Hi!, If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

If you have decided that it’s time to quit your regular job and become your own boss (or atleast intend to in the near future), then read on. This article by Cynthia Schmae  will definitely help you during those early stages with best tips from people with years’ of experience in running their own businesses.

1. Don’t work for less than you can afford to, but do offer a discount to customers or clients who sign contracts with you.
2. Find people who will refer jobs to you. If they send you nightmare jobs, make sure they’re balanced out with rewarding (profitable!) ones.
3. Surround yourself with supportive people and don’t be discouraged by anyone. If your idea is good and you’re determined to stick with it through the first few difficult years, your chances of success are great.
4. Be flexible in your thinking. Prepare to change the way you work, the products you use and the services you offer, in order to meet the demands of your customers.
5. Admit your mistakes, correct them and carry on.(For example, if you purchase a piece of equipment that does not meet your expectations, send it back, sell it or exchange it!)
6. Develop a good relationship with your bank manager and creditors. Show a genuine interest in solving problems. Pay as much as you can afford to, to everyone to whom you owe money.
7. Get trained! You’ll be spending a lot of time doing things that have nothing to do with your area of expertise, like bookkeeping, marketing, and IT support!
8. Avoid isolation. Even if you work closely with your clients, you won’t be part of a gang anymore. Develop your own network of entrepreneurs that you see regularly and bounce ideas off. Ideally they’ll allow you to vent your anger and share your successes.
9. Separate your work and personal life. Set your working hours and stick to a strict timetable. When you’re not available to clients, leave a message on your answer machine letting them know when they can expect a reply from you. Let them know how to reach you in an emergency.
10. Plan some ‘thinking time’ into every day. If you pack your diary with back-to-back activities, your business will never grow.
11. Plan time to do something you enjoy at least a few times a week - recharge your batteries!
12. Write a business plan so you’re clear about what you’re doing, and update it every year.
13. Develop an excellent telephone manner and react quickly to any complaints or problems.
14. Confirm orders personally and immediately, especially those you receive on email.
15. Never lose sight of the big picture – look for innovative, little-explored directions in which to take your business.
16. When you find someone cleverer than you, employ them!
17. Solicit advice from people who know, for example, other entrepreneurs and reputable small business advisers  (The BERR offers lots of information and support for new businesses.)
18. Don’t enter a business or a venture that you know nothing about. You’ll be running to catch up for the rest of your business life.
19. Have an existing, loyal customer base and start locally.
20. Be aware that you will get through any initial investment quickly, so ensure you are covered financially until at least the end of the second year.
21. Focus on a specific goal and work at it until it’s achieved
22. Never worry about how to get things done when you are first developing your idea.Money and resources will come together once you have set your goals and begun to work at them.
23. Make quality in every aspect of your business your primary focus and aim. If it isn’t, you will eventually go out of business.
24. Use the Internet. Use email. Build a website (if you aren’t familiar with websites, try HTML for Dummies), send out email newsletters, buy online banner advertisements and register your site with all the major search engines.
25. Delegate. You might have to hire a good PA, lawyer, or marketing professional to ensure you’ll be profitable in the future.

Source: iVillage.co.uk

Popularity: 1% [?]

StumbleUpon has taken advantage of a popular feature of Firefox 3 browser - the ‘Awesome Bar’ by integrating the StumbleUpon toolbar with Firefox Bookmarks. StumbleUpon Add-On Version 3.23 lets you download all the sites you’ve rated with a thumbs up/’I like it!’ into your bookmarks, giving you as-you-type access to that last cool link you browsed through.

Here’s a step by step method to integrate StumbleUpon ‘Likes’ with Firefox Bookmarks:

1. Check if
   • You are using Firefox 3, if not, you can download it from here.
   • You are using StumbleUpon Toolbar version 3.23 or above or download the latest version from here.
2. In Firefox 3, Click on Tools -> Addons.



3. Select ‘StumbleUpon‘ and click on ‘Options‘.



4. Click on the Search & Tagging tab, and remember to select/check the Save favorites to a Firefox bookmark folder box. Then start downloading your StumbleUpon Favorites by clicking the ‘Download Favorites’ button.



5. Once your StumbleUpon Favorites have been downloaded, you’ll get the following popup saying ‘Download complete‘.



6. Access your ‘StumbleUpon Favorites‘ through your ‘Firefox Bookmarks‘ by clicking on Bookmarks -> StumbleUpon.



You can click on the above image for a full sized one.

You can add me on StumbleUpon by clicking here. Happy Stumbling!

Popularity: 1% [?]

Bored of the usual Windows that you see and use everyday? Want to spice it up to make your desktop more fun to work with?

PowerToys is the perfect recipe for you. Microsoft has a range of tools that will change your experience once and for all. The tools are all goodies that you would eventually end up using in your day to day computing.

Some of my favorite tools are ‘Open Command Window Here’, ‘Alt-Tab Replacement’, ‘Tweak UI’ among many others.

I’ve found use for the ‘Open Command Window Here‘ tool, when we face the usual problem of being unable to delete files in Windows. It gives an error saying a particular file cannot be accessed which is exactly the one you want to get rid of this. Using this tool, you can directly open your command prompt at that location and use your long lost DOS commands to say bye-bye to those unwanted files.

‘Tweak UI‘ is a great tool which has tons of modifications that allows you to configure various trivial but cool settings which you never knew were possible.

‘Alt-Tab Replacement‘ is so cool that you would open more windows deliberately, just so that you can swap between windows.

I could go on about the many other tools that are available, but I’m going to leave it for you to check out and explore the features that the other PowerToys have to offer. Believe me, no matter what your interests are I’m sure you will find something that really interests you.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Ophcrack Live CD, a free, open source software based on rainbow tables, is a Windows account password cracking tool designed to help you recover lost Windows passwords.

Once you download the 452mb .iso and burn it on a CD, just restart your computer and boot up the Live CD. Once the CD boots, Ophcrack automatically loads and is on its way to crack your password.

Ophcrack Live CD requires physical access to the machine, but if you have physical access you can literally crack every password on a machine in a very short time.

Features:

• Runs on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X (intel).
• Cracks LM and NTLM hashes.
• Free tables available for alphanumeric LM hashes.
• Free tables available for Windows XP and Vista.
• Brute-force module for simple passwords.
• LiveCD available to simplify the cracking.
• Free and open source software (GPL).
• Loads hashes from local SAM, remote SAM.
• Loads hashes from encrypted SAM recovered from a Windows partition, Vista included.

The latest version of Ophcrack Live CD is Version 2.0 and there are separate versions for Windows XP and Vista. Get Ophcrack Live CD. You can also get L0phtCrack (aka LC5 which was bought by Symantec) from mirrors like sectools.org.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Having run out of hard drive space on my laptop, I was on the lookout for a tool which would help me manage the space on my hard drive better and I must say that I’m pleased with my latest find - WinDirStat.

WinDirStat is a free tool that comes packed with features to help you manage your hard drive space. It lists the size & percentage of disk space used for all folders & sub-folders on your computer and also gives you a graphical representation of your files, sorted by the type of file extension. One can scan specific folders, multiple local drives and even network drives without any restrictions.

The current stable version 1.1.2 and the key features are

• The directory list, which resembles the tree view of the Windows Explorer but is sorted by file/subtree size,
• The treemap, which shows the whole contents of the directory tree straight away,
• The extension list, which serves as a legend and shows statistics about the file types.
• Coupling. Select an item in the directory list: The treemap highlights it; and vice versa.
• Zooming.
• Built-in cleanup actions including Open, Show Properties, Delete.
• User-defined cleanups (command line based).
• Works with network drives and UNC paths.
• ‘Create disk usage report’ option.
• ‘Submit bug report/Feedback’ option.
• Online help.
• Language can be set to Czech, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, German, English, Spanish, French, Hungarian, Italian, Polish and Russian.

WinDirStat is compatible with Windows 95, Windows 98 SE, Windows ME, Windows NT4, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Vista. Do note that the program comes in two variants: Ansi and Unicode. Windows 9x and ME users must use the Ansi variant. All others should use the Unicode variant.

Download WinDirStat 1.1.2 (Contains both Ansi & Unicode releases)

Popularity: 3% [?]