Our Favorite Biz Apps, Summer Edition

Summer is here and the time is right for another Technoverse list of our favorite business apps.

Our files are stuffed with notes from the last few months of attending trade shows and meetups, quizzing CEOs, and testing software in our state-of-the-art lab. The focus of this list, as in our past enumerations, is on small-to-medium businesses.

The distribution of employers in the US is skewed towards small: most businesses—something like 98% — are considered small, with roughly under 25 employees. Even more astonishing: they hire 50% of the US workforce.

But unlike in the past, the cost of starting and running a small business doesn’t necessarily require emptying a bank account.

We have computing to thank for this, everything from cheap biz apps in the cloud, low-cost communications and collaboration, inexpensive social media marketing, the ability to crowdsource certain tasks, and on and on.

Herewith are a few apps that should help you kickstart and manage your business:Continue reading

Summer in the City: Shirky, Kind Strangers, and Neat Startups

Last night was my fourth NYC Tech Meetup, and I think the first time I’ve been in Manhattan in recent memory during a major heat wave. Thankfully, the electro-mechanical HVAC at Skirball worked flawlessly, far better than this new venue’s Internet access.

One of the highpoints for me was listening to Clay Shirky talk about his new book, Cognitive Surplus. Shirky is a gifted narrator and explainer, and the TED videos I’ve seen of him only hint at the powerful thought waves he radiates during a live presentation.

He is an optimist, a true believer on the Internet’s ability to beneficially channel otherwise wasted human CPU cycles devoted to legacy TV watching into crowdsourced content creation: Wikipedia, Amazon book reviews, Aardvark experts on tap, tweets, and as you’ll see after the jump, food photography.Continue reading