More money for small businesses

Looks like there is some good news for small businesses as we head into 2010. The U.S. Congress has approved an increase in funding for the Small Business Administration (SBA) according to a New York Times article.

Part of that money will be used to hire more employees, which should hopefully speed the application and approval process. But there should also be more money available for loans at a lower cost. The government is also looking into continuing to guarantee 7(a) loans at 90 percent, which makes them a lot more palatable to local banks that are still reeling from the collapse of the loan market in 2008.

Running a small business can be financially challenging even in good economic times. In the current economy it’s downright nerve-wracking. These increases to the SBA, along with a continuation of the stimulus package (hopefully), should help ease some of the burden.

Have you taken advantage of an SBA loan yet, either a regular loan or one of the microloans they’re offering? If so, what has been your experience?

Students exhibit fax art in Baltimore

Bet you never knew faxing was an art form. Me either, until I saw this article about an exhibit currently running at the Contemporary Museum in Baltimore.

They are showing drawings from several students that were sent to the museum by fax. Each week a different school is highlighted, so there is a wide range of art styles and drawings to view. The article says the program is there to encourage students to explore the relationship between technology and art, among other things.

Even more interesting is that the student exhibit is part of a larger program featuring fax artwork from Kay Rosen, Tauba Auerbach, Johannes Wohnseifer and Pierre Bismuth. Who knew there were so many artists working in the medium of faxing?

If you need a little break from the hustle and bustle of the holiday season, the student exhibit runs through December 20.

Which begs the question: have any of you ever seen or even participated in a fax art exhibit?

Surviving the 2009 holiday season

For many of us, the phrase “surviving the holiday season” means limiting weight gain to five pounds or fewer or shopping without getting pummeled by our fellow shoppers. For small business owners, though, there are some other, more serious considerations according to this post in the Mainstreet Business Journal.

One of the biggest is making sure customers don’t get so distracted with the holidays that they forget to pay their bills on time. Most people like to take a little time off around the holidays, and when they do they tend to lose track of the normal rhythm of the business.

Monitoring your receivables, and reminding customers about payment, becomes critical at this time of the year. After all, if you don’t receive payment before December 24, you probably won’t see it until after January 4, 2010.

Another good one is to involve your employees in what’s happening in the business. If they feel like they have more of a stake in it they’re likely to work a little harder and give a little more of themselves.

Something else you can do is find a way to reward employees even if you can’t pay regular bonuses. For most people the reward isn’t about the amount, it’s about appreciation and recognition of their efforts. Give each one an extra day, or even a half day, to go shopping or take care of other needs. Buy them a nice but inexpensive gift, or give each a plate of cookies with an apology that you couldn’t do more right now. Doing something, no matter how small, shows that you value their contribution. That goes a long way, especially in tough times.

What else do you think is important for businesses to do to survive the holiday season?

MyFax and my1voice pass the Bar

Well, maybe they didn’t actually pass the Bar exam. But this week both MyFax and my1voice were added to the American Bar Association’s (ABA) TechEZ site.

ABA’s technology evaluation and information site -- TechEZ (www.abanet.org/techez) helps lawyers make smart choices about technology so they get the best return on their technology investments.

Lawyers have to be in constant communication with their clients, opposing counsel and even bosses in larger firms. Yet they may spend more time out of the office than in it, visiting clients, taking depositions, attending court hearings, etc.

MyFax and my1voice both make it easier to stay in touch anywhere, anytime. MyFax does so by allowing professionals to send and receive faxes anywhere they can get an Internet connection. And my1voice offers features such as smart call forwarding of office calls to any phone they specify, and delivers voicemail messages to email.

If you know an ABA member, have them check out Tech EZ: Tech-Savvy Savings for ABA Members.

Fax machines move up the list of endangered technologies

It’s not exactly a “save the whales” or American Bald Eagle alarm. But in an article in the Telegraph earlier this month Pixmania, the largest electronics retailer in Europe, released its top 10 list of endangered technologies. And guess what? The fax machine was number two on the list. (The DVD player was number one, by the way, so get ready to repurchase your video collection yet again.)

Now, notice they didn’t say “faxes.” Faxing itself is going stronger than ever. They said fax machines. They’re essentially looking at which products they don’t think they’re going to be selling anymore in their stores. In that context fax machines certainly make sense.

As the Telegraph article points out, there are better ways to send and receive faxes these days – smart phones being chief among them. If you’re reading this blog, you know that you can set MyFax to forward your faxes to any Internet-enabled device so you can send or receive faxes anywhere you can get an Internet connection. That sure beats having to run back to the office just to discover that your fax machine ran out of toner halfway through an important fax.

There were a couple of other interesting technologies on that list too. GPS devices made the list. Again, since you can now download maps to and get directions on your smart phone, who needs a whole separate device just to get from here to there?

So what do you think? Do you agree those technologies will be disappearing quickly? And more importantly, which technologies make your top ten list?

And so long, DVDs. We hardly knew ye.

Expanding the definition of “office”

Being as involved as we are in the world of small business, we hear about a lot of non-traditional offices. People convert their kids’ playroom at home into an office; they work completely out of their cars; some regularly hang out at restaurants with free wi-fi connections or rent a little space in the back of a store. But this story tops them all. One of the women profiled in it actually runs two online businesses out of a tent in Kenya.

That’s really taking anywhere, anytime to the extreme. But it does point out how having the right technologies at your disposal means you can operate your business how you want, when you want, and even where you want.

Toward the end of the article, they mention that one of the technologies that’s making things easier for small businesses is “cloud computing.” With cloud computing you don’t have to buy and maintain expensive software or hardware. You sign up for a service, then log in over the Internet (aka the “cloud”) to use it. All you need is a laptop or a smart phone and an Internet connection, which sure beats trying to find space for and maintaining a room full of servers. Especially if you’re working out of a tent in Kenya.

MyFax and my1voice are examples of cloud computing, by the way. Bet you didn’t realize you were right on top of a technology trend!

Small businesses are using the cloud for lots of things, including file storage, accounting, email, calendars, contact management and even desktop applications such as word processing and spreadsheets. How about you? What applications have you moved to the cloud?

Putting 400,000 subscribers into perspective

The other day, we celebrated the fact that MyFax now has surpassed the 400,000 subscriber mark. That means that a lot of people have recycled their fax machine, improved document management and now fax from their smartphones! Sometimes big numbers like that can be a little tough to comprehend, so I thought I would put it into a bit of context for you.

If you look at cities around the world, there are more MyFax subscribers than there are people in Manchester, UK; Bologna, Italy; Tel-Aviv-Jaffa, Israel; and Sevastopol, Ukraine. Not to mention Minneapolis-St.Paul, Minnesota; Wichita, Kansas; and Honolulu, Hawaii. So basically, every man, woman and child in those cities could have a MyFax account and there would still be some unaccounted for.

Or what about years? If you go back 400,000 years in history, scientists believe Neanderthals were the highest evolved human ancestors. They didn’t have a written language, of course, so no need for faxes even if they could figure out the technology side.

Convert that 400,000 to miles, and you can circle the circumference of the earth more than 16 times. Of course, the view would get pretty boring after about the fifth time around.

In terms of dollars, with 400,000 of them you could pay cash for a nice Porsche Carrera GT. That car has a top speed of 205 mph and can go from zero to 60 in 3.9 seconds.

Achieving this milestone is a great accomplishment, and we certainly wouldn’t have reached this level without valuable feedback from our customers. Rest assured we remember those accounts belong to 400,000 individuals, and we will continue to provide customer service as if each customer was the only one.