Ina Sebastian at Jupiter Research wrote about a ComputerWorld prediction that Starbucks will evenutally offer free WiFi service.  Personally, I avoid Starbucks in favor of coffee shops that offer free connections.  My guess is that Starbucks has found this to be a popular stance.  I believe free WiFi will become expected and that SMBs will be able to offer real value to their customers through creative use of this connectivity. 

Question: You run a destination type SMB like Starbucks.  How do you use the WiFi service you are offering them to build a community of your customers?  Do you allow them to engage each other a la Facebook or MySpace?  Do you give them the opportunity to "speak" to you directly?

I wrote about the importance of SMBs keeping processes and systems simple.  I recently began work with a new client that was searching for ways to increase knowledge sharing across their organization.  They were just starting the development of a new corporate intranet.  They had spec’d out their needs and identified a sub-site to have custom developed.  The analysts and developers did a nice job and it looks great.

But I recommended they hold on the custom development.  They needed to evaluate MS Sharepoint’s capabilities before proceeding.  Why?  The basic corporate intranet portal has been built 100+ times already.  Sharepoint, Plone, Liferay, JBoss, DotNetNuke and many others are decent out-of-the-box foundations for an internal site.  So there’s just no reason to pursue custom development for this type of project. 

But why Sharepoint?  This client is also upgrading their core enterprise system.  Turns out that the system based on a MS platform and uses Sharepoint for document management.  Doesn’t it make a lot of sense to evaluate whether or not the platform used by your core enterprise system will work for the rest of your needs as well?

Right now, they seem to like Sharepoint and we’re now doing a test project to prove it to the company.  If the test fails, there are other options.  But custom development for an intranet should be a last resort.

I posted that I’d be trying out the new Lotus Symphony suite of office productivity tools.  Well that didn’t take.  I probably should have changed over the file properties for xls, doc, and ppt files to open with Symphony.  Since I didn’t, I hardly used the tools at all.

Here’s the rub with Symphony and the other MS Office alternatives.  Microsoft Office reached dominance not because of the functions that your average user cares about and that every basic office suite does well.  The tools were widely adopted because introductory level developers (like me) were able to quickly build department level applications that helped improve staff productivity.  In the absence of any real developer tools, I don’t believe Lotus Symphony or any other MS Office alternative has a shot at being anything more than a niche product.

I hate that I didn’t do a decent evaluation of the Lotus tools.  But the reality is that I spend my time working with tools that fit the environments my clients have in place.  As long as organizations have one person who has gone past the basic data entry functions of Excel, I will never convince them that an Office alternative will work for them.  And if they’re so small that they don’t have a serious investment in MS Office, why would I ever recommend they start out using tools that can’t be extended as their needs grow?

I’m an avid reader of Seth Godin’s blog.  His latest post states that companies waste too much time on original web design.  Your web site isn’t supposed to be a work of art.  It’s supposed to be a window into your business for your customers.  If you sell, then make it easy to buy.  If you provide services, make it easy to understand what you do and how those services can be procured.  Start with a site that you like, and have your designer build from there.

The only thing I’d add to his post is that you don’t have to limit your up front research to looking at existing sites.  There are thousands of free or very inexpensive site templates that can be modified to fit your tastes.  Look on oswd.org or Google "website templates" for tons of resources.  Don’t spend time or money reinventing the wheel.

One of the greatest developments in office software suites has been the desktop database.  People have done some pretty complex things with relative ease using tools like Microsoft Access.  Now, online databases such as DabbleDB and ZohoDB are advancing the tool and allowing companies to collaborate outside their own borders using secure databases.

I have a love/hate relationship with MS Access.  Way back when, I spent a lot of time doing Microsoft Office development and Access was a favorite tool of mine.  I liked that I could easily hook up to the enterprise databases, pull the information I needed and integrate it with any other application I happened to build. 

But people who do Access development full time tend to get trapped into that box.  When the task becomes greater than the tool, they simply find ways to make it work.  And that leads to problems.

Nowadays I spend a lot of time supporting an Access database that has outgrown its skin.  I’m rebuilding the application with a SQL Server back end, and ASP.NET and Sharepoint on the front end.  But it’s a really slow process because there are so many business rules hard coded into the VBA.  Identifying the code that has to be there versus what was done inefficiently is a real chore.  And all the while I spend time helping users through crashes, data corruption, and reports that aren’t tying out.

So, here’s my advice of the day.  Use Access.  Or Dabble or Zoho.  They’re great tools and fill a need.  But when you need more than a couple users, have rigorous security requirements, need sophisticated data entry forms, or have complex reporting needs, it’s time for a different tool.  Don’t put this off.  Your application will only become more complex over time.  And you’ll end up spending a lot of time and money supporting the application instead of improving your business.