Helping your business to do more business
At the end of October Microsoft released version 2 of SilverLight, billed by many as a direct competitor to Adobe Flash. To me this is a far more significant release than version 1, thanks to the addition of technologies that give it the ability to be used for something far more interesting than merely a video player or simple animation tool. These new capabilities make SilverLight a serious contender when choosing the platform for a Rich Internet Application (RIA).
As I mentioned in my previous article we were shortlisted for the best business startup category in the North Devon Awards. The awards ceremony was last night, it's still sinking in (12 hours later) but I am over the moon to report that we won!
We've recently had some most excellent news - we're a finalist in the business start up category of the North Devon Business Awards. Frankly I was amazed when told that we'd been shortlisted, and to get this far is reward enough for me.
For those who don't know, VPN stands for Virtual Private Network, the technology is used to provide remote users with a secure tunnel between wherever they are (in an internet cafe for instance) and the company local area network (LAN), allowing them to access files and data stored on the network. This technology is a great enabler not just for mobile users who are on the road often, but also for those who'd like to work from home as VPN technology also enables teleworking.
What do you do with the details of the contacts that you meet? In business when we meet new people we seem to invariably exchange business cards. That's great, as we end up with a card giving details of how to contact the person that we've just met. But what do we do with those details? Do we retain the business cards or store them on the computer somehow? For small businesses it seems to be an enduring problem, which people solve in a wide variety of ways. Many realise that the 'best' answer involves some form of database and so the simplest database of all, Microsoft Excel, gets roped into the solution.