google news rss feed

Do you like keeping up with your favorite sports team? Or finding out about video games? Or reading about parenting tips? An RSS feed can be a great way to keep up with your interests, but wouldn't it be great if there were a way to automatically scour the web for news on your interests?
Luckily, there is a way to do exactly that. Learning how to use Google news is your ticket to a custom RSS feed that brings your news straight to your RSS Reader.

How To Use Google News

It's really quite simple. Simply go to news.google.com and type in what you would like to scour the news for. The results are displayed on the screen, but you can also save them as a custom RSS feed that will be continuously updated.
Learn How To Search For Items In Google News or skip to learning Learn How To Search For Multiple Items

After going to news.google.com, type in what you want to search for and click the "Search News" button. This will tell Google to search through every website it has classified as either news or a blog and bring back results for your search.
Sometimes, it is helpful to search for an exact phrase instead of just a word. To search for an exact phrase, include quotation marks around the phrase."

You don't have to search for just one item at a time. The real power of Google News is that you can search for multiple items and bring them all back in the same custom RSS feed.
To search for multiple items, type in the word "OR" between the items, but do not include the quotation marks.

• Example: "Dallas Cowboys" OR "Houston Texans"
• Results: Any news articles or blog posts that either contains the phrase "Dallas Cowboys" or "Houston Texans"

Sometimes, you want to make sure two phrases are in a single article. This is done the same way as searching for multiple items, only you type in the word "AND" instead of "OR".

• Example: "Dallas Cowboys" AND "Houston Texans"
• Results: Any news articles or blog posts that either contains both the phrase "Dallas Cowboys" and the phrase "Houston Texans" in the same article or blog post

These results can be used as a custom RSS feed. For help setting up the feed from the results page, refer to How to Find an RSS Feed on a Website.

business software Every Great Project Starts With A Plan

Planning for IT Growth Improves Results and Keeps Costs Down
As we get to know each other you'll find out that I'm a HUGE foodie. I love to cook and I drive my family a crazy with my cooking shows, recipe books, and celebrity chef sightings. But I think the thing I drive them most insane with is my ridiculous Ratatouille doll (2007, Disney Pixar cartoon). If you touch his nose, he talks. And the first thing he says every time is:
"Let's get ready to cook! Every great meal starts with a first ingredient."
I wish he'd say "Every great meal starts with a recipe," which is a cook's plan. I often teach people to cook, and I find many people have a common challenge when learning to cook-they don't read the recipe ahead of time. This leads to two problems: 1) When timing is critical, they aren't prepared to act (such as requiring an ingredient that isn't ready for the pan), or 2) They find themselves lacking ingredients and don't achieve the results they hoped for. The other benefit of planning is being able to save money by shopping for specials.
I promise not to always draw cooking parallels, but there are two things in my life I spend a lot of time thinking about-networking and cooking-and believe it or not there are a lot of similarities. The planning issue is obvious. If you walk into a poorly stocked kitchen and try to throw something together without a recipe you are starting from a disadvantage. It's the same with technology. If you don't have a plan, you'll keep randomly throwing things into the pot (so to speak), and you'll end up spending more money because you missed out on specials.
As the economy has been rough, many vendors are offering special incentives such as flexible, low-rate financing and trade in programs that give you credit for your older equipment. Cisco Capital has a great financing program and any of our partners can help you look for additional incentives.
Here are some basic steps to take as you embark on your technology plan:
Equipment audit & inventory. You can't know what you need until you know what you have. So start (or update) a spreadsheet that captures the following items for all hardware. Be sure to include items like phones-they're often overlooked, and we all know how essential they are to business. Purchase date Serial numbers Vendor item was purchased from (this is crucial) Warranty information Maintenance performed (date, work done, etc.) Software audit & inventory. Same as above-you have to know what you have in order to determine what you may need. The following items will help you keep track of it all. Purchase date and version number Serial numbers Vendor item was purchased from (this is crucial) Warranty information Renewal dates Number of seats/licenses Personnel whose computer the software is deployed on Staff audit. Talk to your staff; find out where they feel like they are wasting the most time. There are simple software solutions to many problems that can save your company money. For example, if your business relies on outbound phone calls to customers; integrating your CRM with your phone system could have an amazing impact. You can track calls easily, you can automate dialing, which saves time and eliminates wrong numbers. Customer audit. Ask your customers what you could do better. How's your web interface? Do they find it easy to reach your employees when they need something? How long are they spending on hold when they call in? Do your employees have immediate access to the information they need to immediately and successfully resolve customer inquiries? Find a Partner. Research local, certified technology vendors. Talk about where you want to take your business. Develop a relationship that's based on mutual trust and you'll go far together. A good partner knows that his business doesn't grow unless his customers succeed and will be just as committed to your success as you are.

business software Small Business Ideas – Useful Microsoft Products for Small Businesses

Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 Centralize and manage your customer, contact, sales, and project information within the familiar look and feel of Office Outlook. Manage your time and information, connect across boundaries, and protect your information with Outlook 2007. Office Outlook 2007 helps users better manage their time and information, connect across boundaries, and help remain safe and in control. Here are the top 10 ways that Office Outlook 2007 helps users increase productivity and improve collaboration. Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 Microsoft Dynamics CRM is a customer relationship management (CRM) solution that provides the tools and capabilities needed to create and easily maintain a clear picture of customers, from first contact through to purchase and post-sales. Empower every employee to boost sales, satisfaction, and service with automated CRM that's easy to use, customize, and maintain. Microsoft Dynamics CRM solutions are typically implemented for you by a Microsoft partner with the right industry and technical expertise. Implementations are painless and fast, enabling your business to continue without interruption. Your in-house technologists or Microsoft partner can customize the solutions and help to ensure they suit your requirements. Because the solutions require little continuous maintenance and have a low-adoption threshold with users, you can enable your IT staff to focus more on business-critical issues rather than on running technology.
Microsoft Supply Chain Management Software
Microsoft Dynamics solutions provide you with a multitude of ways to plan, coordinate, and execute delivery of goods and services with increased productivity and gain a strong return on investment as a result of better individual and team productivity, streamlined operations, and more effective collaboration.   Build productive vendor relationships Microsoft Dynamics solutions can help your people work with business partners and suppliers in such a way that everybody's business model can advance and key business relationships deliver high value. As you empower your team to work productively with other companies in your supply chain, you also support those vendors and suppliers in attaining their own business goals  Microsoft Dynamics supply-chain management solutions Each of the following solutions come under the Microsoft Dynamics family of products providing functionality to automate and help you improve supply-chain management processes.
Microsoft Dynamics AX 4.0
Microsoft Dynamics software solutions for financial management give your people a way to raise the visibility of financial metrics and the effectiveness of financial management throughout your organization-all using familiar tools and existing skills.
Microsoft Dynamics solutions for financial management can provide tools and insight to help your team make more informed decisions. These tools and insights can help your company set a competitive direction for your business. With Financial Management tools from Microsoft Dynamics, you can transform financial and executive management of your company into a dependable, efficient process.
Microsoft Dynamics AX provides you and your people with fast, reliable, and comprehensive accounting, financial reporting, and analysis capabilities. It offers a straightforward way for business managers and others to create, view, and understand multidimensional reports and manage fixed assets efficiently. They can also add new functionality quickly and with limited coding. What's more, Microsoft Dynamics AX helps you manage a broad range of other business areas, so you minimize the need for multiple systems.

business software Organizing Email

The e-mail messages land in my inbox, one after the other, with the relentlessness of a tropical rainstorm. Most of the e-mails are junk, and with subjects like "A humour game" and "Re: Hi," they drain straight into my spam filters.
It's an unusually heavy morning. Since I started writing this column about 15 minutes ago, I've counted 116 new messages, and not one of them is legit.
Managing e-mail continues to evolve toward a full-time job for many people. A 2003 survey by the research firm Public Opinion Strategies found that more than half of all businesses rely on filters and "exception lists" to keep their employees organized while they're in the office.
But what happens when you're out of the office?
It's easy to get into deep water while you're on the road, at an off-site meeting, or (especially) on vacation. For example, although my laptop computer has a sophisticated e-mail filter, I don't always have time to update it, which allows many messages to reach me that would otherwise get zapped. The settings on Microsoft Outlook 2003 are also different on my laptop than on my desktop, and again, I don't always have the time to synch it up before I leave. Staying organized on the road — at least as far as e-mail goes — is no simple task.
Fortunately, a better knowledge of Outlook could take you a long way, even when you're using a different PC. Here are five e-mail housekeeping secrets you might not know about:

1. Create more than one inbox. Did you know that Outlook allows you to create multiple inboxes, where you can send e-mail based on your rules? It's a vastly underused feature, according to software experts such as Don Cook, the director of marketing for Learn.com, an e-learning company in Sunrise, Fla. "I see tons of users who keep hundreds of e-mail messages in their [primary] inbox just because they don't want to delete them." So how do you create a sub-inbox? Easy. Go to File, then Folder, then New Folder, and then "Create new folder." Select your inbox, make sure the settings are on "Folder contains: mail and post items," and then give the folder a name.

2. Change your "view" to see less " and more. One little-known way to clear the clutter and see relevant correspondences is to change your view. In Outlook 2003, click on View, followed by "Arrange By" and then "Conversation." That will show you all of the messages relevant to the particular topic — plus it usually reduces the amount of information on the screen, which is great when you're on a laptop or a Tablet PC. "Being able to see conversations together in an easy-to-read 'tree view' also helps you follow conversations from beginning to end," says Aaron Cartwright, a director of technology innovation for FranklinCovey in Salt Lake City.

3. Click on the "From" line from time to time. This isn't exactly a secret, but I am including this tip anyway. Most people get the e-mails in the order they come in, with the most recent at the top. By hitting the "From" line at the top of your inbox, you can see alphabetically all the messages from senders that you've saved. It's easier to find messages from a particular sender this way. But it's also an easy way to find out you've got a lot of messages you no longer need to keep. When you see a message you are sure has outlived its usefulness, hit "Shift" and the Delete key and it's gone forever. (Be careful on the road in what you highlight to delete, however. I once inadvertently defined and then deleted — forever — the bottom half of my inbox.) Want to go back to your normal view? Click on "Received."

4. Use rules to keep your primary inbox clear. That's the advice of professional software trainers like James Wong, chief executive officer of Avidian Technologies in Bellevue, Wash. "The key to effectively managing e-mails is to keep your inbox as empty as possible," he says. “For many people, once their e-mail goes above 50 to 100, they start loosing count of what is in their inbox and the application starts losing efficiency." How to keep the clutter out? Click on Tools, and go to "Rules and Alerts" to send designated e-mails to another folder, or even to the "Deleted Items" folder, which should prevent your inbox from overflowing.

5. Tell 'em apart by getting colorful. Your incoming e-mail doesn't have to look like a massive gray blob. Go to Tools, then Organize, and click on "Using Colors." You can color-code important e-mails from clients or just specify that you want messages sent to yourself to look different. "I'm always amazed by the number of people who don't know how to use colors," says Brian Olson, a spokesman for Lakewood, Colo.-based Video Professor, which offers CD-ROM classes on Outlook. "If you're getting more than 100 e-mails a day, it helps you notice priority messages immediately. And in these days of infected e-mail attachments, it also helps you find non-regular traffic." (Tell me about it " I'm up to 545 messages now!)

If you spend a lot of time with Outlook, as I do, these tips may sound familiar. You might know about creating more than one inbox, for example " a lot of small-business owners I know are fairly sophisticated when it comes to sifting through e-mail. But once you've mastered these organization strategies, there are a few more things you should be aware of.

• Take advantage of shortcuts. This is especially important on the road, where you might not have a great deal of time to use Outlook. CTRL-Shift-M creates a new e-mail, CTRL-R replies, and CTRL-P prints. And my favorite: CTRL-A to define a whole e-mail, CTRL-C to copy text and CTRL-V to paste text. But the coolest shortcut is definitely ALT-TAB, which lets you toggle between applications. Another shortcut: If you drag an e-mail into your address book, it will automatically create a new entry, along with many of the text-fields already filled in.
  
• Know when not to take shortcuts. Sometimes, clicking on CTRL-R from inside a full mailbox can just lead to more problems (on slower laptops, you might think you're replying to one message, but actually be answering another). Sometimes letting "autocomplete" finish an e-mail address on the "To" or "Cc" line invites lots of problems. I once sent a story pitch to a source named Stu instead of an editor named Stu. Taking unnecessary shortcuts can lead to more e-mail in your inbox and more headaches when you're out of the office.
  
• Mind your e-mail manners. Use "follow up" and priority flags sparingly. Most of the e-mail experts I talked with said it's actually better to allow the recipient to determine the priority, not the sender. And features such as "reply to all" should only be tapped when protocol demands that every recipient is in the loop on a piece of business correspondence. Last but not least, create clear subject lines, say "Action Required" in the subject line if your e-mail is lengthy but includes a call to action, and, conversely, say "(eom)" for "end of message" in the subject line if you've said it all in that space.
  

I've counted 974 messages received since I started writing this column four hours ago. That's more than 240 e-mails an hour. Maybe you don't get that many messages. But ask yourself. The next time you go on the road, is your Outlook application set up to handle what it does get? And do you know what you're going to do with the e-mails?

business software Paying Your Bills Online

Of all the promises made by the Internet, online banking has been one of the brightest. With a few clicks, people can pay their bills, check their balances and see what has cleared.
Up to now, Internet users have been slow to act on that promise. According to the Online Banking Report, a publication that tracks the industry, only about 20% of all U.S. Internet users were accessing online banking services in early 2004. That figure is expected to grow to 33% by 2006, meaning about two-thirds of users will still not be banking online.
However, with increased promotion of online banking by banks, and with increased overall use of the Internet, online banking continues to gather steam. Jupiter Research projects the number of U.S. households banking online to jump from 29.6 million in 2003 to 56 million by 2008, and the percentage of those paying bills online to increase from 50% in 2003 to 85% in 2008.
"The rate at which consumers are adopting online banking and bill-payment services ranks these two activities among the fastest growing on the Internet," says Mike Sinco, director of analytics for comScore Networks, a Reston, Va.-based Internet behavioral research firm.
An executive for Bank of America says that its percentage of business customers using online banking has tripled since early 2002. Bank of America, according to comScore Networks, has the most online banking customers of any U.S. bank, followed by Wells Fargo and Citibank.
What's this mean for you?
What I'd like to say is, "Get with the program." But I won't. However, there are many reasons why you, as a business owner and consumer, should be doing your banking online. Here are a few:

• Your account balance is available night and day.
  
• You can easily transfer money between your accounts, both business and personal.
  
• You can easily tell which payments have cleared.
  

But the best reason, far and away, is online bill paying. This can make your life much simpler.
Didn't I just see you fumbling around to find your checkbook? Instead of writing a check, finding a stamp and running off to the mailbox, you simply click a few buttons on the bank's Web site. Several bills can be paid in minutes.
Security concerns not warranted
According to Jupiter Research's statistics, half of all online banking households paid at least one bill online in 2003. This represents a sizable increase in recent years -- only about 12% of the online banking customers paid at least one bill online in the fourth quarter of 2002, according to comScore Networks. However, most experts have been wondering what has taken online bill paying (and online banking) even this long to catch on.
Security appears to be the public's No. 1 concern. The idea of putting a bank account number on the Internet still frightens a lot of people. If I can sign on and pay bills, the skeptics ask, why can't somebody else?
But they can't -- because you have a password. It's just like other products on the Internet. Lots of people trade stocks online. They have accounts at Amazon.com and other retailers and use online services such as America Online. These accounts, too, are protected with passwords.
Additionally, most banks protect you 100% in case of fraud. So, even though it may not be required by law, they promise to make you whole in case someone gets into your account.
When you sign into your account, you are in a secure area. Actions you take, even if just checking balances or seeing what has cleared, are encrypted. Modern Internet browsers, such as Microsoft Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator, use 128-bit encryption. That is virtually unbreakable. It's transparent; you only know it is there because the lock icon in the browser's status bar closes.
I consider this much safer than putting a paper check in a mailbox. But it is simply going to take time to make people comfortable with online transactions.
Some paper checks still needed
So how does online bill paying work? You use the bank's Web site, and set up a list of "payees" (the phone company, other utilities, your suppliers, etc.). When you receive a bill, you enter the amount next to the name of the payee. Click a button to submit the payment, and you're done.
Even if you're paying bills online, you'll have a supply of checks from the bank. You'll need to write one occasionally. For instance, the guy who fixes your network may expect to be paid immediately.
There may also be situations where you want to enclose the biller's invoice. You can't do that if you write a check online. For example, we do a lot of business with FedEx and we need to include the account number and the invoice number. The bank doesn't have a place to put the invoice number, so we send paper checks to FedEx.
Checking your balance online is easy -- handy if you don't do a good job of maintaining a separate register. And transferring money between accounts is generally simple.
Note also that people who pay bills through their bank's online bill-payment service are more loyal online banking customers. The comScore research found that those paying bills online were more than twice as likely to remain active online banking users -- and carried bank balances that were twice as high as the average online banking customer.
Other benefits not as beneficial
Other supposed benefits of online banking are less valuable, in my opinion. One that is touted regularly is downloading of bookkeeping data. You write your checks and complete other banking transactions, and that data is downloaded directly to your personal or your business accounting software. But few people use this service.
Rob Johnston, a senior vice president at Bank of America, says his online customers perceive it as too difficult to use. He believes it needs to be simplified and integrated into the bank's Web site. I agree. When this is automated, it will be a very worthwhile service. Another benefit is reordering checks online. Of course, you may not be using many checks. And mailing in the form every couple years isn't a big deal, but I can't deny that reordering online is handy.
One of the benefits touted by banks is online bill presentment. This just means you get your bills online, rather than through the mail. Who does that benefit? The biller. I prefer to get the paper versions, but maybe you'll like this service.

business software Accounting Software Upgrade | Microsoft Small Business Center

You know it. Your accountant knows it. Your business partners know it. But no one cares to say anything about it.
Your accounting software is old, out-of-date and out of answers for your fast-moving business. You need a change.
Secure, reliable accounting software with advanced functionality and the ability to automate more tasks is no longer just something nice to have. It's a core need for a growing business. A good time to make a switch is at the start of a new year.
Why does it make sense to include new accounting software among your New Year's resolutions? Here are seven reasons (add your own at the end):

1. For most small and midsized businesses, the new calendar year is also the beginning of your new fiscal year. The cutoff between old and new accounting software is clear, and the break is clean, says Amy Levy, software analyst for Boston-based Summit Strategies. "Switching in the middle of the year or, say, November, can mean a messier transition," she says. (If your fiscal year doesn't match the calendar year, see below.)

2. You will spend less money on the transition. If you choose a Microsoft Business Solutions product, for example, your reseller will help with implementation and service. But your involvement of accountants or consultants is likely to be minimal, compared with a midyear switch, says Jack Deeds, owner of Washington, D.C.-based Good Deeds Accounting Software.

3. Migration of data will be minimal. Migrating your data from QuickBooks and Microsoft Business Solutions' own legacy accounting software programs to Small Business Financials or other MBS financial-management solutions is relatively easy, to be sure. But if you are moving over at the beginning of the new year, you shouldn't have to worry about migrating data at all. Beyond entering new beginning balances by hand, you simply begin filling a new database. No gaps to worry about covering if you have your system is up and running by Jan. 1.

4. A complete year's worth of "drill-down" information. Microsoft Business Solutions products such as Small Business Financials feature true double-entry accounting and a secure audit trail that allows you to "drill down" on a transaction right to the source documents. Such features aid in developing financial statements or reports that can be audited and shown for external use. Many small-business accounting packages do not offer the "drill-down" capability; you also lose it if you have to enter data by hand during midyear transitional periods, says Deeds.

5. Overlap in using two systems should be minimal. Granted, you can't get rid of your old accounting system for at least a month or more, as you finish off your year-end reports and complete business tax and payroll tax obligations. But the overlap will be much shorter and more manageable.

6. You can adjust to tax law and other changes right off the bat. That goes for all accounting changes, payroll changes and anything else your business does differently in the new year.

7. New year, new budget, chance to break old habits. If you are implementing some new budget initiatives for your company, you have more incentive to track them, follow them . . . and keep them.

business software Outlook Mobility | Microsoft Small Business Center

If you want to become a better traveler, you can skip some of those how-to books penned by armchair road warriors.
Instead, fire up your laptop computer and open Microsoft Outlook. Yes, I'm talking about that ever-present application that handles e-mail, scheduling and some word processing tasks.
Make the Most of Your Laptop
Odds are pretty good that you've got a copy of it installed on your laptop, and that you take your portable with you when you travel. (Regarding the latter point, a recent survey by Harris Interactive found that more than one in four laptop PC owners say their machine is one of their "most prized possessions," and nearly a third said they've regretted leaving it at home on trips and have turned around to retrieve it on at least one occasion.)
Outlook is to travelers what a paper clip is to MacGyver. It does a lot more than you think. (My apologies to those who aren't familiar with television show which had its heyday in the 1980s and '90s.)
Using Scheduling Features for a Trip
Marielle Barnes, a consultant in Bangalore, India, counts on Outlook's scheduling features to make her trip fall into place. "I use the task manager to keep my 'to-do' list in order," she says. "I organize the tasks by city, and type of function, so that items get grouped and can be easily completed in a stretch." An alternative is keeping her itinerary on a calendar or a personal digital assistant. But if the laptop is coming along for the trip anyway, why not use what you've got (especially when it has a bigger screen than a PDA)?
Robert Hanson relies on Outlook and a third-party application called Xpressions to access his e-mails from a phone — a nifty feature if you happen to leave your laptop at the hotel. "Outlook saved me from wasting money on a plane ticket by finding out the same day that I booked a nonrefundable ticket that the meeting was supposed to attend was canceled," says Hanson, from Wilmington, Del. "So I was able to cancel the flight without penalty."
Outlook has bailed me out a few times, too.
My favorite feature is the contacts manager, which has rescued me more often than I'd care to admit. How's that? I usually print a full itinerary with phone numbers before I leave on a trip. (Call me old-fashioned, but with a piece of paper you never have to worry about a low battery.) Being hopelessly absent-minded, that schedule has gone missing numerous times. Fortunately, I was able to retrieve the key addresses and phone numbers from Outlook rather than completely unpack my luggage in the middle of the terminal.
A Traveler-Friendly Upgrade
To say that Outlook has been underappreciated by the jet set in the past might be an understatement. But that is changing. Microsoft Outlook 2003 is designed even more with travelers in mind.
Here are a few of its handy features:
Find it faster. Outlook helps you make sense of all the e-mail you receive on the road. Its new Search Folders — "virtual" folders that contain views of all e-mail items matching specific search criteria — let you quickly separate the important messages from the ones you want to ignore. Search Folders also flag priority messages first, so you don't waste time reading spam.
Keep junk mail out. Speaking of spam, the new Junk E-mail folder separates out most of your junk mail into a separate folder, helping to un-clutter your inbox.
Work without a Net. If you use an e-mail account through Microsoft Exchange Server, you can work offline while you're out of the office or if your connection is too slow. Outlook only tries to connect to the server when you ask it to or when you choose to do so in the "Send/Receive" groups.
Mine your business contacts. The new Business Contact Manager feature, which integrates with Outlook, turns your address book into a powerful tool that can create, track, and manage your business contacts, sales leads and opportunities. Perhaps the best thing about Business Contact Manager is that it's as intuitive as the old Outlook, so you don't have to spend hours reading a manual before you can use it.
Cool "Feel" to Outlook 2003
Think of the latest version of Outlook as MacGyver trading in his screwdriver for a power tool. Both gizmos worked fine, but somehow that drill just looks cooler. (Indeed, the new icons and "feel" of Outlook have my friends who use older versions or other e-mail systems drooling.)
But best of all, the Outlook 2003 with Business Contact Manager promises to make me more productive on the road.
As the publisher of a travel e-mail newsletter, I was particularly impressed with integrated features that allowed me to send personalized messages to designated contacts, with the help of List Builder. In an age when clients are less likely to accept "I was traveling" as an excuse for missing deadlines, that's something that will probably help me keep the customers I have. And maybe find some new ones.
With Outlook 2003, the learning curve is steep on a few functions — I'm still trying to figure out how to get my navigation pane to do what I want it to, for example — and users of the old Outlook will have some adjusting to do.
But it won't take long to get the hang of it. And once you do, the new Outlook will become an even bigger reason (if you need one) to bring your laptop on a trip.