Soonr:Collaboration in the Cloud

by Mielle Sullivan, Janus Networks
Google Docs is a great, simple office suite in the cloud. It works perfectly for a lot of people and small businesses. I’m even using it right now. But if you, or your business, need to use more powerful programs, yet want the easy accessibility, convenience and ease of collaboration that Google Docs provides, then Soonr is a good option.

Soonr isn’t new. It was founded in 2005 as a service that enabled standard mobile phones to use the applications on computers in an optimized way, but since then it seems to have evolved into a complete productivity tool.

You install the Soonr app on your desktop and mobile phone and select which files you want to sync with Soonr’s servers in the cloud. From then on, all those files are automatically updated and synced as you edit them. Just like with Google Docs, you can grant others access to documents and they can edit as well. Teams can collaborate on “Projects” containing multiple documents all organized under the same umbrella. Users can also comment on documents without editing–a nice layer between read only and edit. From the Soonr dashboard you can see all the recent edits and comments and who made them. From your mobile phone you can email or fax (that’s right you heard me, fax) documents out through eFax. With an iPhone you can even print a document from any networked printer.

The mobile interface for viewing documents is apparently very intuitive and fast, because it only requests from the cloud the portion of the document you need at any given time. Soonr supports over 800 mobile devices. We don’t offer handset editing ourselves, but coupled with QuickOffice it’s possible. We’ve integrated with QuickOffice to offer QuickAccess.net. Often times handset editing is a limitation of the handset/os , not the software.

I should clarify that Soonr isn’t an office suite, it just supports such a variety of document types (it even supports .mov files) that you can choose which office suite to use, and it is all continually updated, organized and safe in the cloud.

Soonr isn’t free. If you want acess for more than two users or more than 2Gb of storage you have to pay bit. To get at least five users and 40Gb of storage, you will pay $19.95 a month. I don’t know how the cost scale goes up from there, but it is probably reasonable. So if you work collaboratively are mobile and are tired of fiddling around with the frankly clunky version

AppCentral: Hubb for Enterprise Mobile Apps

by Mielle Sullivan, Janus Networks

Mobile applications have redefined the way we think about our smartphones. Nearly every day you can read about a great new iPhone app in the consumer tech press and the iPhone is just one platform. Blackberry and Android apps tend to get slightly less attention, but the cumulative interest in mobile apps is nothing short of an obsession for the tech media. But considering the amount of work that is done on mobile phones and the importance of the mobile web to so many workers and companies, where all the apps for them? Until now, enterprise has largely been left out of the app revolution. AppCentral, a venture of Ondeego, hopes to change that.

According to AppCentral, there are three primary reasons the enterprise market has lagged behind the consumer market in mobile app adoption: it is not easy to find apps for business amongst the thousands of consumer apps in app markets; Mobile apps can be difficult to manage for IT professionals and sometimes even dangerous to company data; and third party developers currently don’t have the right tools to make “enterprise-ready” apps or a good marketplace to sell them.

AppCentral says it tackles these challenges with it’s three part ecosystem. It addresses the needs of end users by providing an easy to use web-based portal for employees to find and download the mobile business applications they need. It helps IT professionals by allowing them to easily enable and disable applications as well as handle the data of each application. Additionally, AppCentral’s patent pending “Securitization” technology creates a “security wrapper” around apps enabling remote management. But how AppCentral claims to help developers is what may make it a real game-changer in the mobile applications space. The technology is platform agnostic, so it gives developers valuable tools to efficiently create and market their apps to a wide audience. The securitization layer is also added automatically, so no additional work is required from the developer.

AppCentral just launched a private beta in early October, so its claims have yet to be tested. However they have definitely identified a pain-point in the marketplace and the concept is different from anything else currently available. Being platform agnostic also gives them a leg up on any similar marketplace that might be created by Google, Microsoft or Apple. Although, at the moment AppCentral cannot support development for the iPhone because of “legal reasons.” However, if technology is as easy to use Ondeego says, AppCentral will tap into the largest, most lucrative, yet currently least accessible mobile application market.

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More Small Business Promotion Ideas

by Mielle Sullivan, Janus Networks

Run a user generated content contest in which the winner wins a trip to Hawaii
Show people where the sweet stuff is and they will come to it in swarms and they will tell all their swarming friends and they will talk talk talk about it. What is the sweet stuff? Anything really fun, anything worth fantasizing about, anything worth taking a risk for, or taking time out of their busy day for. If you can cause people to associate your, product, website or company with anything fun and exciting it will get attention. Remember the “Island Caretaker” job offered by the Queensland Tourism Board? It generated so much attention that the ensuing traffic shut down the site’s servers multiple times; tens of thousands of video applications were received and dozens of high profile articles were written.

Host an UNconference

We’ve all been conferences that were too expensive, long and predictable. So the next time there is a big industry conference in your city, rent out a small room near the conference and hold an UNconference. The idea is that the attendees will come up with topics and then discuss and present on the topics right there. You can focus on a specific problem in your field, or leave it more open. Do: invite as many people in your field as possible, invite the press, encourage collaboration, provide snacks, print up fun t-shirts. Don’t: charge admission.

Make a viral video

Hire a good video artist/director. Make it funny. Make it short. Be upfront about who you are and what you are promoting. Make sure it is tagged well and easy to find. Involver has a variety of social media video promotion tools for a large range of budgets.

Hold a Raffle

This isn’t a way to get money, but rather to get information about your target or encourage them to engage with a product. It is similar to the user generated content contest, but instead of creating content users interact with a site, fill out a survey or use a product. This idea works great when you have a new feature to promote as it points users straight towards engagement. The Dubai Government used a raffle to promote use of its new eGovernment portal to conduct payments and credit card companies and Discover Card is currently running a sweepstakes for users that switch to paperless statements. Both promotions encourage users to interact in new way with services they are use.

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Promotion Ideas for Small Businesses

by Mielle Sullivan, Janus Networks

Here are some ideas for promotion that cost under or around $10,000.

Host an event

Host an event around the launch of a new, or improved, product or service. It doesn’t have to be a big event. Rent out a bar, or a good sized room in a bar. Get a DJ or maybe a band. Invite some clients, business partners and any local press that cover your field of business. Make sure everyone the press might want to interview is there. Demo your product or give a presentation about your service. Print up take away materials for guests and press.

Sponsor a Podcast

This is a great way to hone in on niche markets inexpensively. Contact podcasters directly for details. Want examples of businesses sponsoring podcasts? This Week in Tech has a variety of sponsors, but it’s most common are Audible.com and Gotomypc.com; The Savage Love podcast is sponsored by Adam & Eve.

Run a Retweet Promotion

The most well known recent example is Moonfruit, a website hosting company, gave away ten MacBooks in ten days to random twitter users who included #moonfruit in their tweets. The prizes are what gets this kind of promotion going, but if the retweet itself is as unobtrusive and you can encourage a little creativity, the contest can create some interesting content of it’s own. These contests are easy to set up and oversee, so you can put nearly all of your investment into prizes.

Spend the money on a Google Adwords Campaign

Google Adwords is the best, easiest,do-it-yourself advertising tool in the world. You decide exactly how much to spend, what keywords to choose, and what targeting to use. It’s an essential tool to reach local audiences and is infinitely scalable. When used with a bit of know-how, Google Adwords offers some of the best ROI in advertising for both big and small businesses. If you aren’t sure where to begin, Google makes it easy.

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