James T. (Jim) Karam's blog focusing on using technology in small business

Every small business should create a website.

4/7/2014

I've been teaching a seminar on Using the Internet in Your Business for several years as a part of my SCORE volunteer work. Basically, I walk SCORE clients through the why and how to build a website. Even if they are not going to sell directly on the internet as so-called eCommerce, I strongly encourage them to at least create a web presence with what some folks call a "brochure site", so-called because it is a cheap, 24/7 accessible equivalent of the old tri-fold brochures that all businesses used to hand out. Typically, there are just five key pages: Home, Products & Services, About/Why Us?, Help/Support, and Contact Us. You've probably got most of the content that you need in the business plan that you used to get financing.

There are a variety of excellent hosting services that offer easy-to-use templates enabling anyone who can use document software like Microsoft Word to create a good-looking website. For several years, I have touted weebly.com as an excellent site that was notably easy to use and could get your business online at low cost, even free. I recently used it myself to upgrade the cosmetics of my own site, and to convert my brother-in-law's eCommerce site at awilliamsleather.com.

For completeness, I should also recommend wix.com and gybo.com as good, even free, hosting sites as well. Of course, the traditional hosting big boys like godaddy.com, homestead.com, and smallbusiness.yahoo.com have equivalent tools and have all dropped their pricing for small businesses.
There's just no excuse not to get started.

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United Airlines stole 150,000+ Mileage Plus miles

4/3/2014

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Yes, I realize that they supposedly sent out an email in January 2007 that included a whole bunch of new terms and conditions, buried among them being the proviso of cutting back their period of allowed inactivity to 18 months. Checking the internet, I also find other similar retirees who were loyal customers for years who now no longer fly as much and had their miles “canceled” as well. One such customer lost 230,000+ miles, again with no notice. In my case, I didn’t use the miles because I was saving them for a rainy day when I couldn’t afford to fly somewhere that I desired.

My main gripe is that United obviously is taking these actions to make money by taking a deferred expense off their books. Alternatively, I have heard that United sold off this portion of their business to a third party who is clearly doing all they can to make as much money as possible from their purchase. It would have been a trivial matter for United to send an email or, even better, a physical letter to the customer, say a month or so before they unilaterally took this action. Unlike some of their competitors, obviously United intentionally chose not to do so in hopes that they could screw as many miles as possible from unsuspecting or non-vigilant customers.

Given some reasonable notice, I would not have a gripe. They had been sending me over an email per week touting one thing or another, so you know they are capable of automatically generating emails based on an imminent event. But no, they chose to keep their mouth shut, and now religiously stick to their tune of “we told you over a year ago”. Perhaps they did, but they could have provided good customer support by also telling us a couple of weeks before this costly action.

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Managing Systems Development 101 Feedback

4/3/2014

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My main hope for this blog is as a mechanism for readers to provide feedback on my book, Managing Systems Development 101. You can click on its title and read an excerpt of its content. My target audience is the, usually youngish, engineer who is growing beyond his/her academic technical specialty and beginning to face the myriad issues regarding systems that his/her teachers failed to address. It mainly is an expanded compilation of lessons learned that I found myself resurrecting as I went from job to job over a forty year career building aerospace and commercial system products.

Its Amazon posting has garnered some excellent reviews, but I would welcome more comments. For example, one publisher wanted me to expand its concise form into several hundred pages more typical of a textbook. I initially decided against that since I usually found myself frustrated going through “management” texts that seemed to delight in saying almost the same thing over and over again. On the other hand, such might expand the book's audience by improving its adoption rate as a textbook. What do you think?

I’d also welcome more examples and experiences regarding the topics that I address. I used real-world data wherever I could, but more would be helpful. Feedback regarding typo’s and the like are also desired. For example, the paragraph at the top of page 35 of the printed version is one font size larger than intended. Have you noted any other cosmetic flaws?

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Every small business should create a website.

United Airlines stole 150,000+ Mileage Plus miles

Managing Systems Development 101 Feedback

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