A target audience may never hear a great presentation if the meeting planning, coordination, invitations even the lunch, dinner or drinks is planned and executed.

A great administrative assistant can probably do some of this work for you, but great administrative assistants are not easy to find and many corporate budgets don’t support them.  A good project manager is probably going to want the details at their finger tips any way. 

Enter the asset management software from companies like NetSimplicity.  NetSimplicity offers Scheduling Software for assets from meeting rooms, to other assets like projectors, screens, even coordinating food and catering, all linked in through Outlook.

These tools are becoming more and more essential. There’s nothing worse than a conference room getting double triple booked. What type of impression or mood will a slip up like that have have or put your customer, your team, your partners in when there’s work to be done and decisions to be made.

Technorati Tags: Scheduling Software, assett management software, NetSimplicity, meeting planning

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AcornSystems has offered up a release detailing their prepackaged suite of profit analytics software.  Their suite of products will connect into existing systems or databases utilizing SQL Server 2005 and OLAP data cubes to compile data and prepare it for rapid real time analysis within the structured set of solutions that Acorn has designed.

Their packages will help businesses analyze cost, Economic Profit, Price and Performance in general. 
Their packages come with semi standard reporting and formats that can be tailored to suit customers individual metrics, processes and procedures.

The industry providing consulting and software design and implementations surrounding SQL Server 2005 and OLAP tools are primed to take off, providing analytics to companies at prices that formerly cost seven digit amounts and took years to implement.

Technorati Tags: Acorn Systems, OLAP, SQL Server 2005

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Six years many mobile phone manufacturers came to the conclusion (some arriving at the conclusion with their arms twisted behind their back) that combining or converging an MP3 player with a mobile phone would be a good idea. That was back in 2000.

Its 2006 and people are still ooohhhing and Aaahhhing about the concept of an iPhone from Apple despite the fact that the first iTunes phone came out a year ago.

Well for anyone that’s interested converged mobile phones are here and have been here for a while.

There’s some great examples of Samsung mobile phones at The Link. Something about the YPZ5Q (despite its crummy name that is pretty interesting. Its slim, has 35 hours of battery life and almost a 2 inch LCD screen. It will hold about 600 songs and that’s just the starting point for the Samsung lineup. Don’t get me started on Sony Ericson!

Technorati Tags: Samsung mobile phones, mp3 player phones

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Microsoft filed lawsuits against 20 resellers in the US accused of distributing counterfeit software.

Counterfeit software in these situations either come in the form of CDs or when software counterfeit or unlicensed is installed on computers that are then resold.

Microsoft has announced that it has completed forensic analysis that found that 34 percent of copies analyzed could not be successfully installed and that 43 percent had additional programs that did not come with Windows.

So it would appear that Microsoft is helping consumers by working to remove potentially bad software and software that has unauthorized or maybe even malicious software. 

For consideration:  There’s probably a good amount of truth to this concept but its spun a little as well.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft, counterfeit

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I’m a huge fan of the Tom Tom Sat Nav, Satellite Navigation GPS systems.  There’s just something about the crystal clear navigation display that works especially well for me.  There’s a great list of the lineup in sat nav from currys. They have a number of great offerings in the Tom Tom line. Personally for my money the 910 is one of my favorites.

There’s times when I have to see the 3d image of where I’m going and then there’s times when I need the voice and sometimes I need both.
But even if you are looking to use GPS on a budget or your just doing some geocaching as a hobby, I checked out the Gizmondo device last January at CES and this gaming device now doubles as a nice little GPS unit as well. It doesn’t have as large of a display as an in car Tom Tom, but its a handheld.  It is clear and it is sharp.
I haven’t tried one of these out on my motorcycle yet, but I’ve been itching to do it. If the rain would let up for a couple of days, maybe I’ll give it a spin even head up into the hills or something and do a little trail riding.  I suspect I won’t get lost at all, just have to make sure I have enough fuel to make it back to civilization.  Its one thing to ride in but when you have to hike out and then carry the fuel back in again with you, well I’ll just be careful.  Maybe the technology will have me covered with a nice GPS route out of the wilderness to the nearest gas station.

Technorati Tags: sat nav, satellite navigation, gps, tom tom, Gizmondo

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Adobe Systems has offered up an exhibition of their new Photoshop products running on an Inel Mac Platform.  The new CS3 platform is expected to preceed the Photoshop World conference to be held in Boston from April 4th - 6th.

Adobe also anounced the launch of CS2.3 Premium an intermediate upgrade from Adobe’s CS2 Creative Suite which also bundles Macromedia’s Dreamweaver.  Adobe purchased Macromedia in a merger costing over $3 billion and now offers Photoshop, Illustrator, Macromedia, Fireworks, Flash and CS2 among others. 

The software bundling allows photo and web designers to better manage the workflow of their production and project cycles.

Technorati Tags: Adobe Systems, CS3, CS2.3, Creative Suite

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More companies are building an online presence through Corporate blogs and many are just starting to look into podcasting and video casting trying to reach targeted audiences and consumers.  Many companies are flying a little blind in this effort and are either going through very over priced media companies and over buying talent or using in house half cooked talent to provide a mediocre experience.

Establishing your companies voice can be as important as establishing your companies online presence, or offices, logo or brand.  People can associate your company and products with a voice for many years to come.

With that in mind Voice123 provides a marketplace clearinghouse for Voice Production and voice overs services.

You can literally visit and browse through their database of registered artists and listen to samples of their work.  They have a very powerful database that lets you drill down to the characteristics of a voice that might suit your product best.  Does your market study analysis show that your consumers will most likely want to hear a female voice in her middle thirties with a British accent?  No problem.

Want to test that in your marketing survey compared to a forty something male voice with an Australian accent, well that can be done as well.

As I’m preparing to head out to the Podcast and Portable Media Expo, I’m actually intrigued by this notion of yet another aspect of business and performance that has been leveled by the internet. 

Technorati Tags: Voice Productions, Voice Overs, Podcasting, Voice123

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Microsoft anounced today that they are going to launch a new video site to go live as part of the already existing MSN Video service.

The new site will be http://soapbox.msn.com.  MSN Video has not gained in users or market share after sites like YouTube and Google Video launched their sites allowing users to upload their own personal videos and other items. 

The Microsoft Soapbox will be offered to a select group of testers (now doesn’t that sound familiar, must be straight out of the Microsoft SOP on rolling out a new service) and hopes to go live to the world in about 6 months.

Six months in the online video market especially following on an election cycle when viral videos and parodies are often rampant, could however put Microsoft behind the curve.  That said it might be interesting to see how they push the new Zune device with this service . . .

Technorati Tags: Microsoft Soapbox, Msn video, Zune

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Here’s a great deal with an Overstock.com coupon code that will give you $15 off your next order of $150 or more. I’m looking at some of their cell phone offers and can get a much better deal than what’s offered directly through the carrier.

If you are getting a cell phone like me, you may need to buy a couple to get the discount, but the coupon applies to anything at Overstock, so you may want to throw in a blue tooth headset or a computer sync cable to move things along better.

Technorati Tags: Overstock coupon code

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