According to spam filtering company MX Logic, spam as a percentage of all Internet email went down in October. This was the first noticeable decline since tracking started. Before you get excited, let me tell you it still accounted for 89.8 percent of all email traffic. Imagine that! If the noise ratio in anything else we do was that bad, we'd probably stop doing it. However, my Indianapolis computer consulting customers list email as the first or second most important service provided by their computer system. Many would rather be without phones than without email.

Not even the most optimistic economist in the country is predicting anything but hard times over the next few months. Small business owners are trying to figure out what to do to survive, if not thrive, during the days ahead. As a small business owner, you should look to all of your advisors for ideas on ways to get by with less. Your accountant can help with tax avoidance or delay ideas. Your banker (yes, he should be helping too) can offer ideas about refinancing lines of credit or other current debt. Your attorney may have ways to help tighten up collecting thru better contract language.

But what should your IT support services provider be doing to help out? All kinds of things. Now is the time to turn to your computer outsourcing company and ask how they can help you succeed. They ought to have a few good answers too. If they are going to really help, they'll start with a few good questions. For instance, are you or your customers harder hit by the recession? Are there markets that you can enter that will do better in these times? Where do you stand relative to your competitors in financial strength?

You see, the answers guide the discussion toward doing things to get more customers like you have, or seeking different customers, or looking for bargain opportunities to acquire competitors, or even preparing yourself to look acquireable. Each of these directions leads to different IT strategies. Those strategies vary from doing as little as possible and just keeping everything in its best running condition to launching some aggressive Internet presence activities to implementing internal system improvements. One thing is for sure: Your business computer support partner should have some ideas to toss on the table as you consider your options. Share your position and plans with him and ask him what ways he sees to help.

We've been trying to add to our technical staff for several weeks now. The task of finding good, qualified people is daunting even with the growing unemployment. The problem is not so much that we can't find people who have the technical skills for computer network consulting. It's that they don't have the skills that are most important to successfully provide business computer support in the Indianapolis area.

Eric Lundquist made this point in a commentary in a recent issue of eWeek. He summarizes the list of skills identified by the Society for Information Management, a decades old organization for technical managers:

1. Ethics and morals 
2. Critical thinking
3. Collaboration
4. Problem solving
5. Oral communication
6. Written communication
7. Interpersonal skills
8. Creativity
9. Managing expectations
10. Decision making
11. Functional area knowledge
12. Project leadership
13. Database
14. System analysis

Most job candidates find it difficult to understand that technical skills don't even make it into the top ten. My list doesn't exactly match this one from SIM, but it's not far from it. Having people who can't string together a sentence on paper or look me in the eye when talking to me is useless in the computer outsourcing business. My customers expect to get more than technical knowledge from us. They want help with their business problems -- especially the computer network ones.

While we haven't officially closed the books on 2008, it's already clear that it will have been a good year for the Pertingo^® computer support business of Port-to-Port Consulting. I often have mixed feelings about our success during tough economic times. While other Indianapolis area businesses are trying to figure out how to cut back in order to survive, we're trying to hire talented and skilled people to join our IT support services team. Our difficulty in hiring is related to our success in tough times.

If you're a small business owner and you're looking at your staff to determine who has to get cut, it doesn't take long for your eyes to fall on the computer support guy. You know how everyone else on the staff makes money (or saves money) for your business, but you aren't quite sure what your computer guy does exactly. Part of this is because business computer support is not a core function of your organization. A bigger part is that your guy has probably grown lazy over the years and he really isn't doing much except keeping the rest of the staff in fear that he can make their lives at work miserable if they don't treat him nicely.

I know it's true because I've gotten so many phone calls from people who literally whisper in fear that their computer guy might overhear. They want to know if I believe they need to have a full time computer person in their company of 30 or 40 or even 50 people. I generally tell them that depends on how their organization operates: how critical their IT system is the them; and how well it's been designed and maintained. After a bit more discussion, they invite me in to see their system, usually at a time when they're sure their guy will be out of the office. I go, and most often, I find that they don't need a full time guy if they just invest a little in upgrading and re-configuring their system. They are relieved to hear it and set about the task of replacing their guy with Port-to-Port's Pertingo^® service.

Then the other shoe drops. The owner will come to me and say something like, "Joe has been with the company for a long time. Surely you can use a good man like him on your staff." I don't often enjoy this conversation because I have to tell them that if Joe were any good at his job, he would have quit it long ago to seek a real challenge in the industry. My guys do every day the kinds of things that Joe only does once every couple of years. He probably convinces you to hire an outside computer consulting company for that. If Joe was good, he would already have applied for work with us.

Most of my Indianapolis computer consulting prospects take this news in one of two ways. They either get really mad that Joe has been dead weight on their business for so long and can't wait to get rid of him, or they get mad at me for insinuating that Joe was somehow fooling them into believing that his work was more important than it really was. In one case I get a new client. In the other, I apologize and walk away.

The reality is that very few small businesses need to have a full time computer consultant unless their business is directly related to technology. Yes, all of our businesses rely heavily on technology. Having an on-staff Help Desk guy is a false sense of security. No one person can keep up with all of the things that need to be managed on a typical computer network. The time has come to consider how you spend those IT dollars. Computer outsourcing is the norm for larger businesses. It should be the norm for your business too.

Trust is a common theme that comes up when I write about the relationship between a computer network consulting company and its customers. I mention it often because it is the most important element in the success of that relationship. The same is true for other professional relationships we have like doctors, lawyers, accountants, and coaches. A recent malware attack led me to remind of this again.

According to Gary Warner, director of research in computer forensics with the University of Alabama at Birmingham, hackers figured out how to take advantage of the URL redirector function of some popular web sites including Microsoft.com and IRS.gov to send people to malicious sites. These people were looking for downloads to help them protect their systems from just such malicious activity. Port-to-Port Consulting's Pertingo(r) computer consulting clients can avoid these kinds of problems by trusting that we, their IT support services company, have taken care to protect their systems. They also know that because of the fixed fee relationship between us, a mistake in this area will cost us time and money to repair.

When people don't trust that their computer outsourcing company has their best interest at heart, they start searching for good advice from other sources. That search often leads, on the Internet, to bad results. It's like when your kids listen to their misbehaving friends instead of the good advice you give them.

So if you find yourself chasing online solutions to threats and problems instead of seeking your business computer support provider, you should perhaps seek a new provider. Find one you can trust and your life will be better.

Our office telephone service was out for almost an entire week. It first went out on December 22nd. An AT&T technician arrived early on the 23rd to get it working. The next morning it was out again. Another technician came late that afternoon and got it working. It was out again on the day after Christmas. No technician ever showed up to fix it that day. None showed up yesterday either. Finally about midday today, a technician came and got it working again. We've had trouble with our telephone service before. Our old building has an cable that has been in the ground for more than 50 years. It doesn't deal with water very well any more.

It has been kind of embarrassing to have my Indianapolis computer consulting customers ask me why I didn't have a contingency plan for a telephone service outage. My first response was that there really isn't one. Now that I've lived thru a week without service, I realize that there are some contingencies. We've already started the process of establishing the ability to remote call forward our two main numbers so we can have cell phones ring. We're looking into the possibility of phone service from Brighthouse, our cable company. We won't get stuck in this situation again (unless our phone service is down tomorrow morning).
 
Our situation sheds light on one of the most difficult problems computer outsourcing companies have when working with their clients on disaster planning. It's easy to plan for the worst case scenario. The problem is planning for the doesn't-seem-so-bad scenarios that number in the hundreds or thousands. We have procedures in place to deal with an Internet outage. We also have three different Internet providers in our building to avoid an outage. Until this long telephone outage, we worked under the assumption that the phone company would quickly effect repairs if we had a service outage. They always have in the past.

As we put new contingency plans in place for our office, we'll use this experience to work with our business computer support customers to identify the scenarios that may have been overlooked or under-emphasized when we built their disaster recovery plans. There are always contingencies. The problem is identifying where you need them.

I attended the Under the Radar Conference at the Microsoft campus in Silicon Valley last month. I was there as a finalist in the Fast Company Magazine/Brother Best Business Idea contest. I met the other two finalists in the morning on the way to the conference. They were not people from the technology sector so they would ask me what different things meant that presenters were saying. In preparation for this competition, I had read Chip and Dan Heath’s book, “Made to Stick,” because Chip was one of the judges of the contest.

In his book, Chip talks about the Curse of Knowledge wherein we become so familiar with what we do that we can’t imagine what it’s like to be someone who doesn’t have this intimate knowledge level. When I read this, I thought to myself that I’m extremely sensitive to this issue when dealing with my small business computer consulting customers. I don’t want them to feel lost when having a conversation with me or my staff. Listening to the questions of my fellow business idea competitors made me realize that the curse is insipid in its ability to fool us into believing we don’t have it. When the Navy pilot asked me what CRM means and the consultant asked about SMS and RSS, I realized that the curse has plagued me. With that in mind, I’ve created a primer on Web 2.0 jargon that will help those of you who still look at this stuff with beginner’s minds. Please let me know what else needs to be added or explained.

User generated content is the key defining element of the Web 2.0 movement. Social networking is close behind. This makes sites that allow people to rate the quality of various items or providers seem the logical best step for a killer new web site. If you're thinking you have a great idea for a site where people can rate things, that ship has already sailed.

The problem it has created for my Indianapolis computer consulting clients is that the Internet is now filled with sites that contain information about them. Some of it is good. Some of it is bad. Most of it is inaccurate. Why should you care? Most of these rating sites will appear above your company web site when someone does a search on keywords of interest to you. So most people have a greater chance of finding your listing than finding your site. Take Port-to-Port Consulting as an example. If you search for Computer Outsourcing in Indianapolis on Google, the first hit is a site called GetFave. The first mention of Port-to-Port is this blog (4th place isn't bad). Luckily for us, we're the only listing in GetFave and the information is accurate. Why? Because I edited our entry on GetFave when I saw how well it was doing in searches for Computer Network Consulting and other terms.

Do you have someone who monitors these things for your small business? We've created a new practice area for just that purpose. We call it Online Presence Management. It goes way beyond search engine optimization and website maintenance. It involves finding, correcting, or creating your online image to be what you need it to be to succeed. 

I saw a fax machine for the first time when I arrived at Los Angeles Air Force Base in 1984. It was a large device and we cherished the fact that we had one. We could send papers across the country to our colleagues in Boston or DC instantly! There just couldn't be anything better, we thought.

Twenty-five years later, the fax machine is still alive and kicking. I find it unbelievable that in a time when email is considered too slow for the IM, SMS, and Twitter generation, the fax machine still exists in just about every office. Now I realize that a few offices still have an IBM Selectric typewriter hidden away somewhere in their offices, but they don't advertise it on their business cards. Some of the lead sharing sites won't even give you credit for a name if you don't include the fax number. Why can't we kill this thing?

The facsimile machine was patented in 1843. It didn't take off as an office machine until the 1980s. Now that faxing has become a standard feature of multi-function printers and copiers, they are actually selling faster than ever. The amazing thing is that so many offices still depend on them as a normal part of business. Even though scanning and emailing and shared online documents are all, pardon the pun, reasonable facsimiles for the fax, these little machines just keep going.

I guess there is a certain comfort in knowing that some good ideas take a long time to take hold, but once they get in, there's no way to get them out. That's what Port-to-Port Consulting hopes will happen with the Pertingo^® computer consulting service. We hope that as more Indianapolis area companies experience this new form of computer outsourcing, they'll start to demand similar models from others. We can only dream that someone will ask why this Pertingo^® thing won't die 25 years from now.

Cloud computing is one of the hot topics in computer network consulting these days. Many of our Indianapolis computer consulting customers have asked us to explain what it's all about. In a sense, cloud computing is just another form of client/server computing. The difference is that the server is not in your office. It's somewhere out there in the Internet cloud.

Business computing constantly seeks to find the delicate balance between freedom for the staff and control for the management. On top of that, most internal IT support departments start to think it's all about them after a while. This conflict creates a pendulum effect that swings from centralized computing like the mainframe and dumb terminals of old, and individualized computing like the free standing desktop PCs of the late 80s. Each approach has advantages and disadvantages in terms of efficiency and effectiveness. Cloud computing is the latest incarnation of the mainframe approach to computing. Most of the processing happens on the server and all of the data is kept there.

Most business computer support companies are steering their clients away from cloud computing with scare tactics about the data security risk and availability problems. The reality is that cloud computing has the possibility of taking money out of their pockets because there will be less equipment installed in the clients office to fix and maintain. As soon as they find a way to bill for it, they'll start talking about how great cloud computing can be for their clients.

Port-to-Port Consulting is already talking about how great it is because our Pertingo(r) service focuses our energy more tightly on our customer's success. We believe there are some great advantages to cloud computing for many small businesses, including our own. Ask your computer consulting provider about cloud computing. His answer may say a lot about where his focus lies.

A recent study conducted at DePaul, Lehigh, and Rutgers Universities found that people are more prone to lie in email than they are in written communication. When subjects were asked to share an amount of money with another person, they lied about the total amount 64 percent of the time when telling their partner in writing, but the rate of lying went to an amazing 92 percent of the time when the communication happened via email. Email is one of the most critical of my Indianapolis computer consulting customers' IT support services. It's number one or two on their lists of capabilities needed to recover first after a disaster. Imagine what it means to know that the likelihood that your correspondent is lying to you goes up when the method of communication changes.

The researchers who conducted the study believe the difference is because the accepted social rules of email have not yet been established. Although, it is clear that email is much less formal than other written forms of communication. Apparently, that lack of formality leads to a reduction in veracity as well.

Even more interesting is the impact that this can have in future litigation. Now that email has become the favored source of damning information thru the legal discovery process, how will knowledge that people tend to lie more in email than other forms play into the introduction of this material in court?

Technology moves extremely fast. Things are constantly changing. We're all becoming ADD. Our poor caveman brains are having a hard time adapting to all the new stuff. Perhaps we should all slow down just a bit. One things for sure, when the information you seek is important to you, you should start asking people to "put it in writing."

When Bob Beaty and I started doing business computer support in 1991, among the first things we purchased were electronic planners (before PDA had been coined). We loved the idea of having a device that let us take notes in a meeting then transfer them into our computers for safe long-term keeping. One of the difficulties we encountered in using these devices was that they tended to attract attention away from the meeting to the devices themselves. Times have certainly changed. Look around during the next meeting you attend with more than a half dozen people. You'll find at least one who is working a device in his lap, obviously not involved in the meeting.

The discrete lap typer has existed for a while. He's prevalent at computer outsourcing conferences and familiar to anyone who has been in a large audience (meetings, sporting events, concerts, parties). I recently attended a conference where I saw what I hope is not the future of social ettiquette. In a room of about 200 people, there were, at any given point, about 50 who were blatantly disregarding the goings on of the meeting in favor of whatever was on their personal devices (laptops, smartphones, and PDAs). In fact, during some pauses in the presentation, I could hear a cacophony of clickety clicks as folks pounded away on their toys.

I was embarrassed for being a part of such a rude audience. I was embarrassed that our work in IT support services had created the ability for people to behave just like this at conferences all over the country. Being one who presents often at conferences, I was also amazed at how little the presenters seemed to be bothered that a quarter of their audience ignoring them in favor of someone far away. I work hard preparing material for my presentations that is relevant and timely for my audiences. I take cues from my audience as to whether my material is hitting the mark. If I lost a quarter of them, I'd feel I had failed.

As I left this conference, I took away two important things: First, it is still rude beyond description to conduct electronic business when you're supposed to be the audience of an important presentation; and second, if you're the presenter, you'd better make your stuff good because your audience can change the channel without leaving their seat.

I met basketball legend Hallie Bryant a couple of weeks ago. He was Indiana's Mr. Basketball in 1953 and after starring at IU, went on to a career with the Harlem Globetrotters that lasted nearly three decades. Hallie and his lovely wife have settled in Indianapolis. He does motivational speaking and has written a book filled with his insights about life.

During our conversation, Hallie mentioned some trouble that he was having with his computer. He told me that he knew that his little old computer wasn't of interest to my Indianapolis computer consulting but asked if I could give him some tips for the guy who works on his system. I looked at it and jotted down some notes for his guy. I even spoke with one of Hallie's IT support providers on the phone and he seemed to understand my thoughts.

A couple of weeks later, Hallie called to congratulate me on winning the Fast Company/Brother Best Business Idea contest. He mentions that his computer is still acting up even after his computer guy spent about three hours working on it. I nearly popped a gasket! I told Hallie that it's time for him to get new computer tech support. He tried to take the blame for having given bad direction to his guy. I acknowledged that he probably did because he had done that when I looked at his computer, but a business computer support person should have to meet some minimum level of competency.

Unfortunately, there are no governing bodies in the computer consulting services industry. Everything is voluntary. Most of the certifications are granted by the same companies that sell the hardware and software, which seems self serving to me. Why wouldn't Microsoft or Cisco or whoever want me to have one of their certificates? If they certify me, I'm more likely to recommend them over competing products. This leads to the problem that Hallie has. His guys seem nice enough and he's in no position to determine if they know what they are talking about.

I didn't retrieve yesterday's mail from the box until this morning. I was appalled to find THREE letters from personal injury attorneys wanting to make sure that I'm aware of my rights in this accident that "was serious enough to make the public record." I thought about the business computer support providers who use scare tactics to generate new business by feeding their prospects a bunch of stuff that is obvious to anyone in the computer network consulting business but seems incredibly important to someone outside. Like the fact that my accident made the public record. Well, of course it did. Thanks to my Indianapolis computer consulting clients in the legal industry, I know that every police report is a part of the public record. It's not as impressive if you know that.

The two things that many computer outsourcing "experts" are touting these days are security and Online Presence Management. Security is always a good way to scare up some business. Small business owners are overly concerned with the security of their networks as I've written about in a previous post. Combine that with a few stories about the total ruin of a similar business, and you've got a ripe mark.  Even better though is the  promise to raise more money for the struggling business owner. We all know it takes more than a good website or accounts on some social networking sites, but we don't really know how much more. Or how to do it.

The truth is that in both of these areas, the fix is not a one-time deal. Any expert who comes in and promises to make your network completely secure by conducting an audit and selling you additional hardware and software to fix what he finds is providing security at a single point in time. You will not be secure the next day when there are new threat vectors that he didn't take into account. The same is true on the Internet marketing side. Lots of people can present you with a screen image that shows you on page one of a Google search for a particular search phrase of interest to you. They don't tell you that you won't be there by the time your prospect conducts the same search.

The only way your small business can take successful advantage of outsourced business computer support is to have a long term relationship with your provider. That's why we abandoned all forms of network support except our Pertingo^® Computer Suport Services.

I was in a car accident on Tuesday. I was just driving along when suddenly I heard a loud noise. It took a moment for me to realize the noise was the sound of another vehicle slamming into my car. I made the connection when I became aware that my car was spinning in the street. No one was hurt but my car was severely damaged. The other driver had run a red light.

No one who witnessed the accident stopped to offer assistance or to provide their version of what happened. I was apprehensive that the other driver would claim that I ran the light and, with no other witnesses, we'd have a long drawn out dispute. He admitted fault and we're well on the way to resolution.

The incident made me think about the many occasions we have in the course of our computer network consulting business to bend the truth, exagerate, or flat out lie to our customers. We usually know more than they do on the topic. It's the reason they use us for their computer outsourcing. We've learned over the years that those are character making opportunities. We tell our customers the straight truth, whether it's good for us or not. A good example comes from a recent email I got from one of our not-for-profit customers for whom we provide IT support services. He had asked me what it would cost for us to build a new website for him. He didn't know that I was in the middle of a decision about bringing on a full time web developer, but I knew that his project would provide the startup work to make the decision. I also knew that a local school was looking for a not-for-profit organization that needed a new website to use as a class project. I directed him to the school.

Michael wrote me back saying how much he appreciated that I would "take money out of my pocket" to help him. That's the value of honesty in computer outsourcing. Michael knows that he can trust my recommendations because they are made with his interests in mind, even when they don't align with my short term interests.

There are some things I do as a part of my job as an Indianapolis Computer Consultant that I would do anyway. Having the business computer support job just makes it easier to justify in the same way that it's easier to play in a toy store if you have a little kid with you.

I have stood in line twice now to purchase an iPhone. The first time, last June, it was just to see if the device was even remotely close to all of its hype. It was very close. I stood in line the second time because Apple had fixed the biggest flaw with the first version (and I had dropped the original one in the water a couple of weeks earlier). I've written before about what a beautiful device the iPhone is, but here's the part that will survive the iPhone. The primary interface to the iPhone is your finger! That's right: no keyboard, no mouse, no stylus. More precisely, the primary interface is your fingers. The screen is multi-touch capable. It understands if you use two fingers.

Apple's laptop touchpads are multi-touch. Fujitsu uses them too, but calls them gesture enabled. Microsoft is putting multi-touch capability in the next version of Windows, as well as on their very expensive Surface table. This multi-touch screen is one of several new interfaces being applied in computing. You may have seen the Lenovo commercial where the man's family doesn't recognize his face but his computer does. Facial recognition could improve to the point that your expressions work as input. Even more incredible is the Emotiv Systems device that uses electrodes on your head to directly interpret your brain waves. This device will sell for $300 or less in the near future.

Of course there's also the one that I keep saying is right around the corner: good old fashioned talking. Computers are very good at converting our spoken words into text, but they are still pretty lousy at understanding what our words mean. Recall the difficulty you had learning about conjugating verbs and diagramming sentences. Now listen to the talk going on around you. No one is really following those rules! We don't have any problem interpreting what people mean, but your computer could be driven nuts by things as simple as the affirmative “Uh huh” used instead of "yes."

This is an example of the kinds of extras that a business owner gets when using Pertingo computer consulting services.

In 2003, Donald Rumsfeld earned the Foot in Mouth Award for answering a press conference question with his famous, “as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don't know we don't know.” As confusing as that sounds, it is the treacherous unknown unknowns that make the job of computer network consulting in Indianapolis exciting. I’m often told by prospects that they have everything they need from their small business computer consultant only to discover a few questions later that they are only happy because they don’t know what they’re missing.

Another computer outsourcing provider passed on a story about a business computer support customer he had a few years ago. She was visiting the office and noticed that every printer had a bottle of white out next to it. The customer explained that their word processor automatically printed the page number on the first page of each document. They used the white-out to cover it, then copied the first page before sending the document. When the consultant showed them quickly how to change the setting, they exclaimed that the solution would save them several minutes per document, not to mention paper and white-out. They hadn’t asked before because they thought the cost to have it changed would be burdensome.

How many White-Out Cures are there in your office just waiting for a good computer help desk tech to get rid of them for you? The reason that we charge a fixed fee rather than an hourly rate is so you can ask those questions without regard to the burden they might be.

I attended the Dealmaker Media Under the Radar conference yesterday. This is a speed dating style conference where companies that are doing new things in Information Technology get six minutes to pitch their company before a room full of potential investors and business partners. Chip Heath, co-author of "Made to Stick," did a brief presentation on the secret to pitching in a short time. It's amazing how much one can present in only a minute. Unfortunately, one cannot pitch everything in one minute. Heath's advice: Pitch the single most important thing and leave the audience with questions that will lead to future conversations.

In thinking about that advice, I considered what is the single most important thing that a good business computer support company should do for its customers. My conclusion surprised me. Your computer network consulting company should make you more money by increasing your revenue. I can list a dozen things that your IT support service provider should do, but the single defining element is that we, like all of your other employees, should work to make your business more profitable. If we aren't doing that, then we aren't working hard enough.

Given that as the main objective changes the way that my Indianapolis computer consulting company views its relationship with customers. Clearly keeping the computer network running is important, but it doesn't begin to impact profitability. The place where we add value is by taking our knowledge of technology and combining it with your understanding of your business and finding the sweet spot where they fit together. That's why we're always asking questions that don't seem to directly apply to the activities of your computer system. We're looking for those places of most potential. Share your goals and objectives with us so we can do our part to make you more successful.

Computer network services are among the most rapidly changing elements of global business. Yet it is amazing how few really big new ideas come to the industry each year. Sure, processors get faster and memory gets cheaper, but that just means that we have bigger computers waiting for us to figure out what we’re going to type next. Instead of working on the next big thing, most companies in the Information Technology sector watch to see what people are clamoring to have, then try to build an offering that is marginally better than the market leader. Good recent examples are the many new touch screen phones that have appeared since the introduction of the Apple iPhone or the explosion of social networking sites after the sale of MySpace and valuation of Facebook.

Linus Pauling said, “Te best way to get a good idea is to get lots of ideas.” Today’s corporate leaders fail to follow anything like this advice. Their motto seems more along the lines of, “Make something that looks like what everyone is buying so we can get a share of this hot market too.” The reason I bought an iPhone was because Apple had broken the mold of what a smart phone was supposed to look like. I hoped that its success would lead to a complete re-thinking of what people want in a phone. Instead it led to a plethora of me-too imitations. And how many online social networks can one man belong to? I’ve been invited to join at least one new one each week for the past several months. I’ve even been offered a couple of opportunities to create my own for my Indianapolis computer consulting customers. Fear not, there will be no Pertingo social network on my watch.

So, here are some ideas I’d like to suggest for the ready to take a risk company that wants to impact business computer support:

• Brainstorm new ways to interface with the computer. Scrap the keyboard/mouse paradigm altogether and start from scratch.


• Develop a new authentication method that doesn’t depend on our ability to create cryptic passwords that we can’t remember and have to change so frequently that it wouldn’t matter if we could remember.


• Come up with a better way to keep viruses and other malware from wrecking the good mood of office workers.


• Create a standard that allows email authentication so we can stop losing good mail and receiving bogus offers to enhance our lives or bodies.

I can take any group of people and brainstorm an enormous list of ideas under any of these topics. Surely those with specific expertise in these areas can do something better than they’ve done thus far.

One of the many things I love about my job as an Indianapolis computer consultant is that it provides me with ample opportunities to let out the geek in me. In most instances, I'm not extremely enamored with how cool a new item is. I'm more interested in how it can help me or my small business computer support customers do our jobs better. Every now and then, especially in the portable device market, I will buy something that I know won't do what I need it to do just as a way of casting my vote for the innovative idea.

The original iPhone was one of those purchases. I was fairly confident that it wouldn't work well enough for me to use it or recommend it to my customers. However, I was sure that it was an attempt at something completely different than other smart phone manufacturers were doing. It turns out I was right on both counts. My assumption was that the traditional cell phone manufacturers would look at the iPhone and say, "Why didn't we think of that!" They did. Look at the number of phones on the market now that are iPhone impersonators. Then Apple came along with their new version, the iPhone 3G, and knocked the imposters out of the way.

In 15 months, Apple has sold ten million iPhones. They sold more last quarter than industry leader RIM sold Blackberrys. I'm telling my computer consulting customers to consider the iPhone for their mobile device. Now let the recommendation lead you to believe I'm a Mac zealot or a Windows basher. The best thing Apple did with the new iPhone was to license the Microsoft activesync software so it can talk to Exchange servers. I have a list of things that would make the phone better that has reached 10 items, but that's far shorter than the list I have for every other smart phone I've tried.