Archive for the 'business' Category
FONtastic voyage
Posted by: Owen on Thursday, 4th Oct, 2007
I had blogged about FON more than a year ago and it’s great to see them grow from strength to strength. Today they’re in the news together with BT announcing a joint venture in a bid to penetrate the UK market. The details of the deal are still a bit unclear, but from a technology [...]
Competitive Advantage through software
Posted by: Owen on Thursday, 27th Sep, 2007
Sometimes, one way to leapfrog your competition is to choose software that outstrips the capabilities of your competitors. This can be relatively easy if you have an in-house development team, but is harder for companies who use off-the-shelf packages. And in these cases, it’s worth focusing on niche players to see what differentiates them from [...]
Finding Business Opportunities online
Posted by: Owen on Sunday, 23rd Sep, 2007
Are you looking for a specific opportunities to start a new business or expand an existing one? If so, the Internet is full of different places to look. In the Isle of Man we have WorkConnexions which is a brilliant resource for business networking. If you’re looking for something on a broader scale, check out [...]
Visiting Netcetera
Posted by: Owen on Thursday, 20th Sep, 2007
The Isle of Man branch of the BCS yesterday organised a tour of the Netcetera datacenter here on the Isle of Man. It was very well attended and we were given a pretty comprehensive tour of their facility. Their new £10 million data center has the space and capacity to host 700 racks of equipment, [...]
Location Based Services
Posted by: Owen on Friday, 31st Aug, 2007
It’s been a couple of years since I came face-to-face with location based services (LBS). I had been at a Microsoft conference where a very early version of what was to become the MapPoint Location Service was demoed. There seemed to be quite a few applications that would have benefited from this, but there seemed [...]
Running a web conference
Posted by: Owen on Wednesday, 1st Aug, 2007
Have you ever taken part in a web conference? I’ve been wanted to try it out at work ever since I started watching Marketing Pilgrim’s Live Streaming Webcast. So, in the meantime I’ve been looking around at different providers to try and find one I can use.
Running a web conference can be an excellent idea [...]
Using the Internet to scale your business
Posted by: Owen on Monday, 30th Jul, 2007
I had the pleasure of making the acquaintance of Dr Helen Nightingale last Friday over lunch and we had a pretty interesting conversation over her plans to start up a new website focusing on delivering advice and self-help over issues relating to anxiety, trauma, insomnia and other mental issues. It was actually quite refreshing to [...]
Do it online … or not ?
Posted by: Owen on Tuesday, 17th Jul, 2007
I need to renew my car insurance this morning, having received a letter from DirectLine a few days ago, so I promptly headed down to their website to see how I could do this. Turns out, you can log into your account, see your policy details, even amend them and place a claim online, however [...]
3D Mind Maps
Posted by: Owen on Friday, 1st Jun, 2007
I find that when I’m studying I tend to keep notes in a form very similar to Mind Maps. I find it quite intuitive yet, I’ve never taken it a step further to look at computer information organizer software. There’s a selection of packages you can use as an Information Organizer, including FreeMind and Labyrinth [...]
Executive Coaching
Posted by: Owen on Tuesday, 29th May, 2007
What do British Airways, General Motors, Apple, Bell Labs and Oracle have in common? Well, they’re some of the clients of The Forte Institute, and what an impressive list of clients that is. The Forte Institute is a company that specialises in Executive Coaching and have their own methodology which helps them attain great results. [...]
Brave New World
Posted by: Owen on Thursday, 17th May, 2007
Human beings have great potential to create new and amazing things. Unfortunately they also have a potential for destruction and chaos. Just this morning I picked up on two news stories that show how dependant we are on technology and how easy it is for malicious individuals to wreck havoc on others. The first story [...]
CRM Software
Posted by: Owen on Thursday, 10th May, 2007
When you grow to be above a certain size, it starts getting harder to keep everything in your head and you start needed systems to help you. This is especially true are your company grows and more and more people start dealing with your clients. It’s important to maintain a consistent quality of service and [...]
Operational Challenges
Posted by: Owen on Monday, 7th May, 2007
Starting up a new business can be a great buzz, however once the initial excitement wears off, it’s down to the nitty gritty of sorting out operational procedures and making sure that your business can scale in the way you want it to. And sometimes you’ll come across challenges, some with you’ve expected and some [...]
Lenders edgy about fixed mortgages
Posted by: Owen on Friday, 27th Apr, 2007
I read an article recently that lenders are considering no longer offering fixed-rate mortgages due to a fear that the Bank of England interest rate would rise. Some people may see this as a bad marketing move by lenders, as they’re creating a void where new competitors will try and eat into their client base, [...]
Thinking outside the box
Posted by: Owen on Thursday, 26th Apr, 2007
Did you know the Prince of Wales recently bought some Artificial grass for his garage? Turns out when he fitted his Land Rover to run on biodiesel he had problems with the fuel going bad overnight due to temperatures falling below freezing. He solved the problem by putting artificial grass on the floor of his [...]
