The Business Blog at Intuitive.com

Chevy, Ford, 2012 and Blunt Superbowl Adverts

Just watched Superbowl XLVI and really enjoyed the game. Tense, surprisingly close, and a match that could have switched on that final "Hail Mary" pass. How can you not enjoy that?

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HP markets to stereotypes? Ugh.

I realize that as a dad blogger -- see GoFatherhood for my dad blog -- I get on a lot of mailing lists that are really more aimed at mom or mommy bloggers because, well, most of us Dads don't blog about parenting, we blog about work, tech or our other passions. Mars, Venus, all that. So I'm no stranger to getting press releases and media queries that begin "Dear Mom" or "As a Mom..."

As a busy mom, I'm sure you don't have time to struggle with difficult or unreliable web printing. You need to print that recipe ASAP for your kid's last minute school bake sale! Well, you are in luck. 

As such, I wanted to let you know about something you might be interested in. I work with Hewlett-Packard (partners with Microsoft) on the Bing Bar for HP Toolbar. The Bing Bar for HP is a free tool designed to...

What does this mean - when you print recipes, you get the recipe - not 3 pages of pictures, random site text and ads. Want to print a news story? You get the news story on the full page, not on a skinny third of a page with the rest taken by unneeded clutter. The use cases for the Smart Print function can go on and on.

Tip: There's an Art to Formatting a Press Release

As we close in on the huge Consumer Electronics Show (still almost a month away) I am now getting 10-20 emails a day from PR agencies and publicists, inviting me to attend various events, come to parties, meet with executives, and schedule time to stop by one or another of the over 2000 vendors that are going to be at the show. Helpful, but overwhelming.

What's the future of laptop PCs versus tablets?

I received the following question from a reader and it started me thinking....

With the recent popularity of tablets, do you think in the near future tablets will replace netbooks or stay as a substitute? If you think tablets and netbooks are going to continue competing against one another, do you think the demand for netbooks will decline but not perish? Thanks!

He raises an interesting question, but I'm going to expand it just a bit to ask an even bigger question: Are tablet computers going to eclipse and ultimately replace laptop computers in the marketplace?

I have the most popular devices -- two laptops (one Mac, one PC) and two tablets (an iPad 2 and an Android-powered Kindle Fire) -- so I can start by discussing my own experience. With both a Mac and PC, I definitely spend more time on the Macintosh side. Less viruses and a more aesthetically pleasing user experience works for me.

On the tablet side, it's a bit more complicated because I'm more of an information producer than consumer, and I believe that in their current instantiation, tablets are optimal for consuming data, not creating it. As a result, I find that I use my iPad for reading ebooks (though I just got the new Umberto Eco novel, so I'll be switching to paper for a while to enjoy the full kinesthetic experience) and for entertainment, especially on airplane flights.

The Kindle Fire is still so new that I'm trying to figure out what it offers over and above a great form factor with its crystal-clear 7-inch screen and low price tag. Kindles are still optimal for digital books and magazines, and I'm working out how to get my own movies, music, and reference PDFs onto the device.

When I watch people coming out of the Apple Store, there are at least as many MacBook Air buyers as iPad buyers, another data point.

Television and radio are all about consumption. The Internet and our always-on world is just as much about publishing and production, however, and that plays a major part in this discussion.

Facebook reports over 250 million photos are uploaded each day. Tapping in a sentence or two is no problem, but anything longer and you're moving into the gray area of adding a wireless keyboard to your tablet or mobile device. Isn't it then essentially a laptop?

I believe that we're heading towards a hybrid world where the average user will have a tablet computer, either running iOS or Android, that will neatly slip into a case that includes more storage, additional ports and a keyboard. We'll have a second 'travel' case that's slim and offers additional battery power. Between the two we'll have a tablet that's also a laptop, the best of both worlds.

Data security and the CLEAR airport security card

As regular readers know, I wrote a blog post a week or so ago about applying for a CLEAR card [see Biometrics and my application for the CLEAR card] and in that writeup I had one big question: with all the biometric data collected, how does the company ensure that it's safe and secure?

I just got an update from CLEAR Vice President Mark Neirick addressing my security concerns. Here's what he says:

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CLEAR recognizes that with the information provided by its members comes the expectation and trust that CLEAR will appropriately protect it. A key difference between the current system and that of the previous Verified Identity Pass system is that personal data is not distributed to remote systems such as kiosks or mobile systems.

CLEAR encrypts all data in transmission to ensure security in transit. CLEAR uses a variety of security protocols and procedures to secure the data collected including: AES 256, virtual private networks, SFTP, SSL, and TLS. In many cases these protocols and procedures are combined for even higher levels of protection.

Our secure data center uses extensive physical and logical security protections including access control, personnel screening, video surveillance, intrusion detection, and others. The data stored on the CLEARcard is encrypted with 2 separate security keys. The fingerprints and iris images collected are converted to templates prior to being stored on the CLEARcard. These templates can be used for positive matching against the original biometric but cannot be used to reverse engineer the source biometric.

Other than our technical security standards, tools, and procedures, the CLEAR privacy and security policies help ensure the integrity of the information we collect and protect. These policies include screening requirements for key employees and contractors, data management policies, and mandatory training all focused on ensuring the highest levels of protection for our member's data.

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Is it sufficient? I will say that it's something that the company needs to address head on. Responses to my previous article about CLEAR demonstrate clearly that people are leery of trading their personal data - particularly biometric data -- against the convenience of passing through airport security more rapidly.

What do you think? Is this response from Mark sufficient to alleviate your anxieties in this regard?

Biometrics and my application for the CLEAR card

It's not often a company goes bankrupt and comes back from the dead as a better, smarter firm. Seems like companies are more often built on the rubble of previous ventures instead. The airport express security program CLEAR is a notable counterexample, with its database of Transportation Security Administration-approved biometrics that let them whisk you through the airport security lines. With over 200,000 paying members, the first generation of CLEAR just up and declared bankruptcy one day and shut down, leaving a lot of frustrated, disappointed users: no-one got a dime back.

Fast forward a few years and the company has been relaunched under a new management team and the first thing that they did was to extend every previous CLEAR subscriber membership in the new program for the time they had left originally. Without charge. Nice. Smart way to build instant customer loyalty.

When they approached me a few weeks ago and offered a one-year membership in the CLEAR program, I read about the program and decided to sign up. I don't fly that often by myself -- if you travel with others and they don't have CLEAR, well, they'll end up in the slow lane while you zip through. Not a way to keep friends and definitely not an option with children involved -- but still, I love the idea so I signed up!

Taking advantage of my trip out to Los Angeles to speak at Blogworld Expo, I went through the CLEAR biometric collection step at the airport, with my friend and photographer Aimee Giese in tow...

Data. Lots of Data

I knew in advance that I had to bring my passport, current drivers license, and be ready to have my fingerprints and eyes scanned. They collect all the data digitally, so the CLEAR enrollment kiosk is really a wonder of compact tech, with an iris scanner, camera, fingerprint scanner and document scanner, along with a mag card reader, keyboard and big display screen. Quite the gizmo!

That took me a bit by surprise too. I thought that my passport would be used to verify my ID, not actually scanned and parsed. To give you a sense of how sophisticated their system is, the first time we went through the application process, I signed up as "Dave" Taylor and when my passport was scanned, it failed to verify because it lists me as "David" Taylor. Right. We backed up, revised it to "David" and it worked properly. Cool.

Then it was time for my fingerprints to be collected...

I had to then enter my social security number, which they used to immediately pull my credit report and quiz me on background data only I'd know, like previous street addresses. Creepy to suddenly have my street address from twelve years ago pop up on their screen, but I've seen this sort of credit history quiz verification system before and passed the test, fortunately. If you have a bad memory, you could have a problem with this, I suppose.

The Great Iris Scan

The last step of the process was to scan my irises (iri?) and that was surprisingly easy: a glass panel at (adult) eye level on the kiosk, about 8" wide had the eye imaging device and all I had to do was slowly move forward and backward until a small green dot appeared in my face's reflection on the glass. Moments later we were looking at my irises:

Apparently, there are more personally identifying points on your iris than there are on your fingers, so an iris scan is actually a better way to establish identity. After seeing the film Minority Report, however, I worry about unexpected workarounds. :-)

That was it. Data collected. I'll get my CLEAR card in the mail, with all my biometrics encrypted in the chip buried within the card.

How is it encoded? "It's all ones and zeroes" the gal working at the kiosk explained. Uh, yeah, so's everything else. Still, as I pointed out to them, CLEAR now has an extraordinary wealth of data on me, more than just about anyone else, including the US Government, between my birthday, SSN, fingerprints, iris scans, and travel history. That's slightly alarming from a Big Brother perspective, but understanding how they secure and keep this data safe is a separate discussion, one that I'll have with their security team, and report back.

Meanwhile, I can't wait to get my card and try it, preferably on a day when the airport's crazy busy.

Curious about CLEAR? If you sign up using my referrer code, you'll get an additional month of membership free. Why not give it a shot, particularly if you're a frequent traveller? Here's the link: Sign up for CLEAR today.

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Note: at this moment in time, CLEAR is only available at the Denver International and Orlando airports. There are a lot more airports that they're in negotiations with, and the buzz online is that next up are (hopefully) Washington DC, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Don't quote me on that, though.

Top Tips for Coping With Fear of Public Speaking

A friend of mine who is scheduled to give the opening talk at a major conference later this week posted on Facebook that she's both excited and nervous about her talk. Nothing unusual, of course, and her anxiety is certainly understandable: fear of public speaking is the #1 anxiety in the general population.

In that regard, I've been lucky in that I've been speaking from podiums and stages for decades now and when I first realized how much I enjoyed the limelight, I studied top professional public speakers to learn what made them tick, what made them engaging, fun and interesting. The two main people I watched, over and over again, in case you're curious, were Tom Peters and Tony Robbins. Both are just dynamite on stage. But why? That's what I figured out...

The first thing I realized is that as someone on stage, I need to be interesting. No, more than interesting, I need to be an entertainer, a performer. I mean, I'm on stage, I'm performing. Not in the monkey and organ grinder sense (hopefully!) but still, the best speakers are people who keep your attention and find that marvelous mix of fun, entertaining and informative.

There are some speakers who have the opposite problem too, of course. They're all entertainment, often the "bad boy" persona on stage, but afterwards you realize that they didn't actually have anything of value to share. Not uncommon for keynote and paid speakers, unfortunately, so it's really a mix that you need to try and attain. But to assume that you're speaking at a professional conference or event and therefore you don't need to do anything other than share your research data or case studies in a dry monotone. Well. It already sounds boring, doesn't it?

I once spoke at the Modern Language Association Convention and was the odd man out. I didn't stand in front of the room and read a prepared paper, word for word, without looking up or even taking a breath. I actually engaged my audience and made eye contact, shared humorous asides, and had a bit of fun with my session. They didn't know what to to make of it. Me? I never went back. Yikes.

Two of the best things you can do to get ready for a speech or other presentation are to spend the time preparing your material. It's a very, very rare person who can give an extemporaneous talk and not fall flat. Those people you see doing it on TV and at major events? Yeah, they have speeches they've studied, often for weeks, prior to stepping onto the stage.

In that same vein, don't over-prepare. Practice your talk for a few colleagues or in front of a mirror? Could be a good idea, especially if you're not good at pacing yourself. But doing that a dozen times or more? You'll just get paranoid and more anxious, not less. Ditto slides. Revise them once or twice, but if you're spending hours and hours on your deck, you're putting your attention into the wrong thing.

Once you've gotten to a good spot, take a deep breath. Go for a walk. Exercise. Have sex. Whatever. Just breath out and relax. You're going to do fine.

I don't speak at political rallies, so this next part might be skewed, but in my experience, it's always true that every single person in the audience wants you to be awesome. They don't want to nit-pick, they don't want to be critical, they want to find your talk fascinating, thought-provoking and entertaining.

That's reassuring, isn't it?

I think the fear of public speaking is closely tied to a fear of looking stupid or being embarrassed, but if you envision that everyone wants you to succeed, not fail, then you realize that you're going to be speaking to a supportive audience that will forgive just about anything -- including speech impediments, coughing fits, stumbling when you're walking on stage, accidentally smacking the microphone, or even -- in one notable experience I witnessed -- walking on stage with a glass of wine and then promptly spilling it all over yourself. Really, as long as you keep calm and have a sense of humor, it's just about impossible to alienate an audience if you actually have something worth saying.

You wouldn't be invited to speak at a conference or trade show if you weren't already considered someone smart, savvy and blessed with good communication skills. Really. Walking on stage doesn't take that away from you, and I know, I've run all-day workshops for 500+ people.

Here's an exercise that'll convince you that you're ready: think about the last time you were hanging out with your buddies, your mates, your colleagues and everyone was paying attention to you, smiling and nodding as you talked. Got that? Now capture that relaxed sensation and stick it in your pocket. Then pull it out just before you walk on stage.

One more thought about how to do well speaking on stage: be bigger than life. Whether it's a small room with thirty people or a large stage and seating for a thousand, you need to be bigger, bolder and more enthused than you'd be if we were sitting across from each other at the local Starbucks and chatting.

Imagine you're in the back of the room. Hold up your fingers and measure. The speaker's no bigger than your thumb or smartphone screen. Yeah, it's called perspective, I know. But it's important, because if you want to really hold your audience and have them listen to every word you utter, you need to capture and keep their attention.

It's like when movies first started, because there was no sound and the projection systems were crummy, actors had very exaggerated movements and gestures. Turns out that works really well on stage. Even with sound.

Most of all, my key advice to any public speaker is always the same: relax, relax, relax and have fun on stage. Really. It's fun to be on stage.

You'll do GREAT!

Join me for a Facebook & Social Media Marketing workshop

I'm excited to let you know about a really cool workshop that my friend Andrea Vahl and I are doing in a few weeks focused almost exclusively on Facebook marketing. You might recognize Andrea's name, she's not only one of the co-authors of the just release Facebook Marketing for Dummies, but she's also known for her shrill alter-ego Grandma Mary and her entertaining video interviews.

Here's just a subset of what you'll learn in our workshop:

• How to get found in local searches so that you can get new clients
• How to get more Likes to your Facebook Page and convert those new connections into customers
• The best times to post, how often to post and what to post
• How to sell from your Facebook Page without feeling pushy
• Where to get keyword ideas that you can incorporate into all your social media profiles
• How to optimize your profiles to help your SEO so that you are found
• How to use Twitter if you don't want to Tweet
• Where to find targeted new followers
• The best Twitter tools to make your job easier and take less time
• Three things you must do on LinkedIn to increase your exposure and help you come up in searches
• How to find and connect with new people
• Google Plus and why you need to get started while it's still in beta
• Four videos you should create on YouTube to help you connect with clients
• How to build a blog that acts as the centerpiece of your social media presence
• The three most important things you can do today to improve your search engine rank

The event will be a one-day workshop -- including lunch -- located conveniently in Louisville, Colorado, with easy access from Denver and Boulder, as well as points north and south.

When? October 18th, 2011.

Piqued your interest? We also have early bird registration if you act quickly. Details, sign up, maps, and much more can be found here: Facebook and Social Media Marketing workshop.

Hope you can join us, I know I'm excited to spend a day working with Andrea and learning from her!

Smart: Visa's new Online Shopping Card

There I was queued up to buy stuff at the local King Sooper supermarket when I realized that the card I was looking at in a plastic box wasn't a gift card but something rather more interesting:

Visa Corporation is finally figuring out that our collective anxiety about shopping online, identity theft, theft of credit and card balance, etc, can be tapped from a business perspective and has introduced their Visa Online Shopping Card.

Smarter yet, it's a debit card which means that even if someone does steal the card number and CVV number the maximum charge they can run up is only as much as you actually have in that account's balance.

I'm actually a big fan of debit cards anyway, because having credit cards that are limited to money on hand means you can't get into debt. In my opinion there are too many people that live with so much debt that they end up working and earning money to service their debt (e.g., pay interest and fees) rather than saving or actually buying the stuff they want. In my wallet is one credit card and one debit card, the latter of which I use far more often. That, however, is probably a different topic.

Back to the Online Shopping Card!

What's interesting to me is that your credit card, Visa or MasterCard, already has guarantees against online fraud. In Visa's Zero Liability promise, for example, the company assures you:

Shop worry-free at millions of merchants: You can use your card to shop with confidence. That's because Visa protects your card information 24/7 and you won't be held liable for unauthorized purchases made with your card or account information.

Nonetheless the fact that we consumers are worried about online fraud and liability -- and we clearly are -- is reason enough to justify the release of the Visa Online Shopping Debit Card. It's smart and if you're worried, why not pick one up? For a one-time fee of $4.95, it's a smart way to manage things, and 10x if you have a parent or child who is profligate in their online spending.

And if you're a marketing person like me, marvel at how Visa can simultaneously have a Zero Liability promise to its customers and still figure out a way to generate additional corporate revenue based on the very same customer fear. That's just good marketing.

Social media really does matter to SEO

I'm fascinated to find that a Web site that my friend Christian Toto (film critic at What Would Toto Watch) and I (under the aegis of my Dave On Film blog) are building out and experimenting with has pulled directly into the #1 slot on Google for our catch phrase, yet it has no incoming links other than a post on Facebook and another on Google Plus.

Here's the Google search result for the phrase "dinner with a critic":

I realize that it's a perfect match for our domain name (which is, ingeniously enough, DinnerWithaCritic.com) but that wouldn't explain moving into the #1 position on a search that has 13.1 million results. Is it because I'm logged in to Google? No, I had a number of other people do the same search and report the same #1 match.

Think about it: there are no incoming links for this site, I've never submitted it with Google, and a week ago it was available for registration. I post a note on Facebook with the clickable URL and another on Google Plus similar, and less than 48 hours later it's top 'o the charts on the search for dinner with a critic.

Now tell me again why you think that social media isn't relevant to search results placement?

Notifications on Google Plus are broken

In the last few weeks, I've grown to really enjoy working with Google Plus, the search engine giant's second attempt (third attempt?) at a social network to rival Facebook. Clean, elegant, responsive and fast for people to engage, I'm liking it more than Facebook in a lot of ways.

Except that Google hasn't really though through the entire issue of how to share with a user who is following them, and it means I'm not paying attention to people who I really do want to have a symmetric relationship with on the service.

That's the big difference between G+ and FB: Google Plus is asymmetric, meaning that you can follow me (in the Google Plus world it's referred to as "circling" because you add someone to one or more of your follow circles) without me having to follow you back. On Facebook every relationship is symmetric: we can't be friends unless we both green light it. Huge difference and one that I really like, actually.

Except now I find that 300-400 people each day are "circling" me and I have no idea who the majority of them are because there's just insufficient information from Google shown about how we're connected, if at all.

Here's what I mean:

You can see four people shown here, one of whom has their name in Chinese, three of whom in English. But who are they? Do we know each other? Have we connected or followed each other on a different social service? Do they have a Web site that points to my online content?

The pop-up I am showing for John Yaeger is an improvement because it shows the number of people we have in common (e.g. that both of us have circled). That's social proof, and that's darn helpful as a first step. In fact, it's that "people in common" count that I'd like to see next to each and every person so I can quickly scan and say "ah, 17 in common, what's the story with this otherwise unrecognized name?"

But there's a deeper issue here. Google owns the search engine space and has rich, deep and sophisticated profiles on each of us, profiles that include our interconnectedness. Why isn't that data included here somehow so that I can have a quick visual clue who has circled me that I should be paying attention to versus those that are followers or just building up big circles but that, realistically, probably won't make it into my Friends circle?

Imagine if G+ was using predictive analysis behind the scenes and that it had a five star scale next to each name that offered a quick clue about who it believed I was most likely to circle up? Or maybe just added a star or slightly changed the background color of the box that included people that have a non-zero "people in common" list? (better, let me have a slider so I can say the minimum for them to be highlighted is X people, not just 1).

There's more to be done with Google Plus for sure, and this is one area that's increasingly failing for me. What's in the cards, G+ team?

Hey Facebook, just let people deactivate their accounts...

I recently made the decision to deactivate my son's Facebook account after we had one too many issues with his use and it's been fascinating to see how many emotional strings they pull as you go through the process so that you'll change your mind and stick around. Makes me wonder how many of those much-vaunted 750mil members are deactivated accounts or almost deactivated, ignored accounts.

Go through the account settings, click on "deactivate" and you'll get this warning:

In case you can't read it, the top says "Are you sure you want to deactivate your account?" and below it says "Deactivating your account will disable your profile and remove your name and picture from everything you've shared on Facebook."

Below that are pictures (not profile pictures, but user photos) from some of your friends, with the headline "Jason will miss you", "Alynne will miss you", "Kim will miss you", etc.

Under each photo is a convenient "Send Jason a Message", but really, Facebook, this feels awfully manipulative on your part. Is it such a crisis for the business if someone deactivates their account that you need to have this sort of screen pop up to slow them down?

But we're not done. After you finally deactivate the account, the account holder gets the following email message:

Forty words and two links to "reactivate" your account, one of which is a bright green "Sign In", as if you'd never deactivated your account, let alone JUST gone through the steps to deactivate it.

I'll keep my eyes open, I expect my son will get monthly and randomly scheduled messages from Facebook reminding him of all the people who are missing him because he's not on the service and reminding him just how darn easy it is to reinstate the account.

Feels very sordid, Facebook, very manipulative. You really need to reconsider this entire sequence of communication.

Nice job with the mobile search updates, Google!

One thing I like about Google is that the company introduces new features without any fanfare, sometimes just giving us the pleasure of stumbling across something that's never been available before (like image matching capabilities in Google Image Search) or a new interface to a popular feature that's just waiting for us to stumble across.

And that's just what I did this afternoon when doing a Google search on my iPhone, stumbled across the coolest new feature that I've seen in a while. Check it out...

First off, you do a Google search on the iPhone in Safari and here's pretty typical results:

Look a bit closer at the results, however, and there's a new icon present to the right of each matching entry in the search results:

I've highlighted it above. Tap on it and suddenly you're looking at the different view entirely:

Neat. Kind of reminiscent of "screenflow" in iTunes, isn't it? If you move things down just a bit, you'll find that there's even useful information about each match in addition to the thumbnail view of the page itself:

Very cool. And the fact that I just stumbled across it? That's pretty fun too.

Contracts after the company goes under?

I got this most interesting query from a reader that I thought was worth discussing a bit here on my blog:

"I'm hoping you can help me. I paid money to a company called, "The Auction Employment Training Institute" so that I could take the training, then become an Ebay auction listing agent. Half way through my training, this company went under. (I think this because they haven't answered their phone calls for months. First they said it was a temporary inconvenience, now they just don't answer.) Employment with Ebay was guaranteed. Is there any way I can follow through with this to get this job? I realize this may not be your area of expertise, but any suggestions would be welcomed) I've tried looking this up on the Ebay sight, and there is nothing."

I'm not going to talk about how to research a possibly defunct company but instead want to talk about the questionable benefit of a guarantee from a company that can go out of business.

The fact is, most guarantees have escape clauses as it's the rare small business that can afford the risk of having too many customers use their product or service then return it for a refund. Imagine a restaurant where lots of homeless people enjoy their meals then claim it was inferior and ask for a refund, or a housecleaning service where most of their customers later refuse to pay because they weren't happy with the resultant level of cleanliness?

That's not to say that this is what happened with Auction Employment Training Institute, but I'm a bit confused: they can't possibly guarantee you're going to be hired by eBay. The only company that could guarantee employment with eBay is, well, eBay. Anyone else has to be misrepresenting the situation or, perhaps, they mean you can sell stuff on eBay as a merchant, which you can already do by simply signing up and listing stuff.

Still, do they have a guarantee of employment? Well, they did, and it was enough for you to sign up for the program, which is too bad because, as many questionable companies do, they apparently shuttered their office (my guess, they never had an office) and split with the rest of the money. From their perspective, they probably figured that it's easier to drain the bank account and shut down than to worry about delivering content for the latter part of your course.

So does your guarantee have any value? Not at all. I'm sure eBay won't help you out (though they might sic a lawyer on the task of finding and suing the original owners of the business) and while you can try filing a complaint with the Better Business Bureau, the fact is I'm confident that they've long since split and will resurface under another name.

All I can say is that I'm sorry you've been ripped off like this, and to encourage everyone to always beware deals that seem too good to be true. It's clearly the case that no third party company can guarantee you'll be hired by another firm, regardless of how they phrase it.

How not to email someone a press release

Do I even need to add a comment about how this has no information about what the release addresses and how it's a waste of time and bandwidth, and how the vast majority of recipients will simply delete it without ever clicking on the PDF?

What would you do if you received this and they weren't your absolute all-time favorite company?

Understanding the Legal Structure of Business

This is a guest blog entry by James Kim.

Starting up a company is no easy feat. Branding, employees, finances, and advertising are just some of the things you may be juggling in the beginning phases of your business. But the process becomes even more complicated when you have to decide on a business structure or file taxes. Not to worry! Here we've compiled a list of each business structure and their pros and cons, providing a business solution for just one of your conundrums.

Sole Proprietorship

A sole proprietorship occurs when one person owns a business on their own. In this structure, a person and a business act as the same legal entity: the businesses liabilities, debts, and legalities are the sole proprietor's liabilities, debts and legalities. Therefore, the business profit "passes through" to the business owner and these profits are recorded in an individual tax return.

Pros:
-Easy tax recording
-Simple to establish and maintain
-Low startup fees
-No "double tax," or taxation on corporate income as well as individual income
-Complete control over your business

Cons:
-High personal liability
-Limited access to capital (cannot sell shares in exchange for capital)

Partnership

A partnership is a business model with two or more people carrying on a business together. Like sole proprietorships, partnerships pass their profits to the partners and are taxed for these profits in the individual income tax return.

Pros:
-An array of skills contribute to the business decisions
-Easy to start
-Inexpensive to start

Cons:
-Possibility of disagreement
-High personal liability
-Shared profits
-Give up full control over business

C Corporation

In any corporation (c or s corp), shareholders trade money and/or property for the capital stock. The distinguishing factor of a c corporation is its taxing processes. Instead of passing the profits through to the shareholders, c corps are taxed on both individual and corporate incomes in a process called "double taxation."

Pros:
-Easier to get funding from angels or venture capitalists: c corps have the most flexibility when issuing shares because they can have an extremely high number of shareholders with which to give to VCs or angels in exchange for capital
-Employee incentive plans
-Limited personal liability

Cons:
-Complex tax recording/filing
-Double taxation

S Corporation

An S corporation provides entrepreneurs with the limited liability of a corporation plus the "pass through" taxation process of sole proprietors and partners. An s corp can have no more than 100 shareholders, unlike the unlimited shareholders of c corps.

Pros:
-No "double tax"
-Limited personal liability

Cons:
-There can be no more than one class of stock
-Limited shareholders

Limited Liability Company

If your business will most likely engage in some sort of riskier activity (the use of hazardous materials, selling of edible goods, caring for children or animals, requiring injury-prone actions), you should opt for the LLC, which protects your personal assets from business debts and claims. There are no tax advantages (or disadvantages) to forming an LLC: LLCs with one owner file for taxes as a sole-proprietor, while LLCs with multiple owners file taxes as partnerships.

This is because the federal government does not identify LLC as a classification, so a member (and owner of an LLC) must file as a corporation, partnership, or sole proprietorship tax return. A Form 8832 is filed to establish a business classification. Owners of an LLC may also have to pay additional state taxes, or "franchise taxes," in addition to the income tax.

Pros:
-Flexibility of management/taxing structure
-Limited personal liability

Cons:
-"Franchise taxes," a tax solely required of LLCs
-Possibility of disagreement
-More difficult to raise capital

Choosing a legal structure is one of the most important decisions an entrepreneur has to make in the beginning stages of his/her company. Hopefully this list gave you a better sense of which one is right for you.

Email for business? Get a real domain!

I had a company repair and rebuild a bunch of windows in my new house last week and just got a nice followup email from them about the job and how to maintain the new windows so that there are no warping issues or clogged weatherstrips, etc.

What struck me about the message, however, was that the return email address was

      account name @comcast.net

Yeah. A business that, I'm guessing, is clearing over $200,000/yr and their digital identity is tied to their ISP. If Comcast changes its account name structure, or they forget to pay their hosting bill, then what? Their email address is dead.

I see this all the time with companies sending email from @aol.com or @gmail.com. What amazes me, though, is when I see a consultant, contractor or other professional send me an email from @hotmail.com.

Here's my Monday morning tip for y'all as a result: If you have a business, get a domain, then use that as your email address. Even if you don't want to have a Web page, which I guess is not a critical problem, having your email come from a free public email hosting service? Not so professional after all...

Skirting the edge of startups

As someone who has been involved with the Internet -- and its precursors -- for over thirty years now (amazing but true: I first logged in to the ARPANet in 1980 while an undergrad at UCSD) I am privileged to constantly say "been there, done that" when bright folk come up with nifty ideas about new business opportunities.

I've also created, launched, funded and sold four startups, though to be candid the scorecard was more like one sold and then died at the dotcom collapse, one sold to an incubator that didn't care about it and let it die a quick death while I was pulled into other projects, one merged with a sympatico business and the joint venture never gained traction and one never quite achieved liftoff. That's okay because they were all extraordinary learning opportunities and I sure learned a lot through these various adventures.

Learning about things like... the dark side of hiring a fancy Ivy League MBA to help run a company, the advantages of having a big law firm (and then the idiocy of not exploiting that advantage), the Faustian price of getting a big ($1.3mil) check from a venture capitalist, and the pleasure of turning down VCs who cold called, asking if they could invest in my second startup.

Now I dabble, as is probably most appropriate for someone who doesn't have the lifestyle or unifocus needed to really put in those 60+ hour weeks required to birth a startup. The cost of launching might have diminished with things like Amazon S3 (we had servers colocated in expensive facilities "back in the day") but the time required to turn a slick idea into a viable business hasn't changed a bit: it's an intense, exciting and all-consuming adventure.

That's why I really like being on the Board of Advisors or Board of Directors of companies, actually. Because as a startup person you might well know everything you need about your specific niche and market segment, but you quite likely know very little about the business of creating a business. That's my job, and that's where I try to add value to the many companies I'm involved with today.

I just really wish I had a mentor or advisor during my own startup days. The outcome would have been oh, so very different...

An Overview of eDiscovery in Litigation

This is a guest post by Deborah Galea...

The process of preparing for and responding to eDiscovery has become both increasingly important and more complex as companies produce more and more electronically stored information that is relevant to litigation. eDiscovery refers to the process of obtaining forms of electronic communication to be used in civil litigation proceedings and includes email, instant messages, voicemail or data stored on a smartphone or PDA. The process can be incredibly time-consuming, expensive and complicated, so it is important to have procedures in place from the outset so archiving and data retrieval is easy, accessible and integrated as policy throughout your company.

To ensure that organizations are properly retaining such information, the federal government and several regulatory agencies have enacted compliance requirements that differ per industry. It is crucial for management and executive teams to understand the specific requirements for their business. However, companies looking for general eDiscovery standards can look to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP), which govern how litigation is carried out in U.S. district courts, and apply to any company that faces litigation, independent of industry and size.

Your iPhone is tracking your every move...

My friend Pete Warden does a splendid job of data mining, of analyzing the information that companies make available and/or track, but without telling us exactly what they're doing. His last adventure was with Facebook, where his data analysis got him into hot water with the notoriously lax company (see his blog post I got sued by Facebook).

This time he and fellow researcher Alasdair Allan have stumbled into something rather astonishing: a time-based archive of iPhone lat/long locations where you've used your phone. Better yet, they wrote an open source app called iPhoneTracker that lets you visualize the data so you can understand what's going on. A caveat: iPhoneTracker is quite clearly not intended to be a polished application with a fully implemented interface but rather a tool to let you see your own tracking information. It reveals alarming data pulled out of your primary iPhone backup file.

Here's the result of running iPhoneTracker on my own backup file:

iPhoneTracker Data Sample, Southern California

I've been using the phone throughout Southern California in the last month or so, but had no idea that the device was logging my locations over time. As you can see, however, it is, and the darker the color, the more cellular network checkins happened at that spot.

Yikes.

As other commentators have pointed out (see here, here and here), at a minimum this data should be stored in an encrypted format, but the fact that it's logging this information at all is troubling. What's the point of it? Why use storage space for this obviously rather large dataset? Why not give me the option of disabling this feature for increased privacy?

More importantly, what does Apple do with it when I sync, when I take my iPhone in to the Apple Store for service, when I trade in the phone for a newer device?

I realize that it's not the end of the world and I'm not doing my Chicken Little impression here, but really, when you use your phone as you travel around, do you have the expectation that it's tracking your every move in an easily accessible format?

Imagine those divorce fights in court... "according to your phone, you were at Tony's place from 3-6pm every day for the last month!" "According to my WHAT?"

I'm interested in hearing an explanation from Apple about what's going on, and even more interested in an update to iOS that lets me either disable this feature or at least encrypt it so that my privacy is a bit more assured if I lose the device.

Another reason why Amazon.com's the online retailer to beat

How's this for an example of why it's safe to pre-order products at e-retail powerhouse Amazon.com?

---

You saved $1.12 with Amazon.com's Pre-order Price Guarantee!

The price of the item(s) decreased after you ordered them, and we gave you the lowest price.

The following title(s) decreased in price:

City of Fallen Angels (Mortal Instruments, Book 4)
Price on order date: $11.79
Price charged at shipping: $10.78
Lowest price before release date: $10.67
Amount to be refunded: $0.11
Quantity: 1
Total Savings: $1.12

You will receive an additional e-mail when this refund is processed.

---

Amazing. No worries about comparison shopping, no anxiety about waiting until the book is released to see if it's going to be cheaper elsewhere, just a completely automated system that ensures customers get the best possible deal, even after they've placed their order.

Kudos to Amazon.com, again.

Imagine if your cellphone bill worked this way, btw...

The risky business of April Fools Day

It's a bit of a dilemma for trendy, modern digital companies: do you try and be amusing on April 1st and get some good buzz for your company, even at the risk of it misfiring, or do you just continue with business as usual and pretend it's not a big deal?

Of course, April Fools Day really isn't a big deal, it's just an opportunity ostensibly knocking, a chance for a little company to get some good word of mouth for having executed something witty, ironic or satirical.

Some companies do well every year. Google never fails to amuse, most recently with its Gmail Motion parody interface. Smart, well-thought-out, they're a good model of how to deliver a digital trick that harms no-one and that's not offensive. In fact, the best tricks are ones where you're not quite 100% sure it's a trick because, maybe, well, maybe it is legitimate...

But sometimes the joke isn't funny at all, it isn't wry or banal, it's just stupid. Or worse.

This year the worst example I saw was at a Nickelodeon online property called Neopets. Impressively busy, it's a virtual online world aimed at younger children, where they can tend and nurture virtual pets. Boring for a 15yo, it's perfect for the pre-teen set.

Which is why their attempt at April Fools humor was astonishing. Here it is:

That's right, a children's media network decided that the funny April Fools Day trick for their younger Neopets audience was to announce the spread of a pandemic that affected all the virtual pets and seemed to be potential fatal if no cure was found.

I have a few choice words about this on my parenting blog if you want to read more about this misfire: Neopets and the Alarmingly Tasteless April Fools.

Here I just want to encourage businesses to think long and hard before they try to delve into humor, parody or satire. It's a slippery slope and can backfire on you or blow up way faster than you can possibly imagine...

Letter from Reid Hoffman: I'm LinkedIn Member #11,147

Very cool, check out what LinkedIn sent me in honor of its 100 millionth member:

The text of that letter is:

"I want to personally thank you because you were one of LinkedIn's first 100,000 members (member number 11147 in fact!*). In any technology adoption lifecycle, there are the innovators, those who help lead the way. That was you.

"We hit a big milestone at LinkedIn this week when our 100 millionth member joined the site.

"When we founded LinkedIn, our vision was to help the world's professionals be more successful and productive. Today, with your help, LinkedIn is changing the lives of millions of members by helping them connect with others, find jobs, get insights, start a business, and much more.

"We are grateful for your support and look forward to helping you accomplish much more in the years to come. I hope that you are having a great year."

Cool. Thanks, Reid!

Running the Numbers on the Best Buy "Buy Back" Program

Let me state my bias up front: I really like Best Buy. I think that they have consistently demonstrated a savvy about the consumer electronics business that other companies only dream about. It's a tough market too, littered with big failures, most recently Ultimate Electronics. But somehow, the savvy Best Buy team seems to nail times time and again.

Which is why it's very interesting to see that they've introduced a "Buy Back" program that lets customers sign up at point of purchase to guarantee that their consumer electronics will have some sort of value down the road when they're ready to upgrade.

But is it a good deal? Let's run the numbers...

Note: this is based on what information I can find online. Best Buy hasn't done a good job of cleanly and clearly explaining the exact terms of the program yet.

Let's say that 11 months ago I bought my shiny Apple iPad from Best Buy. $699 would have bought me a 64GB wifi unit and for 11 months I would have been happy with the device. Until a week ago, when Apple announced the iPad 2. Ohhh, time to upgrade!

Now if I were smart, I would have enrolled in the Buy Back program. That would have cost me $69.00.

The terms of the buy back is that they'll guarantee you 50% of your purchase price for the first six months you own the product, then 40% for 6-12 months, 30% for 12-18 months, and so on. This comes as a gift card to Best Buy, not cash or a check (typical Best Buy savvy: you have to turn around and buy something else from their store).

That iPad would have cost me $699.00, and 11 months later, the tradein would have been 40% of that value, $279.00. But remember, I also paid $69.00 to enroll in the program itself, so we're really talking $219.00.

Not so great a deal, really. You'd have lost approximately 70% of the value of the product in less than a year. That's like your fancy $35K Toyota Prius dropping down to $10K less than a year after you drove it off the lot. Yikes.

Here's the other wrinkle: A quick search of Craigslist reveals that people are selling their 64GB first gen iPads w/ 64GB for $550-$600. Yes, it's a hassle to sell your used equipment, but if you can get $600 for it instead of $219, well, you can do the math.

Given that, I won't go as far as to say that the Buy Back program is a bad deal. Instead, I'll call it a convenience tax: if you want to go through the hassle of selling your used consumer electronics equipment (and a big TV, for example, is a lot more trouble to sell than a compact laptop or personal device) then you are clearly going to get more money for it. That's true of anything used.

As with everything, as with extended warranties, calling cards, and even gift certificates, go in with your eyes open. Run the numbers yourself and ask yourself honestly, are you really going to be upgrading your gear in a short enough time period that it's worth the enrollment fee? Note that it's not refundable: if you don't sell your gear back to Best Buy, you're just out that $$.

I'm again impressed with Best Buy's savvy in this situation. They have run the numbers and understand that for many of their customers, it's in with the new, push aside the old and let it just collect dust. If you are - realistically - going to just have your old laptop, TV, cellphone or music player just sit in a drawer, heck, even 25% of its value as a gift certificate is better than it slowly depreciating to zero and being eventually discarded.

---

Further reading on this subject: Miami Herald, Sacramento Bee, Time Magazine Blog and Time's Money Blog.

Writing Copy that Targets Affluent Boomers

What's that thunderous sound?

Every time the biggest generation reaches a milestone, you can feel the ground rumble.

In 2011, boomers start reaching Medicare age. There's one turning 65 every nine seconds.

At every stage of life, their buying and work patterns have rocked whichever market they went into or created.

According to investment expert Harry S. Dent, author of The Great Depression Ahead, in the late nineties and early into this millennium we saw one of the greatest booms ever due to the climaxing of the boomers' high consumption phase of their lives. The boom ended when they neared the end of raising families, started retiring and began looking for ways to fund their retirement.

Affluent Boomers make up about a third of the generation and of that third, about half could be considered 'wealthy'. They already have all the 'stuff' they want. What they are happy to pay good money for is services. And most advertisers are missing the boat in their ads aimed at this crowd.

The key to their hearts, and their business, according to Ken Gronbach, author of Common Census: Counterintuitive Guide to Generational Marketing is to give them what they want. And at this point in their lives, they only want three things:

1. Time Saved
2. Life made easy
3. Not to be ripped off

So, if you want a simple copywriting formula to generate a high level of response from this crowd, the underlying themes of everything you write will be: Here's how I'll save you time; Here's how I'll make your life easy; and Here's solid proof and guarantees.

Entrepreneur Magazine lists the senior market as one of the ten best opportunities in 2011 and my guess is we are just beginning to see this trend.

So here are a few tips for adapting this strategy to your business:

1. Remember they own a lot of stuff already - they are more interested in services and don't mind paying for them. They feel less and less patient with time wasted and so have an ever diminishing tolerance for incompetence and inferior performance of services. Make sure you that in your business you do what you say you will at every step of the way and then communicate that message clearly and concisely.

2. Provide extraordinary service, raising the bar on convenience. If you a dry cleaner, offer to pick up, if you are a restaurant, offer free birthday planning, if you provide consulting and advice, find ways to provide information along with experience, such as cruise lines have done for years. Where else could you do something similar in your arena?

3. Dan Kennedy, marketing expert and author of No BS Marketing to the Affluent says, "Boomers still think in terms of "classic credibility", while younger consumers do not. So for instance, brand names, professional affiliations, years in your field of expertise and access to live human beings matter to these folks. You will need to build and maintain a superior level of credibility to win and maintain their business.

The good news is, they stick with you when you maintain and develop the relationship. And that represents a golden opportunity.

---

Has LinkedIn Become a Time Drain?

This is a guest article by LinkedIn book author Wayne C. Breitbarth.

Getting the most out of LinkedIn in just 15 minutes per day


You set out to quickly check your LinkedIn inbox, and an hour later you wonder where has the time gone? Sound familiar? Without a clear strategy for making the most of the time you spend on LinkedIn, it is easy to become frustrated. Get in the habit of setting aside 15 minutes per day to follow these six easy steps, and watch LinkedIn go from time drain to time well spent.

1. Respond to any messages in your inbox -- I can't emphasize enough the importance of being timely when someone is reaching out to you. Always think about how antsy you get when someone doesn't answer a text message in a minute or two. The world we live in has really amped up this expectation; so don't let a day go by with something sitting in that box. If the item doesn't require a response, like a mass invitation to an event, place it in archive so you don't spend another minute thinking about it.

2. Invite people whom you met yesterday to join your network -- Timeliness on this step is important for a couple reasons. First, you want to make sure the person you met will remember the meeting or conversation you had with him/her that led to the invitation to join your network. Second, being the aggressor and sending the invitation shows that you care and are very good at timely follow-through. This will make a good first impression and suggest you are punctual and efficient in all your business dealings.

Always be sure to invite people from their profile page so you can write a personal invitation. Don't take the easy way out and use the standard LinkedIn invitation when you are trying to begin what should be a long and beneficial relationship.

3. Review the previous day's emails of group discussions you are following -- Don't select the option of following a discussion unless you are really interested in the topic or the person who started the discussion, because you will be overwhelmed by the quantity of these emails. Be selective. This will save you time and allow you to keep tabs on the most important discussions.

4. Review the status updates from your network for the previous day -- This is your chance to be a part of or comment on what is most important in your friends' lives. Remember--when you share a comment, you are sharing it with all the people in their network, and that is great marketing for you.

5. Post a status update of your own -- Don't miss this great daily opportunity to share information with your entire first-level network and also remind them that you are still out there doing business and looking forward to their help. You want to stay top of mind with your friends, and this is a super way to do that.

LinkedIn etiquette allows you to do some self-promotion from time to time, preferably crafted in a question type format, but do not make this your focus. Remember -- LinkedIn is a networking platform, and that means giving, sharing, and helping first and foremost.
Do some homework during the rest of your workweek, and save links to interesting articles and websites. This will give you great content (and save you time) when you are doing a status update. In Mitch Joel's book Six Pixels of Separation, he suggests that "content is media," which is so true. So why not make this part of the LinkedIn experience your own little daily media machine.

6. Review "Recently Connected" -- Is there anything more important in the networking world than knowing who your friends just met? I have received more benefit from this section of my home page than any other part.

Good luck in grabbing that 15 minutes a day to LinkedIn success!

---

Written by Wayne C. Breitbarth, Author of The Power Formula for LinkedIn Success: Kick-Start Your Business, Brand, and Job Search (March 2011, Greenleaf Book Group). You can find Wayne on LinkedIn at Linkedin.com/in/waynebreitbarth.

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