2008 Macworld Keynote: The Small Business Perspective
Tuesday, January 15th, 2008
Yet another Steve Jobs Macworld keynote presentation is in the books and, as would be expected, the Apple faithful are all abuzz. As a major fan (and consumer) of Apple’s products, Jobs’ annual keynote is very much the equivalent of Christmas morning for (Mac) geeks. Present company included.
At the moment, most of the buzz coming out of this morning’s presentation is surrounding the new MacBook Air, Apple’s almost-but-not-quite-ultra-portable notebook computer. Weighing in at less than three pounds and barely 3/4″ inch, it’s clearly one sexy machine, and one that I’m sure will sell like crazy.
Sitting back and digesting this year’s event, I’m focusing on today’s announcements from the perspective of a small business owner; what did Steve Jobs unveil that we can really incorporate into our workflow to help us work better, faster and more efficiently for our clients?
Google Reconfigures Its PageRank Algorithm
Thursday, October 25th, 2007
Google has apparently rolled out a fairly significant change to its PageRank algorithm, which is a major contributor to ranking websites in user search results. Changes in PageRank can cause significant alterations in traffic to some websites, and that appears to be the case with this latest change.
Lots of folks are weighing in on exactly what may be the specifics of the change in the algorithm, but right now it appears that sites most significantly hit are those that either: 1) sell text links to other sites; and/or 2) have a high rate of links between blogs/sites on the same network. For example, a number of prominent technology blogs, such as Engadget, are a part of large network of multiple sites and employ a large number of “cross-site” links on nearly every page of their sites. In many ways, this is a means of “beating the system” to improve Google search rankings, as Google’s search algorithm rewards sites which feature large numbers of incoming links (from other websites). It looks as if it’s now (more-so than ever) important that those links be from true outside websites (not other sites owned by the same company or apart of the same network).
This is clearly something that will most significantly impact some of the larger players in the blogosphere, particularly any companies whose revenue model is built entirely on Google ad dollars. Despite this, it should also be a lesson to smaller companies and websites that their search engine rankings can be impacted and that they should focus on developing quality incoming links to their site in order to best increase their search rankings. Relying on manufactured outside links simply doesn’t cut it any longer, and it shouldn’t. Good for Google for correcting this loophole in their algorithm.
(via Kottke)
First Verizon and Sprint, Now AT&T: Vonage Faces Another Patent Infringement Lawsuit
Saturday, October 20th, 2007
The major telephony players continue to pile on Vonage, the seemingly lame-duck leader in U.S. VOIP (Voice Over IP) service provider. After losing a patent infringement case to Verizon and reaching a settlement with Sprint Nextel, Vonage is now facing another round of litigation, as AT&T filed a lawsuit Friday alleging infringement of a number of their patents related to accessing IP phone networks with traditional telephones.
In many ways, it’s a shame that Vonage continues to get beat down by the larger phone companies. While some have offered competing VOIP services, in most cases they’ve not offered the competitive pricing and feature lists that Vonage brought to the table (which isn’t entirely surprising, as VOIP technology is a direct challenge to their established land-line and cellular businesses).
As a small business, we’ve found great value in many of the services Vonage offered. Bainbridge Studios’ primary phone services have been provided by Vonage since early 2006 and the flexibility they offered, including the ability to manage voicemail and call logging via a web-based dashboard, the flexibility to offer additional phone lines in multiple area codes and email notifications of new messages are all features we’ve made great use of.
Given their increasingly rocky standing and the non-stop barrage of litigation, we’ve begun seriously considering alternate providers for our phone services. Whatever alternate provider we ultimately choose, it’s unlikely to be one of the traditional phone companies, as they simply don’t seem willing to offer the same kind of value and service options that Vonage has. And that’s a shame.
What’s the Worst Possible Way We Could Approach This?
Tuesday, January 2nd, 2007
What’s the worst possible way you could approach a task? That’s an interesting twist on traditional problem solving and one that Cameron Moll suggests. Outlining the worst possible outcomes, scenarios, features, etc. of a project at its outset can give you and your team and unique roadmap of hazards to avoid.
Once you clearly understand what you don’t want the end product to be, you’re well on your way to effectively addressing the task at hand.
Lessons Learned Courtesy of Mother Nature
Tuesday, December 19th, 2006
The past five days have been rather harrowing for many of us here in the Pacific Northwest. The windstorms that swept through the region last Thursday night knocked out power to more than one million homes throughout Washington and Oregon. Aside from addressing the most basic issues such as maintaining food and shelter and avoiding the cold, Mother Nature also brought with her a test for businesses - dealing with the impact of the storm on technology, communication and more.
Here at my home office, from which the vast majority of all Bainbridge Studios work and communication emanates, the storm proved to be a particular test. Having been fortunate over the years, we’ve rarely been faced with any power outages lasting more than a couple minutes and Internet service outages have been few and far between (knock on wood).
Thankfully, we had pretty fair warning that this particular storm was coming and what could be expected as far as damage. By late Thursday afternoon, the winds and rain were significantly picking up and the lights began to flicker. Having finished up most of the day’s work, I went through a quick backup routine to get an additional set of all client/project files on a portal USB2 drive and then powered down the office server. Despite a few “blinks”, the power did in fact manage to stay on throughout most of Thursday evening, finally dropping off early Friday, around 1:15am.
Friday is what proved to be the true test of flexibility. We woke up to no power, no heat and (obviously) no Internet access. Given the seemingly slim prospects of the power being quickly restored that day, Dianne and I elected to head out of Seattle for the day, visiting with family in the burbs that were fortunate to have power.
Unfortunately, their DSL service was down.
What could have been a rather insane day of managing work, sans online access, turned out relatively painless. My Blackberry provided easy access to keep up on any/all incoming email and allowed me to inform clients of the day’s events and circumstances. That, paired with a relatively light work day (with only a couple minor deliverable deadlines to meet), made the potentially madding actually rather manageable.
I did find myself spending a good deal of Friday afternoon bouncing from cafe to cafe in search of a working WiFi connection to get a couple client email campaigns ready for delivery, but aside from that, managed to crank out a reasonably productive day in spite of the circumstances.
So what did I learn from last week’s experience? Planning is key. You never know when adverse circumstances (be it weather, accidents or any number of other factors completely out of your control) will impact your business, and it’s best to be prepared:
- Have flexible options for working from the road.
- Make sure your computer systems have working APC backup devices, to allow you to save files and properly shut down your computers in the event of a power outage (I discovered that my APCs didn’t hold up well when the power was lost).
- Have an email- and web-enabled phone or PDA that will give you access to email and necessary online services, and make sure that device works when the power or WiFi is down.
- Back up your data! Regardless of pending nature disasters, always maintain backup copies of your critical data. Ideally, that backup should be portable, so you can simply grab an external drive and take it with you.
- Finally, and probably most important of all, RELAX. No matter how frustrated and stressed you might be in that crisis moment, there are others out there dealing with a lot more. If you’ve taken the necessary steps to prepare yourself and your business for such adverse circumstances, you’ll be fine. Relax and enjoy the adventure.
Muhammad Yunus on Simplicity
Thursday, December 14th, 2006
Muhammad Yunus, Nobel Peace Prize winner and founder of Grameen Bank, in the current issue of Business 2.0:
“When you’re trying to solve a problem, always bring it back to the simplest formulation.”
Yunus was speaking specifically about Grameen’s microloans to individuals in impoverished nations, but that approach can be applied to many ventures, design included.
Death and Business
Tuesday, December 12th, 2006
I found out today that one of our clients passed away suddenly last month.
A fit, energetic man in his forties. The kind of person you never expect to be “the first to go.”
We hadn’t worked directly with this particular client and his company (of which he was a co-owner) since redesigning their website last year and I hadn’t had contact with anyone from their office in some time.
Hearing news of his death, it certainly got me thinking about business planning and addressing the “what ifs?” that so many of us don’t want to consider. Particularly for those of us that are either self-employed, entrepreneurial or running our own small businesses, planning for things like an untimely death is a significant issue (e.g., what happens to the business? To the client base? To employees?).
It’s not the kind of thing most of us want to consider, but it’s clearly important to do so. Sometimes we just need to be reminded of that…