Gerry Blackwell

The 800-lb. gorilla of unified communications just put the other foot down. Kaboom! With the announcement last month of Office Communications Server 2007 Release 2—due to ship in February 2009—Microsoft has started to make good on its promise that OCS 2007, launched last November, would be a complete unified communications (UC) platform and a viable […]

In an economic crisis, cutting costs tops the list of most every business. But can spending money on technology help your small business survive the tough times ahead? We asked professional advisers and got some surprising, and occasionally contradictory, responses. The short answer: yes, but. Yes, but you don’t have to spend much to see […]

Ho-hum. Another BlackBerry. Bold by name, not so much by nature. Not that the new BlackBerry Bold isn’t a fine addition to Research in Motion’s (RIM’s) best-selling line-up of smartphones. It’s a powerful, capable and stylish addition, in fact. And it will fit the bill nicely for corporate and other business users committed to the […]

Selecting a phone system may be the most important technology decision most small businesses make; choosing the wrong one can spell disaster. One relatively new and increasingly popular option, using a hosted PBX (Private Branch eXchange) solution, offers a number of benefits and can also mitigate some of those risks. With a hosted PBX you […]

USB external hard drives are a commodity item, but SimpleTech has managed to smartly differentiate its [re]Drive product as an environmental statement and an all-in-one backup solution. The [re]drive – we’ll use the more conventional Redrive from here on – is built using recycled aluminum and bamboo, a renewable resource. It also boasts a couple […]

Web conferencing/collaboration start-ups are arguably a dime a dozen. We’ve written about a few here. Their services all work, more or less—given a reasonable Internet connection. Each has its pros and cons. Each has its differentiators. Do we need more? CallWave thinks so. CallWaveis not exactly a start-up. The company launched its first product, the […]

One of the fast-growing trends in small business these days is teleworking ‑ employees working from home or away from the company’s main office. Surging gas prices driving up the already high cost of commuting and growing environmental concerns are just the most recent and headline-grabbing inducements that make telework increasingly attractive to both employers […]

Small business owners like Thanh Hua, owner of Selfish Box, a gourmet lunch caterer in Redmond, Washington, started her business a little more than two years ago with a simple concept: to provide catered lunches, mostly to corporate customers, featuring fresh foods, good nutrition and authentic cuisine from around the world. The lunches would be […]

DSM-210 Wireless Internet Photo Frame www.dlink.com Price: $290 Pros: Useful Wi-Fi-based network and Internet features. Cons: Absence of some basic controls Digital picture frames—LCD panels that sit upright on a table or shelf, or hang on the wall to display images—are a cool idea, and they’ve suddenly become a hot consumer item. But most are […]

In the continuing quest for the perfect small business backup product – one that works simply enough that busy, non-technical workers will actually use it and get the protection they need from it – Storage Appliance Corp. may have struck gold. SAC’s ClickFree portable backup devices, portable USB drives with onboard backup software, do everything […]