I’ve recently finished a book on social media (available for pre-order from Amazon , thanks for asking) and one of the things I’ve come across quite a bit is that people think they ought to ‘do’ social media without thinking about which media is right for their business. There are a number of interesting...

Well, that was lively. Twitter went crazy for a few hours as the upgrade to software for a certain Smartphone went completely through the roof briefly when it was released. Clearly Microsoft has a vested interest in loving it when this happens and it’s another company’s software but let’s leave that...

OK, it's like this. The Internet is about to have its most substantial overhaul ever - in 2010, if current plans come to fruition, domain name registration is going to change. ICANN, the authority that polices domain names, is about to make substantial alterations. We'll be able to register loads of...

I’ve been writing a book on social networking lately – out in October, thanks for asking, called This Is Social Media, and inevitably one of the things under discussion is blogging. There’s a debate about the best way to blog; you can host it yourself or you can use something installed onto your PC....

It’s only a week since my last entry on this blog where I stressed the benefits of home working. Now it’s becoming apparent that for this sort of networked technology to truly fly the infrastructure that underpins it is going to need some sort of overhaul if we’re going to come anywhere near the aims...

So, did everybody work from home on 18 May? What? You didn’t know it was Work From Home Day? OK, a little secret – these things are usually a gimmick thought up by someone with a marketing budget for a home working widget, you know it and I know it. Father’s Day is soon, and that was an American invention...

By the time you read this let’s hope Swine Flu will be receding into memory – in news terms it’s certainly diminishing and hopefully in health terms it’ll be doing so as well. It serves as a reminder, though, that there will be times when people can’t get into work. This might be because of health...

In case you didn’t know, we’re just through the annual agony that is the Infosec show. It’s great being a journalist; you fetch up at a trade show, they look pleased to see you then realise you’re writing about stuff rather than spending money and their eyes sort of glaze over. No matter – liking journalists...

As I write we’ve just had yet another bank holiday in the UK (any American readers might note that’s what we call public holidays over here). There were two last month but sadly none for my birthday a couple of weeks back, which isn’t yet a matter for public jubilation (and the DVD I was given wasn’t...

I’ve been doing a lot of work on social media lately – for example, writing a book on it (about which I wasn’t going to tell you, but you forced it out of me). That’s how I came to be doing a talk on it recently. Some of the usual questions turned up, and they all involve how to manage an identity online...

You might have heard a lot about cloud computing – it’s certainly on my mind as I’m writing a bit about it for a supplement in one of the newspapers. Basically it’s a matter of having all of your applications hosted elsewhere – so instead of firing up Word or Excel on your computer you log in through...

Customer service should be a given unless you’re a bank, in which case everyone knows you can’t afford it but will charge anyway. The customer is king and other clichés – you know this stuff. Thing is, the customer isn’t always in front of you. This is particularly galling when you’re supposed to keep...

The news this week that customers are deserting small businesses online for established brands is grim but unsurprising. It was obviously going to happen for two reasons. First the findings are from research commissioned by online aggregator eDeals, so you might find there’s some vested interest in there...

Readers might have noticed there’s been a certain flurry of interest just lately about online music. Essentially YouTube is taking all of its professionally-produced music videos down because it says the music industry wants too much money. You can have the debate about the rights and wrongs amongst...

  This is the first of a series of Guest-blog articles from Guy Clapperton, a freelance journalist who has specialised in the small business arena for over a decade. Guy contributes to the Guardian, Times, Financial Times, Independent and Sunday Telegraph and broadcasts very occasionally on the...