Small business is a vibrant and expanding universe – and an attractive market for many companies. I’m bombarded with a steady stream of product, service and solution announcements targeting business owners, including online applications, technology, software or new twists on old concepts.
Here are new things that small business owners, home based businesses and startups will find interesting:
• Free accounting software: QuickBooks Simple Start 2008 is full-featured (not a trial) accounting software that’s free and easy to use. It’s intended for first-time users and lacks powerful features of QuickBooks itself. But it’s still a great tool to track sales, expenses and data for customers and vendors, plus produce estimates, invoices and more. Visit quickbooks.intuit.com.
• Low-cost Web site analysis tool: For an affordable ($21.95/year) new way to gather info on your Web site, check out TheCounter.com. It offers instant reports that include traffic figures, plus the visitor’s browser and operating system, which sites or search engines brought them there, and keywords used.
• Create custom photo labels: Seiko, which pioneered single-label smart printers, has new software that lets you take photos directly from a Web cam to create custom labels with text and photos for name tags, security badges, inventory identification, envelopes, files, storage boxes, bar codes and other office applications. Visit www.siibusinessproducts.com.
• Try low-cost video ads: AditAll is a new Web -based platform for small and mid-size businesses to create, customize and distribute video ads. Average costs for AditAll video ads range from $300-$700; well below costs of creating quality videos other ways. It’s also a distribution channel for video and audio content producers and developers. Advertisers can post a request for specific audio/video needs; producers can then create/post clips for potential purchase. Visit www.aditall.com.
• Use Web-based performance reviews: Many biz owners dread paper-based employee reviews. Some are finding a better way, online. SuccessFactors (www.successfactors.com), Softscape On-Demand (www.softscape.com) Halogen (www.halogensoftware.com) and are popular solutions targeting small biz.
• Collaborate online: Office Live Workspace, now in beta, will be a new place to store, share and access your Microsoft Office documents and preview them from almost any computer, even if it doesn’t have Office installed. Open and save files directly from Word, Excel and PowerPoint. No more flash drives or sending documents by email. Invite others to your workspace. It’s free from Microsoft (officelive.microsoft.com). •
Daniel Kehrer can be reached at editor@business.com.
