Some good practcal business suggestions...

As a companion to 10 Reasons You Should Never Get a Job and 10 Stupid Mistakes Made by the Newly Self-Employed, here are 10 positive lessons I learned from more than 12 years as an entrepreneur.  A few of these are rehashed from the 10 Mistakes article, but most are new.

This list is the result of the liberal application of the advice from item #5, “Fail your way forward.”

Without further ado:

Network selectively.  Nothing says “business newbie” like shotgun networking.  “You never know when someone might say yes” is marketing for dummies.  Take the time to build a profile of your ideal customers, and target your networking activities to reach them.  Speak to those who are already predisposed to want what you offer.  Almost any profile is better than “anyone with a pulse.”

Buy the best chair you can find.  You’ll probably use your chair more than any other piece of business equipment, including your computer, so don’t settle for a crappy one.  Consider a chair with padded arms and a high back (to the top of your head) for maximum comfort.  The most expensive chairs aren’t necessarily ideal for you, so you must test your way to comfort nirvana...

http://www.stevepavl...snarky-entrepreneur/

The winner of the Funniest Graph contest at The Journal of Irreproducable Results is "All Theories Proven With One Graph":


Winner:

• http://www.jir.com/g.../index.html#OneGraph

Runner-ups:

• http://www.mediacosm.com/eating/
• http://www.venganza.org/

If a picture is worth a thousand words, how much is a picture with words worth?

Fun index card graphs and diagrams..

http://indexed.blogspot.com

Shedko Software:  http://eng.softq.org/

Some very cool programs here for customizing/labeling your folder icons. All FREE.

    * Folderico
    * Folder2MyPC
    * Badges
    * Small Utils
    * Bulba 2006
    * sShutdown
    * FTV
    * Ogg Property Page

Some differences between vocational and life experience differences of males and females.

Thought-provoking article over at Venture Beat today. The author, Joyce Park, points out that there is a substantial gender gap in the computer engineering field since few girls seem inclined to tinker with computers on their own time. Her primary assertions are as follows:

Almost all of the male engineers I know report childhood experience “playing” with computers. I also had this experience, as did most of the female engineers I know; but non-engineer women seem far less likely to have done so.
If Programming 101 classes started with social software rather than math problems and competitive games, more women might discover an unexpected interest.
Women seem to be disproportionately attracted to careers where they feel they can help others — for instance medicine (which of course requires rigorous, highly competitive scientific training) — rather than careers that promise high pay or entrepreneurial possibility.
Male self-taught engineers often begin working with computers as a hobby — for instance, legions of Open Source devotees (including myself) began this way. Women seem less inclined to learn programming just for fun, and more likely to see it as simply a job (to be fair, many self-taught male engineers also seem to primarily see their work as a job rather than a personal passion).

http://mikeomatic.net/?p=136

Free software to modify windows and arrange them in a pattern to maximize desktop space.

Although monitors and video cards are becoming cheaper every day, it is still not enough space on the screen for those people who intensively use computer in their everyday work, such as engineers, financial brokers, software developers, etc. Do they need to buy another monitor? No, there is WinArranger - a simpler solution.

WinArranger helps you to use your workspace more effectively by arranging windows on your computer screen in the most optimal way. It can even hide windows borders and captions and system taskbar. Multi-monitor configurations are fully supported.

Its low system requirements make it possible to use it in your office as well as at home. Moreover, it has neat and straightforward interface, customizable hotkeys and features unique layouts which can not be accomplished by the standard means.

http://www.managebytes.com/wa/