More info from BestBuy – http://www.bestbuy.com/recycling/

The prior stimulus bill focused on trying to make it easier for small businesses to secure credit and added a few tax breaks. Business owners I talked to were not in a position to consider more funding for two reasons.

1. They were wary about adding debt to expand given the current economy.
2. They were already in such a tough position that they would not be able to qualify for more funding.

The President is now talking about a new stimulus plan with an increased focus on small businesses which is welcome news. The new stimulus would focus on jobs and has been called a “jobs bill”. A “jobs bill” could help if it has the right duration and implementation but is it too little too late?

Maybe the government will finally see that small business investment represents the most bang for the stimulus buck because of the following:

1. Geography – small businesses are everywhere and can help strengthen communities everywhere.
2. Industries – small businesses are in every industry so our investment in ourselves is diversified.

Too much focus has been placed on larger businesses and bailing out state governments.  The returns have been questionable.  Small businesses play a crucial role in our country’s success and deserve our attention.

More Reading

• Recovery.gov – Track the Money
• SBA.gov — Stimulus Package Includes Incentives For Small Business

Here are three free office suite/productivity applications for creating documents, spreadsheets and presentations.

Locally Installed Applications
Robust functionality similar to Microsoft Office applications.
OpenOffice.org

Web-based Applications
The functionality is not the same in some areas compared to locally installed office applications but you will be able to access your documents from anywhere you have an Internet connection and collaborate with others.

• Google Docs
• Zoho Writer, Sheet and Show

Solution Overview
Office Suite/Productivity Solution Overview

More Information
Research Helper – Free Office Suite Productivity

Considerations

1. Certifications vary in their requirements.  Some certifications require a short multiple choice exam while other certifications require weeks of coursework followed by an exam.  Some certifications also require continuing education. 
2. Some areas of technology have more relevant certifications than others.  For example, web design and development is an area with less universal acceptance when compared to other areas like networking.
3. Certification may not apply directly to the type of work you need done.  If a certification is for software development, how does that relate to something like computer repair?
4. Certification can be a way for software and hardware manufacturers to control quality but it is also a source of revenue which could cloud motives.
5. A certification, like a college degree, does not mean that job performance will be better.

What do certifications tell you?

1. A certification indicates some understanding for a given technology or solution.  The level of understanding depends on the rigor of the requirements. 
2. Certifications demonstrate a desire by the tech professional to meet additional standards that may not be necessary for the job but serve to boost the perception of credibility.
3. A desire to continue learning.

Certifications could certainly be a deciding factor when comparing professionals with similar experience, customer reviews and pricing.

More Information

• Certifications for Tech Service Providers
• How to Find the Right Tech Help

You can read our press release here:
TechShortcut Provides Free Advertising for Tech Service Providers that Help Small Businesses

If you would like to refer a tech service business to us you can use our referral form:
Refer a Tech Business

While all the choices can be difficult to navigate, these options allow businesses more flexibility than ever before to meet business needs. But which option should a business choose?

Check out our guide How to Run Your Software: In-House vs. Online vs. Outsourced for a list of the pros and cons. Because how you run your software is such a fundamental decision, you will find that each of our solution overviews will present both in-house applications and online applications (where appropriate) for each solution. However, implementation shouldn’t be your first consideration, check your business needs first.

As Google’s Gmail blog pointed out, the Gmail service still adhered to being operational 99.9% of the time.  Do you think you can do better in-house for the price?

To put 99.9% uptime in perspective, the approximate downtimes for 0.1% are listed below.

A Few Questions to Ask Yourself

• How much will an outage cost my business?
• How can I get work done when there is an Internet or Internet application outage?
• Do I have a copy of my data for reference when there is an outage?
• Do I need more uptime?
• How can I get more uptime and what is the cost?

You can read Google’s response to the outage here.
More on today’s Gmail issue

Additional Info
Source: Wikipedia Uptime

Source: Lifehacker Back up your Google Apps data

Related TechShortcut Info
How to Run Your Software? In-House vs. Online vs. Outsourced

Research Helper–Outage

Search results are grouped by website to give you additional context so you can get a sense for the content sources that fit you best. You will find Research Helper throughout the TechShortcut website so you can get additional information on a topic no matter where you are.

Give it a try! Click here -> Research Helper

Related Link
Research Helper
Other Helpful Websites

What are the benefits for small business and technology?  Here are some links that should help clarify the legislation’s intentions. The jury is still out on how many small businesses will benefit.

What it means for small business

In general, benefits serve to improve access to credit and provide debt relief.

Source: U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA)

• Recovery Act Overview
• SBA Applauds Stimulus Bill, Planning Underway For Broadest, Quickest Small Business Impact
• 2009 Recovery Act

Source: CNNMoney.com

• Where’s my stimulus?

What it means for technology

Source: PCMAG.COM

• Tech Gets a Cash Boot-Up

What it means for healthcare providers

If you are a healthcare provider that participates in the Medicare and Medicaid programs, there are benefits for adopting an electronic health record (EHR) system. There are also penalties down the road if you fail to add an EHR system.

Source: Health Information Technology

• HealthIT.hhs.gov Information Related to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009

You were probably just getting used to terms like application service provider (ASP), hosted application, on-line application and software as a service (SaaS) when along comes the term “cloud.”

A picture of a “cloud” to represent the Internet has been used in diagrams for years and is akin to the term “black box.” The underlying concept is the same for all the above terms—your application processing and/or data reside outside of your company.

What is different about the term “cloud” compared to the other terms listed above is that it has become associated with technology advancements like virtualization that have made the ability to run services on the Internet more efficiently and add additional computing resources more dynamically. Internet-based applications or services are taking advantage of these efficiencies which means that your data already on the Internet may be in the cloud.

Additional Information

Source: Wikipedia

Cloud computing

Related TechShortcut Articles

How to Run Your Software?

In-House vs. Online vs. Outsourced

Use TechShortcut’s Research Helper to find out more about cloud computing

Cloud Computing