Karim Vaes

The article “Protect And Track Your Laptop In Case Of Theft” has a good breakdown of the service of The Laptop Lock. It kind of reminds me of iAlertU on Mac…

The latest post from personal mba features called “Patterns That Work” has some nice insights…

In many areas of life – including business – you’ll find a few underlying patterns that appear over and over again when you take a moment to look beneath the surface of what you’re doing. For example, here are few sentences that, combined, describe how the vast majority of businesses make money

• Make a physical product, then sell and deliver it for more than it cost.
• Provide a service, then charge a fee.
• Create a shared resource that can be used by many people (like a gym), then charge for access.
• Offer an ongoing subscription, then charge a recurring fee.
• Offer insurance against something bad happening, collect premium payments, then pay out only when the bad thing happens.

You don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time you do something new – choose a core pattern that works, then focus your time and energy on making something people find remarkably useful.

In this engaging talk from the EG’08 conference, New York Times tech columnist David Pogue rounds up some handy cell phone tools and services that can boost your productivity and lower your bills (and your blood pressure).

Simply put; you can avoid common costing mistakes by being well prepared up-front. Yet here are three tips for sidestepping project estimating mistakes.

• Never assume anyting, get confirmation! : Often people assume that things get done, but in reality things have a different outcome. Realise that you don’t have a view on people’s mind and full agenda.
• Expect the unkown, prepare for it! : Each project will uncover unkown things. Being utterly prepared narrows down that risk, yet it doesn’t remove it…
• Write a clear scope! : Miscommunication is easy. Specify exactly what you will and won’t do.

Source : Three tips for avoiding project estimating mistakes

Macworld features an article called “Ten business lessons from ‘Battlestar Galactica’”

A summary

• 1. Tech isn’t always the answer. : Totally agree… IT-ers tend to always go for a tech solution where a human solution might suffice!
• 2. Don’t neglect training. : I guess nobody will disagree here, but companies often don’t see the hidden cost of neglecting to do so.
• 3. Some things can’t be outsourced. : I’ll repeat it again; Outsourcing is good, but don’t do it on stategical areas!
• 4. Update your antivirus. : Personally I’d like to see this one renamed to “keep your organization up-to-date”
• 5. Democracy doesn’t always work. : A simple Project Management lesson; It’s a democracy until the scope is set, then it’s dictatorship!
• 6. Some problems can’t be killed. : Indeed, not all problems can be killed, just learn to cope with them.
• 7. Seek strategic alliances with competitors. : So true! Being a stategic game fan, I found that alliances either make or break any outcome of a game. The numerous time I’ve “won”, is always due to making (and breaking!) stategic alliances.
• 8. Don’t store all your backups in one place. : Better renamed to “don’t put all your eggs in one basket”.
• 9. The mission can change at any time. : A bit like 4., the world keeps evolving, incorporate that in your strategy.
• 10. Beware of visionaries. Zealots make bad leaders. – Awh, crap, that’d be against me…