We’ve Moved!

Update your bookmarks – the Skoda Minotti Blog is now located at http://blog.skodaminotti.com. Thank you for visiting the Skoda Minotti Blog.

Twitter for Dummies

The dummy here is me.  Or was me up until just a couple weeks ago.  While Twitter has approximately 4-5 million users, about 70% of whom are estimated to be active users, the concept was still somewhat strange to me.  Twitter allows users to answer the question, “What are you doing?” in 140 characters or less and, even though I can’t imagine why people would care that I am “Now contemplating marathon #3…” or was “In the middle of a nice little weekend =)” last Saturday, the site still grew 974% in 2008 and is now the 291st most popular website so it seems people are interested in that kind of information. 

(Sidebar: If you do care, feel free to follow me on Twitter @JLB7700!)

Computer Worm has Potentially Nasty April Fool’s Joke Planned

One of the more common computer worms to be spread around the Internet is known as Conficker or Downandup. According to estimates, it has infected 9-15 million computers worldwide.

 

Among other damaging side-effects, Conficker can automatically disable certain Windows services such as Automatic Updates, Background Intelligent Transfer Service, Windows Defender and Error Reporting Services.

The New Facebook for Businesses

If you’re familiar with Facebook, you’ve no doubt heard at least one of your Facebook friends complain about the popular social networking site’s new look. (If you’re not familiar with Facebook, stop reading this article and join the 175 million users around the world – after you’ve done so, come back, finish the article and learn how the new Facebook can be beneficial to your business).

 

What may have been lost in the shuffle amongst the discussion over the look of the personal profiles is the redesigned “Page” feature. Many businesses as well as actors, musicians and other public personas use the Page feature to share news, photos, videos and other items of interest with their “fans” (Facebook users who have voluntarily joined the Page).

 

Taking advantage of a Page for your business can be a great (and free!) way to keep you top of mind with your fans.

 

For a business, the new Pages have several benefits.

Stimulus Package to Spur Use of Healthcare Technology

The practice of writing medical prescriptions, estimated to be over 3 billion annually, is one of the largest paper based processes in the US. That should all change within the next five years, thanks to a provision in the stimulus act.

 

The Cumulative Effects of Marketing…and Playing the Piano

While driving my son home from his weekly piano lesson, he asked me if he was getting better.   Knowing he rarely practices but wanting to be encouraging, I shaped my answer around his “potential” and the benefits of practicing everyday.  His reply:  “Dad, practicing cuts into my free time.”

Thinking to myself, “You’re nine.  Your entire life is free time,” I explained to him that hoping to become a great pianist without practicing is like hoping to get a snow day from just one falling snow flake.  “To cancel school, you need lots of snow flakes to accumulate until there is enough to warrant canceling school,” I told him.  “And, in order to be successful on the piano, you need to accumulate a lot of practice time to become great.” 

He said, “that was a good a way to explain it, Dad” and said that he would start practicing more often which, to his credit, he has.

The Importance of Gain/Fade Analyses

Contractors can learn a lot about their own jobs and business by doing a gain/fade analysis.  A gain/fade analysis compares gross profit margins at the completion of a job to estimated gross profit margins at an interim period of time (like December 31, 2008).  For example, an individual job has a gain if the gross profit margin upon completion  in March 2009 was 10% and the estimated gross profit margin at the time of the financial statements (December 31, 2008) was 5%.  Since profits were higher when the job completed in March, this job had a gain.  A fade is calculated if the opposite is true – the job’s gross profit margins upon completion were lower than estimated gross profit margins at December 31, 2008. 

To ‘Book or not to ‘Book

According to Nielsen, social networking has overtaken e-mail as the most popular Internet activity.  Nearly two-thirds of the world’s Internet users visited a social networking site like Facebook or MySpace in 2008 and almost 10% of all time spent on the Internet was spent on social media sites, with Facebook being the most popular of these.

 

This time isn’t just being spent posting pictures and SuperPoking people.  Businesses are creating fan pages and using them to communicate with current and potential customers and employees.  Facebook is even revamping these pages to make it easier for companies to sell their products. 

 

Do Laid off Employees Pose a Data-theft Risk?

With layoffs on the rise, companies need to be aware of the data security threat posed by ex-employees.

 

According to a recent survey of employees who lost or left their job in 2008 conducted by Symantec Corp. and the Ponemon Institute, 59 percent of ex-employees admit to stealing confidential company information. The most commonly identified kinds of records taken included e-mail lists, employee records, customer information including contact lists and non-financial information.

 

 Additional survey findings included:

 

Current Trends in Commercial Construction

As the demand for new construction continues to dry up, contractors can continue to expect more competition for commercial and industrial construction projects. The reason for this increased competition is that many projects are in holding patterns as tightening credit markets have left the private sector scrambling to find capital. This leaves only those who can self fund projects (i.e. institutions, higher education, hospitals and public projects) seeking bids on new construction.

Unfortunately for contractors, increased competition drives more aggressive bidding practices.  In some cases, contractors are bidding work at a break even or sometimes a loss in order to keep employees working.  This is a dangerous formula that can leave a construction company bankrupt.  All it takes is one bad project to force a contractor out of business.