Gerry Blackwell

Tricorp Federal Credit Union in Westbrook, Maine is a bean counting type of organization—a wholesaler to smaller retail credit unions in New England—and vice president and chief financial officer Fred Johnson is head bean counter. Johnson signed off on the implementation of a hosted IP PBX solution from VoIPnet Technologies last year—after analyzing the numbers […]

Back in 2003, when AeroScout and a few competitors started making Wi-Fi RFID tags, RFID tracking was already an established—if still relatively new-fangled—technology. Wi-Fi was the interloper, the new kid on the block. Existing systems operated on other frequencies, with other radio technologies. A lot has changed in five years. Today, according to AeroScout director […]

Most business owners need a safe place to store and easily access vital data, and many also need to share documents ‑ or collaborate on their creations ‑ with remote colleagues, customers or suppliers. If that’s true for you, the solution could be in the cloud. That’s cloud, singular – geek lingo for the part […]

The complex art and science of search engine marketing (SEM) has, almost overnight, become an essential skill set for any company that hopes to succeed at e-commerce. It’s a fact that Backcountry Edge, a four-year-old online purveyor of high-end hiking and camping gear, learned early on. So the company was quick to sign up last […]

For years, virtual network operator and Wi-Fi hotspot aggregator iPass Inc. has been selling its services to enterprises, usually with multi-user, long-term contracts. The core service is mobile highspeed Internet access using connectivity provided by iPass’s several service partners, which include operators of thousands of Wi-Fi hotspot and hotel Ethernet locations as well as 3G […]

“It’s not for everyone,” is almost the first thing entrepreneur Jennifer Walzer told me about Back Up My Info, the online backup service she launched five years ago, and that I test drove recently. She repeated this more than once. It’s not that Walzer thinks some small businesses can afford not to back up. Far […]

Just because you run a tiny high-touch, small-town business doesn’t mean you have to forego the benefits of automation. Some people would even argue it’s all the more reason for automating to the hilt. Kimberly Kennedy, owner of The Silver Basket, a gift basket shop in Presque Isle, Maine, may be the ultimate case in […]

Branding these days is everything, or just about everything. Which is why the investors behind Phone.com LLC, a new provider of virtual PBX and voice over Internet services, were willing to pay big bucks for the coveted domain name. The firm is billing itself as The New Phone.Company. Cute. Luckily for small business owners, there’s […]

It takes a village to raise a child, according to the old African proverb. So what does it take to shape a successful entrepreneurial venture? Perhaps something like Zana Network, a virtual village for small and medium-size businesses, especially new companies interested in tapping the global marketplace. According to the Web site, it’s “one-stop menu […]

Product: ASUS AIR Internet Radio Manufacturer’s URL: http://usa.asus.com/index.aspx Price: MSRP $199 Pros: Looks good, thousands of pre-programmed radio stations, easy set-up Cons: Awkward interface for some functions, monaural speaker system In Europe, the Web radio appliance, a dedicated hardware device that connects to a home network and then to the Internet to play live audio […]