Why cough up hundreds for Microsoft Office™ when there’s a credible alternative for free? I am writing this blog post on a new laptop PC that I’ve had for a couple of months now. It came preloaded with a trial copy of Microsoft’s omnipotent 2007 Office™ suite of business applications which includes the likes of Word™, Excel™ and PowerPoint™ etc. Great I thought! After all, like millions of others; MS Office is my staple office application when it comes to word processing and... Read Full Story

The Liberalisation of the Internet A new report called ‘The Liberalisation of the Internet’ explores how the Internet will change as a result of it being liberalised and the effect this will have on businesses and consumers. Next year in 2010, the geography of the Internet is set to expand significantly, as the body that oversees the structure of the Internet: Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (), will liberalise the market for domain name extensions (e.g. the .com or .co.uk... Read Full Story

Checking Email in the Office is a Daily Routine Taking your coat off and putting the kettle on aside; what are the initial things you start to do when you first boot up your computer on a morning? For most of us I suspect the first thing we take a look at is our email when we start to trawl through the morning’s In box. However for some of us and I include myself in this, there’s an additional and increasing level of competition for our attention first thing in the morning thanks ... Read Full Story

The technique of using customer testimonials within a sales process as a means of demonstrating credibility for a particular product or service, has been around for a long time. But quite frankly is the technique worth the effort? Clearly for many companies it’s a great way connecting with their customers and finding common ground between their product and target market. Here in the UK; the price comparison website Confused.com has been running a a number of TV advertising campaigns w... Read Full Story

LinkedIn - Social Networking Site for Professionals I’ve been on LinkedIn, the social networking website for professionals and business folk; for about 3 years now, but it’s only recently in the last 12 months or so that I’ve begun to pay any attention to it and have started to put some real effort into it as a networking tool. To be fair my efforts are paying off and I find at its base level, the site is a great tool at helping me to capitilise upon my off-line business net... Read Full Story

“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” Benjamin Disraeli once famously quoted. This is one of my favourite quotations that I often drop into conversation when I’m presented with a load of which may look great at first glance: particularly if presented in a pie-chart or line graph format, but don’t actually tell me anything! However, in the world of sales and marketing; the use of meaningful is a great way to gain the attention of a pote... Read Full Story

Due to popular demand, we’ll again be running a workshop on the practicalities of using the social networking phenomenon that is Twitter to help businesses engage with their customers and to help them generate interest. Twitter in Bitesize Chunks Twitter for Business at the Shine The workshop will be in two parts – each an hour long and are designed to run inconjunction with each other. Each workshop will be held over two lunchtime sessions at the Harehills Shine venue in Leeds ... Read Full Story

Why be tied down with POP3 Email? If you are a small business that finds its reliance upon the use of a single computer for the management of its POP3 email a bit of a pain then read on for a solution? Perhaps you use Microsoft’s Outlook™ in the office for your day-to-day emailing needs but also want to access all your email features from home or from another computer whilst on the move, but can’t? Simple you may think, simply log into your account’s webmail facility when yo... Read Full Story

Twitter is now worth $1 billion Imagine it on the BBC’s Dragon’s Den show. Peter Jones et al have just heard a pitch from for a couple of geeks asking for a $100 million investment in their dot-com business which since its conception three and a half years ago, has: Made no money Can’t demonstrate a business model that will generate revenue in the future. Appears to be nothing more than a glorified instant messaging system Relies on third-party developers to build applicat... Read Full Story

Most website owners are aware of the importance of gaining one way links to their site from other websites when it comes to influencing how high Google ranks pages from their websites in its (Search Engine Results Pages). Google’s PageRank™ in a Nut Shell! For those not in the know, Google assigns a value called a PageRank™ value on a scale of 0-10, to every page it indexes across the web. The higher the PageRank value a web page is assigned, then the higher Google perceives the subj... Read Full Story