January 2012

You are currently browsing the monthly archive for January 2012.

Mobile Friendly: How easy was it?

January 30, 2012 in microISV startup, Mobile Friendly by ag | 1 comment

DOT Placards Before WPTouch

DOT Placards Before

DOT Placards After WPTouch

DOT Placards After

Note:  This is the somewhat techie version of this story.  If you don’t maintain your own website, you’re probably interested in the more business-oriented version here.

Having checked out our various web sites using both our own mobile devices and the nice HowToGoMo tool that I wrote about previously, it was pretty easy to decide that we needed to invest some time in trying to increase our sites’ mobile friendliness.  And it was easy to decide where to start. Read the rest of this entry »

Mobile Friendly: How easy can it be?

January 30, 2012 in microISV startup, Mobile Friendly by ag | 2 comments

Sherprog Site after WPTouch was applied

Sherprog After WPTouch

Sherprog Before WPTouch Conversion

Sherprog Before WPTouch

I started writing a post about how easy it was for us to convert our two simplest websites to be mobile friendly.  It was pretty easy and you can see the big difference it makes.  But the details are probably only of interest to folks who have something of a DIYer relationship with their website(s).  If that’s you, check out my How easy was it? write-up.

However, if, like most business people, you had someone else build your website, you’re almost certainly going to have someone else make your mobile-friendly modifications, too.  So for you, the questions are more:  What should I expect, in terms of time and money?  How do I know if the person I’m talking is honest, competent, and going to do a good job?

Read the rest of this entry »

Tax Time, Typewriter Time

January 22, 2012 in microISV startup by ag | 2 comments

In the U.S., April is usually thought of as ‘tax time’ since that’s when personal returns are due.  But, for small businesses, January is tax time since we have to get a ton of filings done by the end of the month.  Our own Federal returns aren’t due till March but all the paperwork we produce for others: the W2s for employees, the 1099s for contractors, and many other quarterly or annual reports are due by the end of this month.

I grew up in a family business and remember the bad old days of computing payroll taxes ‘by hand’, looking them up from the tax tables one employee at a time, late into the night, every two-week pay period.   So for the most part, with QuickBooks to back us up, I consider most of our tax reports a little bit nervous-making (Do I have the right numbers?  Am I getting the reporting quarter checked off correctly?  Is that deadline date a post-marked date or a due-there date?) but laughingly easy to actually generate.

However, amazingly to me, there are still a few tax forms that can’t be just printed out on blank paper by QuickBooks. Read the rest of this entry »