Arkadin Web Conferencing

I have started using Arkadin Web conferencing and this looks as if it will be very useful.

Web conferencing allows remote conferencing with multiple users but as well as sharing a telephone conversation, a screen can be shared too.  This is especially useful for business partnering discussions, where I as the accountant am talking operational managers through numbers.  In the past I have sent large spreadsheets, waited ages for my client to open them and had discussion where I might have to keep referring to row numbers and column names.  Now I can share my screen so that the client sees what I see.  They see me point my mouse, I can highlight information and they can see it in real time.

This will also be useful for training where I can show a client what to do, or they can show me what they are doing and I can explain the problem.

More info at www.arkadin.com

Top tips for Twitter

One of the most important ways for businesses to get ahead on Twitter is by helping others who have a problem, according to a new list of tactics. http://telegraph.feedsportal.com/c/32726/f/567647/s/1cce4b38/l/0L0Stelegraph0O0Ctechnology0Ctwitter0C90A93740A0CTop0E20A0ETwitter0Ebusiness0Etips0Bhtml/story01.htm Shared via my6sense

Clear Books - speed

So far I have found Clear Books to be fast to very fast (evenings and weekend).  Monday night at about 6:30 pm was slow though.  Could have been a once off or a problem my end, but something to monitor.

Clear Books - electronic invoicing (good and bad)

Clear Books has some good tools for electronic invoicing.  Not only can you capture a pdf, there is a tool to click to email the invoice.  The good part here is that instead of sending a pdf as an attachment, it sends an email with hyperlinks to both the invoice and a live statement.

The advantage is that the client can see the latest details.  The disadvantage of course is that if for any reason you were not up to date, the client can see that too!

Security thought: if the hyperlink remains valid for that client for all time and continues to show live information, a former employee of the client with the hyperlink would still have access to live statements and by drilling down, to the invoices.  Need to follow this up.

Clear Books - banking and scans

Spent a few more minutes playing with Clear Books and made a major discovery: you can now add attachments.  The last time I looked at Cloud accounting systems (about a year ago) none supported this.  It now looks likely that this system could support paperless accounts in a good way.

I'm starting to get enthusiastic but will need a bit more testing before I drop my old Quick Books desktop version.

Clear Books - testing

I have signed up for a free 30 day trial of the web based accounting software Clear Books.  First indications are that it is quick and very easy to use.  I dived straight in and was able to create a sales invoice in a few minutes.  Customisation and creating of sales lines seemed easy.  Receipting too was fairly intuitive.  It was refreshing to see how well catching invoices as pdfs was built in - using with Evernote would be easy.

Definitely seems worthy of investing a bit more time to test the banking side.

iPad 3 rumours, specs, price & release date round-up - uSwitch.com

iPad 3 rumours, specs, price & release date round-up - uSwitch.com:

'via Blog this'

Future of devices at work

BBC News - BYOD: Bring your own device could spell end for work PC

So what would I chose?  Probably a desktop with double or triple monitors for day to day.  This would be augmented with a tablet and small laptop for meetings, depending on whether I expected to be using the device for input or output.

Future of computers - next 5 years perhaps

The end of the PC, courtesy of Microsoft | Mobile Technology - InfoWorld

Employment law and snow

BBC News - Snow difficulties and your rights

Desktop searches

A replacement for Google Desktop? - Telegraph