►Make Your Business Thrive
►Business Value of Social Media
►Jet Pilots Don't Use Rear View Mirrors
►How Strong Are Your Passwords
►Quote of the Month
►Just for Laughs
 

We all can recall a standout teacher, one whose insight and enthusiasm made a definite impact on our lives.

For small businesses, technology and software can often prove to be the best teachers around. But few entrepreneurs hit the streets armed with every form of business training imaginable.

That's where technology can step in-not only providing essential information, planning and other tools but, in effect, teaching small business owners critical skills that can last a lifetime.

Ready for class to start?

Here are six ways that technology provides you with the knowledge and training you need to make your small business flourish.

Business value of Social Media part 1: online networking
reprinted with permission from the HP Small Business Center

If you could connect to the world’s business professionals, in the time it takes to check your email, wouldn’t you? Welcome to the world of online networking, where valuable business connections are made every day on social and professional networking sites like Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin.

Social and professional networking simply refers to the interaction between a community of people who share a common interest. Through these personal connections you make with an otherwise impersonal medium, you can give your business a personality, build brand awareness, and equally importantly, tune in to what people are saying about you.

The ability to create your own online networks through sites like Ning, has made it difficult to distinguish which online communities will help you reach your business goals. We did the leg work for you, by exploring the difference between social and professional networking and the business value of both, analyzing which sites work best, and providing tips to help you make the most of the free networking resources that already exist.

Social or Professional: What’s the difference?

Commercial jets cruise at about 600 miles per hour, which is the equivalent of ten miles per minute, or three-and-a-third city blocks per second.

At that speed, the pilot does not look back. And at the speed at which the world is changing, you shouldn’t look back either. Like a jet pilot, you need to concentrate on what’s up ahead.

To understand just how fast the world is changing, consider this. All the knowledge acquired up until 1750 doubled by the year 1900. That was 150 years.

It doubled again in just 50 years, between 1900 and 1950. The next time it doubled, it took only fifteen years, from 1950 to 1965. It doubled again between 1975 and 1980 — a period of just five years. That is rapid change.

And in the last 28 years, mankind’s knowledge has been multiplying beyond comprehension!

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Don't worry, Meet the Team will be back next month!!

How Strong
Are Your Passwords?
by Mike Gonsalves, StrategicFusion

Most people don't realize that computer security starts with them. An easy way to hold off trouble is to use strong passwords that you change every so often.

What is a strong Password? It is a password that is easily remembered by you, contains uppercase letters, lower case letters, a number or two, a special character and is at least 8 characters in length.

Sounds hard, but it's really easy when you use things you are familiar with.

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