LinkedIn the 12 most powerful features for business

In doing the research for this post, I have spoken to many LinkedIn users and business owners.
One of the things I have found fascinating about LinkedIn (which was corroborated by the conversations I had and emails I received), is that the individual tools on LinkedIn seem to form their own intense user groups. Some people describe LinkedIn as Facebook in a suit, but it is far much more than that. One person may focus their whole strategy on maximizing LinkedIn Q&A, another might focus on LinkedIn Events, while a third builds an entire strategy around participating in LinkedIn Groups discussions.

Could you recover from a disaster?

Kevin Moreau, General Manager, Acronis UK & Ireland looks at the thing you can be sure of with computers is that, eventually, they will break down. When you’re busy running a company, ensuring that your systems are backed up is often the last thing on your mind. But with financial figures, competitor information and customer data all resting on your PCs, it’s not surprising that, according to a recent survey from YouGov, 40 per cent of SMBs would suffer severe impairment to business operations in the case of a system failure.

New BT Cloud accounting application launched

BT Business has launched a new web-based accounting application, to replace the complex software blighting smaller firms, forcing their employees to work longer hours.

The launch of Xero, a new online tool designed for firms and their advisors, is supported by new research by BT Business which finds that almost 50 per cent of smaller business staff work extra hours to clear their current workloads, with 41 per cent admitting that they actually waste work time because of poor technology and systems.

10 ways to design a good web site

So you need to build a website and instead of paying a web design company you want to A critical part of this process involves deciding how you want your Web site to look. We talked to Sean Brown, interaction design director who oversees the layout of the company’s men.style.com and style.com Web sites, to offer some design dos and don’ts.

BT Serves-up Wi-Fi at Starbucks

BT have announced a new relationship with Starbucks Coffee Company to provide Wi-Fi across more than 650 Starbucks coffeehouses in the UK and Ireland. The first stores will have the service installed this week and the roll out will be completed by the end of the summer 2009.

Keeping down the cost of using your mobile abroad

Whilst we are sure that President Obama doesn’t have to worry about the cost of using his now famous BlackBerry during his current european tour many business owners heading abroad for Easter do. With this in mind Ofcom has produced a video to help travellers keep their mobile phone costs down while travelling.

The video says that while wireless broadband dongles and smart phones are popular to use, downloading data can be very expensive when abroad.

Head in the clouds – a beginner’s guide to cloud computing

Cloud computing (also sometimes known as Software as a Service or SaaS) has been widely heralded as a development that will fundamentally change the way businesses and individuals use technology. Historically, the software that enterprises depend on to do business (for example databases or word processors) has always taken the form of applications that users install on individual computers, paying a licence fee for their use. Cloud computing, however, turns this model on its head by making these applications available through the browsers we use to surf the Internet either for free, or for a monthly charge.