The research’s findings are worrying indeed.

• 74% of organisations are not very confident that they can fully recover after a disaster, according to a new survey of 1,750 European companies
• 54% surveyed have lost data and/or suffered systems downtime in the last year
• 61% report hardware failure as the primary cause of data loss and downtime;  natural disasters and employee sabotage being much less likely culprits
• 43% of organisations cite loss of employee productivity as the single biggest economic impact
• 28% point to lost revenue as a result of a disaster
• 40% of organisations still use tape for recovery and 80% of these organisations want to replace tape all together, highlighting the need for next generation backup and recovery

The fact that 74% of companies and organisations feel that they’re not prepared or equipped to properly recover data after an outage or disaster might be seen as very worrying for business overall.  We’ve all suffered data loss but the data losses suffered by business could affect us and them in many different ways.  They could lose customer orders, lose valuable employee details or details of current projects and so on.

The survey also details that more than half of the businesses and organisations surveyed said they had experienced data loss or systems downtime in the last year.  It’s common for companies to suffer from downtime and it’s a pity the research doesn’t go into more detail about what percentage of companies had actually experienced data loss, all we have is a corruption figure that in itself seems too high.

They say the most commonly reported causes of downtime are…

• Hardware failure: 61%
• Power failure: 42%
• Data corruption: 35%

One of the problems seems to be that 40% of the companies surveyed are still replying on tape for backup.  With the falling costs of hard disks and the increased bandwidth that dedicated phone lines can bring more and more companies are moving to secure and stable off-site backup solutions and indeed many business ISPs and server hosts now offer this facility as standard.  It is clear though that not enough companies are heeding the warnings of data loss and, more important of good security.

The research found that businesses are spending, on  average, 10% of their IT budgets on backup and recovery, and 29% of businesses  do not feel they are spending enough.   For backup and disaster recovery purposes, 40% of companies still rely  on tape, with an average annual cost of €74,000 on transporting, storing,  testing and replacing tapes. Where tape is used for disaster recovery purposes,  10% still have an employee take home a copy of the backup tapes with them.

The companies surveyed included manufacturing, retail, financial services and telecoms, among others and, frankly, it is disappointing that so many companies still seem unprepared for IT and data failures when computers have now been in business for over 30 years and have been on every desk for the vast majority of that time.

One of the issues that businesses and webmasters who take care of the listing for businesses experience from time to time is the dreaded “We currently do not support the location”.

This basically returns a blank page with the error message instead of the businesses listing on Google Places. I actually experienced this message twice in the last three months for a client.

It can be a serious blow to the businesses operations if it is not found on Google Places anymore. One might now assume that this message appears on purposes because something’s wrong with the listing, or maybe even the Google account in question.

This is however often not the case. The We currently do not support the location seems to be a bug in Google Places that a lot of local businesses have experienced in the last time.

I do suggest you check the email account linked to your Google Account and your Google Webmaster Tools account first to see if you got any emails or warnings from Google. The next thing that you need to do is to open your Places listing in your Google Account to check for changes or messages there.

If everything appears all right, you can try the following solution to bring your local business listing back on Maps.

The fix that worked in my client’s case both times was to make a change to the Google Places listing. The easiest way to do that is to post an update. You find the “Share an update on your place page” on the right side of the Places listing.

Just enter an update into the form and hit the Share button afterwards. Write about a new product or special offer for instance. I had to wait about 15 minutes before the local business appeared again on Google Places. The We currently do not support the location message was gone.

You can also make other changes, like adding or removing text from the site’s description, business hours or categories. Make sure you do not change the businesses location or other information related to that.

I hope this helps some local businesses who are fighting with the same bug on Google Places.

Today things are much different. Shared workspaces are becoming more and more popular all the time, and the idea that one individual or a micro company needs to hold into an entire office is becoming outdated. If an independent contractor needs some space they have many options for office space out of the house that does not require that they spend all their money on wasted space.

Until recently there was no consolidated way to locate the places that very small businesses could operate. In response to growing interest in the idea, however, a company called LooseCubes offers a consolidating hub at which those looking for and offering public workspace can meet. They also provide some pretty neat tools for micro companies to keep their employees informed with on the fly company events and decisions.

LooseCubes itself is being re-launched today after a lengthy facelift campaign to remedy its questionable results after it first appeared on the web. While the first attempt was half-hearted, the re-launch, which you can take a peek at here, offers those looking for work space some pretty nice features. Users can find work areas down to the very address of individual offices in over 40 countries on the website, telling prospective cohabitants things about the office space that might help them understand how well they might fit in. Each office has a “vibe” descriptor – creative, artsy, professional, etc. – and lists the sorts of facilities you will have access to, like printers and water coolers.

For those who boast a handful of employees, LooseCubes also offers some pretty neat applications that can keep you connected you for coworkers when planning special company functions or assigning workers a time to meet at your shared workspace. It is called Instant Jelly, and it allows you to create Tweeted events that your fellow workers can be notified of and respond to. The tool can be extremely handy if you operate with a few workers under you and have a workspace through LooseCubes and occasionally need your employees to meet you at your shared office.

The workplace has been moving away from tradition and toward some pretty interesting possibilities for many years already. Yet that motion had failed to be harnessed by a successful online force. With the functionality provided by LooseCubes and its micro company products it is easy to believe that the movement will continue to grow momentum. As more and more individuals turn to independent employment amidst a global economic slump, it would make sense that the flexibility of common office space should attract more individuals. While time will tell how successful the movement will be, the tools it provides to those who are tech literate are certainly useful and help independent contractors and micro companies reach their potential.

To help fight spam and prevent fake profiles, use the name your friends, family, or co-workers usually call you. For example, if your full legal name is Charles Jones Jr. but you normally use Chuck Jones or Junior Jones, either of these would be acceptable

Businesses and organizations are not mentioned at all in the standards. This is by design, according to a recent video message posted by a Google+ product manager. He states that Google+ is currently focused on the consumer experience and has a team working on Google+ for businesses. The options to add profiles for entities will likely be available later this year, including Analytics integration and linking to other parts of Google the businesses uses.

Google asks entities to hold off on using consumer profiles to build a business website on Google+. Businesses who already have created a Google+ profile, and maybe even have promoted it, may get their profile banned just like the German online magazine experienced.

Google will be running a test with a limited number of businesses, organizations and entities. A participation form has been uploaded to Google Docs that companies can fill out for a chance to take part in the test run.

The form can be filled out quickly with information about the businesses name, website, private Google+ profiles and expectations. It should not take longer than a few minutes. Filling out the form does not guarantee you a spot in the test phase though, and businesses should keep that in mind.

I would not advise businesses to create profiles on Google+ currently, as they might be banned by Google if identified or reported. The time frame “later this year” could mean a waiting period of several months before businesses can start creating business profiles on Google+.

This is a major move for the company and is intended to bring Windows Server services to a much broader client-base, these being small to medium-sized companies that cannot afford to run their own IT department and who, as a result, may not even have features such as an intranet and exchange support.

It’s a powerful suite too, and you need to look no further than Lync to see just how powerful.  This one product brings telephony, instant messaging and online video and audio conferencing into the mainstream.  When you compare this suite to Google’s offering with its web apps it’s already far in the lead.

About those web apps too, they’re good generally but limited and just as frustrating to use in general usage as the Google equivalent.  Microsoft’s subscription model does bring full versions of Office 2010 into the mix though, which their web apps sync with seamlessly.  In all it’s extremely polished and comprehensive.

But what is this going to mean and will it, indeed even can it change the world of business?  To be honest I believe it can and that, by not even attempting to play catch up, Google and other competitors will fall so far behind, and quickly, that they may never regain lost ground.  Let me explain why.

I’ve been watching Office 365′s development and as an MVP I’ve been privy to online meetings and demonstrations from the team behind it.  The very fact that Microsoft have a product that’s able to reach out to every single company that isn’t already running Windows Server or an equivalent product is astonishing.  The chances then that something critical would be missed were high, but right out of the starting blocks Office 365 seems to include everything the small business needs.

The trick will be if people find it as easy to use as Office 2010, indeed this will be the clincher.  I’ve played with Office 365 and I’m confident that this won’t be a problem.

Now we need to look at companies that do already have their own IT infrastructure and ask whether they can and will switch to this hosted service.  Businesses that run their own servers are well known to be cautious about any new product.  General uptake of Office 365, should it even happen, will take three to five years.  Companies being what they are though will look at this on a purely cost basis.  IT staff are expensive and the hardware required to support organisations is even more expensive.  The per-seat pricing for Office 365 may tempt a few chief financial officers to call Microsoft in for a pitch.

But what about Office 365′s biggest flaw, the simple fact that you need a live Internet connection to be able to use it?  I don’t believe this is a problem either to be honest as most offices will effectively stall when the Internet or their internal network goes down.  At least with Office 365 there’s the option to keep working with the desktop versions of Office 2010.

Office 365 then is polished, pretty much complete and ready for the mainstream.  Business has always been Microsoft’s biggest market but the company has been in the doldrums for many years now.  Office 365 will put Microsoft firmly back in the top spot and probably keep them there for at least another decade.  Here is a company that’s got its mojo back and that’s now producing some genuinely cutting edge products.

One such solution is Kraft. Kraft is a software designed to help you write and manage the documents you use to run your business. It works with a MySQL backend, is designed for the KDE desktop (but will run in GNOME once all dependencies are met), and can even handle some calculations for you. In this tutorial I will show you how to install and use Kraft. NOTE: As of this writing Kraft can only create Offers, Acceptance of Offers, and Invoices. Hopefully in the future a document-type creator wizard will be added.

Installing

Currently Kraft has binarys for Ubuntu, Fedora, OpenSuSE, SuSE Enterprise Linux, and Debian. These can all be found in the Kraft download page. You will have to download various files from here (depending upon your distribution) and then install one more package from your package manager. For example, when installing on Ubuntu I have to download:

• kraft_0.32_i386.deb
• libctemplate-dev_0.93-1_i386.deb
• libctemplate0_0.93-1_i386.deb

Download those and then open up your package manager to install one more package. The package you need to install is libqt3-mt-mysql. Search for that package, select it for installation, and apply the changes to install. If you do not install that final package Kraft will not be able to connect to your MySQL database. Now go to the directory you downloaded the packages for your installation and install them. For our Ubuntu example I would issue the command:

sudo dpkg -i *deb (assuming the three deb packages above are the only in the directory).

Creating the database

Before you start Kraft you need to create the database. To do this go back to your terminal window and issue the command:

mysql -u root -p

Hit the Enter key and then type your MySQL administrator password. You will now be at the MySQL prompt. Issue the following command to create your database:

CREATE DATABASE kraft;

Hit the Enter key and then type quit and hit the Enter key to exit the MySQL prompt. You are now read to fire up Kraft and begin creating documents.

Using Kraft

Figure 1

The first time you fire up Kraft you will be prompted to configure your database. Figure 1 shows how this is done. Once you fill out the details, hit the Check Connection. When you see the Connection State listed as Good you can OK these changes and then restart Kraft to ensure the connection is made.

When you restart Kraft you may be warned that your database will be over written. This is okay because you have not inserted any data into the database yet.

Figure 2

When Kraft finally opens you will see a very simple user interface (see Figure 2). Don’t let the simplicity of the interface fool you, Kraft is a powerful, useful tool.

To create a new document click the Create Document button to begin the Document Wizard. One of the first things you will notice is the warning that “Customer: Not yet selected”. This should indicate to you that you will be able to build a customer database with Kraft. Brilliant.

The wizard is very simple. The steps are:

1. Select the document type, add a date, and add any Whiteboard content to the document.
2. Select a customer (if none exist you can create one here).
3. Add items to the document.
4. Save the document.

Once the document is saved it will be listed in the Main window where you can right click it and handle numerous actions (such as Print, Edit, and Email).

One thing of note. You will want to go to the Settings > Configure Kraft window and configure your taxes. By default they are set at:

• Full – 19.0 %
• Reduced – 7.0 %

Make sure you adjust these to reflect your locations tax.

Final thoughts

I hope the developers of Kraft continue working on this tool and even make it more versatile so that more document types can be created. But even as it stands, Kraft is a very useful tool that will allow you to create outstanding invoices, offers, and acceptance of offer documents.

The problem arises, however, when we’ve got more than one space online where we’re present. And that’s true for a huge, and rapidly-growing, percentage of people. How do we keep interested people, whether it’s one person or ten million, in the know about all the different places we’re active?

The best solution is also the most expensive and time-consuming: creating, maintaining, and updating a personal website.  There’s something to be said for that, but what about all the people without the money, time, or interest in creating a whole website?

If you’re in that realm, try Card.ly, a service that aggregates and shares your entire online presence. It’s a personal website for those who don’t want a personal website.

The first step is to sign up: You’ll choose a password, and an email address. At the same time, you’ll pick a username: this will be the name used to find your page at the url http://card.ly/yourusername. Choose carefully, because that name becomes your brand (using the same name as your Twitter or Facebook page is a good idea).

Once you’ve signed up, you begin by adding social network accounts to Card.ly. Currently, the site supports, among a huge number of others: Blogger, Delicious, Digg, Disqus, Facebook, Flickr, Friendfeed, Google, Last.fm, Linkedin, MySpace, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Twitter, Vimeo, WordPress and YouTube. And those are just the better-known ones – there are even more supported services.

To add a network, all you have to do is enter the username. There’s no need for passwords, so no security issues – since you can’t add information through Card.ly anyway, there’s no need for a password anyway.

Next, you’ll add some personal details about yourself – a bio of sorts. Add your name, birthday, gender, location, and pick an avatar (you can pick and choose among these – don’t share what you don’t want to). Add your IM accounts, RSS feeds, and whatever other information you want. Below it, there’s a space for a longer-form bio, as well as a space to put contact info – this is where to put an email, or a phone number you want people to be able to reach you at.

The design of the Card.ly site is your choice, too – well, out of 27 templates. They’re nice-looking, though, and most people should be able to find something useful from them. The design’s the last step, and then you’ve got a page that might look something like this:

Once you’ve got your Card.ly account set up how you want it, start sharing! Card.ly lets you send a message on Twitter about it, as well as tons of embed codes for various sites; or you can just share the URL of your profile anywhere on the Web.

If you want even more features (like registering your own domain, removing ads, or tracking all the statistics on your site) you’ll want to get a Premium account – either $2.99 a month or $24.99 a year. The free version, though, will be more than enough for most people.

If you’re looking to build a brand online, there’s no better way to do it than to have a personal website. If you don’t want to pour your time, money and energy into it, though, Card.ly makes simple work out of it.

How do you manage your presence online, especially across multiple places?

Photo: NathanaelB

If you take a look at the categories you will notice several unusual ones, for instance Most Likely to Change the World or Most Likely to Get Users Sued. That’s the spirit, you will not find the usual boring categories in that list. Each of the twelve categories contains a list of Open-Source applications that can be voted for. Interested users can also skip the voting process and head right to the project’s website to download any interesting sounding application.

There are some “serious” categories as well, like Best Project for the Enterprise, Best Tool or Utility for SysAdmins and Best Tool or Utility for Developers. I’m still a bit puzzled why Launchy made it into the category Most Likely To Get Users Sued.

You need an Open ID or a Sourceforge account to vote for the best software in each category. I for one will head straight to the download sites to download anything of interest from the list.

It all starts with an upload obviously. Not your usual pick a song and hit a button type of upload though. You do pick a song but can add a wealth of information to the upload including an extensive description, genre, bpm, record label, catalogue number, release data, track number, keywords and even a buy this track link.

Artwork can be added as well and a decision has to be made if the song should be publicly or privately accessible. If the latter is chosen users can be picked from the list of followers and followed or by email. Emails will be send to users with a direct link to the song so that they can access it at the SoundCloud website. Those users have to chose a password for the first time and can use that password to access that song and any other that they are invited to.

Users with access rights can leave comments that are attached to a specific time of the song which is another interesting feature.

Public Songs can be embedded in websites like the example above. The color of the player can be selected freely. Users can jump to any position of the song. I’m a bit surprised though about the lack of player controls. There is only play and stop. Downloads on the other hand are blazingly fast.

SoundCloud offers some interesting unique features to its core audience. I have three invites up for grabs, if you want to give it a try leave a comment. I pick three random ones tomorrow.

Each project consists of a name and a color. That’s the minimal constellation. Additional data like contact names and email addresses can be added and sub projects can be created. Each project and sub project is listed in the left column and can be accessed with a double-click to change data, add sub projects or write comments on previous time entries.

The time of a project will be tracked when the user drags the project into the Currently Working On area of the application or by clicking on the Work On button in the project’s detail view.

Instead of tracking the time in real time it is possible to drag projects into the weekly view and edit the time manually. A double-click leads to that option which also offers access to the comment function.

Automatic time tracking cannot get better than this. The application is very responsive and it is easy to create new projects or sub projects. Reports are saved in Excel format which is also excellent.