As businesses move to the cloud, suddenly the simple migration just isn’t enough.  When Google introduced the Chromebook in May 2011, it gave businesses yet another opportunity to further increase their productivity and lower their IT costs.

The Chromebook is the first computer to run completely on a Google-based interface, operating entirely in the Google Chrome web browser.  Available through Samsung or Acer, Chromebooks can connect to the internet through Wi-Fi or 3G and have made computing simpler and more secure than ever.  Similar to how Google Apps offers a specific Google Apps For Business platform, Chromebooks offer a specific solution for businesses.

Chromebooks were built with productivity in mind, meaning your employees will be able to spend less time waiting on technical issues and more time working on what matters for your business.  Productivity features unique to the Chromebook include an eight second start up time with instant resume, a battery that can last through an entire day of continuous use, built in Wi-Fi and optional 3G to make working anywhere – even from a moving vehicle – possible, and a compact design that makes the Chromebook light and perfect for travel.

Your business can also increase its functionality by adopting Chromebooks.  Because Chromebooks are cloud-based computers, operating without an internal hard drive, all of your information, including applications, documents, and settings, are stored in Google’s cloud network.  This feature means that all of your data is accessible from any Chromebook or web-enabled device and eliminates any need for migrating data from one machine to another.

The browser-based applications available to Chromebook users through the Chrome Web Store can provide your business with countless tools to improve your productivity.  These applications include everything from Google Apps to custom-built tools.

If your business works on programs that simply can’t be run in the browser, Chromebooks have desktop virtualization technology that enables you to use these programs.  Products for this technology are available through providers like Citrix® solutions.

Your IT costs are guaranteed to plummet with Chromebooks.  For $28/Chromebook/month, Chromebooks for Business come with the hardware, operating system, cloud-based management, and total customer support directly from Google.  Additionally, updates to Chromebooks are automatically applied every time you start up your device, eliminating IT costs related to repairs, upgrades, imaging, and patching.

Chromebooks also make it easy for administrators to update the settings on all company devices. Thanks to the web-based management console, administrators can change everything including themes, apps, proxy settings, and restricted log-ins in seconds.  All of these tools combined mean that Chromebooks can cost as much as 70% less than traditional computers, giving your business significantly more money to spend elsewhere.

Chromebooks are significantly different than traditional computers, and their security is no different.  You can store your business’ valuable information in the cloud and work on it on a Chromebook, all the while knowing it is safe.  This is because Chromebooks are always adapting to protect themselves from malware and viruses.  Chromebooks utilize multiple security defenses such as “sandboxing,” data encryption, and verified boot.

The sandbox concept means that each tab opened on a Chromebook operates in an isolated environment, containing any potential security breaches within its confines.  Data encryption means that all data accessed through a Chromebook is either stored on Google’s secure cloud network or encrypted with tamper-resistant hardware.  This encryption even applies to temporary internet data and makes these files inaccessible to others.  The Chromebook’s Verified Boot is a self-check that occurs every time a Chromebook is started up, and it detects and automatically repairs any issues.

Because there is basically no data that you store on the Chromebook itself, rather all of your information lives in the cloud, you no longer need to worry about employees losing their computers or having them stolen.

With the unmatched productivity and functionality that Chromebooks are sure to provide your business, coupled with the dramatically lower IT costs and unprecedented security, these devices are definitely a must-have technology for any business.

This blog post is brought to you by Cloud Sherpas. Cloud Sherpas is a leading Google Apps cloud service provider. As a Google Apps Authorized Reseller and Google Enterprise partner, we have migrated over one million users across all major industries from legacy, on-premise messaging systems to Google Apps, helping organizations adopt cloud computing to innovate and dramatically reduce their IT expenses. Get to know our company by checking out our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/cloudsherpas.

Has today’s inflation reduced the number of customers approaching you? Or do you feel that your business is demanding too much money for investment in assets? If these are the conditions that you are facing right now, it is obvious that your profit margin will go down. However, the good news is that your business profit will never go down drastically if you consider the strategy to reduce your business costs. Cutting costs is a practical approach towards boosting profitability for business growth. Generally, cost cutting strategies need not have to be complex. It is just the matter of paying attention to a few ordinary business aspects. So, here’s how you can do so via five different ways.

 Make an Affordable but Effective Budget and Stick to It

 If you know how to budget well, it can prove to be a great way of decreasing business expenses. For this, you must know exactly from where your investment money is coming and where it is going. After all, you will have to make smart financial decisions in such a way that you reduce your business costs but not your customers. For example, reconsider the cost of advertising, as it might not be worthy for all types of businesses. It is better to look for some economical ways such as the non-paid social media for building business relationships and reduce your business costs.

 Make Your Presence Online and Go Paperless Offline

 You might have your official site online for attracting diverse group of customers that are more likely to buy your products. However, have you ever thought of starting a business blog and exploiting social media sites? These two strategies work very well to get quick responses from both the old and new customers at an economical price.

 Coming to the paperless approach, how many times have you actually audit the expenses spent on hard-copy documents? Do this and you will know that it is more than significant. No, I am not asking you to go paperless completely. However, I am sure that most of the documents such as contracts and plans can go on your hard disk instead in a file cabinet and that most postage work can be converted into emails.

 Re-implement the Old School Strategy of Barter System

 How about trading printing services for services of lawn care? This is based on the principle of exchanging goods and services without spending a penny. So, I think this is an ideal way to cut expenses. However, consider its tax consequences by approaching a financial adviser.

 Go Green

 This is the current trend in every field right from managing homes to running offices. Use energy-efficient electric equipments such as bulbs, switch all lights if you are the last person to leave a room in your office, turn off computers at night, and print on both sides are some of the green ways to reduce business costs.

 Train Your Staff to become Multi-talented and Increase Productivity

 This idea gives you a great benefit of no new enrolment. If your current staff can develop the ability to do any kind of task, you will not longer have to spend on new people.

Denis is a financial writer that provides some information on  Canadian Bad Credit Loans and also the different Canadian Business Loans that exist to help you save money.

As a designer making a living off your skills, you most likely design for others. While you design for others, you don’t have to lose your soul. In fact, you can use your experiences to grow both professionally and in your craft.

Here are a few steps you should take when embarking on any design project where meeting client expectations is critical.

Specs and More Specs

Before starting a project, get all the specs you need … and then some. We recommend a questionnaire the client can fill out and return to you. It gives them time to process and often they pass it around internally for additional input.

Aside from all the obvious questions you need to know, include some that will give you actual creative direction. Since the people filling out your questionnaire are most likely not creative (after all, they hired you for this), you’ll want to word your questions for even left-brainers. For instance, “What do you want the person viewing this piece to think?”

Also key to a useful questionnaire is repeating the questions but wording them differently. You’d be amazed at the extra information we got when we asked “What are the key benefits of your products and services?” and “What benefits of your products and services set you apart from your competition?”

Pitch it Well, Sell it Well

So you’ve designed something you love. It meets the specs provided by the client. Now you call them up to go over it. No! Stop! Now is the crucial time when you take a step back, review the work, and come up with a pitch. A pitch? But you’re not in sales, you’re in design! I have news for you: you can’t just present your work off the cuff. Smart designers know a good design is only as good as the presentation behind it. Even a not-so-great design can be warmly received when pitched well (which we don’t recommend).

Consider Giving it the Ol’ Heave Ho

So you’ve designed something you think is just bananas. You’ve sold it as hard as you could, but alas, the client just isn’t digging it. Instead of becoming the quintessential hard-to-work-with designer, it might be time to cut your losses and go in a different direction. The piece you’ve done could be tucked away for a different project and different client. Or, perhaps, it would make a stunning portfolio piece. Either way, all is not lost, especially if you are receptive and end up producing something more along the lines of what the client wanted originally.

When it comes to cutting your losses, you should consider if working with this client might be more detrimental than beneficial. Are you regularly producing work you aren’t happy with just to appease the client? Your styles may be too far apart to find a middle ground you can both be happy with. You might actually be losing your design soul.

While you’re spending time producing work that you aren’t proud of, you could be spending your time marketing yourself and finding clients who appreciate your work. If you’re new to the field, you may not be in the position to move on from a client. Building bridges in the future is more difficult when you’ve burnt them in the past. Evaluate your position to see if you can afford to move on. If you can, move on very gently.

Guest Author Byline This is a guest post by Michelle Anderson who blogs on just about anything from accessories such as cuff links to design.

Owning a copyright and using copyright law is just one of the many forms that intellectual property protection can take depending on the nature of the IP in question. As such, intellectual property is a perhaps deliberately vague term the collectively refers to any number of “creations of the mind,” including artistic works such as music or literary creations, technological inventions with and without a tangible manifestation, phrases, logos, names, and even game mechanics. Generally, in the United States artistic and creative works are protected by a copyright, trademarks cover things like words, phrases, and logos, and patents cover products like processes, machines, inventions, and their components.

Owning one of these rights gives the owner certain exclusive rights of reproduction, use, or sale depending on the type. The purpose of the government offering these rights is to encourage healthy activity and investment in the protected medium, ensuring that the owner can recoup the cost of investment through sales, and similarly increasing the odds that consumers will benefit from the option of purchasing the resulting product. However, every one of these protections, including copyright law, includes certain specific clauses and loopholes that make it more difficult that the owner of the copyright might expect to actual maintain exclusive ownership of the spirit of the particular piece of IP.

A popular and somewhat humorous example comes from music of the late 1980s. The Vanilla Ice song “Ice Ice Baby” opened with a baseline hook that very closely resembled the hook of a David Bowie song, “Under Pressure.” The artist later admitted to having sampled the David Bowie song and paid appropriate royalties and tribute. However, a one note difference in the two-bar riff was enough to maintain that the later song did not infringe on Bowie’s copyright for several years. This is indicative of how difficult it was to actively and profitably protect intellectual property rights, even in the era before computers, let alone the Internet, were popular. 

A very common contemporary example of this problem is newspapers’ frequent unpermitted use of copyrighted photos that photographers upload to online photo profiles. These remain protected works, but several publications, large and small, have attempted to use them without permission and often get away with doing so because photographers lack the confidence or budget to fight the large entities. This and other common frustrations and complications with protecting IP using copyright law are some of the strongest arguments for hiring a copyright and IP attorney at the first sign of trouble. Even if all they do is ensure that the proper registration has been filed and officially contact the offender, this is often enough to produce appropriate action and infringement resolution. And if not, it opens the way to more serious and powerful steps.

Copyright Law Is Essential But Can Be Difficult to Enforce. It Requires Knowledgeable Legal Representation and Action. Get This and More at http://nefflaw.com/.

If you’re looking for a good web host, you have undoubtedly heard all about ‘uptime’. But what is it? What does it mean for your business? What happens if your web host is plagued by ‘downtime’ instead?

Uptime is the amount of time that your server (and your website) is actually up and running properly. After all, if you want to have a successful online business, you need to make sure that your website is available anytime, day or night!

Web hosting companies will offer guaranteed uptime. In fact, you should not even consider a web host that offers anything less than 99.5% uptime. Remember, anytime your website is down, you are missing out on valuable traffic and profits!

Just like your web hosting bill, your site’s uptimes are based on monthly figures. If your web host has a guaranteed uptime of 99.5%, that means you can have up to 216 minutes of downtime per month. That’s more than 3 hours of time where your website will not be accessible!

Usually, if you want to spend more money, you can find a web hosting company that guarantees 99.9% uptime. Then, you are only looking at a maximum of 43 minutes of downtime per month.

Unfortunately, no web host can guarantee 100% uptime. That’s because there is always some sort of planned downtime – no matter which company you choose. For example, web hosts have to plan downtime in advance so that they can upgrade all of the servers. However, a good web host will schedule this downtime in the middle of the night, so that you and your site face as little inconvenience as possible. And, a good web host will let you know about the scheduled downtime well in advance.

But what happens if your web host doesn’t meet its uptime guarantee?

Good web hosting companies will offer you some sort of compensation if their uptime misses the mark. Some companies will not charge you for the time your site was down. Others may offer you a free month of hosting. Others may offer you discounts for the next month. It all depends on which web hosting company you go with.

Luckily, though, you can do your homework on uptime before you select a web hosting company. There are websites online that track web hosting uptime, so you can see if your company really meets its guarantees or not.

Kirsty LaVier is editor for Shopping Cart Reviews, the leading shopping cart information website.

As the title of the late Jim Croce song implies, “Photographs and Memories” are inseparable. And although our memories can’t really be altered, thanks to a host of new editing software programs, it’s easier than ever for average users and beginners to make advanced edits to photos and create professional quality effects. Here’s a look at 6 popular editing tricks you can easily apply to your digital photos for printing, posting on the web, or just for sharing with family and friends—all from the comfort of your own home computer.  

1. Remove or change the background: Not long ago if you took a photograph that featured nice images of the intended subjects against an undesirable background, you had little recourse but to hit the delete button and try again. Now, with most digital editing software—which allows you to remove parts of the background of an image, isolate objects or people from a photograph, or remove the background entirely—those pictures can be saved. To take things further you can create a solid color background or put in a new background entirely, such as the image of an exotic beach or landmark from the vacation spot you hope to take the family to someday.

2. Color change and aging: Another trick you used to have to pay a professional to pull off is changing the colors of your photos. Digital software makes it easy to convert color photos to black and white, giving them a more “period” look. Editing software also allows you to turn the clock back even further, making new photographs look decades old.

3. Add or subtract images from a photo: Was someone absent on the day of the big family photo shoot? No problem. Thanks to new technologies you can seamlessly add those “no-shows”, whether they like it or not. You can also add  family pets or pretty much any objects you might want to include—such as a UFO hovering overhead, or a more impressive looking fish.  And should the unfortunate reason arise that makes you wish a certain person was absent from an otherwise perfectly nice photo, editing software allows you to remove that person forever. You can also remove unwanted objects—like that watch or necklace your “ex” gave you—from a photograph without the results looking like an amateurish hack job. Naturally, printed, non-digital photographs must first be scanned into digital format before editing, and the results may vary depending on the software you are using.

4. Resize images: Do any of your photos contain images that are either smaller or larger than you’d like them to be? Editing software allows you to easily resize images without changing the quality or clarity of the image itself. Thanks to this useful tool, you can capture the image of the fish that got away or up the carat weight on that diamond pendant. On a more practical note, large foreground images can be made smaller or small background objects larger to create a more balanced and interesting photograph. To a certain extent, the images of important people relegated to the background can be enlarged to make them more recognizable.

5. Be artistic:  While the main purpose of editing software is to improve and enhance the quality of photographs, many software programs allow you to alter photographs to give them non-photographic qualities. Got a great picture of trees bursting with the vibrant colors of autumn? Using editing software that picture can take on the appearance of a fine oil painting. In fact, why not create your own art gallery, featuring water colors, pastels, pen and ink or pencil sketches, all digitally created from your own photos.  

6. Get creative: Photo editing software allows for more creative possibilities and projects with your pictures, many of which if done with printed photographs would involve a great deal of time and labor. Take scrapbooking, for example. Using photo editing tools you can easily create elaborate scrapbook pages   featuring collages with intricate borders and other unusual graphics. You can also create custom calendars featuring family members as gifts for friends and other relatives. In fact, the possibilities are limited only by your own creativity.

Drew Hightower is a freelance writer for Adobe.

In all honesty if you want to have quality photos of your wedding, then you will want to go about hiring a photographer like you would if you were hiring from one of the principal disability claims lawyers. If you were going to hire a lawyer you would be very careful about it, you would do your research first to be sure that lawyer is going to represent you and your case the way you want to be represented. The same thing goes for hiring a wedding photographer.

When you set out to find a wedding photographer there are questions you should ask and things you should find out before hiring. There are many photographers out there but not all of them will do the job the way you want it to be done.

As you go around looking for your wedding photographer keep some of these helpful tips and reminders in the forefront of your mind:

• Experience. With the new found love of digital photography, many people who want to call themselves photographers can take as many pictures as they want and come up with a good looking portfolio. Look for someone with some kind of professional training. Talk to them as if you are interviewing them and ask about bad situations or experiences they had to take pictures in or through and what they did to turn them around to make great pictures. Ask for references from clients and other photographers. Ask to see a book of entire weddings so that you can see the good and the bad.

• Examples. Ask to see a portfolio of work but do not trust it as an indicator of skill. Make sure the portfolio and pictures are recent and make sure they are not the same images from the website.

• Personality. Is the photographer nice and sincerely happy to help you with your wedding or is he or she just wanting business? Will the photographer be able to act appropriately with you and your guests? Remember you and your photographer will have a longer lasting relationship than many of the other people who are involved in your wedding; the photographer is the one you still have to deal with afterwards.

• Price. Look at the average prices of wedding photographers near you. Ask about add-on fees like touch-ups and color changes. You don’t have to spend a fortune for good photos, be sure you ask around and maybe see if you have friends who could the extra things like touch-ups and scrapbooks.

• Business. Ask to see a contract that includes the expectations, and responsibilities of you and the photographer. Ask the photographer if he or she has a replacement photographer lined up in case something happens that prevents him or her from coming. The timing of when you should expect your photos and the prices should all be very clear.

Madison Hewerdine is an author who writes about principal disability claims lawyers and has a passion for dancing.

Anyone with an interest in graphic design and website development will be looking at the various image editing programs for PC. Four popular image editing programs have the power and the features to deliver professional results every time. Two of them are paid programs, while the other two are free because they have been developed by the open source community. The paid versions come out of the box ready to go. The free versions will take a bit of work to install some of the more advanced features. With that said, while the free versions will install with some nice features, more features have to be added for them to become fully comparable to the paid version.

In the category of scalable art, the best paid image editing program is Adobe Illustrator. It can do an array of professional design work from simple icons to highly complex advertising designs and everything in between. Professional results are easily accomplished because Adobe has built in many wizards to assist the designer. Special gradients, unusual effects, and unique color blending are just a few.

However, Adobe Illustrator is going to cost a lot of money. More money then an aspiring artist may be able to afford. The open source community responded to these needs with a similar free version named Inkscape. It can do almost everything the Adobe Illustrator can do. It can do more once the additional modules are installed. This is not officially photo editing software but since it designs and edits scalable graphics, it can be placed in that category. Any one of these two tools are necessary for any serious designer.

Adobe Photoshop is a true image editor. It can edit photos as well as design and edit graphics. Photoshop is the famous software that does the ‘photoshopping’ technique, which can make a person look both slimmer and younger, with just a few mouse clicks and a steady hand.

The open source community developed their own free version and named it gIMP. Like Inkscape above, it has many of the features the paid version has, however, many people describe gIMP as being better. This is because gIMP is widely supported by the OS community. It can also run many of the Adobe scripts. That means a person can have all of the features of the paid version plus all of the features of the unpaid version, if they are willing to install the additional scripts themselves. It is easy to see why some folks call the gIMP better.

There are many more great graphic arts and image editing programs available, free and paid, but for this article we chose to stick to the most highly recommended and well-known. With so many different programs to choose from these days, you’re sure to find one that fits your budget and needs.

This is a guest post from Alex J., who works with Phases Design Studio, a Denver design firm specializing in web design and development, branding, marketing and print collateral.

The prospect of this book is exciting- a practical guide to planning for a profitable technical blog is an appealing concept. Compared to professional marketers, Antonio’s style is a breath of fresh air, ringing true and honest compared to informercial style info product hucksters.

He strongly discourages low quality tactics (article spinning and the like) in favor of promoting your work to social media sites with strong developer presence – reddit, hacker news, stumbleupon, and the like. This is the first book I’ve read that discusses these in detail. He seems to have had remarkable success with this promotion, particularly considering their reputation for poor ad performance.

Much time is spent devoted to developing a practical plan for blogging – picking subject matter, setting up a site, promotion, and revenue opportunities. He provides good statistics gleaned from his sites, information about lots of software products, along with practical tips on how to use them. All in all, in reading the book I’ve added a half dozen things to my “to-do” list to investigate for this site – well worth the read.

Here’s the link-

http://pragprog.com/book/actb/technical-blogging