Doing Business Digitally

Posted on December 11, 2007 
Filed Under Uncategorized

Over the last couple of years, I’ve slowly become more and more obsessed with the dream of doing everything digitally. Not really the “paperless environment”, per se - I still use a manual typewriter for some projects - but with so many electronic toys available these days, it’s criminal not to exploit them to the fullest.

Here are some of Rob’s recommendations for happily doing digital business.

Computers. Here in the office, my preferred workstation is a dual-monitor Pentium 4 3.06 running Fedora Core Linux; I use OpenOffice as my office suite. Most of the heavy lifting (email management, long term file storage, backup management, etc.) is handled by a P-III office server, running Red Hat 9.0.

The Website. I’ve hosted with Westhost now for years, even before I was operating under the RSWarren.com domain name (registered through DomainDiscover). Having your own domain name is vital these days, but just as important is a solid and affordable hosting provider. Westhost has been everything a guy could ever want: professional, secure, loaded with features, techie-friendly, 24/7 support, lots of toys for low prices. They’re by far the best host provider I’ve ever worked with.

Email. Also Westhost. It’s amazing to me that I’m still getting service inquiries - or, God help us, cold calls - from folks using the email addresses they got free with their home cable internet service. There’s no reason for that these days; if you’re still sending business email with your Comcast or Adelphia (or even AOL) address, do yourself a big favor and plunk down the pennies for your own domain. Keep the name short (preferably less than nine characters, not including the .com suffix, and do make sure it’s a .com domain) and memorable, and expect to hold that domain for five years or more.

Spam management is also a major concern for a lot of us, and I’ve never really found a good off-the-shelf solution to the problem.. so I wrote one myself. It sorts the hundreds of emails I receive daily into a series of folders, filtering out about 95% of the spam and virus emails I receive using a whitelist protocol. All this is done on the server, which is running 24/7. Email is archived regularly to CD-ROM.

Note: An email sig is a terrible thing to waste. Make sure to use your email signature to include your contact information with every email you send out; you never know when that’ll come in handy.

Internet Fax and My Good Friend, PDF. A lot of my professional life simplified the day I finally caved and began using an Internet fax service. Gone are the days of rolled paper snags, faded toner, missing pages - now I have a directory of contract and document templates on the server, ready to update and print off into an Adobe PDF file. Then it’s just a matter of logging into my eFax account and sending it on its way.

Receiving is even easier: I have a dedicated fax number, and anything sent to that number is emailed to me as a perfect .TIF graphic image, which gets stored on the server for safekeeping. When I get a few spare moments, I convert the raw images to PDF.

Adobe did the digital world a gigantic favor by creating the PDF document format. Nearly anything that can be done in print can be done virtually in PDF, opening countless doors to using professional graphic design without loading yourself down with a lot of paper and printing costs. It also makes contract management a snap for the small business owner.

Web Browser. Mozilla Firefox, hands down, no contest, close the door and go home. Honestly, though, you’re in good shape with almost anything except Microsoft Internet Explorer.

I run much of my business with the help of a custom-written web application that handles my bookkeeping, client and project management. It’s a great tool, but I’d go insane if I had to sit watching IE stumble through it every day.

I can’t even begin to describe how much I loathe Internet Explorer. It hasn’t seen a serious new release in almost five years, has no idea how CSS works, renders fonts as though they were drawn in crayon, and has a chronic habit of letting the world rape your hard drive. If you’re currently on IE yourself, throw down your shackles of oppression and join us in web surfing utopia: download and install Firefox today.

Speaker Phone. Boy, did it take a while to work this one out. I spend a lot of time at the keyboard, and when I’m on the phone with a client, I need my hands free to type. To do my job, I need either a headset phone or a good speakerphone - and there simply aren’t many of them out there.

I have a lot of electronics going in the office, which means potentially a lot of RF interference for a phone not designed to handle it. That alone kills most of the household handsfrees; I went through four different models before a client recommended the Radio Shack TAD-3871. Radio Shack? You’ve got to be kidding, I said. Nope, he swore, the best phone around for the price.

And damned if the man wasn’t right. Minimal interference, good speaker pickup, nice volume control, good broadcast range, simple design. I bought a Plantronics headset at the same time - I was a headset junkie then - but I’ve barely used it. Consigned to the desk drawer, it’s been a casualty of my speakerphone conversion.

Good Phone Service. The best desk phone does you no good if your service itself is lousy. I live in a part of the country where I really have only two choices - a conventional land line from my phone company, or a digital phone through my internet provider. While the internet phone is cheaper, I’ve heard enough inside stuff to question whether the technology really has matured enough to be reliable for a small business. For the time being, I’m happy to pay a bit more for a conventional line. Also, I live in Hurricane Alley; when we got clocked by four major storms in the fall of 2004, we lost power for days but the land lines never faltered. That’s good enough for me.

Also, shell out the extra bucks and get the full feature spread. Voice mail is obvious, but call forwarding can be a lifesaver. If I need to be out of the office for a while during the day, a few keypresses sends all incoming calls to my cell phone. Be sure to get unlimited long distance - it’s just silly these days to quibble over domestic LD charges, especially when a client is involved.

Cell Phone. Nokia 6010, service provided by T-Mobile. Cell phone tech is one area where I’m not impressed by lots of cool toys. Digital camera? Games? Web browser? No, thanks: just give me a simple, sturdy workhorse. Nokia is certainly that.

Digital Recorder. When I’m doing interviews, either with clients or subject matter experts, I don’t want to spend a lot of time asking questions that they’ve already answered. I much prefer to let the interview flow naturally and let the subject talk, undistracted by my massive note scribbling and pleas to wait while I write something down. Also, many interviews are one-time events - I don’t have the luxury of going back later to reinterview.

Enter the Sony ICD-P210.

I love this little doodad. Small and lightweight, powered by two AAA’s, I can set to record and put it down on the conference table or near the speakerphone and then relax. (Of course, I only record with subject permission.) Nearly 16 hours of recording time, saved to an internal flash chip. Afterwards, I download the file via USB to a .WAV file, which I then convert to MP3 for storage. Wonderful for making sure that nothing in a rare interview gets lost to bad memory.

Digital Camera. I’m not a photographer, but from time to time I’ll be asked by a client or editor to show up on assignment ready to snap a photo or three. For consumer magazine work, it’s nearly a prerequisite.

Again, Sony comes to the rescue. A slight bit outdated now, my little Sony Cybershot DSC-P100 is a handy little gizmo, producing professional-quality images at 5.1MP. When I’m in the field, my go pack usually consists of the Cybershot, a tripod and some spare bits for the camera, the P210 and some paper and pens. Like the P210, images from the camera are downloadable via USB for long term storage.

and finally..

The Manual Typewriter.

Yes, I own and use a manual typewriter - an Olympia Traveller C, bought new in early 2002. Sadly, it seems to have ceased production in 2004, though apparently Olivetti is still making manuals.

A word processor is a wonderful editing tool, but I’m here to tell you, it makes composition so much harder, especially if you’re working with thin air. A writer never knows while drafting whether what he’s writing is any good; like wine, writing needs to age a bit before a quality judgment can really be made. With a word processor, it’s just too easy to delete drafts in a fit of frustration. Also, as Harlan Ellison (who writes on a manual) has pointed out on more than one occasion, a hard drive crash won’t destroy his stories: once written, they’re written.

When nothing else works, I break out the manual typewriter. That always works - sort of the difference between going into combat with a 9mm pistol, and doing so with a solid assault rifle. When you absolutely, positively have to crank solid copy on deadline, accept no substitutes.

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