I find it truly gratifying when someone refers to something that was mentioned in the SOHOBE Newsletter. Unlike some other e-mailed newsletters, the SOHOBE Newsletter does not use “canned” content, nor simply adds branding onto a purchased newsletter. The SOHOBE Newsletter is produced and written in-house, and gets ideas for its content from the issues and experiences that SOHOBE clients and customers have had. While by no means a Herculean effort, the newsletter does represent an outlay of time and research with a goal of providing stories that might be relevant to the readers it reaches.

The stories are available almost in an archival form on the SOHOMike Blog, as well. There you can find a listing of content by date. You can also search through the blog postings. So, if you remember that there was something you saw in a newsletter, which you would like to retrieve, you can visit the blog to see if it has been posted there. Visitors can even opt to leave a comment about current articles. You might also find that an article has an addendum posted to it, which might reflect new information or opinion based on comments or additional research. The SOHOMike Blog is just one of the apps that you will find at the SOHOMike Client Website.

Lastly, the SOHOMike Blog can be pushed to your Kindle device or app. Amazon, the company that owns the Kindle, now allows blogs to be subscribed to via their Kindle service. The cost of subscribing to a blog is 99¢ per month. So, if you subscribe to the SOHOMike blog, it would be like buying me a cup of coffee every month—a real small cup of coffee. As mentioned in a pervious SOHOBE Newsletter, the Kindle device is just one way to get Kindle content. Amazon has made available Kindle apps and programs for most of today’s popular operating system. Can’t remember the article? Visit my blog to read it again!

Are you a Nonprofit that’s been considering Social Media? Are you confused by where to start or how to continue? Then you might want to consider attending a free webinar by Heather Mansfield, Social Media for Social Good: A How-To Webinar for Nonprofits. The webinar is based on Ms. Mansfield’s book, and is an introduction to her company’s services and other paid webinars. According to her press release:

Based upon the book Social Media for Social Good: A How-To Guide for Nonprofits, this webinar begins with defining Web 1.0, Web 2.0, and Web 3.0 communications and fundraising, and then quickly moves on to a discussion about the importance of integrating the tools from each era to maximize your nonprofit’s Return on Investment (ROI) from utilizing social media and mobile technology. Written as a step-by-step strategic plan, Social Media for Social Good is packed with hundreds of social media and mobile technology best practices and how to’s – 11 of which this webinar will discuss in detail (one from each chapter). Finally, the webinar closes with a brief discussion of what’s coming next in nonprofit communications and fundraising and the importance of early adoption.

To sign up for the Webinar, click the link below. Listed is an additional free webinar that might be of benefit for nonprofits assessing the benefits and considering the effectiveness of the social media strategies they already have in place.

May 31 – Social Media for Social Good: A How-To Webinar for Nonprofits

June 6 – 10 Common Mistakes That Nonprofits Make in Social Media

In a March posting, the SOHOBE Newsletter reported that the LaserMonks are back. LaserMonks is being run as a new venture by a company that has bought their assets, including their customer database.

Well, LaserMonks is showing an act of beneficence towards old and new customers. In an act of benevolent generosity, customers can get free shipping! When placing the order, simply use the code “freeshipping” during the checkout process. But hurry, this magnanimous gesture ends Thursday, May 10th.

If you think that Jeremy Lin is the only topic getting pun traction these days, you must be out of touch. Pinterest is being kicked around the web with all sorts of groaning headlines—which is very Pinteresting. This sort of humorous dealing with what is now being considered the hottest Social Media contender since Facebook, may be making nonprofits feel that it would be of no value to their agency. However nonprofits might want to reconsider that thinking after reading this very well done posting by Nell Edgington of Social Velocity. Why I Love Pinterest and Nonprofits Should Too goes into the rational behind why people are using Pinterest, and how it can be leveraged by nonprofits to help promote their causes. The piece is well written and succinct, and can easily be used as a source of justification for assigning a volunteer or employee to maintaining the “board” that makes up the substance of your posting.

TechSoup has announced the availability of QuickBooks donations from Intuit. Prices are deeply discounted and typically run $25 for the Macintosh versions to $99 for the 3-user Windows version. The Windows edition also includes a nonprofit-specific version with built-in features for grant tracking, financial reporting, and IRS Form 990 data. There are restrictions guiding the eligibility for the donation and its purchase, and only one product may be requested per fiscal year. Please remember that availability of QuickBooks is not guaranteed. In past, this has proven to be a very popular donation, and product ran out very quickly. If your nonprofit is interested in upgrading their QuickBooks, please act as soon as possible. As always, SOHOBE’s SOHOMike can help you with your issues regarding this donation.

Microsoft has recently announced that it is reducing the monthly pricing on subscriptions of its Office 365 (O365) managed cloud service. The price reduction is a consequence of more subscribers on-boarding with the service. In other words, the more people that are signing up, the more Microsoft can afford to bring down the cost of the service.

The most frequently quoted price point is for what is known as the E3 plan. When first introduced, this plan was priced at $24 per month per user. Now, the plan is $20. One of the reasons that this particular plan is so popular is because it includes a subscription to the desktop version of Office Professional Plus 2010. So, rather than pay $400 for a retail copy of Office, a company can sort of “rent” it for $20 per month. However, the Office 365 plan includes much more than just MS Office. For example, e-mail can be hosted on the O365 webserver and powered by MS Exchange. MS Exchange gives Outlook many more capabilities than POP3 or IMAP e-mail does, and extends feature functionality to Contacts and Calendars. Additionally, the plan provides for e-mail archiving capabilities, ‘legal hold,’ and unlimited e-mail storage. And as Microsoft begins to integrate voice into O365, there is hosted voice mail support with auto attendant capabilities, and conferencing using MS Lync.

There are just too many features of O365 to mention in a short newsletter, and many of my SOHOBE clients have already heard me mention many of the ones I think any SOHO business should be interested in. To get an idea of what the O365 service is like firsthand, I encourage my clients to ask me to set up an account on SOHOBE’s O365 demo server. I can also arrange to show what it is like when O365 works with a desktop computer to extend out MS Office’s functionality.

The LaserMonks are back—except they’re not. If you’ve ever ordered from The Cistercian Monks of Our Lady of Spring Bank Abbey, known by many SOHOBE readers as The Laser Monks, you may have recently gotten in an e-mail from them announcing that they’ve reopened their business. The Laser Monks had gone out of business some time near August of last year, citing a downturn in orders and an upturn in competition as the main reasons for their decision to close their virtual doors. The Laser Monks were known for cheap pricing on ink cartridges and toner for printers, and for their very personalized, if not always stella, brand of customer service.

So, the Laser Monks are gone, but the LaserMonks (I noticed that the name is now rendered as a geekish compound word) have bought their assets and are starting as a new venture. According to their e-mail:

We recently acquired the domain and the rights to the customer database. We have no affiliation with the previous owners.

This is correct as the new company is headquartered in California, rather than in Wisconsin. As such, the new company doesn’t use its profits to benefit the community as its primary goal. However, the new LaserMonks, aware of its heritage, has indicated that in the future shoppers will be able to designate a cause, which will receive a donation from the purchase.

Perhaps, even more telling of the speed at which the original Laser Monks collapsed, is the paragraph instructing customers with customer service issues never resolved by the prior company to contact them. Although no guarantee is made as to a resolution, the new LaserMonks does indicate that they will try their best to resolve the old issue.

Microsoft Office Live Small Business will be discontinued on April 30, 2012. Businesses that are using the service should begin a transition to Office 365 as soon as possible. To help effected businesses, Microsoft has created a self-transition guide, which will detail steps and considerations to help manually move accounts over to the new service while minimizing the chance of losing data. Microsoft also suggests that subscribers might want to hire a consultant to help with the process:

It will take time and work to move your email and website to Office 365. The process includes a lot of steps and many technical terms that you might not be familiar with.

SOHOBE clients can contact me to help with the transition. I can suggest options for other services, or help in the transfer of the account and data over to a new service or to Office 365.

I have been known to point out numerous significant holiday events which I feel would be of value for my clients to be aware of. After all, why would anyone want to miss American Chocolate Week (March 18 to 24)? However, there is another observance that all my SOHO clients should know about.

National Consumer Protection Week is March 4 to March 10, and this is the 14th year of the observance. Consumer Protection is a broad term that can encompass much legislatively. However, the reason I thought it was worth writing about is because the NCPW agency is offering events that can help protect the privacy of my SOHO clients.

It would seem that, even in this day and age of inexpensive paper shredders, there are still people who are throwing paperwork out with the trash without first shredding it. Perhaps the glamour of cyber identity theft has caused people to let down their guard. So the NCPW and the Rhode Island State Attorney General are hosting a series of Shred-a-Thons. Doc Shredding Corp. will be shredding paperwork, and issue certificates of destruction as proof of the paperwork having been destroyed.

Various sites throughout Rhode Island will host the event. The first is slated for Tuesday, March 6th at the Warwick Mall from 11:00 AM – 1:00 PM. For a listing of other locations and updates, please visit the Secretary of State’s NCPW webpage. The Shred-a-Thons are apparently free, but a donation of foodstuffs to the Rhode Island Food Bank is requested.

In past editions of SOHOBE News, I made mention of Square, a device that allows your iOS devices (that’s an iPhone or iPad, by the way) or ‘Droid (that’s an Android OS device) to accept credit card payments by using an inexpensive card reading device. Well, in an obvious attempt to cash in on the name, the Square Card Reader website has appeared. There you can get a square-shaped card reader for popular smartphones. The use of the word “Square” is repeated numerous times in the website copy.

However, this is not Square, the company that started the whole card swiping with smartphone phenomena. This company is LEADERS Merchant Services, an independent company that uses Wells Fargo Bank, N.A., Walnut Creek, CA to provide their merchant services. Now, I’m sure that LEADERS might be a fine service. But I’m less than enthused by the way that someone navigating the uncharted waters of smartphone readers could sign up to their service mistakenly, when in fact they were looking for the original Square. I can imagine that soon there might be a flood of Square This or Square That websites, all offering some sort of device and plan that would allow you to add card reader services to your mobile device. And that could be a problem.

So, I’m advising my SOHO clients that they should bookmark the original Square website (www.squareup.com). Square.com will redirect to the squareup.com website, by the way.