Peter Harris, MD of Vision Critical in Australia (and on Twitter @peteraharris), wrote an excellent blog post that summarises the issues with research and how we can learn from of all people ‘Vanilla Ice’.

His blog post- Stop, collaborate and LISTEN, focuses on the issues with research and those that do and do not use it- and those that should.

In addition to this he talks about needing to break out of the ‘traditional’ way of thinking for researchers and moving to the idea of ‘Listening’.

Full blog post here and definitely worth a read- http://peteraharris.wordpress.com/2010/02/16/stop-collaborate-and-listen/

Well it’s nearly 12 months since I braved the market, through caution to the wind and decided to start working for myself.

Like many in a similar situation, I went through the roller coaster of emotions. One day it would be the best decision you have ever made, the next- career suicide! Add in the fact that we had our second child on the way in 2 weeks, and things start to get really interesting. There has definitely been no shortage of advice nor a shortage of people to give it. Most has been incredibly useful, with the odd piece of ‘my god what were you thinking’.

Raz Chorev sent through this article from the Wall Street Journal- How to Succeed in the Age of Going Solo. There is some excellent advice in the article, from getting your own work space to joining business networks.

Probably the one thing that was missing from the article was a very simple piece of advice- don’t be afraid to ask for help. Sound’s simple, but when you decide to go it alone, it is often a hard (or even embarrassing) thing to admit and ask for. Start with people in your own network. You will be surprised at how wiling many are to lend a helping hand, or refer you to a professional resource that they might be using.

For me is was the financial and administrative side of the business that was taking a lot of my time. Perhaps the fact that I failed accounting first time around at university was a sign of things to come! First thing I did was chat to my accountant- Mr TaxMan (yes that’s his alter ego and you guessed it- phone number 1800-Tax-Man, gotta love him just for that).

Next was to reach out to friends on Twitter asking for sites/ software that people would recommend to help manage quoting/ invoicing. Many recommended Zoho Invoices, and I am extremely happy with it. Lets me do all my quoting and invoicing online, as well as managing reminders for late payers.

There are hundreds of other situations that you can get help for, and entire industries are popping up to service these exact needs. Virtual office space, desk shares, virtual assistants, time management and copywriting- the list goes on.

For all those that have taken the plunge and are going at it on their own, just remember that you don’t need to do it all alone. The sooner you can identify your own weaknesses, the sooner you can get on with the job of building a successful business.

Kevin Purdy over at Life Hacker has put together a great list of downloads and tips for those of us who are out and about with our laptops more than most. There are apps for both PC and Mac, and I highly recommend taking a look.

If you are anything like me, you are always looking for another tip and trick to make working remotely just that more enjoyable.

Check out the article at- Top 10 Downloads For A Road Warrior Laptop

I started writing this post from a cafe up the road from my house whilst waiting for my Chiropractor appointment. I needed to go to the bank and post office so figured I would just stay out and get some work done. Searching for a cafe to work from I suddenly remembered that it was Melbourne Cup day and every place had a special lunch running thus making free tables somewhat of a scarcity. I finally found a small cafe/ deli around the corner with decent coffee and planted myself there for an hour or so.

As always my first priority is to find some open and free wifi to connect to and get some work done- this is where things got interesting. There were several networks locked down, and the only one without security was of all things the RTA traffic routers at the intersection. To my astonishment there was no security on this access point and I was freely able to connect and access the web. I could have tethered my iPhone for some 3G access, but this is cumbersome, and in many cases the wifi will always give better access and stability. I have gone to some decent lengths to be able to work more freely without it costing me (much) more. I even downgraded the OS on my iPhone so that I could use tethering for 3G access when WiFi is not available.

This got me thinking about how hard it is to get decent web access when out, and why cafes still do not see it as an advantage to offer such a service.

There are a few VERY smart cafes in the city and the east that have put in wifi to varying degrees. Some have a cumbersome log in procedure whilst others simply have the network wide open. Others are doing an interesting experiment and offering the access outside of peak times (lunch and dinner) to promote trade in those periods.

Whatever the decision, I can simply say this- if there are 2 cafes in an area I need to work in and one has wifi and the other does not, guess where I am parking myself!!!

Just a little food for thought for cafe owners looking to drum up some extra business.

I have finally decided to take the plunge and have signed up for Google Apps to host my corporate mail. This is not something that I expected to do, and until know had been taking the ‘cheapskate’ route and running my mail through an existing hosting account that I have for other domains (including this blog).

Having used Gmail since I wrangled an invite from a friend working in Silicon Valley when it first launched, I have been an instant fan. The unlimited storage coupled with the search feature just blew me away (although now I am on a Mac, OS X search rocks).

I must say that I am just as impressed with the corporate version of Gmail thus far. My migration was simple and

There are a few reasons that I made the switch:

- Additional Backup- having my email stored both locally and in the cloud is yet another safeguard for me. Since having kids and accumulating massive amounts of digital photos and video, backup has become an extremely important issue for me. Knowing how easily things can get lost, stolen or fried (we had a power surge in the house but our data survived- the plasma TV didn’t), I use both local and off-site backup through Carbonite.

- Reliability- although there have been some well publicised outages recently, I am much more confident in Google’s ability to scale and manage storage than my current hosting provider.

- Storage- not having to worry about how much email I accumulate over the years on my personal account has meant that I just don’t delete things. I just archive it and then it is there whenever I need it. When writing this post I actually went back to my very first email ever sent in Gmail quickly and easily.

Time will tell how things go, but so far so good.

With all the rush to create a social media policy for an organisation, often the simple approach is often the best.

A recent post over on the FreshNetworks blog gives some good points about how to write a social media policy. If you are in the process of compiling a policy for your organisation (and you should), then it’s worth having a look at- How to write your firm’s social media policy

Not exactly article from just this week, but definitely some here that are worth a read:

Knowledge Management and Social Business Transformation. Guest post by Jenni Beattie from Digital Democracy over on Market Magazine.

The fundamentals haven’t changed just the tools and technologies! Post by David Wesson over at his personal blog Digital Culture. Video from this post is below:

Great video of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos talking about starting the company from his house, through to the recent acquisition of Zappos.