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I’ve just returned from this year’s South By SouthWest (SXSW) Interactive Festival and I bring news of import to all small businesses looking to attract local, in-person audiences: Get Mobile Now. This year’s festival of all things geeky and early-adoper-esque was filled with a vision of the future – location-based services such as FourSquare, Gowalla, and, to a lesser extent, Loopt, BriteKite, Google Buzz Facebook and Twitter were being used by attendees to find hot spots, action, and most importantly, their friends. And, in the process, funneling customers to businesses that were popular with the crowd.

To explain, for those not familiar with location based services, a person goes to a venue such as a restaurant, club, store, or park, and “checks in” via their mobile phone, letting their friends and optionally their contacts on social networks know that they are in a specific location. They’re also able to give a short message like “Eating dinner.” Why, many people have asked me, would they do this? Aren’t they worried about privacy? Let’s put the privacy concerns aside for a second (though there are valid concerns.) Assuming a perfect world where no one takes negative advantage of this information, letting your friends know where you are is a great way to attract them to your location. At a festival or conference, this information can help you track down people effectively. For restaurants and businesses, users of these services can add tips such as “Try the mulled wine,” or “Special sale on Tuesdays” to help other users get the most out of the venue. Some services support pictures of the venues, or links directly to Yelp or Google Local Business Listings for review.

On FourSquare, users compete to be the “Mayor” of a venue, and some businesses have taken note, treating people who show their mayoral status to free coffee, extra toppings, or even a night at a hotel. Gowalla’s icons have been used to provide prizes for visitors to venues. Some attendees at SXSW who checked in at Austin airport were offered rides to town courtesy of Chevrolet as part of a promotion at the festival.

Granted, Chevy is bigger than your business, but all of these location-based services are looking to partner with the little guys as well. It is free to add a venue to any of these services – and in fact someone may have added your business already. Have you checked? Are there tips or reviews of your business on these sites? Are there some negative comments? Better address those soon.

In June of last year I asked “Does your Small Biz site show on the Mobile Web?” and this is still relevant – but the location based services are the next thing. Twitter and Facebook are already experimenting with location-based tagging of status messages – so if someone tweets “Having a terrible experience in a store,” the message may tie directly back to your business. Twitter tools will soon be able to report these locations, and I’ve heard some are already doing so.

Finally, to the privacy advocates – some percentage of people will not use these services. Some don’t want their location known and will turn it off. There are legitimate concerns, and sites like “Please Rob Me” were set up attempting to tie location checkins to people who might not be home, to make just this point. On the other hand, a statistic that shows the scale of check-ins at SXSW is that PayPal and Microsoft sponsored a bounty of $.25 per check-in via "Check In for Charity" on the FourSquare service, and raised $15,000 for  Save the Children's Hatian relief fund – that’s over 60,000 check-ins in just a few days, at one (admittedly hyperconnected) conference. (Participants got a note thanking them for their contribution – which helped reinforce the behavior.)

What is the future for location-based serivces? Pretty soon, the real estate folks won’t be the only ones saying the key is “Location, Location, Location.”

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Meer dan 600 bezoekers, 4 internationale sprekers, 20 breakouts en een Twitterfall die bijkans op hol sloeg van de aanhoudende stroom tweets op hashtag #intra10. Het tweede Congres Intranet zit er weer op. Een korte terugblik in woord en beeld. Lees meer

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Bij horrorfilms doet de hoofdrolspeler altijd het verkeerde. Toch in dat verlaten huis kijken, naar links gaan waar jij zeker naar rechts zou gaan, kijken onder dat laken wat je natuurlijk nooit moet doen etc. Het wordt hoog tijd dat ze eens een keer naar je gaan luisteren. Dat kan nu want voor het misdaad en thriller kanaal 13th Street heeft het Duitse online bureau Jung von Matt de interacrtieve horrorfilm Last Call bedacht. De hoofdrolspeler belt namelijk tijdens de film iemand in het publiek en deze sluist de hoofdrolspeler via stemherkenning door alle benarde situaties. Het publiek bepaalt dus het verloop van de film. Heel tof. Maar eindigt het ook wel zo goed? Sheisse!

Via Teletekstisdood

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Uit een studie van GetJar, eerder deze week uitgebracht, blijkt dat  er in de markt voor mobiele app's binnen drie jaar zo'n 17,5 miljard dollar omgaat.Het aantal downloads van Apps zal van stijgen van zo'n 7 miljard in 2009 naar bijna 50 mil......

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Whether you are the owner of a home-based business, a virtual worker, or you simply want to establish a space in your home to handle the demands of your off-site business, carving out a home office can help you be more productive at home and maintain your sanity when family and household issues threaten to impede on your work. It's important to choose a suitable space and access your technology needs beforehand so that your new home office is compatible with your needs. The following guide will help you get the most out of your home office setup.  How to Set Up a Home Office: Design Your Space With You in MindThe optimal office setup for your business will depend upon your personal and occupational needs, says Cecelia Jernegan, author of Working From a Home Office Successfully: Best Practice Tips. Those with limited space might choose to set up in their bedroom, livingroom or kitchen, while those with a basement or an extra bedroom may choose that space. Jernegan says that for best productivity, she recommends having a room that is separate from daily household commotion, and one with a door will help immensely. Being able to seclude yourself, in what she refers to as an "office frame of mind," has to be a conscious decision, she says, and your work environment should be a reflection of you. "If you're a bachelor with no kids, obviously your setup differs from a mom who's got three kids," Jernegan explains. "[Conversely,] if you have your home office set up in your bedroom, and you have clients visiting every week, that's not very helpful."Leigh Buchanan, Inc.'s editor-at-large, who works from her home office in a suburb of Boston, adds that auxiliary elements, such as additional storage space and lighting, should also be taken into consideration. "You will have a tendency, when you work from home, to pile stuff up on the floor, which is not good because people can trip and fall," she says. "I think it's a good idea to have a basement, closet, or some place that you can dedicate to archives."Buchanan also emphasizes the importance of computer placement by sharing a bothersome home office anecdote of her own: "Be careful where you're putting your monitor," she warns. "I made a huge mistake of putting my monitor in front of a window so I can see the trees, which is nice, but from 3 pm to 3:30 pm, the sun shines directly in my face."Dig Deeper: There's No Office Like Home How to Set Up a Home Office: Getting the Right Tools and ServicesAccording to Jernegan, comfort and functionality are significant characteristics of a productive home office, and the type of equipment you buy, not to mention where you buy it from, is essential to workplace efficiency. For many people who work from a home office, a desk, a chair, a computer with a working Internet connection, a printer, and a phone line with voicemail will suffice. Some entrepreneurs may need a fax machine, some may need more space or several monitors for design work, and some may find multiple phone lines with caller identification to be helpful. "Your equipment should be ergonomically sound, because you are going to be working on it for hours," Jernegan advises. Hours of work inevitable leads to breakdowns. Thankfully, most hardware providers, particularly computer hardware, comes with user maintenance or warrantee agreements. "In an office, people will fix your equipment for you when it breaks down. But you need to make sure that you can fix your own equipment at your home office, [or] get vendors that are available 24 hours." Jeff Zbar, home office expert and operator of ChiefHomeOfficer.com, also stresses the importance of buying and hiring locally for all of your IT needs. "Find someone in your local area, within 40 miles," he says. "Then, if something breaks down you will have easy access; they can come to you or you can go to them. It helps to support your local community by buying local, and [your local IT help] will always be there."When choosing an Internet provider, Jernegan also advocates exploring local options, and making sure that your area will receive sound access and reliable customer service before you commit to a plan: "You don't want your service going down all the time. If your Internet is out for three hours, that affects your income and your business."Zbar insists that launching a home office does not have to be expensive. "My first home office, which I created in 1989, had a desk made out of an eight-foot kitchen counter top, which I bought at Home Depot," he says. "It was a makeshift office and it cost me practically nothing –the point being, it was a perfectly functional office to get done what I needed to be done.""One thing I would say to invest in is the chair," Zbar adds. "It's important to constantly adjust your chair, because your posture changes all the time. You can get a good chair for about $150 on up."Dig Deeper: Essential Tools For Every Home Office How to Set Up a Home Office: Determining Whether You Qualify For Tax DeductionsZbar points out that if you operate an office out of your home, you are not required to declare it on your taxes.  However, you may qualify for any number of tax deductions depending on various IRS stipulations. In order to qualify for deductions, you have to use the space in your home regularly and exclusively for your own business purposes. Unfortunately, if you are a telecommuter or virtual employee with an employer, and your employer helps cover some of the costs of your home office, you will not qualify for deductions. You may also deduct a portion of expenses that are related to your home office, such as the percentage of square footage that accounts for your home office within your entire living space, your dedicated business phone, and internet service. Nonetheless, some important facts to remember are that your business must be profitable in order to qualify for a home office deduction, and your annual tax write-off cannot exceed your annual business income. Dig Deeper: Deducting Your Home Office Expenses How to Set Up a Home Office: Always Have a Backup Plan No matter how proficient you think your software or hardware is, Jernegan says, it is important to "have a backup plan in case things go to hell in a handbag." She suggests limiting food and drinks around office equipment as an easy way to help safeguard your office tools, but says that technology snafus in general are nearly unavoidable.There are plenty of questions you will ask yourself when your Internet, or your computer fails you, Jernegan says: "Do you go to the library? Do you go to Starbucks? If you don't have a car that day, where do you go?" Correspondingly, Zbar says the key is to always have fallbacks, and while he works from a desktop computer in his home office, he says he has taken steps to ensure that he will never be totally vulnerable to IT failure. "I believe in redundancy," he says. "I have my laptop, so I'm never really down. If my Internet goes down [at home], I have an aircard, so I can still get online whenever; it's about $40 a month, which is costly, but I need it."Being overly prepared is just another characteristic you will develop when you work from home, Zbar says. "You always have to be ready to put on the IT hat, the CEO hat, the CFO hat, or the CHO (Chief Home Officer) hat," he says.Dig Deeper: Checklist: Research Your Backup Solution OptionsResources: For more information on running a home-based office, check out Inc.'s Home-Based Business Start-up Guide.To find out if you qualify for home-office deductions, the IRS has a comprehensive list of prerequisites.Inc. offers advice on setting up your Home Office Technology.

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I'm listening intently at this GrowCo. session to Tom Searcy, founder of Hunt Big Sales, and co-author of RFPs Suck. I was excited about this one because I too feel the same about RFPs! He's talking about 5 Sales Myths of Fast Growth Businesses.

1. Hiring. Most CEOs feel that they do all the big deals in their business. Is that true for you? According to Tom, it's never going to change so get over it. You are, and should always be, your best salesperson. He went on to say that we should really avoid hiring the ultimate blue chip sales representative thinking they'll take that over from you. The big name reps are unpredictable and prima donnas.

Janine's take on the advice: I've hired the blue chip salesperson and got burned by this one, so I totally agree. And I agree that any CEO should be a great salesperson, but I do believe that there are great salespeople that can represent any business, and in many ways they may even know the operations of a "deal" better than you.

2. Activity. Do you wish your sales reps would just sell harder? Do you want them to send more e-mail, make more calls, get more active? He pointed out how foolish we are if we bought CRM tools or spreadsheets thinking if you "track" activity more, people will be more active. But according to Tom, it doesn't mean it will come.

Janine's take: I do think that tracking sales makes all reps more accountable to their numbers, and tools are a great way to do that. But I do think that relying simply on tools and not invigorating your reps won't work in the long run.

3. Logo Hunting. Tom goes on to pick some fun at big logo hunters. Many salespeople think that if they land one large account the rest will follow. According to Tom, it won't be worth it. You might find that your sweet spot is the mid market and the deals are easier deals to do.

Janine's take: We've chased some big logos in our time, and some have worked out very well and others, not so well. I do think that when you close with a large customer, you will get the attention of other large customers, but that shouldn't be the end all be all of your sales strategy. Sometimes a healthy mix is just what you need.

4. M&A. If you're thinking you'll grow through acquisition, it can take your focus away from the core of the business.

Janine's take: In the early years of VerticalResponse, we looked at growth through acquisition and it really did distract me from the day-to-day business at a time when the business really needed me. But I do think that it can be core to your business if it opens up a new revenue stream or gives you a product you need for your suite.

5. Ramping Up. One of the best pieces of advice I heard from Tom: if you've got a great salesperson, take them out to a big fat steak dinner. Tell them what a great job they're doing. But if you have just average salespeople that are still "ramping up" months later, they won't get better with all of the tracking you do and all of the money you pay.

Janine's take: I agree with Tom on this premise with one important caveat: you need to make sure you have a proper training program dedicated to getting these people up to speed on your company, your market and your product.

Have you had any experiences with Tom's myths? Share them!

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