Entertaining clients in a pinch...

A sports event is an easy place to take (or send) clients to for entertainment. In a lot of cases (particularly for football), tickets can be hard to come by because the good events are sold out.

There are numerous other ways to get tickets though - searching eBay/Craigslist, brokers, etc, etc. Of course, it is imperative to find a source you trust. One such service that I've used and have been happy with is Underdog Tickets.

 

Thanks!

Eric.

Remote computer access (https://secure.logmein.com/home.asp)

A couple of friends pointed me to this service and it is just awesome. LogMeIn has a free service that enables you to control your PC remotely (a la gotomypc) and they have a premium service that enables VPN.

I'm using the premium service (it is only $5/month) and it is amazing. The installation is really easy and the connection is so fast it is really unbelievable.

If you're considering any remote PC option, these guys are definitely worth having a look at.

Thanks!

Eric.

Backing up your files with http://www.carbonite.com/

I got a trial of this service with a new computer that I got from Dell not too long ago and it really seems like a great value.

Carbonite installs a service on your computer and transparently backs up your files. It takes a few days to get all your files up to their servers.

The cost seems too good to be true - it's only about $50 USD per year and that includes all the files you can backup.

Definitely something to check out if you're looking for a backup solution.

Thanks!

Eric.

Capturing whiteboards (http://www.scanr.com/)

A friend of mine told me about this site and I've found it really useful.
It's pretty common to use a camera to take a picture of a whiteboard to save its contents. If you send that picture to http://www.scanr.com/, they will apply OCR to it and mail you back the results.

Thanks!

Eric.

Protecting those easy-to-lose USB drives (http://www.truecrypt.org/)

A friend of mine told me about this. Their site is a bit difficult to read, but the True Crypt project is an open source project that encrypts an area of a USB drive. Any data added to that area is password protected. If you lose the USB drive, that data is inaccessible without the password.

Thanks!

Eric.

Sound like a big shot on the phone (www.ringcentral.com)

There are plenty of sites like this, so I can't really say RingCentral is better than anyone else.

The idea behind services like this is that they give you a 800 or local number.

Behind that number you can setup 'big company' things like voice mail boxes, user directories, etc.

Even if you just forward all of your calls to your cell phone, you'll add a more professional presence to your company.

Thanks!

Eric.

Fax machines are so yesterday .... (www.efax.com)

I signed up for www.efax.com and have been really happy with it. The faxes you receive come in as email and they have a handy client application to send your faxes. You need a scanner to scan in a paper document of course.

Thanks!

Eric.

Small biz tips - good stock design

Hey guys,

Well, it's been almost a year since I left the MotherShip and find fame and fortune on my own :)

I have by no means become a small business expert over that short period of time, but I've discovered a few tips and had a few tips given to me about things that I thought I would share.

For some reason I had blogger's block this summer, so I started writing these up on a Facebook group I started. I'll try to keep these synchronized.

First, I'll catch up...

Custom design work can get pricey, but you can do a reasonable job by working with stock templates.

All of these sites are reasonably priced and loaded with good, high-quality stock design artifacts

• www.pixellogo.com has really large selection of stock logos that you can customize for your own needs. They are all between $25 - $250 in price.
  www.hypertemplates.com has a great selection of super high-quality web site templates. Everything from PHP to Flash.
• www.istockphoto.com has a huge selection of stock photography, icons and vector graphics. They do a credit based system that is quite reasonable.
• www.flashden.net is a very small site, but they have some really nice, high quality stock Flash designs.
• www.iconshock.com is a smaller site as well, but they sell really nice icon sets (more expensive than others, but very high quality). They also do pretty good custom logo work for a reasonable price.

Thanks!

Eric.