Top small business consultants will gather in Seattle, WA on September 23, 2008, to offer a workshop for small business owners. The workshop will help business owners learn how to save money and time by better utilizing technology, marketing and other business resources.
Seattle, WA August 21, 2008 — X-BAR (www.xbarit.com), a leading technology advisor, [...]

I’ve been invited to participate in a panel discussion called Small Business Ownership: Tips for Success, as part of Biz Fair 2008on Saturday, September 6th, from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., at the RentonVocational Technical College. The day-long event targets start-up and existing business and is sponsored by the SBA in partnership with IRS and [...]

Part 1
A friend passed along this great tool for generating absurd business-speak phrases. We’ve all seen these types of tools before, but they continue to be a source for a good laugh. After all, nobody actually speaks this way, right?
Part 2
Apparently they do. I received the following email earlier this week. It was titled “Approach [...]

I generally find it encouraging to be headed in the opposite direction as everybody else.

In my quest to become a zero-junk mail household—and with the help of ProQuo and Catalog Choice—I tripped upon a way to get a free credit report from Equifax.
It’s simple! Just print out and send this form to Equifax and you’ll get a free copy of your credit report by mail about 2 weeks later. [...]

Check out the video from the panel discussion I participated in as part of the Smart and Simple Strategies for Small Business conference held on June 4, 2008 at the Washington Athletic Club. The event, sponsored by the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce and Microsoft, included a panel discussion titled Tech/Infrastructure: Build Your IT House [...]

I stopped by the AT&T store on my home this afternoon to order an iPhone. Rather than sacrificing the great weather this weekend standing in line, I decided to simply order the phone. It should arrive in about 5-7 business days — much more civilized.
Two details to be aware of:

The advertised prices — $199 and [...]

Microsoft recently published a white paper showing that Windows Server 2008 uses up to 10% less energy than Server 2003.
Their tests show that, out of the box, Windows Server 2008 uses about 2% less power when idle and about 7% less when active compared to Server 2003. Support for Hyper-V, a hyper-visor based virtualization [...]

A few details related to how Zenith’s BDR solution works with Exchange Server and Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS):

For Exchange Server 2003 and 2007, the recommended best practice is to disable circular logging.
To prevent the unfettered growth of Exchange transaction log, Exchange Server flushes its log files after each successful VSS-aware incremental backup, which, by [...]

Your peace of mind. Our new Backup and Disaster Recovery services.
X-BAR is excited to announce the launch of our new Backup and Disaster Recovery service. We know that in the event of a disaster—minor or major, environmental or technological—loss of data and extended server downtime can cripple a small or midsize business.
94% of companies that [...]

A few photos taken April 29, 2008 at McCaw Hall where I received the Small Business Administration’s 2008 Young Entreprenuer of the Year award.

I’ve been asked to participate in a panel discussion, titled Build Your IT House, at Smart and Simple Strategies for Small Business, an event sponsored by the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce and Microsoft on June 4th. The day-long event, to be held at the Washington Athletic Club, will features sessions on small business topics, [...]

On Thursday, Qwest announced that it will offer two new fiber-optic Internet connectivity options as part of its Fiber to the Neighborhood (FTTN) initiative. According to PC World and Broadband Reports, the two new levels of service, Quantum and Titanium, will feature download speeds of 12 and 20Mbps and cost $52 and $105, respectively. Both will be [...]

A little background: Earlier this year I kept coming across a particular photo in tech-related marketing materials online and in print. At first, I thought the photo was just generic enough to seem familiar. But through an image search I quickly confirmed this wasn’t the case.
It turns out the photo, featuring a woman in a [...]

We’re in the middle of hiring a system and network engineer and I wanted to share a few tips on how to get noticed if you’re considering applying for a position X-BAR.
I don’t know how these compare to what other companies—large or small—look for, but these are the things that we notice, for better and for [...]