Blog Archives
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How Green is Your Office?
By M. Darren Root, CPA.CITP; Executive Editor - Thursday May 7, 2009We’re all doing our part to help the planet last longer, but are we doing enough? A recent article on GreenerWorking.com reminded me of the “hardware” side of the equation. In addition to paperless processes, document management and virtual office/SaaS solutions, “sustainable computing” involves extending the lifecycles of desktop and laptop computers. According to the article, holding on to a PC for three years generates savings of $325 for every $1,000 of original cost. Keeping a PC four years yields nearly $500 in savings. Pretty impressive. Who couldn’t use an extra $500? For more ideas, a complete IDC white paper is available for download. What are some of your ideas to make our practice’s greener? Send me an e-mail... -
Social Media Example Supports the CPA Firm "Me" Problem
By Scott Cytron, ABC; President, Cytron and Co. - Wednesday May 6, 2009I love social media because it brings people together in ways never before imagined. Just last week, I read an article about how one woman, Rhonda Surman, a postmistress in Scotland, was able to locate the owner of a missing camera. Based on some 600 photos, Ms. Surman and her friends located the owner by posting some of the photos on Flickr. As a result, Ms. Surman now holds the newly deemed title, "Digital Samaritan." How is this an example of social media? By asking the Flickr community to help locate the owner, she brought people together for the greater good. Most professionals only think of social media in terms of what it can do directly for them, instead of what it can do for others. As a result, I think there are direct... -
Recent Computer Theft is a Wake-up Call for SaaS Solutions
By M. Darren Root, CPA.CITP; Executive Editor - Wednesday May 6, 2009In late April, an Los Angeles office building was hit by burglars who stole computers from 60 of the 80 businesses in the building, including a CPA whose computer had the tax documents of 800 clients. What would you do if this happened to you? Panic? Sure. Rely on the backups you should have had? Hopefully. Apologize and try to reconstruct the data? Of course. While incidents like this one are really awful, they reinforce what I talk about in my presentations and in previous blog entries: You just can’t underestimate the importance of the virtual office and SaaS solutions. Why not let someone else host your applications and maintain your data? Security is no longer an issue thanks to encryption, so why burden yourself with a... -
Five Places For Cheapskates
By Dave McClure, Contributing Writer/Columnist - Friday May 1, 2009I'm Scottish by heritage and nature, and we denizens of the Highlands have a certain reputation for frugality to the extreme. In simple terms, we tend to be cheap. This means that I am always on the scout for sources of good technology, hardware and software at lower-than-you-could-expect rates. It is a difficult quest, because sites that cater to cheapskates like me tend to make less profit, and sometimes do not survive changes in the marketplace. Many of my favorite places have simply disappeared in the night. Fortunately, I am not the only one out there looking. With the help of others, I've compiled a list of sites that I check frequently for new deals, and am seldom disappointed. There are a lot of them, some of which are very... -
Is Print Dead or is it Just in Transition?
By M. Darren Root, CPA.CITP; Executive Editor - Saturday April 25, 2009Many of you know that Source Media will soon roll Practical Accountant and Accounting Technology into Accounting Today. I am saddened by the loss of the publication’s two editors and colleagues, Jeff Stimpson (Practical Accountant) and Bob Scott (Accounting Technology), and wish them well in their new endeavors. The loss of these two niche publications begs the question: Is print dead? Just recently, print editions of the Rocky Mountain News and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer ceased publication, and many other publications and newspapers have abandoned their print products to ultimately take up residence in an online-only world. A Time magazine article, in fact, discussed the 10 most endangered newspapers in America. My belief is that... -
Is a new tax vendor coming to town?
By Isaac M. O'Bannon, Editor - Friday April 24, 2009A couple of weeks ago, I received a press release from Commercial Logic, Inc., a company that's been around the accounting space since 1981, mostly offering practice management systems and such. The gist of the announcement is that they've partnered with Advanced Professional Solutions (APS), which apparently has had a strong user base in the UK (20% of top 100 firms), New Zealand (60%) and Australia (70%) for nearly 20 years. CLI is going to be the U.S. distributor of that company's suite of practice management, business intelligence, CRM, document management and business process automation software, having helped them adjust the programs appropriately to U.S. compliance requirements, accounting principles, workflow processes and... -
Pollyanna or Polly-Glutton for Punishment
By Scott Cytron, ABC; President, Cytron and Co. - Thursday April 23, 2009Whether we’re talking about the recession or the latest celebrity mishap, my close friends sometimes refer to me as a “Pollyanna” – always seeing the brighter side of the situation. You know the type: the eternal optimist … the glass really is half full … give a person five chances. That’s why a Financial Times article, “Four Reasons to be Cheerful,” caught my eye. Just before the writer prognosticates the four reasons, he offers a quick antidote from Peter Shaw, a partner with Praesta. One of Shaw’s C-Suite executives asked his chairman to tell him about the most important thing he should be doing in a financially turbulent economy like this. The answer? “Smile.” The writer’s second reason out of four... -
How To Clean A Keyboard
By Dave McClure, Contributing Writer/Columnist - Tuesday April 21, 2009The keyboard of your computer is filthy. Even if it doesn't have that familiar brown-to-black border around each key. Even if you are the one person in a billion who never eats or drinks anything at your workstation. Even if you are the cleanest, most obsessive neat freak on the planet. Over time, tiny bits of human skin, hair, dust, and some stuff you don't even know about, have collected under, between and on the keys of your computer keyboard (and mouse!). What can you do? Obviously, clean your keyboard and mouse on a regular basis. But before you rush off to stick these electronic devices in the office dishwasher, there are three rules to follow: 1. Get a spare keyboard. It doesn't hurt to have one, and just in case something goes... -
Welcome to CPATechViews.com
By Isaac M. O'Bannon, Editor - Thursday April 16, 2009Welcome to CPATechViews.com, a blog covering technologies that affect tax and accounting professionals. CPATechViews.com features posts by practicing professionals, technology consultants and the editorial staff of The CPA Technology Advisor, the profession’s most trusted source for technology information. While this is the first blog entry for CPATechViews.com, The CPA Technology Advisor has long enjoyed a blog presence. Our hope is that CPATechViews.com becomes more than just our “new and improved” blog, but that it truly is more informative and practical to those who follow it. Among the key features will be exclusive online content produced by our regular team of bloggers, as well as RSS feeds to news and podcasts from the... -
Ten Things I Don’t Do Online
By Dave McClure, Contributing Writer/Columnist - Tuesday April 14, 2009I’ve been online almost from the beginning of the personal computer age. I was an early adapter to CompuServe, ran forums on AOL and MSN, haunted the bulletin boards from coast to coast in the night hours, and moved to the commercial Internet in the spring of ’94. That doesn’t prove much except that I am older than dirt, cantankerous, suspicious and disinclined to get involved in a lot of the technological fads. And because of this, there are some things that I simply won’t do over the Internet — 10 of them, to be exact. Here’s the list, and here are my reasons. 1. Public Wi-Fi. How many ways can you say, “stolen data?” Public Wi-Fi services, be they at a coffee shop, a hotel lobby or an airport, are simply not secure...
