posted by admin on Sep 27

There is no such thing as a permanent office for small businesses these days – it’s all change!

Rather than renting an office for your small business or working from your spare bedroom – things just go huge for the little guy!

No longer do you have to schedule that important meeting in a pub, or rent that PO BOX to hide you home address – you can rent a great office on a ‘need only’ basis. 

Great Address:
Buying in to a flexible office agreement like this allows for some great things to happen that could actually improve your business image and your sales too.

Firstly, you can always get a professional office in the city when you need one.  Even in another city if you pick the right set up.  And there may well be a receptionist on site to welcome and direct your associates when they arrive.

Your ‘office’ address could well be in a great part of town or in the building that means ‘stylish’ or ‘contemporary’ - or whatever you want it to mean – as basically you get to choose your office space!

And on top of this – you don’t have to rent a set space for your own office and meeting room that is static.  This way you don’t have to make it fit your needs for the next year or so.  Basically the flexibility of these new office agreements means that rather than holding a meeting for 8 in your rented tiny office space, or interviewing a single person in an oversized space – you can tailor your workplace to your exact needs every time.  You can request a large room in the morning for a great meeting, then get yourself a small personal space in the afternoon for an informal chat!

Great Services:
With these deals, you can also expect a few service extras on top as well!  These will usually help out with growing your business and working towards expanding your business and saving you some valuable time.

A typical set up will include an answering service or you where you can have a ‘company helpline’ so to speak.  Your number is inputted into a phone system so that when your customers call your business number, the call is diverted to a central switchboard which registers it as your company call. 

This way the ‘virtual’ receptionist knows to answer with your company name and company details – and can answer basic queries and take details and book appointments (depending on your individual needs) – meaning you don’t have to miss any customer calls when you are elsewhere or out of reception on your cell.

They even sort your mail too and few other little things that can really make your day more constructive!

The Conclusion:
You can really start to make an impact with your small business by using these services.  Yes, you may not have a permanent office from day 1 – but the extra services offered will more than make up for that.

With your phone calls and mail being handled externally – but all in your business name – you are free to meet your customers and actually get some work done!

Not only could it save you the cost of employing extra staff or a permanent (but maybe not perfect) office – you can have access to the best business lounges, meeting rooms and office space – as well as a team of assistants to help you out as well!

It may not be the best solution for everyone – but it is certainly a great solution for whoever can take advantage of this unique and expanding service sector!

posted by admin on Sep 16

Another month has passed and another million pages and articles have appeared online!  So lets get a look at some of them right here……..

So, let’s get straight to business with a light look at the new Google search engine – and what it has to offer both the business and the searcher! Follow Hudson Horizons with their ‘explain all’ article: Keeping Up with Google Caffeine and How the New Platform Affects SEO.

Then lets jump to the short but strange GPS Underwear from Good News Weekly presents – I mean; why underwear and not pets, car keys or something more important?

Leslie Yoelson offers up a new branch of science with this brief article with 7 Ways to Learn About Informatics.

And this starts us of with the whole ‘numbers game again’. Science people love lists of resources! So furst up is Adam Park with Top 20 Tech Blogs, closely followed by Zach Macias’ concise list of only 5 Excellent iPad Apps to Learn About the Human Body.

Up next is Natalie Thomas with a plentiful Top 50 Twitter Feeds to Follow Tech News and finishing with Olivia Davis and her helping hand for teachers of all ilks: 20 Amazing iPad Apps for Educators.

Saved by the bell!

posted by admin on Sep 7

What if I told you that you had to seriously change what you ate to limit your carbon emissions and reduce world hunger?

It seems as though this may well be the way that the world is leaning with all this worry about rising population numbers, world hunger, less fertile land for farming, rising sea levels, water shortages and our continuing drive for more!

So, should grasshopper farms go into overdrive and the cucumber be forced into extinction?

The Small Idea:
No longer should things be big.  Big is bad for the planet at the moment and small is good – so why shouldn’t this apply to food?

Humans (and other plants and animals) have to eat to stay alive – I mean without proteins and fats, our bodies would fall apart: dry skin, poor digestion, low muscle, less energy, and on and on.  But we have gone past the bare bones ‘survival’ stage and we now eat for the fun of it (ironically sometimes causing all the above symptoms from our excesses).

However, what with all the global concerns at the moment – and the drive for local and sustainable foods; why not take it 1 step further?

In the same way that some people think that that we buy to much technology and console games, clothes and other belongings – some people think that we are eating too much ‘empty food’.

The idea being that cucumbers, for example, contain virtually nothing worth eating: being 95% water with some Vitamin C.  Now apart from a few ‘holistic’ benefits like bowel cleansing and lowering cholesterol (if you eat enough) they are virtually pointless in terms of nutrition. 

So why do we waste valuable land, fertilisers and water growing them when people are starving to death from lack of food?  Rather than growing these fruits that make a salad ‘crispy’ and are a dieters dream – shouldn’t we be using the land and resources to grow wheat or something more substantial?

Bugs, Bugs, And More Bugs:
Similarly, there isn’t really much going for the humble cow anymore either!  It grazes on land that could be used for growing cereals, it’s supplementary foods are grown on fields that could be used for growing cereals and it is farting out methane into an already globally warmed atmosphere.

Step up the new cow, the cow of 2010: the grasshopper!

You may think that this is all ridiculous – but there is the virtually the same amount of protein weight for weight in grasshoppers as there is in ground beef!  Would you notice the difference in your (only 60%) beef burgers anyway?

Needless to say you can farm these insects in tiny tubs stacked up in big warehouses – all on the same spot.  Compare this to millions of cows wandering all over Argentina where there used to be rainforest!

The UN have taken this on board themselves – as they think that it is a great way forward for food security in developing countries.  With an estimated 1000 insect species already on the menu around the world – this (they think) could well be the way forward for guaranteeing good nutrition levels for millions of people who can’t get cheap grains anymore as we are using them for eco friendly fuels!

So, will you be opting for that cricket stir fry or that red ant ravioli?