1.
 Powered Up
Issue: March/April 2010
Author(s): Dan Hanson
Where were the geeks on Inside Business ’ list of the region’s most influential people? Well, never fear, this entreprenerd is about to get a little revenge. Here’s my list of the top techies in town.
2.
 Map Quest
Issue: October 2009
Silicon Valley was born in a nondescript garage at 367 Addison Ave. in Palo Alto, Calif. Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard started their company there, on a quiet residential street, in 1939. It’s one of the many tech landmarks I’ve visited throughout the nation. While some really stood out, like Borland Software Corp.’s campus in Scotts Valley, many were ordinary buildings. It wasn’t the edifices or the geography that built the tech industry. It was people and ideas. Cleveland busin...
3.
 Data Protection
Issue: May 2006 Issue
Information at your fingertips. It’s still a noble goal even more than ten years after Bill Gates first announced it as Microsoft’s strategy. Back then the problem was trying to connect users and make the mountains of data available to everyone. Today it is easy to make the data available to your users – employees, vendors, customers. The concern now is to only have that information at the fingertips of the people you choose. Keeping your company and personal data away from the prying fingertips o...
4.
 Hit Me One More Time
Issue: November 2005 Issue
If you build it, they will come. That advice might work for baseball fields in the movies, but not for your company Web site. Now that you’ve spent the time and resources to develop a first-class Web presence, you still have to attract new and repeat visitors to your site to make it pay off. The big challenge is to get the hits you want without breaking your advertising budget. It can take time to build a brand and attract the right visitors to your site. Spending money can sometimes speed up this proc...
5.
 Safe and Secure
Issue: October 2005 Issue
Widespread reports of identity theft have made the practice of protecting customer information a business essential. But keeping your customer information secure is not just a good business practice – in some places, it’s the law. The California Database Security Breach Notification Act requires companies with customers in California notify those customers if they have a "reasonable belief" that a breach in their databases could expose the customers to identity theft. Even if you don’t have custom...
6.
 Pretty Darn Fine
Issue: September 2005 Issue
When most people hear the word "acrobat," they think of a circus performer. Though you may sometimes feel like the man on the flying trapeze, a businessperson would be better off with Acrobat than a tumbler. Not to mention a clown. Acrobat is software from Adobe Systems that allows you to create and work with documents that can then be viewed and printed by anyone – and they look exactly how you created them no matter what system the reader uses. Acrobat does this by creating files in a format they cr...
7.
 Across the Great Divide
Issue: August 2005 Issue
It was every driver’s nightmare. I was stuck at the BMV for two hours as they worked on a "computer problem." I went to get my license renewed – six weeks before my birthday so I would have plenty of time to spare. Yeah, right. When the technical glitches occurred, I couldn’t leave because they already killed my old license. So four of us unlucky souls got to witness how not to run a business. I cringed as the lady spoke to tech support in Columbus. "What’s the monitor?" she asked. "How do I kno...
8.
 Speedy Transfer
Issue: July 2005 Issue
Let's clear up a common misconception. OneCleveland is not a free wireless network covering the city like a connected series of coffeeshop Wi-Fi hotspots. It's true OneCleveland is a provider of ultra broadband networking services, connecting computers to one another and the Internet at super-fast speeds. But it's who it connects, and what it enables them to do, that makes the service powerful and unique. In short, it's revolutionizing the way information is shared in Northeast Ohio. OneCleveland's subs...
9.
 Blog Heaven
Issue: June 2005 Issue
No, Dorothy. We aren't in Kansas anymore, but we could be. Normal geographical constraints just don't matter in the e-world. Tools - some with strange names - can be employed anywhere and anytime to help your business. Everyone is familiar with blogs - the personalized Web logs that were so pervasive in last year's presidential election. Blogs are an inexpensive way for people without HTML (Web coding) skills to get their ideas across on the Internet. Many businesses have found blogs to not only be effe...
10.
 IT To the Rescue
Issue: May 2005 Issue
Companies turn to information technology to cure what ails them.