You’ll need to think about the marketing plan to your electronic magazine. Disregarding what plan you choose you should consider how to handle adverts. Selling the e-brochure will likely need search engine optimized content. Does it allow for paid content? You could think of offering a variety of subscriptions. Will your content be commercialized at all or is this simply a not-for-profit venture? Will you be using summaries to sell your magazine? What’s the accessibility of the catalog? If it’ll be private you can look into all your hosting options or is it public? In which case you will be better hosting directly. What’ll you do with back-isues? Some workarounds you really require to look at in advance before you actually need to go for them. How do you gauge the tech support? Check out their online FAQ page. Do they have a how-to guide? If their response time isn’t published ask about it. Is there a phone number or email address which is easy to access? Tech-support’s importance really can’t be over-stated. The choice you make here will be what determines how well your magazine does – consider carefully before opting for your vendor. You may also want to Google the term “Zmags” for further useful pointers.

There are Windows tips which require specialized software such as registry cleaner so that a user comes out of the process alive. However, other steps can be easily followed using the tools provided by Windows.

Before starting to follow the tips in the given list, youll certainly want to ensure that you can revert to your current position. In case things don’t happen accordingly. Therefore, a System Restore Point is required to be set.

Let us begin with simple things.

Are all those fonts that have been installed by various programs used by you really required? In case they arent, then you should remove the fonts that are of no use.

Take help of free font manager to complete this task.

Some other programs start up every time your system starts.

Welcoming antivirus software, firewall, etc. are some of them.

The remaining programs come under the category of: our software developer assumes you may always require the programs present without starting them on your own.

Applications like iTunes, Skype, an instant messenger service, webcam software and Adobe Acrobat reader update service as well as a keylogger installed by you to check the naughty activities of your kids.

You may prefer that these applications will always remain available for use.

A few programs will be displayed near the clock at the bottom of the monitor. Others hide and only pop-up when the Task Manager is checked.

Here, the Windows Msconfig program will help you by helping you in checking and eliminating such programs. You may find all the autoloading programs, which start as your computer starts booting up,listed in the Startup tab.

However, there is a big trouble with msconfig. It doesnt provide much detailed information. Therefore, you should do thorough research yourself to find out whether your computer actually needs applications listed in it or they are merely nice to have applications.

Next, there is the Windows Registry.

Applications use the Windows Registry as a dumping ground or storage area.

Windows Registry appears to store in everything.

Generally, it is where the last opened files on the menus are kept or stored. It also stores your favorite applications’ size and startup position. Like too much fonts reduce the loading process of the computer, keeping too much things (that too of no use) in the registry also does the same and you will never get a fast Windows 7.

Although cleaning up the Windows registry is possible using built-in Regedit program (start just like in case of Msconfig), some risks are also associated with it. In case you take any wrong step, Windows will mess up or even stop working. Hence, let the software to perform the task.

Coase dedicated much of his studies to the differences between the economic systems and firms. Transaction costs link both of these:

Transaction costs, in my view, become the factor upon which the productivity of the economic system depends. (http://coase.org/coaseremarks2002.htm)

Because of inefficiencies in economic markets, it is more efficient to organize activities in organizations. The normal coordination role of the price mechanism is missing when the market is inefficient or non-existing.

So, if there is no (external) market you can organize that specific market activity within the organization and save transaction costs. The transaction is the object of study. This is interesting of you think about outsourcing and the transactions that are involved when dealing with outsourcing.
The cost elements of the transaction involve information costs, the costs of the setting up the agreement as well as the costs as maintaining the contract.

Now, picture the following situation.

Your company is located on the third floor of a building with two wings. There was no wall between the wings and people could walk and communicate over and through. Easily. If there was a problem you ran across to the other side and with the output where the problem as printed, you discussed the issue and tried to solve it at the moment. “This is urgent.”

After the outsourcing deal, there is this wall and if you want to go from one wing (building) to another you need a security key in order to access. Each communication involves time.
One of the advantages of outsourcing is just that, different locations. Indeed for large corporations the spreading the activities over more locations spreads the business risk. But the additional problem is the management of the various activities over the different locations.

Yet there is this wall and you cannot longer step over it at the moment you wish to.

So what to do… (to be continued)

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* Add public holidays to your calendar automatically.

On the Tools menu, click Options, and then click Calendar Options. Under Calendar options, click Add Holidays. Select the check box next to each country/region whose holidays you want to add to your Calendar, and then click OK. Your own country/region is automatically selected. Color code your appointments.

* When you select a label for each appointment, Outlook will assign it a color, drawing attention to your most important activities and allowing you to see at a glance how you are spending your time. The available labels are:

• Important – Red

• Business – Blue

• Personal – Light Green

• Vacation – Gray

• Must Attend – Orange

• Travel Required – Aqua

• Needs Preparation – Olive Green

• Birthday – Purple

• Anniversary – Dark Green

• Phone Call – Yellow

• None – White

* Turn a message into an appointment or task.

What’s the quickest way to deal with an email inviting you to a meeting or event?

Drag the message onto your Calendar and a new appointment will be created. The entire message will appear in the details section – all you need to do is edit the subject line, location, date and time! Send an RSVP if necessary, and now you can delete the email!

Not sure if you’re going to attend? Set “Show time as” to “Tentative” and the appointment will display with a dashed border rather than a solid one. In this case you should also drag the message onto your Task Pad and a new task will be created. Edit the subject line to be a reminder to register for the event, and set the due date early enough that you won’t miss out if you decide to go.

* Print pages for your paper planner.

If you like the idea of using the Outlook calendar, but are more comfortable using a paper planner, Outlook allows you to print pages in daily, weekly or monthly layouts, formatted to fit a variety of commercial planners. Print the whole year, or just today’s schedule!

* It’s not just about work.

There are many websites that allow you to download schedules right into your Outlook calendar, including sports teams and TV stations, among many others. You’ll never have to miss your favorite team or show, and just think of the time you’ll save!

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Permission is granted to use this article, as long as the “About the Author” section including the link to http://www.organizedassistant.com remains intact. An email letting me know which article you have used and where would be appreciated.

About The Author

Janet Barclay, Organized Assistant, is a Professional Organizer, Virtual Assistant and Time Management Consultant. For more information visit http://www.organizedassistant.com.

info@organizedassistant.com

• Customer Matching. This is rather the question about generic lockbox application – which basically imports text file, received from your bank and matches them with customer invoices, debit memos and miscellaneous charges. The question typically sounds like this – in our Great Plains CustomerID is different from bank customer ID. This is right, but each check has Bank Account Number and Bank Routine Number, identifying the customer, all you need to do is – carefully review first processing and enter this customer info, or open it here: Cards>>Sales>>Lockbox Bank Details – and next time you get check from this customer – lockbox will catch and identify it. This is true even in the case of hand written check.

• Invoice Number Matching. This is a bit tricky question, and you can’t catch invoice number from hand written check. However when we are talking about large businesses – these checks have invoices printed. If you bank has so-called Automatic Clearinghouse (ACH) lockbox file format – it can provide invoice number line if the check is issued by corporate or midsize established business. In the case of ACH header will have prefix 6 and line prefix 4.

• No Invoice Number Matching. This is still OK if you have a lot of small customers with one or few outstanding invoices. In this case – use autoapply method. You can have variety of apply criteria: None, Document Number (when you have ACH), Due Date/Oldest Document, Due Date/Oldest Invoice (other than invoices you apply manually), Document Date, Specific Invoices (and you specify them in the list)

• Additional Considerations. Virtually if you have corporate account in any bank – lockbox processing module does the job – because you map lockbox file at your will in Lockbox Maintenance screen: Cards>>Sales>>Lockbox

• Customization Options. Lockbox is Dexterity piece, so it is in the hand of Dexterity Developer, if you need to improve it for your corporation. VBA Modifier and Continuum are also available. Also feel free to use new tools, such as Extender or eConnect.

Good luck and you can always seek our help in customization, implementation, integration and support. Call us: 1-866-528-0577 or 1-630-961-5918, help@albaspectrum.com

Andrew Karasev is Chief Technology Officer in Alba Spectrum Technologies – USA nationwide Great Plains, Microsoft CRM customization company, serving Chicago, California, Arizona, Texas, Florida, Georgia, New York, Australia, UK, Canada, Continental Europe, Russia and having locations in multiple states and internationally ( http://www.albaspectrum.com ), he is Dexterity, SQL, C#.Net, Crystal Reports and Microsoft CRM SDK developer

If you are developer who is asked: how do we create report for Microsoft Great Plains – read this and you will have the clues on where to look further.

1. Great Plains Report Writer (ReportWriter) – this is built-in reporting tool. All the original report in Great Plains are written in ReportWriter. ReportWriter itself is Dexterity module. You should use this tool if you would like to modify existing Great Plains reports, such as Blank Invoice Form – here you can place your company logo, change the positioning, fonts, colors, etc. ReportWriter will allow you also do new reports – simple option if you want to export all the records from one Great Plains table – use it. New report, however doesn’t have interface where you would enter parameters – so it is not useful for real custom reports. Another limitation of ReportWriter – you can not do cross-modules report – when you need sales and purchasing info on the same report for example.

2. FRx. This is excellent tool when deal with financial reporting – it works on the General Ledger level (Balance sheet, P&L, Cash Flow Statement, etc.). It also allows you to do multiple companies consolidation – when you do consolidated Balance Sheet (with inter-companies transactions elimination).

3. Smart List – Export to Excel – this is nice feature in Great Plains – you could create a list with simple criteria and then export it to Excel.

4. Crystal Reports. It gives you unlimited functionality. Obviously flexibility requires you to know Great Plains table structure: Launch Great Plains and go to Tools->Resource Description->Tables. Find the table in the proper series. If you are looking for the customers – it should be RM00101 – customer master file. If you need historical Sales Order Processing documents – they are in SOP30200 – Sales History Header file, etc. Create ODBC connection to GP Company database. Use the same technique as when you create standard ODBC connection for GP workstation – but change default database to targeted company database. Create SQL Query to probe the data – we always recommend tuning your query and see that you are getting adequate results – in any case – Crystal Report is just a nice tool to show the results of your query.

5. Direct Web Publishing off Great Plains databases – yes – it is easy now with Visual Studio.Net and you can hire good programmers. This is good – Microsoft Business Solutions products: Great Plains, Solomon, Navision and Axapta will be integrated into so called Microsoft Business Portal – which will have web interface – you can get the idea if you look at Microsoft CRM web client – so derecti web publishing is good taste.

6. SQL Queries. If you have SQL background – this is great field for you. You know – with properly formatted SQL query you can realize simple EDI export/import for the integration with legacy systems.

Happy designing! if you want us to do the job – give us a call!

About The Author

Andrew Karasev is Chief Technology Officer in Alba Spectrum Technologies – USA nationwide Microsoft CRM, Microsoft Great Plains customization company, based in Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Houston, Atlanta, and Miami and having locations in multiple states and internationally www.albaspectrum.com, he is Dexterity, SQL, VB/C#.Net, Crystal Reports and Microsoft CRM SDK developer.

akarasev@albaspectrum.com

1-866-528-0577 help@albaspectrum.com

Yes, that’s right – I said “all five versions”. Microsoft says that past versions of their OS, such as Windows XP, were based more on hardware type than how people actually used their PCs. MS says that this will not be the case with Vista, and to that end they’re going to offer two separate versions of Vista to businesses and two to home PC users. In this article, we’ll take a quick overview of Microsoft Vista Business features.

Windows Vista Business is offered as a solution for all companies, regardless of size. In answer to security concerns about past Microsoft products, Vista Business will offer built-in solutions against malware. And for those of you (okay, us) who never quite have all the information on their PCs backed up properly, Vista will not only help you to resolve catastrophic failures before they occur, but new features Windows Backup and Volume Shadow Copy will help to ensure that you never have to pray for a hard drive to come back to life because you’re behind on your backups!

Windows Vista Enterprise will bring these features and more to enterprise-level networks. One of these is Windows BitLocker Drive Encryption, designed to encrypt an entire hard drive. BitLocker will help prevent the loss of your organization’s intellectual property even if the PC it’s on is stolen.

To start learning more about Vista, visit www.microsoft.com/windowsvista. Regardless of whether your company has any plans to move to Vista, you owe it to yourself and your career to keep up with the latest technologies- and that includes Microsoft!

Chris Bryant, CCIE #12933, is the owner of The Bryant Advantage, home of free CCNA and CCNP tutorials, The Ultimate CCNA Study Package, and Ultimate CCNP Study Packages.

For a FREE copy of his latest e-books, “How To Pass The CCNA” and “How To Pass The CCNP”, visit the website and download your free copies. You can also get FREE CCNA and CCNP exam questions every day! Get your CCNA study guide with The Bryant Advantage!