Snappy title here

Small Business Online Accounting Software

2008-07-13T15:40:00.000-06:00

Looking around online for some good solutions, I found there's a few options out there. Now QuickBooks Online Edition is the leader of the pack for small business for good reason, and their platform is worth every penny, especially if you send out invoices as it will auto-generate them for you. Add in the ability to give your accountant access, never worry about backups, and be assured that you can grow with what you are using, and it's a winner.

Ther cheapest plan is 9.95/month - what if you want to find something comparable, but free? Turns out there are a couple of options.

First, both MicroSoft and QuickBooks offer free, watered down versions of their desktop products, and both ave received many positive reviews.

First, MS offers Office Accounting Express for a free download. QuickBooks has Simple Start.

I prefer the online editions though in my quest to free myself from the desktop and be as mobile as possible. Here are some reviews I found of a few web based QuickBooks alternatives.

I chose to try out Saasu - it looked a little more robust to me, with payroll support for the future, and more. It is 100% free for the accounting packages, with a max of 15 transactions/month, plenty for me.

Saasu.com NetAccounts - easy online accounting » Automate, Connect and Simplify

Checking In

2008-05-16T12:20:00.001-06:00

Going to use this place to sort out some thoughts and post what I'm up to, as well as some development and business-focused experiments.

Getting Real: Free Web 2.0 ebook online

2007-02-08T12:42:00.000-06:00

37 Signals has released a book that is a collection of essays about starting and running a Web 2.0 company. There are some gems in here, and it is worth browsing if you have any interest. The also sell PDF and paperbacks, but the content is available online for free.

Getting Real: "Getting Real
Here are the 16 chapters and 91 essays that make up the book."

Blogarithms » Amazon for Infrastructure-on-Demand

2007-02-05T13:32:00.000-06:00

Anyone who knows me knows how cool I think Amazon web services are... here is a detailed, yet very cool example, with a diagram, of a website using all three.

Spend time on this if you want to know some of the future of computing...

Blogarithms » Amazon for Infrastructure-on-Demand: "The buzz is building around Amazon Web Services as an application platform. Don MacAskill has been using AWS’ S3 storage service for SmugMug, and according to Jeremy Zawodny, will be talking about it at this year’s ETech conference. Jeremy and others have been experimenting with S3 as storage backup for desktop and laptop systems. Even Dave Winer is experimenting with S3."

A VC: The Seminal Web 2.0 Service

2007-01-30T10:58:00.000-06:00

Great list....

A VC: The Seminal Web 2.0 Service: "Here are 10 things I've learned from using Flickr:
1) Making online content default to public instead of private creates community
2) Every web service needs to have a profile for every user
3) Users should be encouraged to comment on other user's posts"

... and 7 more.

New GMail features showcase Google Docs

2007-01-28T22:39:00.000-06:00

I've thought quite a bit recently about the feasability of going online 100% with hosted services, and I think it is possible with some planning and accepted frustration, but getting easier all the time.

I have a couple of domains that use Google Apps for email, and also have a space for docs and spreadsheets, and the ability to share docs easily (and the free email service) are quite valuable. Robert Scoble has mentioned that the company he is now part of does everything through gmail and shared google calendars, and I know it will only get easier. As much as I like Office 2007, what is Microsoft to do with these new services, where new features drop out of the sky every week?

Article below about some new features in Gmail... I'm not sure if gmail is out of beta yet, but if you'd like a GMail account, just leave a comment or email me and I will send you an invite.

Fugitive Thought -: "Gmail users receiving attached documents now have the ability to view them via Google Docs and Spreadsheets, which presents a sleek in-browser word processor interface. Emails arriving with a document attached will now display a 'open as a google document' in addition to the usual 'View as HTML' and 'Download' options. "

iTunes + Netflix = Cancel Cable?

2007-01-25T12:04:00.000-06:00

From The Consumerist....

iTunes + Netflix = Cancel Cable? - Consumerist: "A blogger over at ZDNet realized that he could cancel part of his cable, order his shows on iTunes, watch movies on Netflix and save $300 a year.

Last week I came to the realization that with Netflix and iTunes, I would be able to cut out the $50 portion of my cable TV bill and ditch the 80 or so channels I never watch, including 3 shopping channels, 3 sports channels, 6 family channels, numerous foreign language channels, and one Lifetime Channel for Women that my fiance tortures me with. Farewell Melissa Gilbert, Rachael Ray, and Paula Deen! You are thus banished from my home!

I'm currently interested in about 6 shows, all of which it turns out I can get on iTunes. Plus, Netflix handles all of my movie needs. If I'm generous with my iTunes figures, it adds up to about $300 in purchases each year, versus the $600 I pay for all of the 'variety' that Comcast provides me. The old model of just piping junk into my home simply doesn't make sense to me anymore."

The author goes on to say it might be a hard sell for most people, which is probably true.

FYI, I have not had cable for about 5 years now. I stopped not for financial reasons, but because I was plain sick of wasting an evening away on mindless television. I did watch a couple of shows, mainly the Sopranos and Sex and the City, but I downloaded them. Same with movies. Off bittorrent from time to time.

It just worked well for me, and I don't regret it. I do miss some college football, but I'll just head to a bar for a drink when I want to watch a game. So count me as one who saw the light a little early. It is suprisingly easy to drop cable when you want. Luckily, in Birmingham I can buy cable internet without the TV, so I'm not paying for the channels at all.

Ditto with the phone company... I haven't paid BellSouth a dime in a few years. Just went to cellular. That deserves another post.

New Year, New You - Editorial - CIO

2007-01-23T19:37:00.000-06:00

This is a very good article... whether you aspire to move up the corporate ladder or desire that "special something" that successful tech executives have.

New Year, New You - Editorial - CIO: "I speak to CIOs every day who confide that they would like their next opportunity to be something 'challenging' with a 'growing company' where they can provide 'leadership.' They have a generic understanding of what they want but no plan, no strategy, for achieving it. This never fails to amaze me. CIOs work so hard to be strategic in their technology leadership. Why not be strategic about your career?"

Entrepreneurialism in the New Millennium

2007-01-22T20:34:00.000-06:00

I never ran into this problem personally.. now I've had a few very cool ideas that I thought were clever, and a couple of years later they popped up in the marketplace, usually by a big player proclaiming a breakthrough. Two examples off the top of my head are real time help desk analytics, and "BI as a service," something I have been reading about in BI circles. It stings a little bit that I shopped an idea around to the biggest companies in Birmingham, got an audience with the right people, and never was able to get them to get commit money to pay for the service.

In the meantime I told everyone that would listen, including VCs, about it, but at the end of the day I had to make money some other way. Now there are several products of the sort out there, and it is a growing market. I don't chalk it up to stealing, but to that I should have known how to sell the damn thing better... that's something I'm much better at nowadays.

I'm a believer that to idea people, you never have just one good idea, so I think another will come along, and I'll be able to apply some of the lessons I learned that didn't let that idea pan out the last time.

Entrepreneurialism in the New Millennium: "Enter a new player in the entrepreneurial team: the lawyer. That’s right, the lawyer. The lawyer is not a technician. The lawyer doesn’t bring any new ideas. The lawyer doesn’t bring any money. In fact, the lawyer costs money. The lawyer doesn’t speed things up. In fact, the lawyer slows things down greatly. So how did the lawyer get involved in the entrepreneurial team?

The lawyer is there to protect intellectual property. To create patents and trademarks. And adding the burden of protecting intellectual property to the already heavy burden of creating and marketing new technology is like adding a 50 pound anchor to a rowboat and then trying to race across a lake. It simply is a huge imposition to the entrepreneurial process. "

Welcome to my new blog

2007-01-21T13:44:00.000-06:00

However, you get here, welcome... I am a VP with ComFrame Software in Birmingham, AL running the Enterprise Portfolio and Project Management (EP2M) practice, which is a group formed entirely from a company I sold to ComFrame in Decemeber. I have been a blogger for about 3 years now with my OLAP Stuff blog, focused on BI, but on this blog I would like to follow the lead of Fred Wilson and expand to cover much more of my life, with pictures and music, and focus on my experiences as a past, current, and future entrepreneur. With alot of observations of trends based on my experiences, which I hope will come through my filter to be a little different than others you might find on the net.

At the moment there's a lot of housekeeping that will be going on as I get the layout and some content lined up, but welcome, and I hope you enjoy my future posts.

First post

2007-01-14T17:15:00.000-06:00

Starting new...