Business in the Internet Age

I was doing some thinking today about running a business. As a computer consultant I worked with different companies on different projects. I’ve seen a lot of different things. Some companies use services that are available on the internet. Basecamp, and EBAY are two examples. Does yours? What happens when your internet connection goes down? Would this be a minor or major disaster? Can you afford to not be connected for any length of time? If your answer is “No” then your chose of service probably isn’t the best one. You want to be able to continue working even if your internet connection is down. Your workflow may temporary change but you will still want to continue doing business. You may have to restructure your workflow to work around the problem. What are your options? Everyone has heard about backing up your hard drive on a regular basis. Because at some point the drive will fail. How many of us do this regularly? During Apple’s demo of Time Machine, Apple mentioned that about 4% of their customers regularly back up. The same thing goes for your internet service. At some point there will be a time when your service goes down, what will you do then? If you have a plan in place then all you have to do is follow that plan instead of rushing around trying to figure out what your going to do. I guess what I am trying to say is to plan ahead for disasters or problems. Large companies spend millions of dollars on disaster recovery, planning. While you don’t need to spend millions you do need to plan ahead. Here are some items to think about:

Your plan doesn’t need to be all inclusive.

Have a couple of alternatives for each disaster(problem)

Define when your plan should go into effect – each item should have conditions that cause that item to be put into effect.

Keep the plan in several locations

Review and update the plan regularly

As part of this plan you may want to rework your business processes to be more flexible with regards to disasters.

Hopefully this post will help you better handle the next “disaster” that comes your way.

GTD – Getting things done

Personal Productivity – by David Allen. David Allen has created a personal productivity system. I’ve started reading his book to learn more about it. I’ve tried Stephen Covey’s productivity process and I didn’t stay with it. I’ve started to hear a buzz about GTD. There are several software pages available right now and at least one on the way. What I’ve read so far seems very do able. I’m a little excited.

One thing that I have learned about these different productivity systems is that they have to work the way you work. By that I mean the system needs to refine your style not necessarily create a whole new style. A system that refines your style of work you are more likely to stay with than a system that completely redefines how you do things.

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Kinkless GTD

MacWorld 2007

Well, MacWorld is over the big announcements were the iPhone, Apple TV, Airport Extreme – a new base station with 802.11n, and a name change for our favorite computer company, Apple Computer is now Apple Inc.

iPhone – I want one, sort of. From what I’ve seen of the keynote and read on the internet. I agree the iPhone has the possibility of revolutionizing the cell phone industry. The iPhone is what I want a phone to be. Commentary predicts that Apple will also release less expensive versions of the phone like they have with the iPod line. I hope this happens as things are now the iPhone is too expensive for me. Also, I want to be able to purchase an unlocked phone so that I can use it with my current service T-mobile. All that said when do I get mine.

Apple TV – The iTV is finally released in its final form. The only surprise here was the include 802.11n wireless networks. Apple also announced that the latest round of computers with the Core 2 Duo chips have the 802.11n chip sets in them. Also announced was a new version of the Airport extreme base station that is also has 802.11n networking.

Missing in action – Leopard – no mention of the new version of the operating system. I was expecting at least something even if it was a minor mention of the new release. With Vista due out to the public at the end of the month. I figured that Apple would at least do something. Maybe we will see a special announcement before February. Also missing was any mention of iLife 07 or iWork 07. Overall I think MacWorld 2007 was a great success. I look forward to see what Apple has in store for us in the future.