Here’s the startup news making headlines today on other Web sites and blogs. The best tools to use to run your small business, what initiatives BC can tackle to reclaim the tech throne, and reviews about your local business.
Best small business tools
What are the best online tools and software packages available out there to help you run your small business? Should you use Open Office, or fork over the cash for Microsoft Office? What is an accounting solution suitable for a firm with just a few employees? How should you share files with your employees? ReadWriteWeb offers a good list of resources to help you wade through those decisions on its new ReadWriteStart channel. Of course, ITBusiness.ca has lots of advice to offer you on this matter as well.
Cormac Foster on ReadWriteWeb.
How BC can get its groove back
In response to Jevon MacDonald’s April 9 post on StartupNorth, a technology practice lawyer from Capital West Partners says that BC needs to wake up. Toronto has passed Vancouver as Canada’s hi-tech hotbed, with recent successes such as Varicent selling to IBM, Rypple selling to Salesforce.com, and Kobo selling to Rakuten. What does BC need to do to get its game back? Five initiatives are laid out, inspired by MacDonald’s post, but with a BC spin.
Brent Holliday on Corporate Recruiters.
Local business marketing
Local businesses used to rely a lot on word of mouth for business promotion. Well these days, word of mouth is to social networking is as snail mail is to e-mail. Mobile apps are taking social networking beyond even that, adding reviews to the mix so customers can share their opinions both with friends and strangers. Be proactive about this new type of marketing by engaging customers or prospective customers on these channels. Five good ones are explained.