neutralizing this language promotes an open dialogue in which both parties' ideas are equally valid. This parity will encourage the conversation to move freely and ensure that both the senior and junior staffer emerge with new ideas.

Think Strategically. One of the best by-products of mentoring is the slew of novel approaches it can engender. Once your staffers have met to discuss their professional goals and new methods of achieving them, be open to applying these ideas. They may not always work, but with patience and perseverance on all sides, successes will be achieved and staffers will see that their mentoring conversations produce tangible, actionable results that enhance their performance.

While mentoring may seem at first to be a one-way street, benefiting the recipient of the mentoring, it invigorates everyone involved. Mentors are stimulated by the active need for their skills, while they can learn from the junior employee, who brings a fresh outlook and new ideas to what might feel like old hat for the senior staffer. Mentoring can boost communication, inject new ideas into old formulas, and promote a satisfying, more open work environment — all of which benefits your bottom line.

Quotes to Inspire

I recently read a quote that inspired me and thought, "Why not share it with others?" I've also collected a list of quotes from entrepreneurs and other quotes that are relevant to entrepreneurship. I hope one of these quotes inspires you as well.

• I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work - Thomas Edison, inventor and scientist
• The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary - Vidal Sassoon, entrepreneur
• Entrepreneurship is living a few years of your life like most people won't, so that you can spend the rest of your life like most people can't. - Anonymous
• The best reason to start an organization is to make meaning - to create a product or service to make the world a better place - Guy Kawasaki, entrepreneur, investor, author
• Every worthwhile accomplishment, big or little, has its stages of drudgery and triumph; a beginning, a struggle and a victory - Mahatma Gandhi, political and spiritual leader
• Failure defeats losers, failure inspires winners - Robert T. Kiyosaki, author, entrepreneur, investor
• Entrepreneurs average 3.8 failures before final success. What sets the successful ones apart is their amazing persistence - Lisa M. Amos
• Once you say you're going to settle for second, that's what happens to you in life - John F. Kennedy, U.S. President
• In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable - Dwight D. Eisenhower, U.S. President
• The greatest reward in becoming a millionaire is not the amount of money that you earn. It is the kind of person that you have to become to become a millionaire in the first place - Jim Rohn
• Some people dream of great accomplishments, while others stay awake and do them - Anonymous
• Experience taught me a few things. One is to listen to your gut, no matter how good something sounds on paper. The second is that you're generally better off sticking with what you know. And the third is that sometimes your best investments are the ones you don't make - Donald Trump, real estate and entertainment mogul
• The entrepreneur in us sees opportunities everywhere we look, but many people see only problems everywhere they look. The entrepreneur in us is more concerned with discriminating between opportunities than he or she is with failing to see the opportunities - Michael Gerber, author, entrepreneur
• An entrepreneur tends to bite off a little more than he can chew hoping he'll quickly learn how to chew it - Roy Ash, co-founder of Litton Industries
• The critical ingredient is getting off your butt and doing something. It's as simple as that. A lot of people have ideas, but there are few who decide to do something about them now. Not tomorrow. Not next week. But today. The true entrepreneur is a doer, not a dreamer - Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari and Chuck E. Cheese's
• I will tell you how to become rich. Close the doors. Be fearful when others are greedy. Be greedy when others are fearful - Warren Buffet, investor and billionaire
• I never perfected an invention that I did not think about in terms of the service it might give others... I find out what the world needs, then I proceed to invent - Thomas Edison, inventor and scientist
• Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the Trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover - Mark Twain, author
• There is a tide in the affairs of menWhich, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;Omitted, all the voyage of their lifeIs bound in shallows and in miseries.On such a full sea are now afloat;And we must take the current when it serves,Or lose the ventures before us - William Shakespeare, author
• Genius is 1% inspiration, and 99% perspiration - Thomas Edison, inventor and scientist

The MPAA and RIAA are still not smart. - Big suprise huh?

The MPAA and RIAA will leave no stone unturned in their quest to eradicate piracy from the Internet. Their latest target: Evil laser printers, which are surely harboring bootleg copies of "Iron Man" and "My Humps."

Laser printers of course are innocent of the crimes of which they are accused. But two professors and a student at the University of Washington are using printers (which have indeed received takedown letters in recent months) as an example of how poor a job the MPAA and RIAA are doing at finding copyright infringement online.

Using a number of BitTorrent-connected file sharing computers but not uploading or downloading any files, the researchers received over 400 takedown notices during trials in August 2007 and May 2008. All of the notices were directed at spoofed IP addresses which weren't engaging in any infringing activity: In fact, many of the addresses weren't even computers. But in addition to serving printers with legal notices, at least one wireless access point (which has no storage capabilities at all) was threatened with a lawsuit.

The full research report is available online (PDF link). The conclusions find that not only are false positives a real problem because the systems scanning for illegal activity are doing only cursory examinations of the behaviors going on at those addresses, but those addresses are easy to conceal and fake. The result: Mass hysteria in the world of copyright infringement. On the other hand, the study noted that the door swings both ways: IP blacklists, long a standard method of avoiding detection by P2P users, are "wholly ineffective" as a means of avoiding monitoring.

Workers paying for their own work laptops, gadgets

If you've been buying your own gadgets to increase your productivity on the road, you're not alone. A recent study by In-Stat discovered that nearly 40 percent of the professionals surveyed admitted to buying their own work laptop, and it's likely that countless others have used their personal PDAs, GPS, cameras, and even cell phones for work-related projects because most companies aren't willing to buy them one.

Apparently, some employers feel electronics are too expensive and aren't convinced that gadgets boost productivity. However, one In-Stat tech analyst says these companies are being "penny wise but pound foolish" because electronics do add value and cost less than an employee's time.

I'm going to have to agree with In-Stat here. Some of these companies should get with the times and realize that we are a fast-paced society that depends on technology to get our work done. Ok, so maybe we dont' all need a GPS or digital camera for work, but those that could actually get a significant productivity boost should get one.

In this day and age, all companies should at least issue a laptop and a smartphone to mobile workers. And if they're not willing to pay the cell phone bill, the least they can do is offer to split the bill. These are hard times folks, and the last thing workers need to worry about is not having the right tools to get the job done.

Get lost on your desktop

With all the discussion about productivity, it made me think about whether I do what I can to ensure I am as productive as I should be.

This lead me onto thinking about the things that divert my attention away from my task in-hand, such as loud music, interruptions and wallpapers. So I came to wonder whether your desktop wallpaper (being the thing you see everytime you get a glimpse of your desktop) could aid you in your productivity.

I believe that having a wallpaper that I choose helps me to concentrate. I am the kind of person where I can work for hours without stopping, skipping meals, and becoming so totally absorbed in what I am doing to forget the outside world even exists. When I burn through that period, I am usually tired, not in the physical sense, and need a break. Staring into my desktop wallpaper relaxes me and gets me prepared to concentrate again, sort of like a good massage will help an athlete for the next game.

Does your wallpaper help you concentrate? If you need a minute to think maybe you can get lost in your desktop wallpaper too. A good place to find some interesting wallpaper is http://www.deviantart.com. Find what you need and let your mind relax a bit before tackling that next task.

You may find that you will become more productive if you take a minute to relax.

Fun at Work and Productivity

We've all heard the maxim "work hard, play hard" applied to workplaces. Often times the whole "play hard" thing is a bit of a red herring. But what is the value of fun in the workplace anyway?

Research has linked fun and employee satisfaction to higher productivity and even higher profits.* Not only this, but I've seen workplace fun contribute to retention. Departments that have fun together can be hard places to leave behind, and they tend to retain their best employees.

What can you do as a manager to bring some fun in? Chances are you won't need to do much other than let others spark it, but here are some ideas.

- Capitalize on your hobbies. I enjoy poetry, so I hosted lunchtime poetry readings at one of my companies. People enjoyed it, but perhaps poetry isn't your thing and movies are? Can you do a departmental film festival during lunch over a period of a few weeks? Be creative.

- Be spontaneous and quick. You don't need three hours to have some fun. Jump on an idea and then jump back to work.

- Go back to your childhood. When was the last time you blew bubbles? Had a sack race? Filled out a Mad Lib? You'll be surprised how much people enjoy a few moments of silliness, no matter how upright they are the other 99% of the time.

- Make it Educational. One client of mine asked two of her supervisors (who were often perceived as quite serious) to put on a skit about customer service for the departmental meeting. One of the managers came dressed like a grumpy old woman and played the part of "fussy customer" while the other demonstrated a slew of customer service techniques. The employees laughed until their sides hurt at the sight of their manager as "fussy customer" and learned a great deal about customer service too.

So, what can you do to embrace a little fun and increase employee satisfaction? Jot down a few ideas. Who knows? Perhaps it's just what the doctor ordered.

Spyware Infections Carry Big Costs for Small Businesses

A single spyware infection on a work computer can impact the productivity of the typical small business employee for two-and-a-half days, according to research commissioned by the Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA).

A survey of employees at businesses with 10 to 200 computer users found that more than one in four computer users reported having their productivity impacted by a spyware infection during the past six months. Of these, more than one-third reported multiple spyware inflections.
Even more alarming, users of spyware-infected computers reported "living with" the problem for 18 work hours – more than two full workdays – before getting it repaired.

They did so even though they realized that their work productivity was reduced due to the problems associated with spyware. Users estimated their productivity was reduced by 21 percent when the spyware problem was first noticed; and was reduced by 32 percent when the problem was at its peak.

On top of the delay in reporting a spyware infection is the time it takes to fix the problem. A survey of PC-support professionals servicing small businesses and who had fixed at least one spyware incident during the past year reported spending an average of 2.8 labor hours per infected PC. That’s more than 20 hours of reduced worker productivity for each spyware incident at a small business.

CompTIA commissioned Kotler Marketing Group of Washington, D.C. (http://www.kotlermarketing.com/), a consulting firm specializing in value-based selling, to conduct the survey to better understand the frequency and cost of problems such as spyware, viruses and network and server downtime among small businesses.

Two separate online surveys were conducted in late 2007. One questioned 537 end users who work in non-IT roles at small and mid-sized businesses in the financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, and professional services industries. The other survey queried 200 IT professionals who support small and mid-sized businesses. Respondents were based in North America, with approximately 80 percent in the United States and 20 percent in Canada. For more information on the study, visit http://www.comptia.org/sections/research/.

Create Some Buzz

One of the goals in business is to get people to talk often, favorably and in the right way about your products. Below are three ways you can spur the buzz about your business - best off all two of them are free!

Develop a high quality product.
The first step to generating buzz about your business is to produce or sell a meaningful and quality product. It must possess a quality that is worth talking about. Your product may be something that improves the quality of life, innovative, and connects or elicits passion among its customers. People will not hesitate to pass on or recommend to others a product that they think offers something valuable.

Ask for it.
Don't hesitate to request your customers and prospects to recommend you to any other person or organizations they think might benefit from your products or services. A happy customer will be more than willing to talk about you to their circle of family and acquaintances. Request them to give you a list of friends or family members that you can contact or include in your mailing list. Also ask people to pass the word about important company news and product developments.

Set up a formal referral system.
Referrals can allow you to bring in quality new customers at a fraction of the cost of advertising. The key is to start with a quality product or service that other people can feel confident about referring your business to their friends, family members or others. Then give them incentives to spread the word about your business.

One effective way to solicit referrals is to approach businesses that offer complimentary (but not competing) products or services, then requesting them to refer clients to you. For a business selling baby books and videos, a good referral partner would be a business selling baby clothes or furniture. Same market, but different products fulfilling different needs. For every client referred to you, you will pay them the agreed referral fee.

Printer Spooler Errors

If the Print Spooler service fails when printing, when Windows starts or it can not be restarted, the usual reason is that one or more printer drivers is defective. If the Print Spooler service is not running, the Printers and Faxes folder will be empty and you can not use it to remove (or add) printers or printer drivers.

Check in Control Panel, Add/Remove Programs; if there is an entry relating to one of the printers, select it, then click Change/Remove. Follow the dialog and "uninstall all" or "remove all" as appropriate. Some "printer software" have programs that show up here and it will be a good idea to remove those before going any further. If the Print Spooler service is not operational, or you want to make certain there are no printer driver remnants use cleanspl.exe from the Windows 2000, XP or 2003 Resource Kit. Download it from the link below.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&familyid=9d467a69-57ff-4ae7-96ee-b18c4790cffd

Cleanspl.exe from the Windows 2003 Resource Kit tools will work on Windows Vista. Cleanspl.exe does a very thorough job of cleaning up the print spooler stuff, but it does not remove the spooler service dependency on the Lexmark service (see special information about Lexmark printer drivers). When you run it, it asks you if you want to remove some things that are actually delivered (and installed by default) with Windows. In most cases, you should answer No to the corresponding prompts (you don't want to remove the Standard TCP/IP Port or the BJ Language Monitor).

Lexmark Special Instructions: The Lexmark printer installation process sometimes installs a service that makes the print spooler service dependent on itself. If there is a problem with Lexmark service or a Lexmark printer driver (or you removed it using the steps above), the print spooler service may not start. Open a Command Prompt window - (Start - Run - cmd)key the command sc config spooler depend= RPCSS(note the space after the = but not before)Reboot the PC

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