Data backup is extremely important. Business 2.0 Magazine certainly learned the hard way this month, and because their backup server wasn’t working, they lost their entire June magazine layout and have to recreate it from scratch.
I’ve always overlooked the importance of backing up data, and recently downloaded and setup Mozy. It essentially backs up all the pertinent information on my computer. The service has 2 gigabytes free and it definitely helps me sleep at night knowing my laptop data is all backed up someplace else in the world.
I encourage everyone to take advantage of the basic (and free) functionalities of a backup service or external hard drive to avoid data loss.
I woke up fairly early today and couldn’t fall back asleep. To force myself to be productive, I ended up taking about 2 hours to design a custom blog theme for RyanGlasgow.net. I think it’s important to have some blog customization to really grow and gain readership. It helps increase your authority, voice, and recognition. To further my point, I haven’t seen a blog with over 200 readers that has uses a downloadable free blog template. 
Here is a screenshot of the theme I designed. I’ve never designed a blog theme, so it was a bit of a challenge. I also might change the colors around, to perhaps something like Wilson Miner Live.
What does everyone think about the design? Any comments, feedback, or suggestions are appreciated.
Today I made a search for “networking” to find a picture to put in the blog post. What I was suprised to find was that in the regular Google web search, the sponsored links section was not blue, but rather a bold and obvious yellow. The blue sponsored links were more subtle and less obvious, but the yellow significantly highlights the sponsored links and makes them much more noticeable.
Google is a large company, and they are looking for growth. Any company needs to continuously grow, and Google’s strategy has been to allow employees to create hundreds of little side projects, which has lead to poor results in my opinion. Most of the smaller projects lack innovation, merely copy competing services, have no business model, no source of revenue, and most don’t even provide advertising revenue.
For Google to grow, they need to focus on their main bread and butter revenue stream: Google search. Using yellow instead of blue is a smart move in my opinion, and should help increase the ad CTR (click-through-rate).
Working with a business partner is quite controversial. Many times this decision will make or break your business and I suggest you ponder this topic seriously before anyone starts a business.
Here is the criteria that a co-founder must fit: (more…)
Awhile back I picked up the inspirational and insightful book: Wisdom For a Young CEO. I bought the book probably when I was 15, yet have always kept it in my stack of favorite books.
The book is a composition of over 100 letters from business executives responding to a young teen asking for advice about becoming a CEO. The book is insightful, and helps an aspiring business executive the principles and foundation for their success.
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For brochures, letters, logos, websites, etc., selecting the perfect font is always a tough challenge. It’s always been tough for me, but I have picked up some tips along the way.
Utilize Your Own Fonts. Computers come with a wide array of fonts and before going out and buying one, definitely check out the ones you have. A computer font might be more used, and less unique, but it definitely beats paying for a font. Also try to get to know your fonts and take notes of your favorites. I often end up using the same set of about 10 different fonts.
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Working on planning your next startup? Need some place to organize all of the details and info? Look no further than PlanHQ. 
I stumbled upon PlanHQ after reading the founders blog and saw how beneficial their product is. I have used Business Plan Pro, and wasn’t too fond of its offerings, not to mention it’s hefty price. The samples were nice in Business Plan Pro, and that is something that PlanHQ lacks. PlanHQ is much more intuitive and its nice that its web based because others, such as co-founders, mentors, investors, can take peaks, make changes, etc.
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Steve Poland has started a new community driven startup at RingSideStartup.com. Steve’s new breed of startup relies on blog readers to donate money, and once he raises $20,000, he begins consulting with those who donated about a concept, marketing ideas, and other startup details. The result is a community driven startup, mentored by a panel of seasoned startup experts and venture capitalists.
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I just started a blog, and it seems like everyone else is blogging too. Blogging has been a fad for quite some time, and now it seems like everyone has a blog, which creates a new problem: over saturation. If everyone has a blog, there could be even distribution with only a few readers per blog, or uneven distribution with many blogs unread, and a few blogs having large readerships.
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Last night on the radio news I heard that Yahoo! will now offer unlimited email storage. I still remember when I only had 3 megabytes of storage at the old Hotmail, and unlimited storage seems quite unnecessary. I guess it is one easy way to make the news though. I’ve always used Gmail since it first launched, but it has hardly improved in its years of existence. Google products seems to remain dormant, and lack the major upgrades MSN Live and Yahoo mail have gotten. I also checked out the new Yahoo Mail beta, and the drag and drop features to be really cool and useful. As a Mac user though, the Yahoo Mail beta is only for Firefox and IE at this time, so I guess I’ll have to wait. Once Yahoo Mail released a Safari version of their beta, I’m ready to make the switch and attempt to take advantage of their unlimited storage.
