If you’re a small business owner, you’re probably aware that disasters can happen. Disasters can come in many forms. What happens if there is an earthquake, flood, or some other natural disaster that eradicates all of your data? What if a well-meaning employee mistakenly erases a crucial file? What if you download a virus that destroys important documents? All of these what-ifs can have you dizzy and anxious. That’s why it’s imperative that you develop a strong disaster recovery plan.

Decide What’s Important

The first step is knowing what you have and what’s essential. Take an inventory of all the data that is critical for your organization to run. This will lead you to the data that needs to be backed up. Utilizing an online provider or the cloud to store all of your data is one way to guarantee data recovery if your hard drive crashes and burns.

Make a Plan

Your next step is to contemplate what steps you should take if something happens. Start with the worst possible scenario and create a plan for that. What technology do you need if everything is destroyed, what data, and what systems need to be back up ASAP? Write down all of these in order of importance.

Know Your Workflows

While you have the big picture of how your company runs, you probably don’t know every single process everyone does. Have your staff document the processes and workflows they perform to execute tasks for the company. In the event of something tragic, anybody can read the process document and preform an important task.

Decide Who is in Charge

I’m sure you have the big picture of your company processes, but think about all the day-to-day processes that you don’t have memorized? Ask your workers to document their workflows and the exact tasks they preform. This way, if something does happen, anybody can pick up where they left off and nothing gets looked over.

When we hear of disaster people often think it can’t happen to them, but we never know what is around the corner. It’s important to be prepared. Having a strong disaster recovery plan will not only make you feel more secure, but will comfort your employees as well.

What do you think of when you hear the name Segway? If you’re like many around, “tech failure” comes to mind. Dean Kamen’s creation of the Segway PT scooter was supposed to reinvent personal transportation. The Segway was supposed to usher in a new era of errand running and puttering around town.

That vision hasn’t quite come to fruition and it’s pretty infrequent that you see someone using a Segway. They are still around and have recently celebrated their 10th anniversary. So while they may be known as a tech failure, they’re still alive and kicking.

Let’s discuss how the Segway actually works though.

Powering the Segway

The Segway PT is powered by electric motors.  Those motors are fueled by a number of lithium-ion batteries that are easily charged by a standard household electrical socket. Five gyroscopic sensors, two tilt sensors, and two computers with specialty software keep the Segway from falling over.

Making the Segway Move

The user plays the biggest role in making the Segway move. By simply shifting your weight in the direction you intend to go and moving the handlebars slightly, the Segway’s sensors acknowledge the change in balance point and react appropriately. The most recent version of the Segway features a top speed of 12.5 MPH. For obvious reason, it performs best on flat surfaces.

Lowered Expectations

The buzz was pretty big around the Segway when it was initially announced, but it never quite lived up to it all.  Some even predicted that the Segway would be more popular than the Internet overall!

However, once the Segway was released many thought it looked odd and you looked weird riding one. Others thought it looked unsafe. Regardless, the negatives were enough to prevent the Segway from reaching its promised potential.

As a small business, there is a good chance you have to manage projects and people that are not always located in one area.  So how do you manage these projects and off location employees while still having the capacity to share updates, documents, and assign tasks?

Project management solutions

Conveniently enough, many project management tools are available that make handling all of these things easier.  Using these tools will help your small business in coordinating projects and keeping employees and clients up-to-date. Here’s a few available options:

Basecamp

Basecamp is still one of the most widely used online project management tools for entrepreneurs. There is a simple reason for this: It offers an easily understood interface that allows you to quickly manage any of your small business projects. You can access the system to communicate with project managers, assign new tasks, give your okay to submitted documents and marketing materials, or plan meetings. You can even enable your clients to access Basecamp to allow them to offer comments on the work that you as well as your team have already carried out.

Quickbase

From the creators of Inuit, Quickbase is reasonably similar to Basecamp with its capacity to serve both large and small businesses. It provides a simple and easy to use interface.

Huddle

For the more creative projects, like marketing and advertising, Huddle is perfect. Certainly one of this tool’s perks is its live-conferencing tool. If you need to assemble the team in a quick and easy fashion, this tool lets you, no matter where your team members might be.

Deskaway

Deskaway permits you to keep clients and employees up to date by using snapshots of a project’s progression. It has the functionality to create and post blogs determined by individual projects as well as keep in touch about important updates with ease.

There are lots of other online project management tools that will help you keep stronger control over your business’ marketing campaigns, new product launches, and website development. This is good news. It allows you to find the one project management tool that best fits you and your business.

The promise of a paperless office has existed for years. Unfortunately, most offices must still use paper regularly. Is the paperless office just a pipe dream that we will not attain?  In a nutshell, no. We are constantly moving toward paperless offices, but it’s just taking us considerably longer than we had expected.

The advantages of paper

There’s a reason why paper hasn’t yet disappeared from most offices: It is useful. Employees at even the greenest of offices—those workspaces most dedicated to reducing the level of paper they consume—have uses for paper. Paper is portable. Employees can easily scrawl notes on it. They can fold it up and slip it into their wallets or shirt pockets. Many employees prefer proofreading important documents in hard-copy form. There is something about proofreading a document on the computer screen that causes some employees to miss important errors or typos.

Less paper than ever

Paper isn’t disappearing, it is becoming steadily less important. While we still need paper for certain tasks,  most offices are using less paper than ever before. Most writing is completed on a word-processor and communication is done via email or Skype instead of fax or letters. Meeting notes, company schedules, and whole marketing campaigns are stored digitally on our computers and smartphones.  So while paper is not yet obsolete, the sticky note is no longer king of the workplace.

The future

Clearly the future of the workplace is using less and less paper, but will it ever be absolutely paperless? Will notepads and sticky notes go the way of the milkman? Perhaps. Let’s look at the milkman: some still prefer to get their milk hand-delivered to their homes, but the majority of us just pop out to the store and pick some up when we need it.

Paper will likely end up exactly the same. As we use business solutions such as the cloud, smartphones, and computers for invoicing, writing and spreadsheets, there will still be people that prefer the physical  feel of pen and paper.

It appears like iPhones are capable of doing everything but take out the garbage. Besides the obvious phone calls, we are able to observe the latest movies and TV shows, and update our social sites. They store our music and give us directions to navigate to the nearest shopping center. You might think you already know all your iPhone is able to do but here are a couple lesser-known tricks you with thankful to learn.

Saving Time

It can be frustrating to use the tiny on-screen keyboard for typing emails or Web addresses. If this is true for you, try turning your phone horizontally before clicking in the area you need to type in. This will provide you with a larger on-screen keyboard making it simpler to type a “t”  and not a “y.”
Here is a tip for making phone calls: If you are browsing the Web for a phone number you have to call, simply tap the number on the screen and your phone will dial it.

More Efficient Typing

This tip will help you type faster: When you tap the space bar twice at the end of a sentence, your phone will add a period and automatically capitalize the next word you type. If you’re a person who uses a great deal of special characters, it’s easy to access the menu by touching and holding a letter on your screen until the special character options pop up. Then simply select the character you want and insert it.

Quick Printing, Personalized Entertainment

If you own an AirPrint-enabled printer, you are able to print documents, emails, and even Web pages right from your iPhone. To print an email message, tap the Reply icon and then select “Print” and your phone will send the message to your printer. For a Web page, touch the “Action” icon and select “Print.”

For you music lovers out there, you can create a music playlist on the run. Access the iPod app, tap the “Playlists” icon select the “Add Playlist” icon. Rename your playlist and add any video or song on your phone just by touching it.

It’s something we already take for granted: when we touch an icon on the screens of our electronic devices, we expect something to happen. And not just anything, either; we anticipate our gadgets to do exactly what we want it to do, when we want it done, and all at the touch of a fingertip. It was not too far back that touchscreen technology was a source of wonder. Today, touchscreen technology is a given for many of the latest gizmos—from tablets to GPS units.

While most of us use this technology on a daily basis, most of us do not know how it works. How does a screen know what to do when we touch an icon? There are various types of touchscreen technologies but they all operate based on a similar idea.

Resistive touchscreens

This is the most common form of touchscreen technology. Resistive touchscreens are coated with an electrically conductive layer. Your fingertip changes the electrical current whenever you touch it. This sends a message to the device’s controller telling it what action you would like to perform. This technology is more affordable than other touchscreen technologies and also less sensitive.

Surface wave touchscreen

This type of touchscreen is popular as well. It relies on ultrasonic waves that pass over the touchscreen. When you touch the panel, you essentially change the wave. Depending on how and where it is changed, specific data is given to the device’s controller to relay what action to preform.

Capacitive touchscreens

Devices that rely on capacitive touchscreens tend to have the sharpest image quality. Capacitive touchscreens are coated with a material that sends a continuous electrical current across the sensor. Fortunately, the human body is also a form of electrical device. This means that when you touch the screen you absorb some of the current. The device registers this disturbance, causing it to send information to its controller. The unit will then perform the action which you requested.

Fortunately, to enjoy touchscreen technology you don’t have to have a deep understanding of it. And you don’t have to be an engineer to realize this technology will become more popular, not less.