When you’re running a business, it’s important that the customers are happy, so they’ll become repeat customers. It’s one thing to get new customers, but when you want to be a successful company, you need those customers to not only return for future business, but also spread the word that you were satisfied. There’s a saying that one happy customer will tell three other people they were happy, and one unhappy customer will tell ten people they are unhappy with your business. Running a successful business means not only doing a great job, but being properly insured, bonded or licensed in the field that you work in.

Whether you are a Washington DC Carpet Cleaning company, or a Houston day spa, you need to know the business inside and out, and that means on both the customer satisfaction end, and on the legal end. Let’s take Washington-DC-Carpet-Cleaning.com as an example; they are a company that promotes the highest level of satisfaction. They guarantee that if you aren’t happy with the service they provided, they’ll come back and do it again at no cost to you. That’s the kind of guarantee that makes customers take notice. They are also properly licensed, insured and bonded. They use modern equipment, not outdated equipment, and they use this technology at a price that you can afford. Keeping pricing in tact with the service they are offering is another way they strive to satisfy their customers.  Not only are they offering one service, they are offering multiple services so that a client can use one company rather than many. This offers a client convenience. Because I used them as an example, I’d like to leave you with their number also, or you can go to their web site and get a free estimate. You can reach Washington-DC-Carpet-Cleaning.com at 877-328-9275.

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Google Inc. said on Wednesday it had created Web software that runs both online, and offline, marking a sea change for the Internet industry by letting users work on planes, trains, spotty connections and even in the most remote locations.

Quoted from Reuters

Google is looking to make their mark offline too. Google is now the biggest and most widely used search engine, and with their many added applications, people are becoming more and more reliant on Google for their online tasks. What they are looking to do now, is give you the ability to use things like your readers, mail and other things without that internet connection. They are using something they call “Gears Technology”. What they are looking at first is with their reader. You’ll be able to check for updates, download those updates and read. Sounds an awful lot like, “connecting to the internet” first, if you ask me.

Palm is introducing their Foleo to the market as an addition to your smart phone. What they are bringing you is an ultra light small laptop of sort, weighing in at a little over 2 pounds that works in conjunction with your smart phone. What they are doing is giving you a larger screen, a full sized keyboard, and the ability to connect to your phone, so you can do the things you want to do or need to do, and you can see what you are doing, and be able to type easier. Great, good, ummmm, what?

They want you to carry your smartphone and the Foleo. Hmmmm…So now, because it doesn’t have laptop capabilities, you’re looking at lugging your phone, your Foleo and your laptop? I doubt you’ll be giving up your laptop anytime soon, since you’ll need that for business. I can see this working in some instances, but not a final answer. It’s a step in the right direction, but it just gives you one more thing to carry around. How convenient is that? Sure if you’re going to have a place to put it, when you need to work on some things, it will have it’s use, but the convenience of a smart phone is the on the go ability. Who has room for a Foleo in their pocket. It’s just one more thing to lug around.

While it has a convenience factor to it, making things easier to see and type on, I don’t think this is the thing to relaunch Palm back to the forefront where it’s competitors are quite yet. It’s a step in the right direction, and while I see some people really digging this Foleo, I think the general public won’t be picking it up quite so quickly.

Did you see the new Surface from Microsoft? It’s similar to a tablet PC that’s been incorporated into a coffee table of sort, so it enables you to use a touch screen but also reacts to bar codes. It’s not really an application for home users yet, but mainly for commercial users. Starwood Hotels are going to use them in their lobby. Team Mobile may use them in their stores to help people demo new phones, offer comparison for phones and such. It will let you experience stuff, simply by placing the various phones on the screen itself. It reads the bar codes that are associated with the products and gives you options and features based on that.

I was over at AdVolcano looking at their site. They are a text advertising network. How they stand apart from other networks is that they offer value pricing with specialized web site targeting. They also offer fixed rate buying, which means instead of trying to figure out how much something is going to cost based on clicks and other silly things, you know what you’ll be paying for what service. It’s about simplifying the process of internet advertising!

You can easily sort through their web sites available, and decide where you want to “rent” space. Each site tells you how many page views they get along with the pages Alexa score. This way, you can target where you place your ads. You can easily use their search to find a specific category, and even add in a sub category to help you pinpoint where your ads would work best.

If you’re a publisher, you can set your own pricing and ad size for your site. You have control over how much you’ll be paid to display an ad. You can customize them, along with seeing a 75% payout royalty.

If you’ve been looking for a more customizable ad network, or looking for a more streamlined process, you’ll want to check out AdVolcano.com and join their ad network today. This post has been brought to you by AdVolcano.com.

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You know you’re a geek when you get excited to go to Staples, and take just as long to pick out a mouse or flash drive as you would a new pair of shoes! A girl’s got to play!

Windows Vista came preloaded on my new laptop. I decided to go searching for guides, tips and tricks today to see what I could find. I was thrilled to find some great sites full of information, and let down to find sites promising tips only to find one or two sentences about the topic. Here are four hot spots that will start you on the path to conquering Windows Vista with excellent information.

1. Vista4Beginners.com is well written. Each piece is simple, to the point, and offers screen shots to make learning easier.
2. If you’re looking for tips, you’ll find a list of 50 tips at ItsVista.com.
3. The CNET Learning Hub is a great spot to check for tutorials and tips. You can find a Windows Vista 101 course.
4. The Windows Vista Community is a great question and answer forum that may help you out

A flash drive is a memory storage device that is compact and easy to use. You sometimes hear them referred to as USB Flash Drives. That’s because you insert it in the USB port of your computer. With a USB Flash Drive you can transfer information between different computers, or keep personal information at hand.
They are extremely portable and small units that can pack a lot of information on them. You can buy them with different storage capacity. You may be able to password protect some information, and many people partition them between public and private information. For this capability, check with the manufacturer before buying one.

Did You Know:

Some companies are selling ICE Flash Drives for the purpose of storing medical information on them to keep with your keys “In Case of Emergency”. MedicTag is one such device. It’s worth taking a look, as it can offer valuable medical information when you may not be able to.

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You finally got yourself a Smartphone or maybe a PDA, did you know that you can add software to it? It’s easy to find programs to add to your system. What you need is programs that were made specifically for these types of units. Here are three sites you can check for third-party software. Find out what type of operating system you’re using, before downloading a program, it will save you headaches when looking for something compatible.
Handango.com

Smartphone.net

PocketGear.com

Often when you are looking for a specific form or piece of information that you need, you can find it online just by doing a simple search. It can save you valuable time to bookmark these sites for future reference, or print out information and file it for a later date.

Here are some sites that offer business forms, resources and tools:

CCH Business Owners Toolkit offers forms and samples of almost every type you can imagine for a small business.

Small Business Administration has a section on forms and useful information.

Entrepreneur.com offers you forms that will save you time and offer many different topics from leasing to franchises to accounting and more.

SmartBiz.com offers you a full page of forms on various topics for the small business.

The IRS has a bunch of forms and publications for the small business owner.