On Show 627 Craig spoke with the following guests.

Chris Holbert the CEO at SecuraTrac joins Craig to discuss a new technology to the market that brings peace of mind to families, protecting children, the elderly and pets by allowing us to know where our loved ones are located at all times. SecuraTrac® develops, markets, and sells a suite of products dedicated to bringing families closer together and improving employee safety through GPS location based technology and state-of-the-art, easy-to-use websites.

Stuart Putney the CEO and Founder of Mobylyng joins Craig to discuss HTML5 technology and its advantages for social games for mobile devices and social networks. They will also discuss which Moblyng Games have just launched on the Facebook platform.

Rachel Carollo is the Senior Director of Marketing for Fandango joins Craig to discuss the nation’s leading moviegoer destination and a unit of NBCUniversal. Fandango, the leader in the moviegoing mobile and tablet space, has seen nearly 20 million downloads of its various apps, which have won three 2011 Webby Awards.  It seems that more and more moviegoers are choosing apps as their preferred means of getting movie tickets and information.

Mark Guarnera the Executive Vice President at Vendini joins Craig to discuss the industry’s first enterprise cloud based ticketing system. Thousands of organizations utilize Vendini’s solutions for event promotion, ticket sales, and box office management of operations. The company’s suite of applications includes a fully integrated marketing system to promote events via email and social networks like Facebook and Twitter.

Brian Curry the VP of Product and Business Strategy at You Send it joins Craig to discuss business content collaboration. YouSendIt helps enterprises and business professionals streamline collaboration by enabling them to instantly sync and access content in the cloud and easily send files, share folders, and sign documents from anywhere — the desktop, Web or mobile devices.

Josh Koppel is the co-founder and Chief Creative Officer at Scroll Motion joins Craig to discuss reshaping how people experience digital information and entertainment. ScrollMotion believes technology should enable, not dictate, the creative process, they offer end-to-end solutions that help companies create and distribute across digital devices without losing what makes their brands unique.

Keith Smith the President and COO at CorFire joins Craig to discuss the mobile commerce business. CorFire offers mobile technology platforms to financial institutions, mobile network operators (MNOs), payment processors, card issuers, retailers, and other technology innovators that enable delivery of mobile commerce to the mobile phone today.  Its three core technology offerings include its Trusted Services Manager (TSM) platform, a robust mobile wallet platform, and a state-of-the-art suite of mobile marketing platform.

Gregg Dunn the VP of Project Management at Sybase joins Craig to discuss Mobile Payments. Sybase 365 is the global leader in enabling mobile information services for mobile operators, financial institutions and enterprises. The recent launch of the Google Wallet has gotten the industry a buzz about what the future of mobile payments, and a mobile wallet will look like. The mobile wallet is a technology that enables consumers to transact, interact and engage with their favorite brands

Adam Kotkin the CEO at Apps Genius joins Craig to discuss Apps and Social Gaming. Apps Genius creates innovative social games and mobile applications that let you play together with real-world friends and family using the infrastructure built by social and wireless networks. The company’s cross-platform gaming and mobile applications allow users to play and interact with the same people such user would play cards, board games or go bowling within the real world, regardless of the network they are on.

Kevin Stapleford the President of V2 Broadcasting joins Craig to discuss changing the way businesses digitally connect with their customer inside of their store. V2’s proprietary The Neighborhood® shapes a unique digital customer experience that includes customized entertainment and games along shopping content, product information and social interaction right to customers’ mobile devices.

Beth Murphy the Chief Marketing Officer at Hotels Tonight joins Craig to discuss their same-day hotel booking app that brings you the best, last-minute deals. HotelTonight is made-for-mobile and available as a free download in the Apple App Store and Android Marketplace. Perfect for business travelers, vacationers and locals alike, HotelTonight brings you deals in top hotels.

Image via Wikipedia

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Although it’s been hung up in the courts, there appears to be some forward momentum towards Google finishing its project to digitize all the world’s libraries.

The project hit a halt in 2005 when publishers, authors and others disagreed over Google’s policies regarding abandoned, copyrighted works.

The judge in the case supports Google’s efforts to digitize 100 million+ books (there are 15 million already scanned).  Having digital books online provides more access to great information to society at large, which can only help.

Related articles

• Authors’ Guild Sues Universities Over Book Digitization Project (wired.com)
• Authors To Universities: Give Up Your Google Books (paidcontent.org)
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• NY judge gives Google, lawyers more time to talk (boston.com)

It’s even pain if some clients insists a copy by snail mail. We have come up a simple solution to blending century old book keeping to new technology. Keeping financial record should be easy, fast, simple (and perhaps even fun), but still detailed enough to satisfy your accountant.

We have seen many people / companies are struggling with tools like Word and Excel for invoicing or with QuickBooks which is completely bloated for their needs.

Here an alternative and some relief to those who raises frequent invoices to clients. FreshBooks has made it very simple so that you create and send invoices in seconds. FreshBooks simplifies the billing process, transforms the way entrepreneurs and their customers look at invoicing.

FreshBooks is an easy to use online invoicing service that re-invents how professionals, freelancers and small businesses invoice their clients and helps them save time, get paid faster and look super professional. FreshBooks was built from the ground up to address the highest level invoicing needs/pains of our customers – saving time, getting paid faster and looking super professional. Your data deserves to be safe, secure, and accessible to you.

It also keeps track time and expenses. You can send your invoices by email and even by snail mail depending on your client’s requirement. You can automate the invoices and do a follow-up reminders for those who have not paid. All these are possible and automated too to make your life much easier. You can import and export your data and prepare a report too.

FreshBooks has tie ups with major online payment channels such as Paypal, Authorize.net and many more.

Save time:

If you only send 3 invoices a month, this new service will be a huge help because it will be so easy. No envelopes or stamps to buy. No trips to the mailbox. Sometimes it takes you weeks to get around to actually mailing your invoices. Now there will be no time wasted between when you want to invoice your client and when you do invoice them.

Time spent to do billing has been reduced. On average – 4.5 hours a week / billing cycle. Payment waiting time is cut by 14 days, on an average.

Save Money:

Take a moment and imagine you (or your client) have 5,000 clients that you manually send invoices to every month using the ground postal service. To mail all those invoices probably costs around $2,500/month in postage, plus materials, plus time and effort. The total expense is probably about $50,000/year plus a whole lot of wasted time. Ouch. How do you stop that kind of pain? By helping transition those 5,000 ground mail invoice clients to 5,000 online billing clients and by transitioning them smoothly.

Imagine saving about $50,000, just by sending your invoices by email instead of by post. It really could be that easy. The trick is to get your clients from “snail mail” to email to save that money, and that’s where FreshBooks comes in. That’s what we are going to help you, your clients and their clients do.

Most of the Freelancers, professionals and small businesses make up a massive market place. But they also make up one of the most under-serviced markets because individually they are small. People from 100+ countries are using FreshBooks and then nos are increasing.

You can test it before you become a FreshBooks user. To know about the different pricing options, click here.

Mike McDerment
CEO
FreshBooks

Mike McDerment – A biography

Mike McDerment is the CEO and co-founder of FreshBooks. An entrepreneur with two successful start-ups to his name, Mike talks faster than he writes and can deftly juggle and keep his eye on hundreds of balls at one time. Mike is a founder of the mesh conference, lecturer at Humber College and a frequent speaker at Internet conferences. See what Mike’s up to by reading his blog or catching his latest Twitter updates. Mike loves his work, and would rather be outdoors than inside.

We know billing is a pain. We know you have tried tools like QuickBooks, Excel and Word to create your invoices and manage your books. That’s why we built FreshBooks – because you need something that works well and gets the job of billing your clients done – without the pain. What pain you ask? The QuickBooks pain of having to do 100 steps to get one thing done. The Excel pain of poorly formatted invoices. The Word pain of keeping track of who has paid and how much remains outstanding.

We designed FreshBooks to attack those problems, and to create a solution that made it easy to handle billing and invoices.

According to government statistics, there are over 24 million businesses in the United States with fewer than 500 employees and they are the back bone of American economy. Most of the small business owners doesn’t have a website and don’t have the knowledge of how to market their products and services.

As more and more consumers turn to the internet to find products and services, these small business owners are faced with lot of challenges – online marketing, web presence, advertisement, yellow directories, global reaches, e-commerce, market survey, etc.

In order to meet these business challenges, John Wall’s Innuity has come up a good solution exclusively for small business owners. Innuity offers Software as a Service (SaaS) platform – which designs, acquires and integrates software applications to deliver solutions for small business.

A disparity exists, however, between consumer practice and small business response. While nearly 75% of U.S. consumers use the Internet as a source when shopping for goods and services, less than 10% of advertising dollars are spent online, and fully half of all small businesses don’t even have a website.

Innuity is a Software as a Service (SaaS) company that designs and integrates applications to deliver solutions specifically targeted to small businesses from sole proprietors working from home, to local family doctors, to neighborhood restaurants, and almost everything in between.

The company’s Internet technology is based on an affordable, on-demand model that allows small businesses to interact simply with customers, business partners and vendors and efficiently manage their business. Using Innuity’s on-demand applications, small businesses can grow their revenues, reach and serve customers and run everyday operations.

Innuity currently has two operating divisions, Promotion and Commerce, each of which is focused on a critical business process. The applications and solutions offered by the Promotion division help small businesses market and promote their products and services, while the offerings of the Commerce division can facilitate and improve a small business’ selling processes and transaction processing capabilities.

Innuity delivers its small business information system solutions through its Internet technology platform – Innuity Velocity. The Velocity platform provides small businesses the opportunity to choose applications that are right for their businesses – individually or as an integrated package – with minimum initial start-up costs and maintenance.

With Innuity’s use-based pricing, small businesses pay a monthly subscription fee for the applications or integrated packages that address three major small business life stages: Getting started, growth and profitability.

For years, many small business owners spent much of their advertising dollars on traditional media such as yellow page listings or print advertising in local newspapers. (Some small businesses even choosing outrageous names for the sole purpose of getting ahead of the competition in alphabetic listings.) In the online marketplace, small businesses often lag behind local competition and the bigger e-tailers due to lack of computer know-how and an inability to adapt their messaging and optimize potential to be seen by new customers.

There are dozens of ways for small businesses to distinguish themselves and be seen by online consumers from targeted online advertising campaigns to enhanced search engine optimization.

With Innuity’s LeadConnect, businesses can be found quickly and easily by online consumers searching for applicable local goods and services. The LeadConnect service provides a simple-to-use system to gather key business data from business owners and distribute that information to the major local search engines and yellow page directories, including Google, Yahoo, and MSN, and twenty-seven more.

Innuity’s Promotion division connects businesses with customers who are most likely to buy their particular products and services – helping generate new customers as well as grow existing customer revenue. The division currently includes two business lines: Small Business Online Marketing & Search Engine Marketing.

The Small Business Online Marketing business line provides affordable solutions that comprehensively and immediately promote small businesses online and rapidly build strong customer bases.

With Innuity’s online marketing solutions, current and new customers of small businesses can find small businesses online quickly and easily via local search results and pay-per-click ads; learn about small businesses’ product and service offerings via clear, compelling and easy-to-navigate websites; and purchase a merchant’s products and services online, with ease and efficiency. Small Business Online Marketing features the following core products:

LeadConnect™: Drives top local search rankings for Innuity’s customers in the major search engines. Develops enhanced online local business profiles, places customized business profiles in one centralized location and automatically distributes these business profiles to major search engines and yellow page directories including Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask, Citysearch, YP Guides and YellowPages.com.

Business Websites: Design, implementation and delivery of websites to effectively market small businesses online, provide successful customer interaction and help current and prospective customers learn about the business.

eCommerce Websites: Design, implementation and delivery of websites with safe and secure online stores, and creation and maintenance of compelling online storefronts — providing a quick, thorough and efficient way to sell products online.

Pay-Per-Click Advertising: Identify, analyze and select high-impact keywords; buy sponsored listings, advertising space, in places such as Google for identified keywords and keyword phrases; and rapidly deliver highly qualified leads.

The Search Engine Marketing business line delivers higher-end, interactive marketing agency capabilities for businesses seeking comprehensive online marketing solutions.
 SEM offerings help businesses design and implement in-depth search engine marketing strategies; deliver and convert highly qualified leads to customers; and develop higher natural rankings on search engines for clients’ keywords, transforming keywords and websites into long-term client assets. Search Engine Marketing features the following core products:

• Search Engine Optimization: Designed to deliver high natural search engine results (rankings) for carefully selected, high-impact keywords at a fraction of the cost for premium, paid keyword search engine placement. Continuous optimization efforts transform websites into long-term assets.
• Pay-Per-Click Advertising: Identify, analyze and select high-impact keywords; buy sponsored listings, advertising space, on search engines for identified keywords and keyword phrases; and quickly deliver highly qualified leads.

Innuity’s Commerce division provides the operational capability for processing, managing and supporting commerce transactions between small businesses, their online and offline customers, vendors and business partners.

The Merchant Services business line’s offerings deliver complete, end-to-end payment and processing solutions for merchants — bringing faster credit capabilities to Innuity’s customers.

Providing all the functionality and support needed to conduct bank card services, Merchant Services offers a thorough merchant solution  including merchant approval software, bank card acquiring and comprehensive merchant life cycle management products; convenient and easy-to-use payment acceptance and processing solutions that are fully functional with multiple payment acceptance methods; and seamless payment engine delivery. The Merchant Services business line delivers three principal offerings – Merchant Life Cycle Management, Bank Card Acquiring and Gateway.

Merchant Life Cycle Management (MLCM) products provide rapid merchant account application processing, real time credit scoring, board automation, contract origination, settlement data, risk management and profitability and residual management. MLCM products take merchant applications from the prospect stage through account set-up and boarding; then advance the merchant process to total terminal set-up, transaction processing and detailed daily reporting. The result is a streamlined, integrated and seamless user experience.

The Bank Card Acquiring (BCA) program provides the ability to accept retail credit cards — collecting payment from consumers’ credit cards or debit cards for goods and services sold. We have partnered with J.P. Morgan Chase &  Co., the nation’s largest merchant processing bank, to provide timely, secure and reliable payment processing capabilities and technology.

The Gateway offerings provide eCommerce, mail order, telephone order and virtual point-of-sale transaction processing. To know more about Gateway, click here.

You can click on these links to get more information on innuity, LeadConnect and YpGuides.

John Wall
CEO
Innuity

John Wall – A biography

John Wall is the CEO of Innuity and is an articulate proponent of American small business as well as an online industry expert.

A well-known technology entrepreneur, John Wall founded and grew his first company, Wall Data, to a $150 million, publicly held company.  During his 17-year leadership and CEO tenure, he transformed a fledging enterprise into a connectivity powerhouse and built dominant enterprise acceptance for his RUMBA product line brand.

John founded Vista.com (now renamed Innuity) in 1999 to reach out again to a vastly underserved market from a technology standpoint — small business. His vision now is to help small businesses 10x their business.
A technologist as well as company builder, John believes in the power of breakthrough technologies, strong teams, clear priorities, and dedication to exceeding customer expectations. Like other committed and long-term entrepreneurs, John is most interested in building a company that has a profound and lasting market impact.

John is a civic leader in his Seattle home town and has been chairman of the Washington Software Alliance and the Digital Blackboard Foundation, and board director for the Corporate Council for the Arts. He is currently on the visiting committee for the University of Washington’s Physics Department. John holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Northern Arizona University.

She feels that some of the causes of low productivity in a small business are as follows:

• Burnout / Stress- According to the American Institute of Stress, 40% of workers reported their job was very or extremely stressful, and 26 percent of those workers said they were “often or very often burned out or stressed by their work.”
• Poor/rigid working conditions
• Management Style
• Employee Motivation

NTM / Sherean counteracts these low productivity triggers by creating an environment that is flexible, supportive, and creative.  NTM understand that businesses have a tremendous impact on their environment. They believe it’s their responsibility to minimize that impact and practice good green policies. Technology also plays a major part…

Environment: creating an environment that is dynamic and flexible to her employees’ lifestyle, but still receptive to the business needs.”   NTM is not any less competitive, and everyone is just as serious about their work as if they were still at their super corporate jobs.  NTM is focused on Work-Life Balance. NTM is a kid friendly environment.

Non-toxic cleaning: They have selected a janitorial services company that uses only non-toxic, green-friendly cleaning supplies.

Creativity- NTM injects creativity into its modus operandi, especially when dealing with employees. It is important to have employees with hybrid skill sets. For example, during slower months such as the summer, the NTM team is always engaged because they all share equal responsibility in a project- they do not operate in a silo.

Flexibility- Employees are a business’ lifeblood.  Creating flexible work options such as Telecommuting and Job Sharing fosters an environment that addresses individual needs/concerns, celebrates team work, increases productivity and even enforces social responsibility.  All of NTM employees telecommute at least part of the time.  They’ve found this to be not just good environmental policy, but good business.  NTM employees are happier and more productive by incorporating telecommuting in their actions.

Recycle/Reduce: In addition to recycling paper, NTM strive to manage all accounts electronically so we don’t use much paper in the first place.  Their book keepings are happening online and the book keeper only comes for meeting.

Commercial Printers: While NTM use a variety of printers, the one they contract with most often uses vegetable-based inks (primarily soy), paper that is produced from 60% recovered paper, and paper that is milled without harmful dioxin.

You can take advantage of today’s technology.  Equip your employees with the right tools.  Webinars and podcasts are excellent for business development and meetings with clients.  Social networking is excellent for recruiting and initiating strategic alliances.  Embrace the new tools created to increase productivity for your industry.

Some example of great tools include:

Social Media Productivity- Drupal is a free software package that allows an individual or a community of users to easily publish, manage and organize a wide variety of content on a website.  Another productivity tools is Joomla.  Both are Free software packages.

Clearspace- Clearspace is enterprise collaboration software built from the ground up for teams, companies, and communities looking for an easy and productive way to work with each other — without time or location limitations. Eliminate redundant conversations, meetings, emails, and ideas by opening doors to new co-workers, partners, and customers.

Webinars / Podcasts are great for business development and meetings.  Software such as Adobe Connect or Webex make the transition to virtual meetings dynamic and easy to create.

Linkedin- is great for recruiting and networking and building strategic alliances.

GroupHub or Basecamp are excellent tools for project management.  Basecamp is a web-based tool that lets you manage and track projects (or simply ideas) and quickly create client/project extranets.  Basecamp solves this problem by providing tools tailored to improve the communication between people working together on a project.  GroupHub is a creative design community. A collection of individuals and businesses drawn together by a desire to create, design and innovate.

You can plan your meetings and events at  Open Table or Cvent.  OpenTable is the leading supplier of reservation, table management and guest management software for restaurants. This is an ideal place for lunch meetings.  Cvent provides Online Software for Event Management, Web Surveys, Email Marketing, Reservations, listings and ticket sales.

ACT CRM is the #1 selling contact and customer manager that helps you organize contact information, manage daily responsibilities, and communicate more effectively to improve your productivity.  With over 2.7 million users and 41,000 corporate customers, ACT! is renowned for being easy to learn and use, and is an effective solution for anyone who regularly works with contacts.

Constant Contact is an Email marketing software that makes it easy to create professional HTML email campaigns with no tech skills.  Whether you’re looking to send an email newsletter, a high-impact email promotion, an email event invitation, an online survey, or build your email list, try Constant Contact.

Productivity remains at an all time high at NTM.  It’s super-low churn rate

Sherean Malekzadeh Allen
President
New Thought Marketing, Inc

Sherean Malekzadeh Allen -  A biography

Sherean Malekzadeh Allen, internationally recognized advertising, sales and marketing expert, is Founder and President of New Thought Marketing, Inc.  She is one of the early internet marketing pioneers, award-winning writer and television producer. Media and world-class companies including FOX, PC Magazine, CNN International, Jones Lang LaSalle, IBM, CBS and MTV have featured Sherean’s work and continually seek her expertise for real-world solutions to maximize market opportunities; integrate new media and digital marketing strategies.

About New Thought Marketing:

New Thought Marketing was founded as Sherean Malekzadeh’s way of sharing smart people with companies she believes in.

The consultants give clients the marketing and sales tools to grow.  They really love working with second-stage entrepreneurs: successful companies beyond the start up phase who now want more. NTM graduate them to the next level, and then train them to stay on course with their own people.

NTM do it while balancing life and work.  Since founding the company in 2001, Sherean has collected senior level marketing, advertising, sales and creative folks who simply want to adjust their work schedules to make room for family or themselves. So instead of being tied to one company, or out of the workforce entirely, they work for the clients.

Here is a small piece of information shared by Andrew S. Field. Andrew is the President and CEO of Printing for less.com. He feels as a small business owners you can save yourself, your employees and your customers time and money by doing small things. Let us look at one by one.

You can leverage technology in all your dealings. You can buy your supplies online. Some of the administrative support functions such as banking, paying the bills can be automated through online. You can buy your marketing materials such as website, logo design to printing and mailing lists. Printing for less.com is one such company, which provides all these services online. You don’t need to step out on your vehicle and go to the printer to get all the works done. Printing for less.com can do all these work for you online. You can also develop your downline to work smarter. During slow periods, you can take advantage of low-cost online training if relevant. This makes your staff get motivated and do more for you.

You can use technology to make it easy for your customers. You can save their precious time and worries. If you put all your goods and services online, it is available to your customers 24X7 even if you are not there. Some of the things you can put oneline are product information, order tracking, company information, resource links, where it can use freely. Through this online display, you will maximize valuable people –power by automating routine transactions online so your team can focus on providing higher-value-add services. You can also advertise their products and link to other sites. This will help customers where to find you. If they feel that this is an easy way to do business and creating a remarkable experience for customers, you’ll be sure to get people talking and increase referrals this summer for your business.

To boost the summer sales, you can use direct mail services. Summers are the perfect time for a direct mail campaign. You can get the phone ringing with increased communication to prospects / customers. You can also use a print provider that can handle the mailings too. To get the beautiful direct mail designs, take the help of Printing for less.com

Another way is to increase the brand visibility. During the slow summers, you can use a integrated look and feel to re-inforce your company branding and increase top-of-mind-awareness. You can use full-color stationery, which is great for a professional image and branding at every touch point.

For better networking and attending trade shows, you need to use quality and eye-catching business cards and marketing materials are a must. You can re-design new cards.

Why don’t you use an e-commerce printing solution especially over the summer? It’s convenient, affordable and the turnaround will be faster.

There are some online printers who can give you the ability to order print jobs right from your computer. You just need to simply upload your print file (in any format). They will review it and approve your proof and deliver at your door step. It just as a “one stop shops” who can handle your printing and mailing needs effortlessly.

Most local printers can take weeks to handle a job from quote to finish. Online printers can usually turn your project around quickly – usually anywhere from 2-7 days. You can really save lot of time here. E-commerce printers often have lower prices than local print shops. Assume that you are ordering high quantities, you will get it at lower per-piece prices too. Internet gives you the opportunity to develop a great relationship with a printer located across the country.

While selecting your e-commerce / online printing solution, check their service. With an online printer, service is the key to a successful print project. Make sure the representative are available, friendly, and polite while talking to you. Ensure that the representatives are knowledgeable and able to answer your queries. Also, check whether they have received any service awards. Are they flexible? Can you configure a project the way you want or are there limited options?

Is their work 100% guaranteed? Check BBB. Check the fine print to make sure there are no weasel words. Ask for specifics on the guarantee?

Obviously quality matters. Request for samples of printed products before ordering. How about the quality of paper used and the printing equipment? What about testimonials? Do they have printing experience and who are their clients? All these matter when you choose online printing options.

Always, avoid looking for cheapest price. You get what you pay for – it will be usually inferior quality, substandard service and sometime you don’t get technical support too. It’s easy to find affordable printing service that can compete in quality with the big guys.

So, this summer you can do a lot now.

Andrew S. Field
President and CEO
Printing for Less.com

Andrew S. Field – A biography

Andrew S. Field is the President and CEO of Printing for less.com. Andrew Field launched PrintingForLess.com in 1996, and has since led a revolution in the commercial printing industry, tapping the power of the Internet to build one of the country’s fastest-growing companies.

Andrew’s affinity for the printing business began when he learned to run a press in high school and got a job at a local print shop in his home town of San Mateo, California. From there he worked for print shops in Minneapolis and Los Angeles, until switching careers to sales and business management when he moved to Montana in 1989.

He started a successful local automotive service business, then secured a regional distributorship for Wynn Oil Company, a worldwide manufacturer of specialty chemicals. The distributorship won Wynn Oil’s coveted award for #1 in U.S. market penetration five out of six years from 1994 to1999. After founding PFL in 1996, Andrew turned over operations of American Automotive Supply to his wife, Victoria, in 2001 so he could devote his efforts to growing his third startup company.

Andrew was named Montana’s Entrepreneur of the Year in 2004 for his contributions to the local economy. He was recognized by Winning Workplaces and Fortune Small Business as a winner of the 2005 Best Bosses Award for innovative approaches that have created a high-performance workplace. Through his leadership of the company’s operations and progressive business practices, he has built a dynamic culture that both empowers and inspires his employees for success.

Andrew’s leadership and maverick tendencies first showed in college (Washington University in St. Louis) where he organized a strike to protest the unhealthy dorm food. A competitive swimmer as a youth, he now dabbles in skiing and fly fishing, and enjoys floating the Yellowstone River. Andrew’s devotion to his border collie, Jessie, was the inspiration for PFL’s dog-friendly environment. What inspires him is the fine people he works with and the opportunity his company has created for them to live their dreams in Montana.
About PrintingForLess.com

PrintingForLess.com is the first and leading online commercial printing company in the United States. Located in southwest Montana, PrintingForLess.com provides unmatched technical and customer support and instant online pricing and ordering for full-color printed pieces. Go to www.printingforless.com for affordable marketing materials including: business cards, brochures, postcards, newsletters, letterhead, and more. For additional information, please visit their website.

The services’ small business applications will especially appeal to the country’s more than 5 million small businesses, including small offices and home offices (SOHOs).

It is a great product brought by AT&T for small businesses and consumers to stay in touch when people go on a vacation, to check the elderly parents, kids, pets.  Remote Monitoring is a productivity tool.

For small businesses they can use this remote monitor to check their POS, front door, back door and other store location, etc.  Remote Monitor can do this through a web enabled PC or from your AT&T phone.

Remote Monitor is pretty useful for small business owners to monitor the POS, Cash Counter, Stores, etc.   It can capture the images or videos and records in DVR. You can archive these and view it at ease.  It also automatically send an SMS alert.

Since Remote Monitor is a wireless services, the cameras are on a wired platform. You don’t need to understand technology to install the equipment, it’s pretty simple.  People don’t have to put an extra effort for the installation.   It broadcast the video using AT&T own technology homeplug or powerline adapter that allow the powerline in the building. You don’t need an internet cable or DSL line to transmit video.  It’s cost effective and easy way to set-up the system.

You can watch these videos on your AT&T smart phone (please make sure you have the right model with you). You can get these streaming videos on your handset.  You just need  Java enabled phones such as Blackberry, Nokia, Motorola and Samsung to name a few.  Check out the compatible phone list before you use Remote Monitor.  You can directly control the system from your phone.

Regarding the pricing, it comes with two component – Starter Kit and Service Plans.  The starter starts from $299 to $999 depending on the component you choose.   The Business pack is ideal for small business owners and home users can start the standard pack.   It comes with a system controller, one fixed position IP camera for remote viewing, one door / window sensor / temperature sensor, two PLC adaptor to transmit via powerlines and necessary cables.   The service plan depends on number of location that you choose to monitor.  To know more about these plans, click here.

Since some of the people are going out for vacation in summers, they can carry these phones and do of monitoring activities such temperature control, lighting, power devices and many more things from anywhere.  This would be a handy tool and gives a piece of mind at vacation.   You can also check at AT&T site and have thermostat information for remote programming.

You need to have a good computer system with broadband internet connection and a router.  Ensure that your network router has at least two unused ports. A network hub or switch also can be used to provide more ports, if necessary.  If you don’t have a broadband, call AT&T, so that they can provide one for you.   For more details of pre-requisite, visit system requirements page.

The starter kit comes with the controller and it plug in to the router. You can fix the sensors and camera wherever you need.  With one quick registration, you are ready to use.  If you have any technical problems, always rely on AT&T customer support are willing to help you.

Steven Loop
Director of Business Development
AT&T Remote Monitor

Steven Loop – A biography

Steve Loop is an Executive Director of Business Development at AT&T.  Steve has almost 15 years at AT&T with a diverse background of Technical Sales, Sales Operations, Merger Planning and Integration, Marketing, and Product Development.  His role in Business Development is to find new products and services for mass market and small business customers and then accelerate their availability. AT&T Remote Monitor is a great example of one of those products.

About AT&T:

Wireless from AT&T, formerly Cingular Wireless, is the largest wireless company in the United States, with more than 71 million subscribers who use the nation’s largest digital voice and data network. AT&T is dedicated to providing customers with wireless technology designed to enrich their lives.

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Once the bastion of cheap DVD rentals, the victor over the war against Blockbuster and thousands of local DVD rental stores, Netflex is getting out of the business.  At least that’s what they hope will happen.

Netflix is pushing their customers intoonline rentals of movies rather than renting DVDs via the US mail.  It obviously sees steaming media as the wave of the future, but it’s got some serious problems in the present.

In order to view Netflix movies streaming online you’ll need to have:

• A high-speed Internet Connection
• A PC capable of running Netflix’s software (often more of a problem than it should be)
• A Roku, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Apple TV or WII

The biggest problem with their streaming is the quality of the video itself.  My personal experience of watching Netflix movies on a WII or PlayStation has been poor at best.

Given time, I’m sure it’ll improve, but with Internet ISPs pushing tiered pricing this model may end up being much more costly for the end user.

The pricing?  Instead of paying $10 per month for all-you-can-stream online movies and endless DVDs via US  mail, the services have been split into two separate plans. For unlimited movie streaming service, you’ll pay eight bucks a month. For unlimited DVDs, you’ll pay eight bucks a month. So if you still want both, it’ll cost you $16 a month total.

Related articles

• Netflix Under Attack For Price Hike (wired.com)
• Netflix Changing Streaming and DVD Plans [In Brief] (lifehacker.com)
• Netflix Alternatives: Other Places You Can Get Streaming Media, DVD Rentals (pcworld.com)
• Netflix Customers Subscribe to Unlimited Screaming (blogs.wsj.com)
• Is this the chance Netflix rivals have been waiting for? (slashgear.com)

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The winner-takes-almost-all battle between giants is entering phase two as Google begins to compete directly against Facebook and as Facebook is rumored to be starting a new email service.  Both companies have completely different methods, but share the same ultimate goal of taking over the online world.

Google wants to be the ultimate container and search engine for all knowledge in the world.  They’ve been indexing the online world since their inception and have added massive scanning of books, photographing of homes and businesses and second-to-none mapping technologies.

Facebook is taking another approach.  They’re building a closed universe of users who trust each other.  Ultimately, they’re looking to have friends recommend friends — something that happens regularly in real life.  If you’re looking for anything from a new TV to a new Doctor you’re likely to ask a friend or two their opinions.  And that’s where Facebook wants to be.

If both companies are able to play their cards out to the end it’s likely that the Facebook strategy will win.  Of course, much of that depends upon finances and Google is the clear winner here with billions in real revenue and profits.

Facebook is still far behind Google’s income, but has solved the eternal Internet problem – How Do You Get People to Identify Themselves?  Over 200 million people have voluntarily given Facebook detailed information about themselves, their friends, the things they like and even their family details.  Wins don’t get much bigger than this.

Related articles

• Google Social Network to Take on Facebook (thehollywoodgossip.com)
• Google+ and Facebook: Two Very Different Approaches for Protecting our Privacy (east-nelson.com)
• Google’s Facebook Copycat, Google Plus (blogs.wsj.com)
• Will Facebook Fade Like MySpace Now That Google+ Has Arrived? (radio923fm.radio.com)

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With the dot-bomb-bubble at the top of many investors’ minds, others appear to be ignoring a plethora of old axioms.  LinkedIn (a website I’ve been using for years) is now publicly traded, and as the top social media site for professionals, things are acting a little unprofessional.

“LinkedIn is just the latest internet startup to go public this year amid an increasingly frothy IPO market — and its impressive first-day performance is sure to hearten Wall Street bankers and Silicon Valley venture capitalists salivating to get a piece of the internet IPO action.

“New tech bubble or not — your mileage may vary — it’s very clear that there is massive demand in the public markets to own a piece of these high flying internet names. Web auto rental company ZipCar raised $174 million and watched its stock price close up 60 percent in its first day of trading. Demand Media, which went public in January, enjoyed a 33 percent first-day pop. And Chinese internet social networking giant Renren — referred to as “the Facebook of China” — went public, soaring 40 percent higher in its first day of trading.”  (Read Full Article at Wired here)

Related articles

• LinkedIn Up 90% (blogs.wsj.com)
• LinkedIn IPO Shares Pop 84 Percent On First Trade (techcrunch.com)
• LinkedIn IPO Priced At $45 Per Share (businessinsider.com)

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“Do-Not-Track” legislation was introduced to the Senate yesterday by Sen. John D. Rockefeller (D-W. Va.), which would give consumers the ability to prevent Internet companies from tracking their online activity. Although it sounds good at first glance, this legislation would actually end up hurting online media companies and many Internet users’ online experiences.

There’s a good summary of many of the problems with this legislation by Jeff Jarvis of the Washington Post here.

Related articles

• Federal Lawmakers Join the Wave of Do-Not-Track Legislation (nytimes.com)
• Sen. Rockefeller Announces Anti-Online-Tracking Bill (wired.com)
• Google Ad Probe & Facebook Security Breach (onecoolsitebloggingtips.com)

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An IT consultant, living in Abbottabad, unknowingly tweeted details of the US-led operation as it happened.  Sohaib Athar wrote that a helicopter was hovering overhead shortly before the assault began and said that it might not be a Pakistani aircraft.

He wrote: “Helicopter hovering above Abbottabad at 1AM (is a rare event).”

Soon after, he reported the sound of an explosion, now known to have been US forces blowing up their damaged helicopter.

“A huge window shaking bang here in Abbottabad Cantt. I hope its not the start of something nasty :-S”

Throughout the raid, Mr Athar was drawing on information from friends in the local area who were also online.

Read Full Article at the BBC.

Related articles

• Bin Laden raid was tweeted live (bbc.co.uk)
• Twitter user unknowingly reported bin Laden attack (cnn.com)
• Bin Laden raid tweeter not looking for fame (cnn.com)

It’s an intense photo of a historic moment — so naturally the internet made a joke out of it.  Read the Article at Wired.com

And here’s the best part: Some of the best images from wired.

Related articles

• Hillary Clinton Explains Famous Osama Bin Laden Raid Photo (blogs.abcnews.com)
• TRENDING: Iconic photo might not be all it seems, says Clinton (via CNN Political Ticker) (thespiritportal.wordpress.com)
• White House Releases ‘Situation Room’ Images From Bin Laden Raid [PICS] (mashable.com)

The Reuters report, which cites two anonymous sources, comes three months after Skype delayed its highly anticipated IPO following the hiring of a new CEO, former Cisco executive Tony Bates.  Article at Wired.com

Related articles

• Reports: Facebook, Google In Talks With Skype (adweek.com)
• Google, Facebook Calling Skype About Possible Tie-Up: Report (wired.com)
• Rumor: Facebook wants to buy Skype (zdnet.com)