Our good friends and long time customers Springfield Commercial Roofing is really quite a story -
So much so that TV 7&4 did a piece on all their recent success.

While there is a lot of doom and gloom out there, the folks at Springfield show that an optimistic outlook and great customer service can still bring in the business.

See the TV 7&4 story here

Also, Springfield was the winner of the Traverse City Chamber of Commerce Small Business of the Year for 2008. See the story here.

See the Springfield Commercial Roofing web site here

A hearty congratulations to the entire Springfield team!

“Trust me, you’re gonna love this!”

This is usually how we IT folks bring out a new project for users…and it doesn’t always work. Likely you know this from your own experience.

Inc.com (Inc Magazine) has a pretty good article on steps to take to get users to embrace the new technology that a business owner or organizational leader wants to implement.

Two key phrases from the article:

“IT projects fail not because of the technology but because human beings resist change and uncertainty…”

and

“Simply saying, ‘The company will be better off if we do this’ just doesn’t cut it…”

So how do you get the “buy-in” that is needed to make an IT project successful?

According to the article:

- Work from the bottom up: Involve the employees who will be using the new technology.

- Invest in training: Plan from the outset to have ample training opportunities for the users to see how the new system works.

- Create incentives: Simply put, make it worth the users’ time to learn and implement the new system.

Find the article at inc.com here

This is from the New York Times tech blog, and it describes a new TLD (top level domain) called .tel (as in yourname.tel).

This is being touted as a way to have all your addresses on the web, so (for example) users with a smartphone (BlackBerry, iPhone, etc.) could have all your contact info with just a link. If you change your .tel info, anyone who has the link would get the updates automatically.

This could be a very neat idea! Here is a graphic from the article showing how it might work:

The article says that after an initial offering where getting a .tel name costs big bucks (mainly to allow for trademarked companies to get their names registered where they won’t have to fight for it), “dot-tel” names will be available for around $20 per year.

See the NY Times article here.

This is from the WWJ tech web site, and it is pretty interesting. (WWJ is an AM radio station in the Detroit area.)

Does spending tons of time on a computer actually re-wire the way your brain works? Specifically, is there a chance that too much digital interaction reduces one’s ability to have regular social interaction – as in, with humans? (Imagine!) There are some scientists that think this may actually be the case.

This article from the AP doesn’t seem to really draw any conclusions, but does raise some thought-provoking ideas.

See the article here.

Wireless networks have moved to the small business arena, helping offices spread Internet connectivity and mobility at a low cost, but bringing security concerns. Unauthorized access points can undercut your Wi-Fi security.

• Read the story on Inc. Technology…

A variety of software and services — from Lojack to GadgetTrak — are designed to help recover a lost or stolen notebook computer. These products have become more appealing to businesses of all sizes.

• Read the story on Inc. Technology…

Notebook computer vendors are now more aggressively pushing to have you buy a mobile wireless card that’s built into your computer. Nothing to lose, nothing to break – and you might just get a sweet deal.

• Read the story on Small Biz Technology…

You’ve probably had this experience: Your printer tells you it’s time to change the cartridge, but you dismiss the message and keep printing. Days or weeks later, you’re still using the same cartridge and thinking to yourself that rumors of its death were greatly exaggerated.

• Read the story on Entrepreneur.com…

This is really something – this meteor was huge and was actually filmed as it streaked through the sky over Edmonton, Alberta in Canada.

From the Astronomy Picture of the Day website description:

What if you’re driving down the street and an object from space shoots across the sky right in front of you? Such was the case last week for many people in south central Canada. Specifically, an extremely bright fireball, presumably a desk-sized meteor from deep space, flashed across the sky just after sunset on 2008 November 20.

See the video here.