Tech Review: SketchUp, free, easy-to-use 3D modeling software

Where should you place your security cameras for the best coverage of your business? Wouldn’t it be nice to have a 3D model of your facility, and a bird’s eye view so you could see that sort of thing? Or maybe you’re considering landscaping your business or home this year, or putting in a garden, an addition, or a patio. But you’re not quite sure where in your yard to put it, or how big it should be, or, most importantly, what it will look like.

Tech Review: Virtual business cards fall flat

This article originally appeared September 2, 2008. New services like rmbrME offer an electronic remedy to the problem of paper-based business cards. Only for many business people, business cards aren’t a problem that needs solving. Through text messages and web applications, rmbrME creates an electronic business card called a bzCard. Instead of carrying around a paper card, you email it to a contact. Technology is supposed to make life easier, but sometimes the old-fashioned way of doing things reigns king. New services like rmbrME offer an electronic remedy to the problem of paper-based business cards. Only for many business people, business cards aren’t a problem that needs solving. Through text messages and web applications, rmbrME creates an electronic business card called a bzCard. Instead of carrying around a paper card, you email it to a contact. Sign-up for the service was easy. I timed it. One minute, ...

Tech Review: Online Marketing the Easy Way

Like many small business owners, I’ve had an online presence for years — featuring my products, services and biography on brochure sites. Visitors can read promotional copy and click through my portfolio. But with 2010 almost upon us, I decided that it was long past time for me to embrace the 21st century and make my sites more informative and interactive.

I knew I was missing an opportunity to reach a wider audience online and convert them into paying customers, but I balked at the amount of time and energy it would take to top search engine results pages, get linked to from blogs and create buzz on social networking sites.  I couldn’t afford to spend hours a day marketing my business online or to pay someone else to do it.  So I’m experimenting with HubSpot, an inbound marketing system, on one of my websites, WritingCoach.com.

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Tech Review: Note to self: start using the ultimate reminder program

I confess: I’m a serial note taker. As I type this tech review, I am surrounded by Post-Its, index cards, notebooks and legal pads, all bearing task lists, reminders and other notes to self that I’m unlikely to look at again.  I write things down to give my brain a break, but it’s impossible to reliably retrieve information stored all over the place. The office supply list that I penned during the day often isn’t on hand when I swing by the store after work. The inspirational quote I jotted down while reading a business tome may languish in a “to file” folder for months before getting tossed.

So, like many overworked multitaskers, I need a way to capture and organize the myriad tips, ideas, recommendations and insights I accumulate so they are handy when I need them at home, in the office or on the move.

Even at work, some of the information you want to save doesn’t easily fit into rigid systems of to-dos, milestones and appointments.  Sometimes you’re saving things to cherish them, not to act on them.  Sometimes you’re storing information just in case it might come in handy down the road. How do you label an idea whose time hasn’t yet come?

Where do you file a fond memory?

Tech Review: The thing about Ning

As if you weren’t already saturated enough with social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter … along comes Ning.

Ning has actually been around since 2004 and has more than 37 million registered users. The concept is fairly simple: you sign up and start your own social networking site.

Instead of being part of one big club, you get to start your own club that others can join. The idea is to create a site for your particular niche; for example, there are several regional Nings about fly-fishing where fly fishermen can sign up and talk to each other in a chat room or on message boards. They can post photos or videos of their expeditions, which only other members of that particular Ning can see.

Tech Review: Finally an idiot-proof, free accounting software

For better or worse, I run BizSense by feel.

In any given month, I know how much is in our account, and I know about what we should be bringing in and spending. But I don’t worry too much about it. If we need a new computer, I drive to Best Buy and pick one out. When we line up a new ad contract, we order pizza.

In the end, I hope the business proves wildly popular and profitable, so I keep my head down and keep typing.

But partly it’s also because I refuse to learn Quick Books and have given up on Quicken, for which I paid $100 that I will not be getting back. There also isn’t enough time in the day to learn obtuse accounting software. I looked at Quick Books and yelled “Uncle” after five minutes.

Tech Review: There’s a recipe for that

I'm new to the whole iPhone and iTouch scene.

I don't have an iPhone, but I have had an iTouch in my house for about a year (it came free with a MacBook Pro). Up until now, I never really fiddled with it. But when I got a news release that Richmond-based start-up called You've Got Supper had a new app available, I decided to give it a whirl.

You've Got Supper is a website started about three years ago by two University of Richmond business school grads, Michelle Jenkins and Susan Aprahamian. The two college friends shared a love for cooking and launched a recipe website and newsletter.

The email newsletter delivers four or five recipes every week developed and tested by the two women and their families. It began as a subscription ...

Tech Review: Get Scribd

Maybe I’m the last person to know about this. I can be pretty slow on the uptake. But Scribd.com may be the latest in a parade of mandatory sites, just like YouTube and Facebook.

Scribd is a mix of social media and document sharing. It gives anyone the ability to upload whatever document they want into the public domain. If you are a writer, it’s a quick way to self-publish. If you are a business, it becomes a way of getting your message on the internet for the patient reader to peruse. No, it isn’t Twitter, and what you put on there is going to be much more than 140 characters – Scribd actually has entire books available for reading right on its site. And it’s entirely free. But if you are a private company, not publically traded ...

Tech Review: Twitter’s training wheels

During the summer I took an exhaustive look at the social media scene in Richmond.  It took weeks of research and dozens of interviews and a few sleepless nights. (Yes, I’m patting myself on the back.) So after that, I was done with social media for a while. I needed a break. I didn’t even log into my Facebook account for three weeks. But something Bill Bergman, who runs the Bergman Agency in Richmond, said during one of those interviews stuck with me and got me to thinking. “Nobody is an expert,” Bergman said. “It reminds me of those marketers back in the early ’40s, running around claiming to be experts on TV advertising when TV was brand new.”

Tech Review: How you say ‘eh’ in French?

Maybe it’s me.

I have taken five years of French, two years of Spanish and two years of Latin. I can’t really speak a word of any of it. Go education system!

So I was hopeful when I heard about Rosetta Stone’s language software, and I heard about it some more, then I heard about it some more.  I heard about it from Michael Phelps and from the Richmond-based Martin Agency’s new ad campaign and I even heard about it on BizSense.

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