Need a Place to Host a Business Meeting?

Do you find yourself searching for the perfect place to host a business meeting or hold interviews? An obvious choice for many are local hotels and coffee shops. But sometimes hotels are expensive and coffee shops do not offer enough privacy. Try your city's local public library or recreation centre. Some coffee shops also have rooms for rent for a fee (e.g. $10-$15/hour). Another alternative is a professional office facility that rents meeting rooms and offers business services like wifi, copying, printing, scanning and faxing.

Here are some typical rates that you might encounter at a library:
http://www.opl.on.ca/RoomRentals.PDF

Here are some typical types of rooms available for rent at a recreation centre:
http://www.oakville.ca/11944.htm

Places like The Coffee Office, with locations in Windsor, London, Burlington and Toronto, may offer a membership-based business club with meeting spaces, business services and onsite cafe:
http://www.thecoffeeoffice.com/index.htm

Understanding Facebook Opportunities

This is a link to a blog entry about the benefits of how businesses of any size might benefit from using Facebook to reach their target markets. The post is written by Ricardo Covo from Web Nodes - Software Development.

BDC Small Business Week

BDC (Business Development Corporation of Canada) kicks off Small Business Week on Oct.14, 2007. The theme this year is "A World Without Boundaries, Open to New Markets". Click on this link to read more... http://www.bdc.ca/en/about/events_publications/small_business_week/default.htm

Using Web 2.0 Tools to Communicate with Customers

Good article from BusinessWeek (Aug/Sept. 2007) about using Web 2.0 tools (blogs, wikis, podcasting, YouTube video ads, social networking) to communicate with customers more effectively:
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_36/b4048441.htm?chan=smallbiz_special+report+--+doing+business+online+2007_doing+business+online+2007

Google Apps and Webauthing

This article by Barry Cornelius at Oxford University Computing Services (June 2007) discusses Google Apps including Webauthing; be aware that the article is a bit on the technical side for most end-users.

http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/oucsweb/gapps/2007-06-22-ucisa/normal.pdf

Google Docs Beats Office Live Workspace?

Check out this article with discussions on one author's opinion as to why Google Docs beats Office Live Workspace:
http://www.crn.com/software/202103930

Google Apps and Microsoft's Office Live: SAAS (Software-as-a-Service)

This article from the New York Times (Oct.1/07) discusses Microsoft's Office Live application which will allow users to store, access and share documents online using Microsoft's office software that they've already purchased:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/01/technology/01soft.html?ex=1348977600&en=9b6fd950b8859753&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

This is the link to Office Live:
http://www.officelive.com/
Here's the link to Office Live for Small Business:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/officelive/FX101465131033.aspx

This article from Macworld (Sept.18/07) discusses Google's Google Apps and Google Docs service as well as Microsoft's which bundles online applications like a word processor, spreadsheet, email, calendar and instant messaging:
http://www.macworld.com/news/2007/09/18/googleapps/index.php

This is the link to Google Apps:
https://www.google.com/a/

This is the link to Google Docs:
https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin?service=writely&passive=true&continue=http%3A%2F%2Fdocs.google.com%2F&followup=http%3A%2F%2Fdocs.google.com%2F&ltmpl=homepage&nui=1

Interesting IT Blog for Small Businesses

Check out this blog: discussions about social networking tools, wikis, wireless, laptops, VoIP, data backup, etc.

Entrepreneur.com

This is a great site for small business startups as well as for small business expansion.