Business HUB

[liamac]

Hiya. My scenario is: I'm a young designer starting to develope myself into a small freelance business. At the moment I have a phone, browser email and free website that are all different from eachother. I want to synch them all together and build a website for myself, that can house an email domain, pictures, blogs, portfolio attachments & links. I also want to get an application say like outlook that I can store my contacts onto - which can also synch through my phone. So i can network efficiently on the street, and have the information stored for me on my p.c/website when i get home.

PHEW.

My first question is: I assume i can buy outlook. That part should be easy. Where do i start on the website/domain front? I need some information on a good econical source to purchase the domain name. And what do i need to do to get a package that supports: email, the domain itself that will house a fair bit of information. i.e. pdf attachments, online med res pictures, an updated blog with link attachments.


Second question is: does anyone reccommend some phone models that are good at synching with a p.c. and are intuitive to adding contact information and then sedning back to my outlook email?

Bear in mind that I use a P.C based system.

[azzam]

For those who may not know - this is also my son
Any advice please?

[canuck]

godaddy.com

[azzam]

No, I don't know his daddy, I'm not sure a website will help with that.

[canuck]

No, I don't know his daddy, I'm not sure a website will help with that.

we used them to host a site, fairly cheap and should be able to do the trick

[azzam]

Joking......

[baloo]

dotster and godaddy for domains.
Hosting is fairly straight forward. Get a UNIX based host. A lot more free/GPL apps to install that way.
All hosting will give you email, subdomains (i.e. xxx.liamac.com), and the ability to install all sorts of scripts tom manage everything you want (sourceforge.net for a see at what you can get).

icdsoft are a good host. HKG based though. Where is your target market located ?

[Lichtgestalt]

I second godaddy.com

[Lili Von Shtupp]

Hi! Nice to meet ya. My husband is in the same boat, he has a long shopping list of Interet requirements and absolutely no idea where to begin to fulfill them. Turns out he's started working on a project with, of all people, a web site guru, and is bartering his expert services in exchange for expert web services. He's very excited.

[canuck]

Joking......

But but I totally believed you :p

[BoD]

me.com - but you will need to ditch that PC thing

[Morrolan]

why Outlook? not even sure if you can just 'buy' Outlook without forking out $$ for the whole MS Office nightmare. my guess is Thunderbird will work just as well and it's free.

[Fat Bob]

I've had differing amounts of success of linking contact info between phone and your email program, but yes, feel that Outlook tends to be the most supported one.

I've used both Nokia and Windows mobile to do this, and it now depends what you want to be with you. Nokia has the ability to choose which address book you want to use within Outlook (and also Lotus Notes). This means you can have an email address book (that doesn't get sync'd) and a phone address book (that does get sync'd). This is good if these lists are separate and you dont think you'll be mobile emailing.

If you are mobile emailing, then I would suggest finding out more about your email options. Windows mobile has the ability to do this easily but I've yet to try, as I don't need it. The sync-ing with Outlook is good, with Lotus Notes it's a bit more of a pain as you have to get a 3rd party program. If you do need to mobile email, think about your price plan and make sure it covers unlimited data or something.

With both Nokia and Windows mobile then te calendar functions link up rather well.

I've no experience of Blackberry, I'm under the impression that takes the mobile workplace to the next level in that your email is pushed to you (you don't have to ask the phone to sync it). I'm also under te impression that the calendar and email have to be held on a central server, which may be extra costs. However, I know a lot of people who use them and freak me out as they are always checking it (something to think about: have a private mobile line and a office mobile line linked up to your email etc. Means you can put work down or leave it at home should you need to.)

I'm using the Samsung Omnia at present, highly capable phone, easy to sync, plenty of memory. There are others out there.

I'm not sure how many phones would sync with free email programs such as Mozilla Thunderbird and Microsoft Live Mail programs. Outlook is not THAT expensive, nor is MS Office, not when you are doing business work. The extended features these have a far wider reach than just emailing.

Also consider a professional PDF solution if you are issueing invoices and quotes. There are some cheaper ones other than Adobe, I think we use novaPDF at work for somethings and seems to do a good job.

[Morrolan]

Also consider a professional PDF solution if you are issueing invoices and quotes. There are some cheaper ones other than Adobe, I think we use novaPDF at work for somethings and seems to do a good job.

http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/reader/

[liamac]

test.

[liamac]

thanks guys. From what i'm seeing - thunderbird cannot sync with a mobile device - nor online services such as linkedin/plaxo. I've managed to synch it with my online account - but its still uploading emails from 2005 and does not easily transfer my contacts yet. I've spent two hours playing with it - and have yet to send/receive an up to date email.

At this stage I think its best to invest in outlook so that I can have seamless working system from the beginning. The reason being that I am wanting to do this to ideally save time, because I will probably have to manage a day job as well as this business for the first couple of years.

I have also heard of google sync - which achieves the same function with a gmail account. Don't have the phone to test it yet - does anyone else want to give it a try?

http://www.lifehacker.com.au/tips/2009/ ... phone.html

[Morrolan]

thanks guys. From what i'm seeing - thunderbird cannot sync with a mobile device - nor online services such as linkedin/plaxo.

http://www.birdiesync.com/

http://lifehacker.com/software/pocket-p ... 240032.php

export Thunderbird contacts from a file to LinkedIn:

http://www.linkedin.com/uploadContacts? ... =inv_other

(should work with any file in the following formats: .csv, .txt, .vcf )

[baloo]

Google are coming out with a synching tool. A few others are too.

I think true "cloud" like synchronisation is a while away though. If I were you then I would also have Outlook, possibly with the Business Manager add-in, as a base for all contact, diary & task types information. It's mature, it works well, and there is nothing on the market that comes close to it's maturity yet (on a PC platform).

Cloud computing and presence will mature over the next 12 to 18 months where we'll see good apps allowing you to store everything on the internet and accessible from any connected device you may have. I'm looking forward to that next step in computing.