Google's web mail service could be the greenest one you can use for your business or personal emails. The computer and technology spheres aren't often seen as green because of their energy use and materials used in their fabrication. Google's servers have a very good Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) rating ( and most useless components (like graphical components on monitor-free servers) are stripped out for less power use. They have a 1.1 rating where the best possible rating is 1.0. For reference, Microsoft's PUE rating is 1.6, which is also considered quite good. Google also reuse their water in the vapor form in the server-cooling process. Since [...]

 The Happy Rock wrote a list of why they think it sucks to be a part time entrepreneur. Of course, something of that importance is usually a full-time business, but not everyone is able, or wants, to jump off the wagon and start something new, there is too much risk involved. The list is long, and while all points are valid, I collected what I think are the most interesting points made. Sacrifice. You can’t do it all.  Areas of your life will suffer and gather cobwebs.  If it is important to you, other things must take a backseat. No help. When you want go on vacation you can’t without major planning.  No breaks, you do everything. Yourself. [...]

Pamela Slim wrote an article on the hardships and the phases any entrepreneurs goes through. She defines the characteristics, things to remember and the "mantra" of each phase to reassure you what you're going through is normal. The four phases she mentions are the following: Square one: Death and Rebirth Square two: Dreaming and Scheming Square three: The Hero's Saga Square four: The Promised Land Of course she mentions that it can easily be a cycle, and that any entrepreneur is likely to be back to square one after a while in the last section of that journey. Head over at www.openforum.com to get the full descriptions [...]

Fast Company wrote an interesting article on why age doens't matter all that much anymore. The time of guessing the interests of your potential customers through their age has passed. With the internet and all the technology available to you nowadays, people actually tell you what they like. You need to base your ads on relevance, and what type of customers will react to your product or your service.  They list the 5 following reasons:

1. People are age shifting and not living lives based on traditional stereotypes for their ages.
2. The top end of a demographic (34) usually has almost nothing in common with the low end (18).
3. Age demos

[...]

How you advertise your brand or service is a crucial decision to take; it dictates how people will see your product, of course, but also how they see you. There is a blog post on StartupNation that uses lemondade stands to make a parallel between the kind of sellers or advertisers. The way they promote their stands show a great deal about how they see their own position in the market. The writer, Melanie Rembrandt, denotes 3 different types of promoters: 1- The Spammer 2- The "One-That-Doesn't-Really-Want-To-Be-There" 3- The One-That-Loves-That-He-Does Read the full text as it is very interesting and will lead you to think about some things [...]

In another set of the "lies" continuity, Guy Kawasaki tallied up a list of the top 16 lies CEOs love to say in a meeting. Once again, the lies are mostly how people opt out of being too harsh with employees, or in this case sometimes, looking weak, or even (God forbid!) human ! CEOs know all and are never liable for any failures of course! Here goes the highlights of the list, but make sure you read the post to get the full info! “It’s like a startup around here.” “Our sales pipeline looks good.” “The stock price is not important; what’s important is building a great company.” “I will gladly step aside when the time comes.” “I don’t need to [...]

 When you give your business plan to potential investors, the last thing you want is for them to reject it on a superficial base. If your idea is as interesting as you know it to be, you want its presentation and readability to be top notch. David, on MaRS blog, has written a list of how to make your business plan so readable that the investors won't put it down before getting through it. An increased readability means more changes of your project being picked up. He had this idea after reading a lot of them, ranging from 15 to 80 pages. He proposes a 30 pages model, and gives a number of tips to make your business plan a pleasure to read. a) [...]

The entrepreneur blog, Be Excellent, collected and debunked 10 myths surrounding strategic planning. They obviously think it can help any business, by communicating goals, organising an entreprise and securing your investment. Here is a roundup of the 10 myths: 1. “We don’t need a strategic plan!” 2. Strategic planning can only be done at a resort. 3. “It interferes with our real jobs.” 4. “We can do it without any help.” 5. Planning will predict the future. 6. Planning is done when the retreat is over. 7. The plan is a binder on a shelf. 8. The plan will automatically produce results.  9. If the CEO says it, it will happen. [...]

 Your office is already using 100% post-consumer paper ? Reusing printing mistakes for note-taking, and recycling everything else too ?  Well, there is a way to go even greener. Ink usage vary greatly depending on which font you use. A recent study conducted by Matt Robinson tries to show the different amounts of ink that are used depending on the font type. According to his experiments, light and sans-serif fonts use less ink than their "heavier" counterparts. Garamond and Courier are the lightest ink users in his test, while Impact and Cooper Black were the heaviest on ink. It's worth nothing that there is another font, Ecofont, that uses less [...]

 Guy Kawasaki tallied up a list of the top 10 lies entrepreneurs love to say in a meeting. Lies is a harsh word  of course, but those expressions are cliché and shouldn't be used too liberally. With his lists he comments and gives alternatives (when applicable) as to how to approach those subjects.  I'll list the lies here, and make sure you read the post to get the full info ! “Our projections are conservative.” “(Big name research firm) says our market will be $50 billion in 2010.” “(Big name company) is going to sign our purchase order next week.” “Key employees are set to join us as soon as we get funded.” “No one is doing what we're [...]