The Business Web – How We Use the Web for Business

I had posted about site24×7.com for website up-time monitoring and actually recommended it. However, I have found a much better deal that will allow you to monitor up to 100 websites at 10 minute intervals for absolutely free. We are dumping site24×7.com and moving to Montastic.

4/4/07 Update: We have been using Montastic and there appears to be too many false positives. We would get a number of email alerts telling us that one of our website is down but when in reality it’s not true. We recommend that you do not use Montastic.

Filed under: Website Up-time / Performance Monitoring | 2 Comments »

These are the rants, views and not always qualified opinions of 2 guys who have worked and toiled in the high tech business. Hopefully you’ll find our postings useful, amusing, and perhaps learn a few things as we are learning them. We don’t work for any of the companies we review and while our opinions are often pointed, we are just writing as we think. No holds barred. No Google Ads.

We’ve gotten a couple of emails asking why we are hiding our identities. This is absolutely not a “BRAND” building exercise for us. As you might have already noticed, some of our reviews are quite candid. Since we’re both involved in the software industry, we don’t want to burn any bridges, therefore remaining anonymous is beneficial for both you and us.

So about the two guys behind Business-Web.com:

X-Man (Written by phobulous)

X-Man’s lack of a decent jump shot is made up by his business acumen and tech savvy. His alma mater’s inability to rank higher than mine has been an ongoing sore point between us. Hey X-Man, ask me what the inside of the Top Ten looks like. What?? Sorry, I can’t hear you from up here. This import from Asia may try to fool you into thinking he’s “the man” by driving luxury sports cars and wearing designer clothes, but just ask his wife who does the cooking. I’ll take one Beef Noodle Soup please…thanks.

phobulous (Written by X-Man)

phobulous grew up in a posh suburb of Maryland. He is a huge fan of Ohio State and one would assume that is his alma mater. However, he just wanted to have a winner to cheer for given the lack of Division I football team at his real alma mater. phobulous, agrees by everyone who has seen him, strikingly resembles Jamie Foxx. Admittedly, this is not something that he welcomed until Jamie Foxx had put the Booty Call days behind him and blossomed into a real star. He’s a genius.

Filed under: Uncategorized | 5 Comments »

I dont’ have any personal experience with ViaTalk but this is a similiar deal in terms of price that I got from SunRocket last year. From what I have read, the service quality is pretty decent. I think with most VOIP phone service providers, you will experience some weirdness and quality issues primarily due to your internet connection. If you want to run VOIP at home, make sure you have a decent size internet pipe and buy a router that can prioritize VOIP traffic.

We use both Vonage and SunRocket and I am pretty happy with them given the price we are paying. The services are not perfect but it works for me.

Link

Filed under: Miscellaneous Deals, VOIP Phone Service | No Comments »

If you are looking for a CRM solution for your business, check out http://www.comparecrm.com. They also have a CRM Software Comparison section that has reviews on CRM vendors as well as their product information. They also have a couple of CRM Evaluation Guides that you should check out if you need some crm evaluation help. One is a 7 steps guide to purchase CRM software and another helps you negotiate a better deal with software vendors.

Pretty useful site.

Filed under: CRM Software | No Comments »

The Web 2.0 Expo is happening from April 15 – 18 in San Francisco. Here is a link to the site, http://www.web2expo.com/pub/w/53/register.html.  Again, this is not a full conference pass but it’s worth checking out if you have time and do not want to pay for the full conference pass. You can get a free expo pass using code webex07mk37.

We’ll be going and hopefully we can find some Business Web 2.0 Winners there.

Filed under: Miscellaneous Deals | No Comments »

I thought this post might be useful to some of the small business owners out there who might not be necessarily be up to date on the latest office automation technology. My goal is to find essential business software/services (whether it’s software or Saas) and try to find the best deals possible without sacrificing too much on feature and functionality. I’ll start with a list of what I feel every small business office needs and feel free to comment on my selections. I will summarize each and then provide a link to a more expanded post. This list, not ordered by importance, is work in progress so I will be expanding this over time.

1. CRM Software – I think in this day and age having a CRM system is important. This is the system where you will keep track of all your business contacts, deals, activities, sales, and other so called “front office” information.
2. Project Management – I run a company with a distributed workforce all over the US as well as overseas. Having a project management solution that is easy to use and one that people will actually use is hard to find. I think this is a no brainer as this is the only way to track activities.
3. Email Marketing – We rely quite heavily on email marketing to our prospects and customers. Not having a good solution here can be deadly to your business.
4. Online Collaboration / Desktop Sharing – This is the tool that helps you share your desktop with others. For example, this is useful if you are going thru your finances with your accountant and need to quickly share what’s on your screen.
5. Online Backup – This is a service that backs up all your important files to a server accessible on the Internet. I had a couple of hard drives fail and I think a back up service provide is most likely more reliable than any hard drive (raid or not) can provide.
6. Office Productivity Suit – This is synonymous to Microsoft Office. However, unless you need the more advanced features that Microsoft Office offers. There certainly are less expensive alternatives.
7. Anti-Virus Software – It’s critical that you protect your computer systems. Again, free Anti-virus software is available for this job.
8. PDF Writer/Converter – These days, everyone needs to output their word doc or xls spreadsheet to PDF. Fortunately, there are many free tools out there that will do this.

We will discuss these areas in the weeks as phobulous comes up for air and I have more time to evaluate our options for each.

Filed under: Business Service, Business Software | 3 Comments »

Though its name may sound like a mystical creature from Harry Potter, I assure you it won’t take a wizard to use Yugma. This web conferencing tool is easy to use, free (Yugma Premium will cost extra per month), and the product performance is great.

Yugma provides a useful control panel, which lists everyone on the web conference — clearly noting the host and presenter. The control panel also gives you the ability to chat with other people on the web conference publicly and privately as well as switch presenters. One misstep is the control panel’s lack of an “Always on top” feature. Picture quality and refresh rate are better than I’ve seen from other applications (e.g. Unyte, CrossLoop, and Vyew). We did see a bit of a slow down when X-Man was hosting, but he literally had 50 windows open. Once he closed down a few of the unnecessary apps, the performance was more than acceptable.

Here are some of the Yugma Premium features for as low as $9.95/month:

• Unlimited online meetings for up to 50 attendees
• Share mouse and keyboard controls with other attendees
• File sharing of documents
• 100 MB document storage
• Record and playback meetings
• Schedule sessions
• Email and telephone support
• As low as USD $9.95 per month (no contract required)

Mouse and keyboard sharing should be part of the free version, but despite that X-Man and I call this a Business Web 2.0 Winner! Uninstall Yugma? Yu gotta be kidding.

Filed under: Web Collaboration | 4 Comments »

Starts Sun Mar 18 .. Staples

Intuit QuickBooks Simple Start 2007

$89.99
-$10.00 Instant savings
= $79.99
- $80.00 Easy Rebate
= FREE

Link

Deal was posted at Slickdeals.net.

Filed under: Free Business Software | No Comments »

We found this guide while doing additional searches for Web Conferencing/Web Collaboration tools. We actually found it on another site called Kolabora.com (a web conferencing news aggregator). It’s a very extensive guide that is very well done without any annoying ads. We highly recommend this guide if you need something more comprehensive. Good job Robin.

Link

Filed under: Web Collaboration | No Comments »

Here is the link. Great for a small office although it does not have built-in fax capability. $90 value.

Filed under: Miscellaneous Deals | No Comments »