Archive for the ‘Business’ Category
Friday, February 8th, 2008
Why Can’t America Vote Right?
Democracy in America is in trouble. For some reason we can’t figure out how to cast votes and count them without blunders, inaccuracy and stupidity. Worst of all, a consensus seems to be forming that computers or electronic ballots are to blame, and that the solution is paper-based voting. Here’s my proposal.
Democrats’ Nightmare: Elite Superdelegates may pick nominee
If neither Illinois Sen. Barack Obama nor New York Sen. Hillary Clinton manages to pull decisively ahead in the next few weeks, the nomination could depend on the convention votes of 796 party leaders, or superdelegates, who are free to ignore the preferences of Democratic voters.
Analyzing the Internet Collapse
When the Internet suddenly collapsed early last Wednesday across the Middle East and into India, it provided a stark reminder of how the Net’s virtual spaces can still be held hostage to real-world events.” And showed “the fragility of the Internet at its choke points.
What This Recession Nonsense Really Means for Us
Recession, shmecession. Everyone keeps blathering on about the dwindling dollar, the deflating markets, and an economy that is sure to dissolve into something obscenely dire any day now. But what does that all really mean and what exactly are we supposed to be doing about it?
10 Mistakes People Make When Starting a Business
What are the common mistakes that new entrepreneurs make and how can you avoid making them yourself? Here is our top 10 list of mistakes people make when starting a business:
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Saturday, February 2nd, 2008
33 Cent Plastic Bag Tax Causes 94% Drop in Use
Reusable cloth shopping bags, like this one at a Superquinn grocery checkout in Dublin, have replaced those stretchy, crinkly plastic shopping bags, which are subject to a 33-cent tax per bag. Ireland introduces 33 cent plastic bag tax. 94% drop within weeks.
Yahoo needs Microsoft’s help
Now we know it wasn’t just a rumor all these months. Microsoft (MSFT) has been seriously thinking about swallowing up Yahoo (YHOO) since way back in 2006. In what would be by far its largest acquisition ever.
Microsoft and Yahoo: Perfect partners?
Certainly, a Microsoft and Yahoo joint search engine would in theory give Google some competition in the search and online ad business. But even a combined Yahoo and Microsoft search proposition would still be a long way behind Google.
The Nation: MoveOn Endorses Obama
The Nation is reporting that MoveOn will endorse Barack Obama, who got 70% of the votes in their online balloting.
80% Efficient Solar Panel?! Works at Night?!
The most expensive, carefully designed, and complicated solar panels in the world operate at about 40% efficiency. That means that, for every bit of sunlight that hits the panel, only 40% of it is turned into electricity.
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Friday, January 18th, 2008
So I broke through to support today. After days and says of no response, I actually got through to an American who knew what to do. If you aren’t familiar with what I am talking about, please read about it.
I first called Sales. I thought that if anyone would answer the phone at a miserable hosting company, Sales would…and they did. Hey, you always have to have enough people to take the money, right? I told the guy that I wanted to cancel my contract for the server because I couldn’t run a company like this. He got quiet and transferred me to the Philippines. The freaking Philippines…AGAIN!!! I am telling you, when you have a real problem, the best person to talk to is one in the Philippines. Yeah, right. I challenge you to find me one person on the planet who likes their customer service coming from the Philippines. Again, they had no idea what I was talking about but actually transferred me to a living, breathing American server technician. The strange thing is that while I was talking to him, I heard all sorts of commotion going on in the background. It was other support techs talking on the telephone. What was this? How did they get through? Do they have the good phone number? I have the regular customer support number as well as the managed server number. I thought I was golden…guess not.
I talked to the tech for a little while, when he put me on hold. While I was on hold, I was downloading some configuration files from the server. I need them for when I transfer the websites over. All of the sudden, the websites started working again. Do you want to know what he did? He restarted Apache. Gee, I think that is what I have been trying to tell this company to do all week. Apparently, when I was optimizing that huge database, the temp directory became very full. The temp directory only holds about 200MBs and the database was over 750MBs. The optimizing filled up the temp directory and locked up the server. Restarting Apache and cleaning out the temp directory is no big deal, but what good is a company if you can’t get in touch with them to get it done?
I have to say, this hosting company has awesome equipment and really great prices. If they only had awesome support, I would be with them forever. That is such a waste.
I called my new hosting company today to have them set up another server over there. Now, let me tell you why I am with this company…they are the IT provider for some pretty serious companies, like Bluetooth, Motorola, Webmail.us, etc… They have managed backup that is real, they have server monitoring, their support is simply fan-freakin-tastic and their equipment is great. Can you tell that I am happy? The new server should be set up by Monday afternoon. This will make five servers in total, but before you think I am crazy, I want to let you know that I will be skinnying them down to just two over time. With this kind of company, I can afford to have more sites on fewer servers. Also, I am having them locate the servers in separate datacenters in different areas of the country, just in case something goes wrong with one datacenter.
So, I guess I know what I am doing next week.
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Wednesday, January 16th, 2008
If there is one thing I have learned from doing this business thing all these years, it is to work with the best companies out there. The problem is, they are kind of a pain in the tush to find. You are bound to get involved with the wrong companies here and there. I sure did.
Today was another day spent transferring two of my websites over to my new hosting company. By the way, this is called website migration. It’s not the most difficult thing in the world to do, but it can take some time if the site is large. At this point in my life, I am very good at it.
I woke up this morning and decided to optimize a few databases that were left on one particular server of mine. One database was rather large…I mean huge. It was a little over 750MB. That’s pretty big. When I began my process, the page hung…the database was too big. This, in turn, took the MySQL server off line. I called support at the wickedly horrible web hosting company (the one I have been moving away from) and couldn’t get through, twice. Then, I called a third time and got through to the Philippines. I swear I have nothing again the Philippines, but I vow to never knowingly do business with a company who uses them for customer support. They are all very nice people. The issue lies with the company not giving these customer support people any authority to do anything on their own. If they are just going to be working the telephone and passing the issues through to the real support department, why not just use the real support department to start off with? I have a real feeling many of these companies are actually losing money by outsourcing their support. That support is enough to drive even the most regular person nuts.
This morning, when the server (yes, the entire server) went down and I finally got through, I explained the problem. I told the girl to reboot the machine. She continued to troubleshoot by reading off her little card. I tried to tell her again just to reboot the machine, when she put me on hold. I waited for about ten minutes when I realized that the same scenario from a few months ago was actually happening again. I decided to hang up the phone and just transfer the sites over to the real hosting company. That, my friend, was the best investment I have ever made. It saved my sanity and saved my hair.
Well, the transfer process is almost complete. The DNS of both sites still has to resolve, but things are looking up. One of the only issues left to deal with is the data loss. I was forced to use my own database backups…one from January 2 and one from December 16. So, if you placed any ads on any of my websites in the past two weeks, please re-register and replace your ads. My apologies.
Here is one word of wisdom for you if you are in this line of business – no matter how much your website hosting company tells you they do backups, backup your databases and files yourself to your own computer. The last time this happened with this company, I was informed that they had no database backup. Nope, they just didn’t and I suppose I would have to travel to the Philippines to argue about it.
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Friday, December 21st, 2007
101 Ways to Monetize Your Blog (Without Irritating Readers)
Blogging is big business these days, with some bloggers reporting six-figure or even million-dollar incomes. There are a number of ways that these bloggers earn such large paychecks, and the best know how to do it in a way that won’t scare off readers. Check out 101 ways that you can earn money from your blog.
Apple has sold 5 million iPhones
Apple has sold 5 million iPhones, according to 9 to 5 Mac, an Apple rumor site. At the iPhone’s launch, Steve Jobs set a public goal of selling 10 million iPhones — next year. With the iPhone only on sale for six months, that means Apple’s already selling its sleek smartphones at 2008 speed.
Firefox 3.0 Beta 2 Is A Win For Linux
Mozilla has released the latest beta of Firefox 3 today, and the Linux efforts behind it are starting to show even more. This release, being a beta, is surprisingly stable. Here’s the killer that makes this beta release amazing: true GTK support.
Norway mandates use of open formats: HTML, ODF and PDF
Government, state and regional agencies, authorities and services may also publish in other formats, but they must always publish in one of these formats. The decree is retroactive, and by 2014 all documents published prior to this decree must have been converted and made available in one of the three formats.
10 great Web site designs/redesigns of 2007
We pick 10 of our favorite site designs and redesigns of 2007.
8 Bold Predictions on Google’s Next Moves
There’s little doubt that Google Inc. is indeed king of online media. In August 2007 alone, Google captured 57% of worldwide market share among search engines, with more than 37 billion search inquiries. Not surprisingly, this dominance has led to endless rumors about where Google is headed next?
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Wednesday, November 28th, 2007
I went to Staples today to get the latest version of Adobe Dreamweaver, which is Dreamweaver CS3.
Just to let you know, I only bought this software after I searched online for open source alternatives to Dreamweaver. I think I came across the top alternatives, but each one had a fault that I didn’t really like. The top choice had a review. The software’s downfall was that it liked to change your code for you, which really isn’t cool. Dreamweaver actually brags about not doing that.
The reason I was looking for alternatives was because the $399 price tag seemed a little hefty for a web editing application. The upgrades are only about $199, so that’s what I will be doing from now on.
I installed the software and gave it a run. Wow, it seemed just like the 2004 version. I am assuming there are a bunch of new features in there, but I most likely won’t use them. I am not into building websites from scratch anymore. There is one thing though…it seems slower than the older version. That could be the Adobe influence of it. Geeez, I remember trying to open GoLive. For big sites, it took a few minutes. But then again, it could be Vista. Everything seems slower in Vista. I noticed that the minute I turned this computer on the day I got it.
I will let you know how it goes.
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Friday, November 16th, 2007
I have had this on my to-do list for a few weeks.
The other day, I ran up to Staples and grabbed the latest version of Microsoft Outlook. I wanted to upgrade because my previous version, Outlook XP, was becoming a little buggy since I got Windows Vista. On the calendar, instead of showing one appointment, it would display one for every year that has passed. If I put one appointment in the calendar in January of 2000 to happen every year, there would be two of them in 2001 and so on.
I also upgraded to Outlook 2007 because I couldn’t find an alternative open source program that would easily sync with my Treo 700. That is all I use it for…contact, tasks and calendar.
It’s pretty good. Things seem kind of slow on it though. I am sure there are many more features in this version, most of which I will never see, because I don’t use it for email.
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Friday, November 16th, 2007
It’s a little windy outside. I am not looking forward to changing the oil in my car all that much. I have to do the oil, rotate the tires and add windshield washer fluid. I should actually clean the car out as well. It’s quite the mess.
Also, today I have to follow up on the whole banking thing. I have been moving some stuff around. I have to follow up on the proposals for this year’s business insurance and apply some termite spray around the perimeter of the foundation.
I guess I should take a shower.
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Thursday, November 15th, 2007
Why English isn’t the only language you should know
Although English is spoken by almost 500 million people around the world, it is impossible to deny how countries such as China, Japan, Russia and India are becoming increasingly important, both in the world of politics and the world of business. Here are some reasons to expand your horizon and learn a new language.
Google: $500,000,000,000 company by 2010?
At the end of 2009, Microsoft would have a market value of about $405 billion and Google’s would be roughly $370 billion. So Google would surpass Microsoft sometime in 2010. If its stock kept appreciating at 34 percent clip annually compared to Microsoft’s 12.5 percent, Google would finish 2010 with a market value of nearly half a trillion dollars.
Top 50 Fastest Growing Women-Led Companies
With women starting businesses at a faster clip than men, here is a list of the top 50 fastest growing women-led companies. Meet the women behind these high-growth businesses.
The Top Entrepreneurs Under 25 Changing the Face of Business
The goal was to find businesses that demonstrate potential for growth and establish the talent of the savvy young people behind them, possibly identifying the next Mark Zuckerberg (of Facebook fame).
How to save money for 18-25 yr. olds
This recent article ran in the October 29, 2007 version of Newsweek. The article gives easy common sense advice from spending, to building credit, and how to make bank on Roth IRA’s.
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Wednesday, November 14th, 2007
To save gas.
Well, it’s good for you too, for a little while. We all need to get out of the house, but I am sure that killing that two hour commute each day would leave a little hair on your head.
So much happens during that commute. I don’t think I need to explain what here, but I will say this…for the past few weeks, I have been taking Thursdays and Fridays off. I have had nice, four day weekends. I don’t think about working at my full time job at all. This past Monday, while I was driving into work, I began getting in a bad mood. I was almost to the job, so maybe that had something to do with it. Also, when I got to work, my left eye started twitching. I have had the twitch the week before, but it went away over the weekend. Hmmm….
I would say the main reason to work at home (if you can), besides saving your sanity, is to save gas. Check out this website for more information on that.
This morning, I passed by the gas station down the road from me. The cheapest gas was priced at $3.11. I fear that it will go up more. I like staying home and not paying for it. Also, when I don’t drive to work, I don’t smell the truck fumes that I have in the past.
Sometimes I wonder what happened to the old days, when people actually used to work in the towns they lived in. They had ten minute commutes. I like the idea of that. This whole commuting for half the day thing is the pits.
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