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11/10/2008

Slow economy has businesses adjusting sales methods

Good economy or bad economy, sales have to be made. But when times are tough, how do you get buyers to pull the trigger and say “yes” to what you have to offer? Three veteran salespeople give their perspectives here on what needs to be accomplished to make a sale during these near-recessionary times.

Times are getting tougher. Making sales is harder. What are most salespeople doing? Nothing a whole lot different from what they did when times were good. The reason: They probably don’t know what to do differently. You need to help them. Here are some tips to flourish during these tough economic times. Read the rest of this article.

Posted at 8:13 AM by Chad Massaker | Category: Business & Tech | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

11/5/2008

Change the Wallpaper Screen on Windows XP & Vista Logon Pages

Stardock has a great utility called LogonStudio that lets you change the traditional blue login screens for XP and Vista. You can choose from a few preloaded images, download additional images from a gallery site, or use your own.

You can download the free software from the links below:

LogonStudio for Windows XP

LogonStudio for Windows Vista

Have fun!

Posted at 10:31 PM by Chad Massaker | Category: Cool Tools | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

10/22/2008

Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business

Over the past decade, however, a different sort of free has emerged. The new model is based not on cross-subsidies — the shifting of costs from one product to another — but on the fact that the cost of products themselves is falling fast. It's as if the price of steel had dropped so close to zero that King Gillette could give away both razor and blade, and make his money on something else entirely. (Shaving cream?)

You know this freaky land of free as the Web. A decade and a half into the great online experiment, the last debates over free versus pay online are ending. In 2007 The New York Times went free; this year, so will much of The Wall Street Journal. (The remaining fee-based parts, new owner Rupert Murdoch announced, will be "really special ... and, sorry to tell you, probably more expensive." This calls to mind one version of Stewart Brand's original aphorism from 1984: "Information wants to be free. Information also wants to be expensive ... That tension will not go away.")... Read the rest of the article (wired.com)

And here is something of a rebuttal. (internetevolution.com)

Posted at 8:59 AM by Chad Massaker | Category: Business & Tech | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

Computer Keyboards Betray User Keystrokes to Radio Eavesdroppers

Two Swiss security researchers from the Security and Cryptography Laboratory at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale De Lausanne have published a video demonstrating how the electronic emanations from wired computer keyboards can be deciphered to reveal the user's keystrokes.

Using a laptop connected to a PS/2 keyboard, one of the researchers in the video typed the words, "Trust No One," in a nod to fans of The X-Files. The video then shows a program receiving data from an eavesdropping antenna and then converting that data into the typed words... Read the rest of the article

Posted at 8:57 AM by Chad Massaker | Category: Business & Tech | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

10/17/2008

You Weren't Meant to Have a Boss

I found this article on a blog entry at CareerEco, a web site run by my friend Gayle Oliver-Plath. It's a little long, but a very good read. It offers some excellent perspective.

I began to suspect this after spending several years working with startup founders. I've now worked with over 200 of them, and I've noticed a definite difference between programmers working on their own startups and those working for large organizations. I wouldn't say founders seem happier, necessarily; starting a startup can be very stressful. Maybe the best way to put it is to say that they're happier in the sense that your body is happier during a long run than sitting on a sofa eating doughnuts.

Though they're statistically abnormal, startup founders seem to be working in a way that's more natural for humans.

I was in Africa last year and saw a lot of animals in the wild that I'd only seen in zoos before. It was remarkable how different they seemed. Particularly lions. Lions in the wild seem about ten times more alive. They're like different animals. I suspect that working for oneself feels better to humans in much the same way that living in the wild must feel better to a wide-ranging predator like a lion. Life in a zoo is easier, but it isn't the life they were designed for...Read the rest of this article

Posted at 10:16 AM by Chad Massaker | Category: Business & Tech | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

9/26/2008

Surf Web Sites On Your Windows PocketPC Like an IPhone

When Apple's IPhone came out, one of the first things that scored a 10 on the coolness factor was the ability to view whole web sites on the device versus Windows PocketPC that could generally only browse sites especially formatted for mobile devices, or just doesn't show them correclty at all . IPhone did this by showing a very condensed view of the site on the IPhone's small screen, that lets you zoom in to certain sections of the web site. Moving around the page is similiar to a drag and drop. On the IPhone, you just hold you finger on the screen and then move it across the screen to the desired loccation on the web page. This obviously works easier if you're already familiar with the layout of the site you are visiting.

Now Windows Mobile users have this same functionality through 3rd Party Browser called Skyfire.

With Skyfire you can move around the web page similiar to the IPhone. Take your Stylus (or finger) and press and hold and then slide. Tap once to zoom in on a section. The browser seems fully functional: you can log into web sites like LinkedIn or Facebook, watch videos on YouTubes and muc more.

Skyfire is currently in beta, but I have had no issues using it so far.

See the demo of how it works here. http://www.skyfire.com/product/demo

This cool tool comes compliments of Carceron's Cheif Technology Officer, Jeffrey Lee.

Posted at 10:33 AM by Chad Massaker | Category: Cool Tools | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

Use Your Mouse Less: Keyboard Shortcuts in Microsoft Office

As you become more of a power use, you'll come ot realize that having to take your hands off the keyboard to use the mouse briefly get's old after a while, especially for documents with heavy formatting.

Get to learn this powerful keyboard shortcuts for Microsoft Office to become more efficient. Most people use MS Word as their default email editor in Outlook (whether you realize this or not, this is the default - if you get the red underlines for misspellings, that means that Word id your default email editor). This means that many of these short cuts in Word apply to formatting email messages.

My most favorite Outlook shortcuts are:

ALT+S = Send Email (like clicking the send button)
ALT+R = Reply
ALT+L = Reply to All
ALT+W = Forward
F5 Key = Send/Recieve Button

These four commands come in real handy when your checking a lot of email at one time.

Common shortcuts

CTRL+O Open

CTRL+Z Undo

CTRL+Y Redo. In some programs, if there is nothing to redo, this repeats the last action.

CTRL+S Save

CTRL+P Print

ALT+F4 Close the active window

CTRL+B Bold

CTRL+I Italic

CTRL+U Underline

CTRL+R Align right

CTRL+E Align center

CTRL+L Align left

CTRL+C Copy

CTRL+X Cut

CTRL+V Paste

CTRL+C+CTRL+C Open the clipboard

CTRL+F Find

CTRL+H Replace

CTRL+A Select whole document

F7 Spell checker

SHIFT+F7 Thesaurus

CTRL+SHIFT+S Style box

CTRL+SHIFT+F Font

CTRL+SHIFT+N Change font to Normal style

Keystrokes to move the insertion point around text, or select text:

Press SHIFT+ any of the following keystrokes to select text:

LEFT ARROW	Left one character at a time
RIGHT ARROW	Right one character at a time
DOWN ARROW	Down one line at a time
UP ARROW	Up one line at a time
CTRL+ LEFT ARROW	Left one word at a time
CTRL+ RIGHT ARROW	Right one word at a time
HOME	To the beginning of the current line of text
END	To the end of the current line of text
CTRL+HOME	To the beginning of the document
CTRL+END	To the end of the document
PAGE UP	Up one full screen
PAGE DOWN	Down one full screen
CTRL+PAGE UP	To the beginning of the previous page
CTRL+PAGE DOWN	To the beginning of the next page

Posted at 10:19 AM by Chad Massaker | Category: Outlook Tips & Time Management | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

9/23/2008

How Should One Think About China?

By JP Donlon at CEO Magazine:

The Beijing Olympics are intended to dazzle and for the most part they do. At this writing China leads all others in gold medals won so far. The country intends for this spectacle to showcase its emerging strengths as an economic and political power. Yet there are signs that everything isn’t as it seems. For example, the pretty girl who won fame by singing “Ode to the Motherland” during the opening ceremonies turned out to be miming. Wearing a red dress and pigtails Lin Miaoke charmed international audiences but, according to reports by the BBC, the song was, in fact, sung by seven-year-old Yang Peiyi. The authorities felt the nine-year-old Lin was prettier and the show's musical director said Lin was used in the ceremony because “it was in the best interests of the country.”

Yet China’s economic power is real enough. The country is set to overtake the U.S. as the world’s largest producer of manufactured goods... Read the rest of the article

Posted at 11:40 AM by Chad Massaker | Category: Business & Tech | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

Life After Financial Armageddon

By JP Donlon at CEO Magazine:

Is this the end of capitalism as we know it? A stock market that sees a 504 point dive in one day following bailouts of Fannie and Freddie Mac, Bear Stearns, the demise of Lehman and the terrible takeover of AIG marks a cataclysmic end to the great credit bubble of ‘08. Who’s next? One would like to think that only Henry Paulson knows for sure, but we suspect even he is groping for answers. With each failure since IndyMac several months ago the final shoe is said to have dropped except that this financial crisis is a centipede with many more shoes to go.

The great financier, J. Pierpont Morgan, who had seen several financial crises in his time, once described credit—the lifeblood of any banking system—as “man’s faith in his fellow man.” With each thunderbolt of bad news there seems to be precious little of this remaining. Capital markets could use all the good faith they can muster right now to avoid a deflationary collapse while credit markets adjust. What might help?....Read the rest of the article

Posted at 11:38 AM by Chad Massaker | Category: Business & Tech | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)