Recession Dividend: MSFT report: Majority of Recession-Bred Entrepreneurs – 70 Percent – Left Full-Time Positions to Start Own Business

I’ve been searching for both the words and evidence for something I know to be true: many successful companies are started in a recession. I wrote a cover story a couple of magazine issues ago on this topic – see Issue 4-2 on SMB STARTUPS!
I recently had a conversation with Jeff Connally at CMIT (leading [...]

Going Rogue with VoIP!

A VoIP-ism a day keeps the H1N1 flu away in my eyes! Seriously – some news from our friends at Junction networks regarding rural exchanges and traffic pumping caught my eyes!!! Read on.
Junction Networks Offers Alternative to Blocking Numbers in Response to “Traffic Pumping” Practices
“Free” conference calling, adult chat lines and similar services “pump” traffic [...]

Seattle Mayor Boots Microsoft for Macintosh – Sign my RECALL PETITION!

Minutes before my Monday night yoga class started on Bainbridge Island (across from Seattle itself), my iPhone rang. It was a colleague shockingly informing me that Seattle Mayor-elect was part of a radio story playing on the air. The topic? Mayor McGinn’s is pulling the PCs out of City Hall and converting over to Macintosh. [...]

That’s just cool – airline travel itinerary scanner from TSA reads your mobile phone screen!

It’s Friday after a long and busy week. I was curios about what topic I would write about today. Then the topic jumped out at me. I was clearing TSA security last night at the Las Vegas airport after the Windows Connections conference and heading back to Seattle. At the checkpoint, there was a scanner [...]

Reader mail – I love hearing from readers! ISA and SBS 2008

Today is Monday and it is the administrative day at work – sales meetings, operations meetings, accounting meetings, etc. So to break up the day, I did two things. First – I started streaming some public radio music so I could rock on. Second – I answered a reader’s e-mail regarding ISA and Small Business [...]

Sources report “End of Life” for MSFT Office Accounting

Sources close to the top have reported Microsoft has “end of lifed” the Office Accounting (OA) product aimed at the small business customer effective november 16, 2009. It is also closing its Microsoft Professional Accounting Network (MPAN) community program. I fondly remember OA and MPAN being big players in our 4th annual SMB Nation fall [...]

From the world of telephony and VoIP: Telephonation 2.0

Many readers know that we’re on a journey here at SMB Nation to reach out and extend our conversations to include VoIP.
So let me introduce our “sister site” Telephonation (www.telephonation.com) where we have a robust SMB VoIP conversation occurring daily. In fact – you’d be pleased to know that the web traffic at Telephonation now [...]

Don’t be a SMB “twit” get off your duff and TWEET!

Folks – I have just left a MSFT Redmond meeting on BPOS and one of the topics at lunch was the need for consistentcy in blogging/Tweeting/Facebook, etc. I couldn’t agree more and I try to “do all the above” each day. When the following story crossed the wires that only 9 percent of SMB folks [...]

All together now – Jennifer and Carl team with WatchGuard on case study

I like it when friends play nice. Such is the case with Jennifer and Carl Mazzanti teamed with our mutual friends at WatchGuard to produce a computer security case study. This cooperation really embodies the spirit of James Kernan’s speech at SMB Nation Fall 2009 on how to work with vendors. It reflects a certain [...]

Work hard/Play Hard – that’s the SMB Nation Way!

My good friend and neighbor is a M&A guy with a lot of self-confidence that I admire. He’s a “bring it on” kinda guy! So whereas I think the seven day work week should be full of rigorous and righteous effort, your down time should be equally entergetic. So today I have one of my [...]