 I moved from working in my business to working on my business!
Jim White, Founder Savor Dallas http://www.savordallas.com |
 I found a community of business leaders who make being in business a lot more fun and less lonely.
Jeannine Sandstrom, CEO CoachWorks International, Inc. http://www.coachworks.com |
 I now have a place to be open about my business success and future challenges.
Debbie Mrazek, CEO The Sales Company Author The Field Guide to Sales http://www.the-sales-company.com |
Posts Tagged ‘Microsoft’
Apple sues clone maker Psystar – The Top 5 Marketing Mistakes They are Making
Well unless you are a techie that is under a rock or for what ever reason don’t read the news, Apple is suing Psystar a maker of Apple clone computers. Now before we get into a EULA debate or how great Apple is I would like to talk a little about the marketing and business opportunities that Apple always leaves on the table. Since people like tops 5 lists etc. here you go.
The TOP 5 Business and Marketing mistakes Apple is making with Psystar
Short Sited – Again apple is failing to see the big picture and staying with the island unto it self motto. The main reason that Apple is always in trouble down the road is because they go it alone in their business and also in their vendor relationships. This is one reason they needed the cash infusion that Bill Gates gave them many years back. Yes it was to help Microsoft’s antitrust issue as well. I grew up with Macs in school but later switched to PC computers. Why? because I had many choices of computers to pick and I could EVEN BUILD IT MYSELF! If you really have a better product in your OS then flood the world with it. Open up your hands and set it free, for a fee of course. Imagine if 98% of the world had a choice to run OSX on their current system like they do Linux. HELLO 
Tarnishing their Image – Yes it is happening. Even forums that I read who contain MAC lovers are starting to compare Apple to Microsoft. Starting to say it is time to open up your systems. I even saw an episode of Kathy Griffin Life on the D List where her new boyfriend Steve Wozniak unlocked her IPHONE. The canary in the coal mine is the new generation really does not like to be trapped in a box. I would hate to be seen as the outdated over bearing parent of the products they buy. They may decide to just leave home one day if they see something better.
Leaving Money on the Table – I have been in business for a long time and call companies for my clients looking for mutually beneficial relationships. Here is an opportunity for Apple to have a ready made product that is most likely being sold to people who wouldn’t buy an Apple because of the price. What I would do in this situation is praise them for their work and help spreading a superior product to the market place. I would then work out a way for them license making the product for end users. That way you get your cut and most importantly the consumer gets what they want, YOUR SUPERIOR PRODUCT.
Innovation is so yesterday? – I am old enough to know details about how the computer industry started moving into a new era. I would hope that Steve remembers this as well. In stead of blocking innovation, go back to your roots. If you are seen in the market place as a cooperative innovator you will move ahead of the competition by leaps and bounds. I applaud your new store for the iphone. It is a move in the right direction. I also think it is funny how many of the IDEAS that Apple came up with came from Xerox including their GUI operating system. Go watch a show on PBS called Triumph of The Nerds or read the transcripts especially show 3 to see parts of the truth. Bring your business hat and pay attention.
Be careful what you wish for? - The worst thing that could happen is you get what you want and are seen as destroying a small business. This is also short sited because I could see lots of people wanting to help PSYSTAR if you did win on their appeal based on The first sale doctrine. Because I believe that many people believe they should be able to do what they want after they buy a product. People who have money to spend on more of your products. I couldn’t imaging someone saying you can only use your kitchen table in your house, as a kitchen table, not as a desk, you cannot modify the table like cut its legs and make it a coffee table, and you damn sure can’t sell it to your neighbor or give it to goodwill. Come ON!
Feel free to share your thoughts on some of my quick ideas.
How do most businesses begin? Small. Sometimes they are an idea born from a hobby, a passion, or a skill…and then they progress and grow. Bill Gates’ behemoth of a global corporation, Microsoft, started in his garage! Your own business could go the way of Microsoft, or it could thrive and sustain itself from your home or within your neighborhood. What do Microsoft and the 20-years-and-still-counting neighborhood vacuum repair shop have in common? Each started as an idea — a dream — and progressed to an initial business plan modeled from the original vision or idea into a working, profit-making, viable and enduring business.
When established businesses invite innovations, the process is similar to that of setting up a business to begin with. The success rate of your business innovation (you know, stuff like progressive profits and the future growth potential of your business) is all about your ability and willingness as a business owner to understand business operations and make decisions that most decisively and positively benefit your business. Good business planning entails developing and maintaining a vision of the future while also concurrently recognizing present resources and financial realities. Your business innovation plan should also take into strong consideration myriad foreseeable changes within and outside the business that will affect growth and future viability.
After a few years in business, you may feel like the basics are old hat; you have more important things to do! However, the basics are what take you to where you most want to go. Akin to eating well and health, the basics ensure you a healthy bottom line.
Before moving onto your next big innovation, take a moment to assess all the known facts and possible contingencies of moving in this direction, and know without question all that is involved. This checklist will be invaluable in helping you with your initial planning.
- Identify the advantages and disadvantages of making this change in your business.
- Be absolutely honest and unwavering in assessing your company’s current skills and the skills needed to move into this new area.
- Be as forthright and truthful in assessing your business skills. Consider your experiences and your qualifications for completing marketing, financing, planning and management functions. Think about outside partners who can advise you.
- Do whatever level of market research it takes to identify the market for product(s) or service(s) of the type of product or service you are expecting to sell and/or provide your customer base.
- Give your new service or product a name and, if appropriate, a logo that is descriptive, appropriate, catchy, even hip, and certainly memorable.
- Establish a system that fits this new product or service. What accountability needs to be put into place? How will you accomplish this?
- Design an advertising and promotion program that stays within your budget and effectively delivers your sales message to your target audience. Utilize an outside marketing consultant if your budget allows and you feel their expertise will achieve your sales delivery goals.
This is a start. You and your partners may also come up with other items to add along the way. The bottom line is to know exactly where you are going, have realistic goals and a workable plan, and maintain your focus every step of the way.
For a strategic view of your new plans, give us a call. We can offer a third-party, objective view that may help uncover issues you haven’t considered.
What do you get when you cross Microsoft’s PowerPoint with a YouTube type of interface? The Web’s latest website dedicated to helping users share PowerPoint files, AuthorSTREAM. This presentation sharing engine not only allows you to upload your PowerPoint presentations online for free, but also assists you to share them with your friends, students or co-workers located across the globe.
authorSTREAM is a great online community that gives you access to numerous presentations on varied subjects uploaded by community members. You can find exciting presentations on just about any topic, rate them, post a comment and even embed them in your blog.
authorSTREAM is for:
- Educators looking to deliver their presentation to students over the web
- Entertainers trying to reach out as many people as they can
- Friends and families seeking to keep in touch by sharing their picture slideshows and greetings
- Co-workers and classmates attempting to exchange content such as project presentations, homework assignments, etc.
If you’ve emailed a Microsoft Word (or Corel WordPerfect, for that matter) document to anyone, you may have unwittingly sent confidential information to a friend, colleague, or even competitor. You see, when you create and edit a document in these programs, the software creates bits and pieces of information and hides it within your document.
If one chooses to reveal these bits and pieces, or metadata, they’ll discover who created, opened, read, printed, deleted information, added information, and where the document was stored as well as how long it took to perform the task on any particular date and time.
What is metadata?
Metadata, as defined in Beware the Dangers of Metadata, is “simply described as ‘data about data’. Think of it as a hidden level of extra information that is automatically created and embedded in a computer file.”
Some metadata is easily viewed (steps shown below). Other metadata is hidden and can be revealed by accident or by using a binary file editor. Both of which are quite possible in any office.
Microsoft indicates that the following metadata is stored in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files:
· User name and computer name
· Comments and tracked changes
· Hidden text, worksheets, data columns, and data rows
· Embedded objects such as Excel worksheets, drawing objects, and pictures
· PivotTable® cache
· Speaker notes
Why does it matter to me?
All the information indicated above is great for productivity and is an important part of a technical communicator’s life. In fact, we embrace the ability to collaborate! Document management systems rely extensively on metadata, allowing users to find a relevant document based on who edited it, how it was distributed, keywords, and subject or matter information.
Metadata makes life easy, right? Well, MOSTLY.
As I was researching this article, I found multiple references to blunders made by individuals, governments, and even the United Nations, in which bank account numbers, assassin names, original authors not attributed in a document, smoking guns in memos, and more were revealed. Here is an article in the Washington Post that has some good examples. I was particularly intrigued by the story of Tony Blair providing Colin Powell a document that had large portions plagiarized—grammar mistakes and all!
I’ve spoken with colleagues who had several months worth of documentation seized simply because a team member, who was involved in litigation, had simply opened a file once upon a time. The team lost hours of work and had some tense times making their deadlines.
What can your document’s metadata reveal?
Your document can reveal quite a bit about your work. When I was working on a presentation about metadata, I went fishing in my archives for an older document that would reveal sloppy document management. I opened a file that was used in a collaborative project when working on my Master’s degree eight years ago. I believe the original document was created in Word 2000, but can’t be sure with a cursory review.
Just by a simple selection, I revealed the following information about the document (Figure 1) I created earlier this year.
Figure 1: Metadata information in Word 2007 (top) and Word 2003 (bottom).
So, what’s interesting about this? I created this document on February 27, 2008, but my metadata says it was created on August 1, 2007. While this was a brand new document, I had opened up an older folder that had my styles already set. Instead of reflecting revision one, it showed that this was the third time I had revised the document. Though I had actually worked on the document for about 10 minutes, I apparently had it open for 50 minutes at the time of the screen capture. The title of the document was even wrong!
For me, the scariest thing I found was on the Summary tab. It says that the company that created the document was Company X. I haven’t a clue about that company. To my knowledge/recollection, I’ve never worked for or collaborated with anyone in that company. When I did a Google search, I couldn’t find anything that seemed to fit Company X, nor did any representative with that company have any connection whatsoever to this document. But there it is…. Somehow this document descended from a document (from a document from a document) that was created by a classmate who probably worked for Company X EIGHT years ago!
Not only would this information be embarrassing if a client saw it, I could be opened up to some intellectual property issues if somebody chose to be litigious. Now fortunately, a forensic review of the document’s metadata would reveal the truth. But it could be expensive.
It pays to be aware of what your document says about you and to make sure it reveals what you want it to reveal.
How do I reveal my document’s metadata?
It’s easy, with one click you can reveal your properties.
· Word 2003 or earlier: select File > Properties
· Word 2007: select Office Button > Prepare > Properties
How can you protect your document’s metadata?
Many ways are available for ensuring that your personal or company data stays with you:
· Turn off Fast Save. This feature speeds up saving a document by saving only changes made to a document. However, text that you delete from a document may still remain.
· Remove personal information from a document when you save it.
In Word 2002 and 2003
In Word 2007
1. Click Tools > Options.
2. On the Security tab, under Privacy options, select Remove personal information from file properties on save.
3. Click OK.
1. Click Office Button > Prepare > Inspect Document.
2. Select Options for inspection.
3. Click Inspect.
4. Select Remove All.
· Turn off the Track Changes tool.
· Use a third-party software to remove the information.
· Use a clean template/document each time.
· Save the document as an .rtf, .txt, or .pdf file.
This article by Louellen S. Coker of Content Solutions appeared in the May 2008 issue of Technically Write, the STC Lone Star Community’s newsletter. Louellen’s brand new blog offers great tips and tools for making content (and technology) work for you.
Mail Merge Wizard
To start the Mail Merge in the new Word 2007, click on the Mailings tab. The Ribbon, the groups of commands you see on each tab, replaces the toolbars and menus. Commands are organized in groups related to activities such as you see below in the Create, Start Mail Merge, and Write & Insert Fields groups on the Mailings tab.
When you click on the arrow beside Start Mail Merge, a drop-down list appears as shown below. Select the last option, “Step by Step Mail Merge Wizard.”
This brings up the task pane as shown below. Select Letters (or whatever type you want) as the type of document and then click on the “Next: Starting document” link at the bottom of the task pane to go to the next step to select your starting document.
Selecting a Template
You have options to use the current document you have open, to select a template, or to browse to an existing document not open. For this practice, select “Start from a template.” This brings up a link you click on to “Select template.”
This opens the “Select Template” dialog box shown. Select the “Letters” tab and choose “Oriel Merge Letter.” Click on OK.
This takes you to Step 3 in the Mail Merge process in which you “Select recipients.”
Selecting Recipients
Select “Use an existing list” and click on the “Browse” link. Locate and open the file containing your data source. For this exercise, use the MailMergeList.xls.
This opens the following dialog box in which you select the table (the named range defined within Excel) containing the mail merge recipients info you want to pull into the merge fields in your document. Select “seminar” or “training” or whatever you named the range in your spreadsheet containing the names and addresses you want to use for the mail merge (“attendees” is the defined range selected as shown below).
Make sure to check the box indicating that the “First row of data contains column headers” so that the field labels (Last Name, First Name, Address1, etc.) on your spreadsheet won’t be mistaken for data.
This opens the Mail Merge Recipients dialog box shown below. Here you can select which recipients to include or deselect by uncheck the check box by the name.
You can sort and filter the list using the drop-down list located on each field name indicated by the triangular black arrow. Note there are also links to Sort and Filter or Find Duplicates and recipients in the “Refine recipient list” section.
Click on the link “Next: Write your letter” to go on to the next step to edit the mail merge template letter content.
Inserting Merge Fields
Notice that the Address Block and Greeting Line fields are already inserted into this template letter. If you weren’t using a preformatted mail merge letter, you would just simply click on the links on the right to insert the Address block, Greeting line, or more items (more merge fields). You also have these same options on the Mailings toolbar at the top—you don’t have to use the wizard each time you do a mail merge. Pick the date and replace the letter content with your own and then go on to the next step to preview your letters by clicking on the link at the bottom of the task pane.
Matching Fields
When you click on the Address block link, the following dialog box appears in which you can choose the format of the address. Also, you can click on the Match Fields button to match the missing address field (the Match Fields button is also on the Mailings tab in the “Write and Insert Fields” grouping).
Clicking on the Match Fields button brings up the following dialog box. Use the Address 1 drop-down list to select the Street field name from the Excel spreadsheet.
Previewing Results
You have buttons on both the Preview Results group on the Mailings ribbon as well as the task pane to look at different recipient info before going on to the next step to complete the merge.
Completing the Merge
When you click on the link, “Next: Complete the merge,” the following appears:
Click on the link “Edit individual letters” which you can see from the screen tip is the link to “Merge to new document.” This is also a button on the “Finish & Merge” dropdown list on the Mailings Ribbon.
The Print link on the Task Pane or Print Documents on the Ribbon dropdown list allows you to merge directly to the printer.
When you click on the link to edit the letters, the following dialog box appears:
You can choose whether to merge all or selected records. Click OK and then a new merged document entitled Letters1 is created. It contains the individual letters for each recipient. If you look at the status bar, you will see that it indicates multiple letters.
Saving
Save your work by clicking on the new Office button which replaces the file menu.
Select “Save As” to view the new options for saving in different formats.
The new “default” file format is .docx, a new file format for Word documents. It is one of the new Office XML formats. You also have the option to save in the Word 97-2003 format so that your file is compatible with those versions and can be opened in them. However, with earlier versions of Word, you can open a file created in the 2007 version by going to the Download Center at the Microsoft site and downloading the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for 2007 Office Word, Excel and PowerPoint File Formats.
Are you a busy professional that is finding it daunting to keep track of all the blogs you read?
Well your savior is here! We will show in a few simple steps and how get the True You Marketing Blog into Microsoft Outlook 2007. Once you master this simple process for our site, you will be able to add as many sites as you want.
The benefit of aggregation of content from multiple Web sources is that you no longer have to visit different Web sites for news, weather, blogs, and other information. You can see if there is anything of interest for Microsoft Outlook which most professionals are in all day, anyway.
To get started with the process you will need to open Outlook 2007 and an Internet Explorer or FireFox Window.
1. Step one is to get the URL for our Blog Feed (http://www.trueyoumarketing.com/feed/rss )
Open Internet explorer and type in our website http://www.trueyoumarketing.com . You will then see a page that looks similar to the one below. Now weed need to discover the RSS or BLOG feed for our site.
You can discover new RSS feeds on Web sites that offer this feature by looking for 
, 
or, 
. In some Web browsers, such as Microsoft Windows Internet Explorer 7, when you click these buttons, you can subscribe to the associated feed and find the link.
Click on the ![clip_image001[1]](http://www.rapidsuccesspartners.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/clip-image00112.gif){kind=small}
link at the top right of our site and you will be taken to a new page that looks like this:
In the address bar of Internet Explorer is the link we want to use with Microsoft Outlook 2007. (http://www.trueyoumarketing.com/feed/rss) Now, right click on the URL in the address bar and select Copy.
We are now ready to add the link to Microsoft Outlook 2007.
2. Go to Microsoft Outlook 2007. You should be in your default mail view. On the left menu under mail you should see RSS Feeds.
Right click on RSS and Select Add a New RSSS Feed
You will then get a prompt for the feed to add. Past in the URL we copied earlier (http://www.trueyoumarketing.com/feed/rss) and hit Add.
You will then get a second prompt warning you to add only BLOGS that you know. Hit Yes to add the BLOG to Microsoft Outlook 2007.
You have now successfully added True You Marketing’s BLOG to Microsoft Outlook 2007!
To read a post, just click on the Headline and click View Article. This process will work for any RSS capable BLOG.
If you have any further questions remember you can always email us using the contact form on our site.