Firefox 2 was released recently and offers a slew of security and
performance improvements. The main user interface change I’ve noticed
is tabs now have their own button to close them, rather than using the
"master" close tab icon that was on the right in earlier releases.
If
you aren’t using the Firefox web browser yet, WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU!!!
🙂 It really is way better than Internet Explorer. And it’s FREE!
Technigrafa is now a member of the Eastern North Carolina Better Business Bureau.
The BBB is a great organization to belong to because it is recognized
by many people as a reputable company that makes sure that it’s members
are also reputable companies. Becoming a member allows you to use their
logo in your printed materials as well as on your website, which is
important to establish credibility for your company.
You must
have been in business for over a year and agree to their terms
reguarding operating your business in a moral manner. Of course there
is a yearly membership fee as well, based on how many employees your
company has.
You can sign up for the BBB Online program here, but remember, you must be a member of a local chapter as well.
Being in the logo design & branding field, we run into a lot of people who are starting up a small company and need to get their promotional items created (business cards, brochures, web site, etc.) A lot of the time it can be confusing knowing exactly what you need to do to start up a business right.
Here
are a few tips to make sure you get everything set up right. This is by
no means a complete list, or a sequential list, but just a set of
recommendations based on some common problems we run into with clients
and some lessons we’ve learned well from our own experiences:
1) Get Ready to Spend Money
It’s
true that you have to spend money to make money. It may be tempting to
go the cheap route, but if you want your business to succeed, I’ve
found that doing it right the first time is worth the money your spend
up front. If you try to cut corners, you may not be real happy with the
results. Get a loan and pay off these expenses later when you have
money coming in. At least you can know that you are putting your best
foot forward and you’re not sabotaging your business’s success over the
relatively minimal amount of money you need to spend up front to
develop a good image for your company.
2) Pick a good company name
It
sounds simple, but it can be one of the hardest tasks you face. You
want a name that reflects the services or products you offer, but you
also want to be catchy. That’s tough. A good trademark attorney will
help you with this process, and this leads to a very valuable point:
Trademark your company name! This is a painful (and sometimes costly)
process, but a good idea because it keeps another company for taking
you to court over your name and it keeps other companies from stealing
glory from you by resembling your business. If you own a small bait
& tackle shop on the edge of a lake in the middle of no where,
trademarking your business may not be so important, but we’re not all
so…. err…. lucky.
There are two primary ways to trademark your business:
These
are both necessary to protect your name and your logo. Your text
trademark will be evaluated to make sure it doesn’t resemble or sound like
any other registered trademarks. Especially other companies that are
similer to yours in what services or products they offer. The stylized
trademark takes into account your font, colors and any other graphical
elements in your logo. You can’t change these things after you apply
without resubmitting another application, so make sure you get it right
the first time! It’ll cost you around $325 to trademark each method. A
trademark attorney will help you search for a clear name and logo and
file the paperwork for you, although he’ll charge you waaaay more than
$325 each. You can search for trademarks online at the US Patent and Trademark website here. Then you can submit your application here. NOTE:
It can take up to a YEAR to find out if your trademark was approved and
you have to pay your filing fee regardless if you get the trademark or
not.
At this point you will probably need to get a federal tax
ID for your business, or EIN. You also need to file with your local
secretary of state to register your business name. You may also be
required to get a business license/permit. Here is a good website for people in NC.
You’ll need to figure out if you want to do business as a sole
proprietor, LLC, S-Corp, etc. too. Your accountant can help you with
that and you can file online or get an attorney to help you. Then you
can get a bank account as a DBA or "Doing Business As" if you are a
sole proprietor or get a bank account in the name of your corporation
if you incorporate. Usually you need to do business for about 2 years
before a bank will let you open a company bank account. DBAs are
immediately available to you though. Also note that if you incorporate
later, you’ll need to get another tax ID and your bank account will
have to be closed and reopened with the new ID. Fun!
3) Get your Logo and Branding Done
This
step goes hand-in-hand with the second step. Find a graphic design
company that does logos, corporate identity and branding and get a logo
created that you really like and you feel represents your business
well. They should work with your attorney to make sure your logo
doesn’t conflict with another logo that is already trademarked. This is
the building point for all your marketing materials. To have a
consistent corporate identity, you want to get your logo on everything
you put out there: business cards, letterhead, website, etc. Why is
corporate identity important? Why can’t you just put out generic
marketing materials? Well, you can, but studies show that people need
to see (or hear about) your company up to seven times before company
recognition occurs. Having consistent branding helps to build
credibility and help people remember you. Think "The golden arches" or
the Nike "Swoosh."
4) Market your Business
Whether
you find a marketing agency or do this yourself, you need to figure out
how you are going to promote your new business. Believe it or not, just
getting some business cards and a website most likely won’t bring a
mass exodus of customers to knock down your door. You have to get the
word out. There are many ways to do this, such as press releases,
phonebook ads, online ads, TV and radio, ads, etc. A marketing company
can help you determine where your money is best spent to get the most
return on your investment. Your marketing agency will work with your
designer to develop good marketing materials like postcards, flyers,
brochures, etc. They can also help you figure out where postcards need
to be sent and where you can send email promotions to get the best
response. Note: Marketing
companies, despite what they tell you, are not always the best equipped
to design your marketing materials. Some marketing companies have good
internal design teams or contract out with good design agencies, but
often you can run into pretty unimpressive stuff if you don’t get a
designer involved.
There are also many other things you can do
to get the word out like joining your local Chamber of Commerce, attend
trade shows, etc. Networking in this way can prove to be very valuable
and it’s pretty inexpensive.
5) Run Your Business Well
Well,
duh! If you don’t do a good job of running your business, all of the
above will be for naught. Sure, you’ll make a few mistakes along the
way, but don’t let that keep you from forging ahead. Make sure you get
a good attourney to take care of any legal concerns, get some insurance
for your company – and you may want to look into disability and health
insurance while you’re at it. Your accountant can help advise you on
setting up a retirement account too. Better safe than sorry!
One
of the keys to running any business successfully is to provide friendly
and prompt customer service. So establishing a way to handle that up
front is important. Impersonal phone systems, busy signals and
answering machine messages are usually going to send a cold message to
your customers. People are starved for good customer service these days
and most people don’t mind spending a little extra money to know that
they are being taken care of well.
You may have started hearing people talk about web site syndication. Sometimes called RSS (Really Simple Syndication),
podcasting or an atom feed. Well, I’m going to leave all the technical
mumbo jumbo out of this post – you can read more about that here.
Syndication
is a great way to spread information about your business, products or
services over the web. Many people out there actively look for content
that relates to them in some way and reposts it for the benefit of
their visitors. Why is that good for you? Well, if you include links to
your business in the post, you just got a free advertisement. Some sites search for relevant content and even posts them automatically.
Many people use news aggregators, or programs that show news from several different sites all in one place. I use Google’s personalized homepage so I can at a glance check my gmail inbox, view my Google calendar events for the day, see the latest posts on Slashdot and catch up on local news. If you have information that is useful for other people out there, put it on your website and syndicate it!
Establish
yourself as an expert in your field. I met a travel agent recently who
said that once he started posting regularly on his blog, which is
syndicated, the traffic coming to his site went through the roof.
The
best part about syndication is it is a great way to increase the
traffic to your website – and it’s FREE. The more links you get
pointing to your site, the better your site ranking is going to be in
search engines too.
Feedburner
is a great tool to get your RSS feeds out there in the world to be
found easier. Once you create an account for your syndicated content,
Feedburner creates a page that lets people link to or subscribe to your
content via email. You can see my links in the right column.
Another useful site is MyWebAuthor.com, which helps to get more traffic to your site if you post articles there.
Podcasting
is pretty much the same thing as any other syndicated content – it’s
just in audio form. So you can post mp3 files that people can subscribe
too with a "podcatching" program like iTunes and take the files with them on their mp3 player or just save the files to listen to later when they have more time.
The
trick is coming up with good content that people want to read. But
remember, people don’t want to be bombarded with your new product or
hear how great it is over and over. People catch on quick when you are
trying to sell them something and they usually don’t like it – so post
often and post carefully!
Free Article Submission Sites
Well, I’m a Verizon wireless customer and our "New every two" was
up, so my wife and I went in to upgrade our old Samsung flip phones.
And it was an experience…so I thought I’d share it here in the hopes
it will save someone the headache that I went through.
New every 2?
First
of all, the "New every two" or $100 credit towards a new phone only
applies to the main line if you are on a family plan, which my wife and
I are on. So that sounded discouraging at first, but since I ended up
buying a $200 phone, they gave her a free phone anyway, so that turned
out okay.
A Lot of Time Wasted on the Wrong Phone
I
had spent HOURS researching different phones and I decided that I
really wanted to merge my Palm Pilot and my phone together so I don’t
have to carry both around with me. The first obvious candidate for the
upgrade was the Treo 650 or 700. I don’t care about getting on the
internet or checking email on my phone, so the broadband access on the
700 didn’t appeal to me. I just wanted my Outlook calendar on my phone.
But since those phones were close to $400, that was out. (They no
longer had the 650 in the store, but they still have them online
discounted) I can’t justify paying that much for any phone unless it
stays charged forever, includes unlimited internet and changes the oil
in my truck for me. So I talked to a guy at the local Verizon store,
telling him all I want is to sync my phone with my Outlook calendar and
he suggested to me the LG V,
which he used and it has a fold out qwerty keyboard and a large screen,
camera, bluetooth and a calendar. He told me it would sync up with the
Outlook calendar, as long as I get the computer sync kit, so I thought
I was good to go. I took a look at the box for the sync kit and asked
him why it didn’t say anything about syncing with Outlook on it, but he
assured me that it does just that, so I reluctantly got it for an extra
$50. And I got the extended battery, which he recommended for another
$60, not to mention a 512MB mini-SD card ($40) so I can store more
photos and mp3s. *Eyes his empty wallet*
Trying out the Phone
Well
I get home and play with the phone for 4 hours trying to figure out how
to sync it with Outlook. It comes with a tool to sync your contacts
with Outlook, but NO way to sync up with the calendar. I called
Verizon’s tech support and they immediately said that phone does not
sync with Outlook. So after throwing a private temper tantrum, I looked
on the web for a 3rd party tool that might allow the LG to sync with
Outlook. Sure enough I found one so
I bought it as a software download and started to regain some hope
(Another $30). Then I try to install the software and it crashes every
time I try to run the installer. Lovely. I try to contact their
technical support, but that just ends up leading me to their automated
help system which of course says nothing about the installer
crashing…and it’s a Saturday, so their not available to call. Later,
that following Monday I did call them and they gave me a refund – thank
goodness!
Finally, the Right Phone
So
I take the phone back to Verizon the next day and tell them I had been
told this phone syncs with Outlook and it doesn’t. Of course THIS rep
said, "Of course this phone doesn’t sync with Outlook – only the
smartphones do that." After restraining my desire to put her in a choke
hold I tell her that I want to switch phones to the Motorola Q,
which is indeed a smartphone and syncs just fine with Outlook (Another
2 hours of research on the all-knowing internet to come to that
conclusion). Well, one hour and a frustrated Verizon sales rep later I
was switched over to the Q ($200 after the $100 discount) with the
extended battery ($20 on special) and luckily the miniSD card I bought
the day earlier worked on this phone too, so I kept that.
The Motorola Q
I
get the phone home, and despite it running Windows mobile, rather than
PalmOS, which I prefer, it seems pretty solid. The battery indeed
doesn’t last long, so the $20 extended battery is a no-brainer. It
synced up with Outlook perfectly the first try. Of course it comes with
101 ways to get on the internet with any accidental click of the pad.
And since I didn’t get a data plan, that is a disaster waiting to
happen at the crazy price per kb downloaded. I thought that might be a
problem, but I called up Verizon tech support and they put a data block
on my phone so it won’t get on the internet (and keeps me from sending
or receiving photo messages, but oh well) and I found the settings to
edit the home screen to remove all Verizon’s custom buttons to get on
the internet.
So now I am finally happy. The phone is nice,
although there are a few things I don’t like such as the nonstandard
mini headphone jack and the fact that the phone won’t fit in the
leather carrying case I bought (another $20) with the extended battery
in it. Arg. The buttons are a bit small and switching from dialing
numbers and entering text characters is sometimes a pain. The camera is
worse than on my old Palm Zire although it does have a flash. The
speakerphone on it is quite nice and despite the phone being way larger
than my flip phone, it’s definitely smaller than my old phone and Palm
put together and with my new Bluetooth headset (yes, I now have a
plastic bug attached to my ear) it works out pretty nice.
Consequently, I am selling my old Palm Zire PDA, although I do love that thing.
Morals of the story:
Greetings!
This edition we’re reviewing some cost saving phone and fax services
that are available for home and small business. These are all services
that we have tried and although they may not be for everyone, we were
generally satisfied with them and feel comfortable recommending them.
The
first service that we are reviewing is the toll-free phone number
company "TollFreeLive." They offer simple toll free numbers that can
redirect your customers to any phone number…even to a cell phone! We
were very impressed with their automated answering system that allows
you to provide extensions for different employees or departments in
your business. You can even assign a voice message to a number
selection and record a message that describes the basic features that
your business offers. All of your dialing structures can be set up
online, or you can pay a small fee when you create an account to have
TollFreeLive set it up for you. This is how it works: Someone calls
your toll free number and they get your automated attendant(or you can
record your own voice). They are presented with a menu like "For
customer service, dial 1…for technical support, press 2, to speak
with an attendant, press 0." Once they make a selection, they are asked
to speak their name. Then your phone will be called and you will hear
the name of the person calling and chose whether or not to accept the
call. If you can’t get to the phone, they will simply be redirected to
your TollFreeLive voicemail box. Their basic service includes 5 extent
ions and costs $9.99 a month, which includes 100 minutes of incoming
calls a month–additional minutes are 5.9 cents each. Of course they
also have larger plans with more included minutes and a lower price per
additional minute, if that’s what you need. They best part of this
company is they have a place where you can search for available toll
free numbers via their website so you can get the perfect memorable
number for your business.
Send2Fax
is a company that allows you to set up a toll free fax number for your
business. Not only that, but you don’t need a second line in your
office, or even a fax machine! All incoming faxes are converted to an
image and emailed to you. What about outgoing faxes? Simple. You simply
send an email to a persons fax number @fax.send2fax.com with a file
attached and that file will be converted to a fax that will print on
any regular fax machine. The pricing starts at $1.95 a month. Yes, you
read that right. There is a $4.95 setup fee and you have to prepay at
least $20.00. You are then charged .15 cents per page that you get or
send out. Anytime your account falls below $5.00, your credit card is
charged another $20 to fill it back up. Of course there are larger
plans available that include free pages for a larger monthly fee and
they even have a broadcast fax service for solicitations, although we
haven’t used that service. We have found this to be a great service if
you don’t do a ton of outgoing faxing. We never had any problems
receiving faxes, but once we did have a problem getting a fax to send
to a particular fax machine correctly.
Vonage
You
may have heard of these guys. The ones with the obnoxious TV
commercials with the tune that you can’t get out of your head? They
provide phone service through your high speed internet connection. So
if you have a cable modem or DSL, you can sign up with Vonage and get a
phone line that uses your internet connection, but allows you to send
and receive phone calls just like any other phone. In fact, in some
ways, it’s even better than regular phone service. For one thing, you
take your phone number with you. Where ever you plug in the Vonage
phone box into a high speed internet connection, your phone number will
ring to the phone plugged in there, so you could take your phone along
with you if you move offices or even go on vacation! Also, you can
choose the area code that you want for your phone. So if you do a lot
of business in Yeehaw Junction, FL (Yes, that’s a real place) you could
get an 863 area code so your customers would have a local call even
though your office is in Businessburg, OH (also a real place). Pricing
for Vonage starts at $14.99 a month for 500 minutes, which are good
anytime, anywhere in the US, Canada and Puerto Rico, or you can bump up
to unlimited calling for $24.99 a month. And remember, you don’t have
to pay for a phone line(unless you are using DSL for your high speed
internet). We found the sound quality to be pretty good–better than
most cell phones, but not quite as clear as a regular phone line.
Vonage does have an online setting to configure your sound quality, but
even at the highest quality there was a little bit of lag at times, but
it was definitely usable. You also can check voicemail online and get
email notifications of voicemail. Also, you can get your current phone
number transferred to Vonage, but we experienced problems getting our
number transferred in a timely fashion and we have heard that has been
a problem for other people as well, but that is probably not entirely
Vonage’s fault–local phone providers are typically not excited about
releasing your phone number to a competing company, so we got the
feeling that it wasn’t on their top priority list. We also found that
we had to pay an $80 cancellation fee later to stop the service–so
make sure you read the fine print!
Well,
there you have it. Three low cost phone solutions for your home or
business. Again, they may not be for everybody, but definitely worth
checking out.
One of the shopping cart systems we utilize often is OSCommerce,
for many reasons. One, it’s been around a long time and is very stable
and there are a lot of plugin contributions readily available. Two,
it’s open source. And three, we work regularly with an amazing
OSCommerce programmer – Monika, who recently wrote this book.
It
does a great job of providing easy to understand instructions on how to
modify the OSCommerce shopping cart. I recommend it heartily and if you
are interested in customizing OSCommerce – this is a must have book.
In this edition we will be discussing
free anti-adware, anti-virus, anti-spyware and other utilities to make
your computer run more smoothly.
Sure, you’ve heard about
adware, spyware and computer virii, and no doubt you’ve experienced the
frustation that these little nasties can produce when they infest your
computer. But what can you do to protect yourself?
1. Don’t open
emails from people you don’t recognize. This is probably one of the
most common methods that virii and spyware spread. If possible, set
your email program settings so that they will not automatically
download images or run scripts. These things can either cause
infestation, or confirm to spammers that your email address is a
legitimate one.
2. Don’t use Internet Explorer. Most online
virii and spyware is designed to take advantages of security holes in
IE. There are plenty of other browsers out there that provide just as
good of a browsing experience(if not better). Here are links to a few
that are free for you to download and install:
3.
Avoid clicking on pop up banners or other annoying advertisements as
you surf. These ads are often misleading and can trick you into
installing unwanted software on your computer.
4. Be weary of
emails you get promising SUPER deals, or emails claiming that an
account you have with your bank, Paypal or eBay is about to be closed
out if you don’t click on this link and update your profile. This is
usually a trick to get your account information. If you are concerned
that an account of yours is in poor standing, contact the company
directly by phone or from a website you know to be theirs.
5.
Regularly update your operating system. Windows, MacOS, and Linux all
provide means to automatically update your system periodically. These
updates often fix security holes.
6. Regularly run an antivirus
program and make sure to schedule it to download recent virus
definitions. Here are a few free antivirus programs, but there are many
good ones to choose from that are reasonably priced, as well.
7.
Spyware is software that gets onto your computer and monitors the sites
that you visit and can even log data you type in(like credit card
numbers!). The worst part is most antivirus softeware won’t remove it.
So it is also important that you regularly run spyware removal
software. Here are a few free alternatives:
So hopefully these tips will arm you for the war against spyware, adware and computer virii.
Also,
Technigrafa is proud to announce that we now provide web hosting plans
starting at only $20 a month! Our server is at a class A data center in
Research Triangle Park and is backed up daily and backed up off-site on
a weekly basis. Our plans include many of the features that other
hosting companies charge extra for, like spam blocking and antivirus
support for your email.