Sharing Couldn't Be Easier - How Windows Sharepoint Services Will Benefit Your Small Business

Sharing of business data in small business used to be a nice thing to have; however in todays business environment it is rapidly becoming a necessity in order to compete in the marketplace. Never has the demand for collaboration inside your small business, across multiple locations, geographic regions or with partners and clients been needed as it is today. Many small businesses continue to struggle with the concept of collaboration and how to do it effectively.

When collaboration in the workplace occurs effectively, productivity inside the business skyrockets, suddenly you can do more with fewer resources, both human and technical and the workforce is happy because they can work from virtually anywhere. The flipside of effective collaboration is exactly the opposite, productivity goes way down, dependence on technology support skyrockets, and the added cost is reflective in your human capital and expenses. Your team becomes frustrated and even may leave your firm when the tools are not available to do their jobs effectively, wherever and whenever they need to perform their tasks.

Introducing a new way to share business data! It is not that new actually; Windows SharePoint Services is starting to catch on in the small business market, larger corporations have been using document management systems for quite some time. Just like having your email hosted in house took a little time for the small business market to embrace, now SharePoint Services is making its way into the SMB market.

The added value of SharePoint Services is that many small businesses already own the solution; they just dont realize that they do. Windows 2003 Server or 2003 Small Business Server have SharePoint Services included, however many businesses never implement it, this could be the result of poor IT services or just a lack of awareness of the solution and the power it brings. Small Business need strong outsourced IT services that will introduce new solutions like SharePoint Services to them and help them to understand how these new solutions will benefit them and their business.

How can your small business get ready for Windows SharePoint Services?

First of all, it is important for small business today to be on the same page and moving in the same general direction, without this, no technology solution will ever work. Your team needs to be on the same page as the management and understand the companys end goals and value proposition, once you have this done, then you can begin to mold a technology solution to meet your business needs.

SharePoint Services is a tool to enhance collaboration in the workplace. In order to have the technology work for your business, you need to foster an environment that promotes collaboration. Without this environment, no technology tool will ever work. Business owners today need to make sure that the lines of communication inside their business are flowing in both directions.

Once you have your people factors settled, then the technology can be allowed to enhance that. Still in this day, many people are nervous about what technology can do. The younger workforce has been collaborating and using technology for quite some time, however many people that have been in the workplace for a while, have concerns about technology. The message in your firm needs to be that this technology solution will aid in the employees overall success and when we are all successful, the company is successful.

Windows SharePoint Services offer some of the following benefits to a small business:

Document Libraries are repositories for your team to work together on documents, spreadsheets, presentations and whatever else you need to work on. Inside the document libraries you can secure your information and set rights on what people can do or see, control document versions plus so much more.

Shared calendars are available inside Windows SharePoint Services where you can post corporate events, important dates, meetings or whatever calendar information you need to post. With the calendar and many other features inside SharePoint you can also view this information inside your Microsoft Outlook application on your desktop.

Has anyone on your staff missed an important meeting? With SharePoint you can put announcements right on your main page, so that everyone can see what is happening in your business. New product launches, important information or any other announcement that you may have in the past, broadcasted out via email to your entire team.

Have online feeds sent right to your SharePoint site. SharePoint can link into any RSS feed service. This is great if you want to show items such as road reports, weather conditions, stock prices and any other information you need to see when released. SharePoint will become the portal for your small business to get the information you need.

Another powerful tool inside SharePoint Services is the ability to control workflow process. Does your business suffer from workflow challenges? How does your business suffer when your team skips steps in the process? What if you had a tool that would increase productivity and results by managing workflow? Would your business prosper?

The most important tip to a successful implementation of Windows SharePoint is to keep it simple. SharePoint needs to slowly introduced to your team, include them in the implementation and planning of your site, promote buy-in from all departments in your business. When the entire team is involved, your rollout and adoption of SharePoint Services will be a success.

There are many additional benefits to Windows SharePoint Services; I encourage you to visit the Microsoft SharePoint website. Also, a strong information technology consultant can provide you with additional information on the benefits of SharePoint Services to your small business.

SharePoint will be the way files and information is stored in the future, dont delay, understand how this new technology will affect your small business, prepare for the future, provide the tools for your team to become successful. Do more with less and watch your small business explode.

Stuart Crawford is the Director of Business Development for IT Matters Inc., Calgary, Albertas award winning Microsoft Small Business Specialist. He can be reached at scrawford@itmatters.ca or via their website http://www.itmatters.ca IT Matters is a leader in the Calgary marketplace with Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services.

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Cell Phone Revolution

Will cell phones be the future of gaming?

On buses and trains and at the local Starbucks, more and more business people are staring at their cell phones. But they're not trying to close the latest deal! No, the new interest in cell phones is gaming, and everyone is swept up in this craze.

After the success of Atari in the 70's, arcades sprung up and gaming became seen as childish or nerdy. After years of continued growth, gaming is now even larger than the movie industry. But until recently, average people fell like they aren't interested in wasting their time and were embarrassed to admit they played. So what's changed this trend?

People are now surrounded by computers and technology. With the ubiquitous cell phone on every hip and in every purse, it is harder and harder to find a time to wind down during lunch and on break. With stress levels rising, it is more important to relieve this stress and come back to work productive and energized.

Not only do cell phones provide a way to play video games, but game makers have gone after business users, making games that are now shorter and can be played in short bursts, making them ideal for coffee breaks and lunches. A puzzle game can be a stimulating challenge that keeps the brain working. A board game can be a relaxing break that lets you rest your mind. And all of these games can be played in 5 minutes or less.

So the next time you stand around the water cooler, don't be surprised if idle banter and gossip is replaced with battle cries and victory cheers!

For more on video gaming, visit http://gamer-revolution.net to read about Mass Multiplayer Online Games including flash and online 3D racing games to PC and Nintendo games, and much more!

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Super Mario Bros - A Detailed Look

Mario Brosstarted off as an arcade game made by the gaming giants Nintendo and was first released in 1983. Later on portable versions for home gaming systems were developed. It was a by-product of the popular Donkey Kong series with a heavy influence of the game Joust developed by William Electronics in 1982. Designed by Shigeru Miyamoto, it was the first game to use Mario's name in the title (Mario was called Jumpman in earlier versions). It also starred Mario's brother, Luigi (hence the name Mario Bros.) who later became a permanent fixture of Mario games. He is usually shown as Mario's cowardly young brother but later on due to his popularity he took a distinct personality of his own with surprising moments where he stood up for his own. Unlike Donkey Kong, where Mario appeared simply as a side-show carpenter, in this game Mario starred as a plumber, destroying pests that emerge from pipes.

A remade version of the game is included as a mini-game within the original Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) release of Super Mario Bros. 3 and also features in the remake, Super Mario All-Stars. Improved remakes of Mario Bros. were released on the Famicom Disk System. A contained version of this remake called Mario Bros. Classic was released solely in the European market.

The game begins with a classical music piece from Mozart's Eine kleine Nachtmusik. Apart from the two main characters, Mario and Luigi, the game includes several enemy figures like;

Shellcreeper:

Sidestepper:

Fighter Fly:

Slipice:

Popularly known as Freezies, these are blocks of ice that, no points for guessing, freezes platforms. These resemble flies, as is suggested by the name, and can be hit only from beneath. Crab look-alikes, they take two hits to flip and are just a tad faster than the shellcreepers. These look like turtles and have to be hit once to flip and get eliminated.

The game strategy is to kill these vermin coming out from the pipes by hitting them from above or below, making them flip and then shoving them off the screen with a kick. The tricky part is that if they are not taken off the screen right away after flipping them, they flip over and become faster than before and therefore more difficult to kill. Small gold coins keep popping up through out the game which when collected give bonus points to the players. Three small square blocks appear in the game which when hit throws off all the enemies from the platforms. But as said earlier, they appear only thrice throughout the game and have to be therefore used sparingly.

Most, if not all, Mario Bros games revolve around the main theme of this one. Later additions were made to make the game more advance and complex to make it challenging and interesting for the players. Some of the later versions include, Super Mario Advance, Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, Super Mario Bros. 3 and Mario Clash.

Game Boy Advance, Game Watch, Saga, Virtual Boy and Virtual Console all offer Mario Bros. games.

Mario Game are available in a lot of platform such as the GameBoy Advance, Famicom Disk System, NES and many others. There are also flash game versions of Super Mario available for download. Checkout Free Mario Game for free online games to play.

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