Mind Maps

I've been on a training course, and the guy advocated use of Mind Maps.  Not a new concept to me, but a revisited one.  Given that I am TOTALLY paperless in my work, I am in a dilemma.  Are the mind map software packages any good?

Email Tip - the use of EOM

Emails are a bain in our lives, we cannot do without them, but there are too many of them.

Sometimes we only need to send a one line email and there's a clever way to save time for the recipient - put your message in the title line and put EOM at the end.  EOM means End Of Message, and your email client (eg Outlook, Thunderbird, GMail, Hotmail, etc) will recognise that and not hassle you by saying "you've left the body of the email empty".

Ha!  Timesaveer!

New media v Old media

This YouTube video may be a few months old now, but it's very enlightening on the power of the Internet in the media world.  Anyone who ignores the internet risks their business.  Harness its power and you are at least standing still, if not moving forward

So very nearly ordered an iPhone....

I blogged before about how I was going to wait for Orange to release their prices, as I expected that it would mean O2 (my preferred network) would then be forced to bring their price down.  WRONG!  Orange matched O2 pricing, and I've been pondering for a week or so when to order.

The the Times tell us here that Tesco would be releasing the iPhone ahead of Vodafone and TMobile, and I'd certainly put money on Tesco starting a price war.  Oh dear, when should I get my iPhone, I wonder?

I want an iPhone - but now is not the right time

I have been pondering for some weeks whether or not to get an iPhone and last week decided to take the plunge.  Given I had to be in the office on Friday, and I needed to be at home for the iPhone to be delivered, I put off ordering it until this Monday.  Good job too!  On Friday Orange announced they (my provider) O2 no longer had exclusivity with Apple, and you will soon be able to get iPhone on Orange UK.  Then, hot on the heels of that, it seems that Vodafone UK will follow suit in the spring.

Hold tight!  Prices will have to come down with this level of competition around, and I can certainly wait in a recession for lower prices!

Taxi!

Dependent on the time of day and your location, hailing a London cab is often a random game of chance - will you, or wont you, manage to find one of those welcoming golden lights which stays lit all the way along the road until it reaches you? A game of chance, of course.

Prefacing this with a "I have not used this service yet", it was a very pleasant surprise to hear of a fab use of technology in the London cab market. TweetALondonCab - yes, send a direct message on Twitter saying where you want to go from and to, and a cab turns up. Start by checking their Twitter page and their website to see how it works. Good luck, guys, you are ahead of the game.

Spotify is so much cheaper than iTunes - it's free!

For those of you who spend too much time at your PC/laptop and want an easy way to play your own selection of music as you work. Better still there's no downloading from iTunes and even better, the basic service is FREE! As I type this, I'm listening to some rag-time piano by Scott Joplin. You need to go to Spotify.com and download a very small app, and it's dead easy from there. The freebie service includes adverts every so often, but hey, they're short and only ever one at a time - so nothing like your local commercial radio station which seems to be playing more and more advertising minutes per hour than you thought was legal.

UPDATE:

Unlimited Streaming Music on iPhone: Apple Approves Spotify

UPPER CASE or lower case?

I get asked this one on a fairly regular basis, so let's cover it off here.

Email addresses
These can be upper or lower or mixed case. Your email system does not care, and in fact will convert it to lower case. So, if it makes it easier to read on business cards etc, use mixed case like JohnSmith@MyCompany.com

Website addresses (aka "URLs")

• Your basic domain name can be mixed case - so www.MyCompany.com and www.mycompany.com and www.MYCOMPANY.com will all get to the right place
• After the basic domain name you need to match the correct case or a browser may not find the right page. So http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/cart/view.html is not the same as http://www.amazon.co.uk/GP/cart/view.html for example. This is because some websites are hosted on an operating system called Unix which does care about UPPER and lower case.

Passwords are usually case sensitive and I would encourage you to use upper and lower case letters and digits in any password - this makes it much more tamper-proof.

Cloud Computing

"What on earth?", I hear you say! A good start (if you like lots of detail) is the Wikipedia definition, but I'm planning a short update here to give an overview.

The simple approach is that Cloud Computing is where you are storing information on the web, rather than on your hard drive or a memory stick, and you do not necessarily know or care exactly where it is stored. So examples would be

• GMail but not Outlook
• Google Documents but not MS Word or Excel
• Facebook
• Flickr and other photo storage sites
• etc

Benefits - you can work from anywhere and know that you have all the information available at your fingertips. a personal "Paperless Office" - hence the title of this blog. And yes, I do operate a paperless office! Those of you who have seen my desk will laugh, but any hard copy here would have arrived by post and will ultimately be destined for my bin or my shredder.

Word of caution. If you are storing business information in this way, you ought to find out where the data is physically stored as any legal issues with the data could need to be handled under the laws of that country.

Recession Tip #4 - Money for old mobiles

Heard this advert recently to get money for old mobiles. Searched in bottom drawer and found four "candidates" and checked out their values on Mazuma's website. One was too old, but the other three were OK and they quoted me a figure of £61. I had thought about selling them on eBay before, but you only get decent money there if you can unlock a mobile from its network (mine are all O2 configured), and you have the charger and the manual - which, as it happens, I do for each mobile. Condition not important, just that it works and the screen is not too scratched.

So late in the evening of Monday 12th, I get my quote from Mazuma after getting the IMEI number from the barcode sticker underneath the battery. They send me a freepost envelope. I put three mobiles in a little padded bag inside into their envelope. It sits on my desk 24 hours as I was not going to the Post Office that day (to get a postal receipt). They receive it, verify the details I filed online. They confirm by email all is OK. Cheque arrives Tuesday 20th - total eight days including one day of delay I built in. Perfect!

It all works like this - I verify that was exactly what happened. Free money! Go for it!

Recession Tip #3 - Renegotiate your company car lease

Some of the people hit worst by the Recession are those where certain financial "events" hit them this year - consider, for example, someone coming up to retirement age who cannot work on for health reasons - but the value of their pension fund has been trashed by the stock market changes in the last 9 months. Could you survive on 60% of what you planned to?

On a much smaller scale, but having personal financial impact, the lease of my company car expires in April 2009. So I got a quote from my lease company to replace the car with a brand new one of the same spec, and the new lease was 20% more expensive than the current one - due presumably to them marking down the likely end-of-lease resale figure. Ouch, particularly when my limits are in terms of the lease price not the value of the car itself.

So I looked at other options. Cars from other similar manufacturers such as Mercedes are out, because the lease company is owned by BMW and they tweak the lease prices to buy market share. Cars from a bit further down market were not ticking my boxes. Talking to a friendly BMW dealer 100 miles away, they priced up a private lease on a pre-registered heavily-discounted new car, and still could not beat the price I was offered for a new list-price car.

Then the light-bulb moment! Extend the current lease. Fortunately I am well within the pre-agreed mileage I set when my current car was new, and I now work from home so I could extend the three year lease to four years without extending the mileage. The answer - I keep my car an extra year, and the lease price is down by 10%. Then, when I come to replace it the new model will be out, I can hope that the economy will have stabilised etc, but at least I can plan ahead with a lower lease price until April 2010.

Recession Tip #2 - eBay sells NEW items, not just old ones

eBay is great, and I have sold a lot of stuff there - a feedback figure of over 300 for a private ad-hoc trader shows the level I use it... for selling old stuff and buying new stuff. Yes, buying NEW stuff.

Here's an example from today. I need a SCART to SCART lead. after buying a 3-way SCART box and forgetting I needed a cable to connect it to the TV. Doh! My local catalogue shop Argos sells them for £4.79 (see here) and I could walk there and back in 10 minutes. Checked eBay and just bought a new one for £1.98 including post and packing (see here), a saving of 59%. Next, I thought I would price up a 4-way extension bar. Argos was £5.47 (see here) and eBay £2.94 including delivery (see here), a 46% saving.

Point made?

Recession Tip #1 - Amazon Seller Account

Practically everyone I speak to about Amazon thinks the site is just one big company selling loads of stuff, gradually expanding in to new markets. Some say they have noticed the "Used and new" prices but very few have ventured further.

So, how can you as a consumer benefit in the Recession?

• If you insist on buying something new - for example, the item is a birthday present for your mother-in-law and you want to avoid a family row. Check out the "used and new" prices - often there are shops selling surplus stocks at lower prices, but still New items. Remember Amazon are crafty because they have full and easy access to these prices and can alter their own selling prices accordingly.
  
• If you just need the item, and want the cheapest price. Check out the "used and new" prices - significant savings to be made, but remember you pay post on all items.
  
• If you only need the item once, for example a DVD. Buy it new (see above) and then re-sell it on Amazon Market Place. The difference is your rental cost of the item - compare that to Blockbuster or similar.
  
• You have items at home in very good condition but you don't need them, particularly books. Sell them on Amazon Market Place.
  

Amazon Market Place - The selling costs are a little higher than eBay, but only charged if you sell the item. The ease of listing is staggering, and the items are listed until they are sold, with a standard 90-day period and easy re-listing process. See my current listing of books for sale

Look out for more Recession Tips soon

Profit after tax is NOT spend-able cash

OK, so I worked for five years for a firm of accountants in the City of London (Neville Russell, now part of Mazars), and I guess that gives me a head-start in understanding a set of financial accounts.

Let's take a step back. Anyone in the UK can get hold of the latest set of accounts and the Annual Return of a company from the government department known as Companies House.

• The Annual Return gives you a list of company directors and their home address, together with a list of shareholders (and their home addresses) and their shareholdings.
• The Financial Accounts are a much more complex, and the most frequently misunderstood document is the "Profit and Loss Account" which looks at how much money they got from trading, and the costs they spent while trading - such as buying the stock, paying the staff, the light and heat bill, etc etc. But it does NOT cover how they spent cash in buying assets, and it is quite feasible that and spare cash (and more..) could have been used in buying new equipment, new group companies and so on.

My point? Employees should not look at their employer's accounts and say "they made enough money, they can afford my pay rise" - an employee expecting any more than a pay freeze in this market has their head in the clouds, frankly. And past year's trading profits do not mean that the employer has cash surpluses available for distribution.

I survived Christmas without going to a shop

Those of you who read this blog will know that I like using the net a lot. So it will not surprise you that I did all my Christmas shopping online and never went near a shop. Amazon got their act together this year and delivery was spot on - even a late order for 6 items on the evening of Sunday 21st December arrived before noon on Tuesday 23rd. eBay shops were good, charity cards arrived by post and I sneaked some wrapping paper my wife had stored away in the loft after buying it in the January sales nearly a year ago.

Coming from a family of retailers, I got a fair amount of stick when I told them on 25th that I had not been to a shop this Christmas. "You should support the High Street", they told me, implying that the only way to ensure a retailer made money was people coming through the front door of a physical shop. It seems to escape some retailers that the as the recession hits deeper and deeper, the retailers who are most likely to survive are the ones with the lowest cost base - those with a virtual front door online open 24x7. It certainly does not need to be the only part of the mix, but it is very likely to be a key component.

None of us know how long or deep this recession will be, although most media columnists are erring on the side of caution, and realistic employees are more than happy settling for zero pay rises in the knowledge that they still have a job. Spending patterns are changing significantly with a much higher percentage paying by cash than shops have seen for years, and credit card payments taking a dent as inidividuals max-out their accounts. However, I also see big changes in web retailing - where the much lower costs leads to lower selling prices, in turn showing an acceleration in spending online over the high street.

Support retailers I did - supporting those with the vision to sell online.

Social Networking in a business environment - 2

Having written last week about LinkedIn.com, this week I turn to a more controversial site - Facebook. Up to perhaps a year ago, Facebook was largely dominated by the 14-24 age group, but a real sea-change has occurred and I would put the top end of the age range more like 60-70 ,although that may be stretching it a bit far.

Facebook is much more "social" in what it seeks to do, and includes much more on personal interests, online games and keeping up to date with what everyone is doing. So, you say, what's that go to do with business? Well, in these days of homeworking and disparate teams, Facebook is the glue that keeps such groups of people together. In my own team, for example, I have colleagues in UK, France, Finland, Spain, Romania and Egypt. Of these, I have personally met just one face-to-face, although that is being addressed early in 2009 with a plan to go to Cairo for a week. And, of course, I work from home.

So, excluding IM which we use for formal comms, we have no water cooler to chat at. Facebook is our virtual water cooler. Sharing photos, what you've been doing, forming groups etc gives a sense of belonging. Then extend that from business networking to the people you send your Christmas cards too - and instead of sending something once a year, you can keep in touch with them right through the year.

Social Networking in a business environment - 1

Still too many people I am in contact with dismiss social networking as a passing craze for teenagers. Let me explain. An article in today's Sunday Times on Reid Harrison, founder of LinkedIn.com, prompted me to write this blog entry. He's expecting the reach of his website to double in the next 12 months from the current 32M, particularly fuelled by the global recession forcing people go to jobhunting when they did not expect to be. LinkedIn is a business networking site where you share elements of your CV in such a way that other people may contact you from seeing or searching on various key words. That may be an employer name, a job role or whatever. Headhunters have been using LinkedIn and other similar sites for some time now as an easy source of data, and I should know, I'm married to one!

And it's certainly not for just jobhunting. Employees of companies big and small, and the huge band of self-employed people can also benefit by the networking opportunities the site brings. For example, you may think "I'd like to get in touch with someone from company X for such-and-such a project", and a quick search on LinkedIn will bring you back the answers. By using a three-level network (think of that as "three degrees of separation"), you have better access to people within three steps of you, ie

1. people you know
2. people known to those at level 1
3. people known to those at level 2

Right now I have a little over 200 direct contacts (level 1) and nearly 4.5 MILLION, yes MILLION, across all three levels. Go on, sign up, and then link to me as the person who introduced you! New jobs, projects and opportunities could follow very soon.

Fuel prices - finding the cheapest and avoiding anger

If you are in the UK, here's how to find the cheapest fuel prices in your area. The website PetrolPrices.com is a great FREE service which tells you the cheapest five filling stations in a 5/10/15/20 (you choose) mile radius of a given postcode. If you sign up, also FREE, they will email you the latest prices weekly just so you can check you are getting the best deal. How does it all work? Well, they purchase data from the fuel card companies which gives date/time of the transaction, the filling station identity and the price. Sorted.

Another fuel-related tip. You'd have thought that I would be the first to use "pay at pump", but no.... I have tried it twice in recent months and the filling stations concerned have a limit on the amount a card with authorise via "pay at pump". This is often £50 or £60, and when I go to fill up, I need about £75 worth. Still, at least I get 50mpg on a long run out of my car, so who's complaining?

Save time - use a kiosk

Kiosk technology is coming at us from all directions, and it's another great time-saving use of technology. I went to Argos the other day to get a new mouse - my corporate purchasing department cannot supply a replacement mouse to a home-worker like me inside three weeks, so it seemed sensible to pop across to the shop (5 mins walk) and buy a spare one for myself. All my current spares were old little round socket ones, not USB :-(

So, you walk into Argos and you check out the massive catalogue first until you find your number, pop that into the stock checker to confirm they have the item, technology in itself. Then wander over to the kiosk, tap your item number and quantity in, check out, put your credit card in and the order is none. No contact with Miss Stroppalot behind the till any more.

Then Friday I went to the doctors (routine weight management advice, nothing more!) and there you not only book your appointments over the net, but you check in for your appointment using a kiosk - similar to the one in the photo. Brilliant and dead easy. No more contact with Hyacinth Bouquet behind the glass - yippee!

Over at the airport, lots more kiosks for saving you time checking in. Why queue ever again? I urge you - USE KIOSKS.

Did someone forget to include RSS in the marketing budget?

RSS is a technology that has not had the marketing push behind it that it deserves. For anyone interested in news, it is a very simple and effort-saving way of picking up the headlines and allowing you to review just the one(s) you want - and lots more info can be found at the Google Reader FAQ Page. On the other side, newspapers and broadcasters are generally very good at putting RSS feeds on their websites. Black mark of the bunch goes to the corporate press officers, though.

Woefully few companies issuing corporate press releases have RSS feeds - some people know I have a passing interest in helicopters, and I'd expect the major manufacturers to have RSS feeds on their websites. Shock Horror - NONE of them do - check out the websites of AgustaWestland, Bell, Eurocopter, MD Helicopters, Robinson and Sikorsky. I grant you that the parent companies of Bell (Textron) and Eurocopter (EADS) do have RSS feeds, but the helicopter manufacturers do not. Hang your heads in shame! Always look out for the RSS feed icon - the orange square with the white "radio waves" broadcasting from the "transmitter". They're usually seen on any blog - for example, check out the "Subscribe to Posts (Atom)" link at the bottom of this page.