Most of the article centers on pharmaceuticals, science and such, but the idea itself is interesting and a great outlook in this economy. For better or worse, forward thinking employers and employees seem to be thinking this is a real bend-or-break time for everyone.

It may seem counterintuitive that in the midst of this global economic crisis a substantial number of entrepreneurs, investors and venture capital financiers are interested in starting a company.

via Entrepreneurial Edge – As Some Businesses Dig In, the Venturesome Set Out – NYTimes.com.

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Spending days on the cubefarm getting you down? Via Lifehacker, this stunning cubical (yes, cubical) is much less soul-sucking than any I’ve seen. Cute lamps and darker walls create a soothing, un-Office Space like environment, and a small selection of nice personal pics replaces the usual mishmash of random photos.

Like most cubicles across the land, Brad’s cubicle was a bland affair of generic speckled-gray modular panels. He tacked black fabric over the paneling—easy to do, since the walls of most cubicles are essentially giant bulletin boards—and added two small accent lamps with bold red shades. The black fabric does enough to dampen the overhead lighting, so the lamps have a chance to really add a visual punch to the workspace. Originally supplied with only a laptop, Brad further tweaked his workspace for comfort by bringing an LCD monitor from home and adding an ergonomic keyboard.

Featured Workspace: The Noir Cubicle.

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“I had an admin assistant that wasn’t doing a very good job and wasn’t working fast enough,” Lee recalls. “To take on other projects, I needed to find other resources.”

So she started e-mailing out work for the GlobeTask team to do – PowerPoint presentations, online research requests, weekly reports on Web traffic, and a laundry list of various tasks she used to rely on her in-office administrative assistant to perform. She was soon able to offer her employee to someone else in the department and rely on GlobeTask for her daily workflow.

“Pretty much anything that could be done online or via e-mail, I farmed out to them,” Lee recalls. “There’s an efficiency that’s not possible in most physical offices.”

I read so many articles selling the concept of Virtual Assisting as a career path. What stuns me is that more articles don’t focus on the potential benefits for existing business owners who need a VA.

I’ve had the unpleasant experience of working for employers who couldn’t afford the staff they have, and would cut and rehire staff as funds fluctuate. The costs in retaining and retraining staff are high, and I empathize with employers who struggle to make payroll each week.  Musical Office Chairs is no fun for anyone, and it kills morale.

A virtual assistant is a better option because not only are they generally more experienced, all you pay for is the work we do for you. Not benefits, not breaks, not staffing bounties. And when business is slow, we can help you pick it up or be waiting when you need us again.

via Firms using “virtual” office assistants worldwide to get the job done

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Ever since I first laid eyes on a white Asus netbook earlier this year, I fell in love with the concept of using a smaller laptop in exchange for fuss-free travel.

Me too. While my beloved white iBook is fantastic when it works, it breaks when you look at it funny and feels like a brick in my bag. I’ve been back and forth with Netbooks because of the tiny screen, but I’m more and more convinced I need one of these things sooner rather than later.

Further selling points for me are that so many Netbooks run on Linux (I wish more laptops would come customizable with that option) and they come in a rainbow of colors you can match to your wardrobe palette. Sweet.

Click the link below to read a quick rundown on which common netbooks sport which features.

An Introduction To Popular Netbooks.

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Via Lifehacker, this handy post on making the most of your indie business expenses lists several tax tips to boost your yearly net. Don’t forget to write off your Virtual Assistant! (Via Lifehacker.)

Virtual assistants and other freelancers

You’ll want an invoice from whoever you work with, as well as a record of when you paid the invoice.

Subcontracting part of a project to another freelancer or hiring a virtual assistant can be an easy way for a freelancer to take on more work and make more money – and the expense to do so is tax deductible. You’ll want to document any such transactions carefully so that you can prove that your use of freelancers and virtual assistants is purely a contract arrangement, rather than employment – which you would have to pay extra taxes for. You’ll want an invoice from whoever you work with, as well as a record of when you paid the invoice.

10 Tax Deductions Freelancers Can Make – FreelanceS

witch – The Freelance Blog.

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“She can work as much as I need her to and I can focus on being in front of clients rather than putting together a mailing or database,” Trull said. “It enabled me to take my business to the next level without having to hire an employee.”

via WISCONSIN STATE JOURNAL.

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Although fairly few people are truly synaesthetic, I found this video blog* on CNN to be really interesting. While most of us (myself included) can’t identify with the complexity of synaesthesia, it’s still pretty cool when a scent triggers a memory or vice versa.

I personally avoid most video stories, but I find the CNN iReports to be pretty interesting. This one in particular is very well narrated and engaging.

*Opens to a video player.

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Your Virtual Assistant is on moderated assisting duty whilst I spend a long weekend celebrating Virtual Valentine’s Day.

I don’t want you to get bored, so please:

Make a baby with anyone via VW;

Stay hype on the stimulus situation and just say no to coffer looting!

Become an expert on Artisinal Ice Cream.

Add some steampunk cred to your desktop with these cool icons!

And bring chapstick.

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Continuing on with our theme of avoiding social media embarrassment,  I’d like to share this must-read article for everyone over the age of 16 who has a Facebook account.  This comprehensive piece details how to CYA from every angle on the ubiquitous, all-knowing Facebook. It won’t save you from being tagged in unflattering and possibly felonious pictures, but it might save you from sharing those regrettable night out photos with current and future employers and clients. And your grandma.

A typical setup for groups would be “Friends”, “Family”, and “Professional”. These three groups can then be used to apply different privacy policies. For example, you may want your friends to see photos from the party you were at last night, but you don’t want your family or professional contacts to see those photos.

10 Privacy Settings Every Facebook User Should Know.

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From the files of “Really? …Really?” comes this distasteful, dated and pointless initiative. So many things wrong- I’ll just post an excerpt and you can post your own conclusions. May I also add… >facepalm<?

Earlier this week, the Bank of England held “Dress for Success” day. On that day, they sent out a memo to female employees detailing just how they should dress for success, important now more than ever in These Economic Times, the worst financial crisis Britain’s dealt with since the Depression. WWD obtained a copy of the memo:

“Look professional, not fashionable; be careful with perfume; always wear a heel of some sort — maximum 2 inches; always wear some sort of makeup — even if it’s just lipstick.” Shoes and skirt must be the same color. No-no’s include ankle chains — “professional, but not the one you want to be associated with;” white high heels; overstuffed handbags; an overload of rings, and double-pierced ears.

Female Bank of England Employees Must Wear Makeup and Heels — The Cut: New York Magazine’s Fashion Blog.

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Everyone in my household is addicted to these soft, fluffy, sweet harbingers of cookie-ecstasy. I feel honor bound to implore everyone not to walk past them at the supermarket because they have the ability to cure disease, wipe your hard drive of malware and painstakingly launder your delicates. Lofthouse Cookies got Barack Obama elected- true story. They’re the kind of cookies people get angry with you for bringing places because no one can stop eating them.

Lofthouse Cookies

Facebook Page

Support Group

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I feel really bad for this guy, and I think we’ve all fired off some off the cuff words into the intertubes only to have them come boomeranging back at us.

However, it’s worth noting that this sad tale starts with a disparaging tweet sent from the airport on the way to a client. To educate them about social media.

It’s a story about a PR account executive/vice president named James Andrews from Ketchum in Atlanta who flew to Memphis to visit FedEx, one of the agency’s biggest clients. Andrews’ mission was to — now, this is important — talk with the corporate communications people at FedEx about social media.

Upon landing in Memphis, Andrews posted this message on the popular social media, mini-blogging service, Twitter, that’s widely followed by business people worldwide:

“True confession but I’m in one of those towns where I scratch my head and say, ‘I would die if I had to live here.’”

Andrews (right) openly used his Twitter monicker – @keyinfluencer.  Someone inside FedEx was following Andrews, and that person shared the post among the top executives at the FedEx front office, and the company’s corporate communications staff. At that point, a person in the FedEx corporate communications staff apparently took umbrage to the post by Andrews and responded…

Ouch. There are lots of lessons to be learned here. If you can’t say anything nice online, think twice about saying anything at all. Don’t say anything you don’t want your biggest, most important client to read. And if you’re caught out in a moment of bad judgment, fix it as quickly as you broke it!

How Not to be a Key Online Influencer | David Henderson – author, journalist.

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In my last office gig, I heard time and time again that internet marketing wasn’t worth pursuing because the demographic we served (Boomers) didn’t “get computers.” I suspected that the 50+ crowd was being underestimated technologically, and it turns out they’re gaining ground.

I came across this piece and wanted to share it- it breaks down the numbers of internet users by age. Just under half of users are over the age of 45, with 24% (1 out of 4) of those users over 55. Still think it’s not worth targeting Boomers and beyond?

Generation Xers, Baby Boomers, and even “G.I.” folks dominate their own niches when it comes to the online world, according to a new report from the Pew Internet and American Life Project.

Gen Y (also known as Millennials) make up the largest single group in the Internet-using population—30 percent—and more than half of the adult Internet population is between the ages of 18 and 44. However, Pew notes that surveys taken in 2006 and 2008 indicate that other groups are growing rapidly, with the largest increase in Internet use coming from the 70 to 75-year-old age group.

via Older ‘Net users giving youngsters a run for their money – Ars Technica.

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Via Tess at the VAF comes this article about Virtual Assistants and small business.

For small businesses that are drowning in paperwork or administrative tasks, the traditional choice has been to hire a part-time or full-time assistant, or else slog through unassisted. But in these work-from-home days of the Internet, there’s a third option: hiring a virtual assistant.

I’ve worked as an Executive Assistant in a few small businesses, and the benefits of going virtual would have had a huge impact on the quality and efficiency of the work I did in all of those situations. The flexibility of a virtual assistant is indescribable for smaller companies that need a vast array of ever-changing tasks completed.

…(VAs) disseminate her weekly two-minute audio tips, improve her site’s shopping cart and search engine optimization, and write pitches. The Internet marketing work she never seems to have time for is finally getting done. And, though a Web developer might also have been able to improve her SEO and shopping cart, working with a VA has a different quality, she notes. “A Web developer wouldn’t do some of the stuff my assistant does,” she says. “Plus a Web developer might not always be available or have the same mentality about getting things done that a virtual assistant does.”

via Why You Need to Hire a Virtual Assistant — virtual assistants — internetGIRLfriday –.

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Via JK Virtual Office Resources, a cautionary tale for the internet age about the power of good and bad internet attention and your brand. Background: Motrin created some ads that unintentionally portrayed mothers in a less than flattering light. From the article, some key points:

…outraged mums, furious at the suggestion that their babies were a hassle, posted rebuttal videos on YouTube. Through Twitter, the microblogging service, thousands of people attacked the company.Eventually a marketing executive at McNeil Consumer Healthcare, the subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson that markets Motrin, e-mailed individual bloggers to apologise for the campaign. But the damage was done.

Motrin was caught off-guard. For days, no company representative replied. Critics accused the company of being not only insensitive but also unresponsive. (Bolding mine.)

(I know it’s a British-ism, but the visual of “outraged mums” is quite funny.)

Mistake #1: Ignoring the blogosphere- in the fast moving internet era, it’s pertinent to respond to good or bad internet feedback as soon as possible. No other medium snowballs like this one. Just ask any of these people.

The “Motrin moms” episode … demonstrates the perils for enterprises that are unprepared to interact with social media.

Exactly. The article, linked below, goes on to explain how many big firms have since appointed social media ambassadors to monitor and interact with influential virtual communities.  Be aware:

“It’s no longer just companies talking to the press, and customer service talking to customers. All these other people showed up in the -middle. They may not be press and they may not be customers, but suddenly their collective voice is bigger than the traditional channels.”

Technology leader Dell is a great example of proper social media marketing and community interaction:

Dell is taking its customer feedback seriously. When the company launched the Latitude laptop last summer, six of the features, including backlit keyboard and fingerprint reader, were ideas that came from IdeaStorm…

..Dell, for one, has made a business of it. By broadcasting discount alerts on Twitter, it says, it has generated more than $1m in sales. And in the US, 59 of the 100 leading retailers, including Best Buy and Wal-Mart, now have a fan page on Facebook, according to Rosetta, an interactive marketing agency.

Other savings can be realised through the Web’s ability to reach many people at once. “If you solve someone’s problem on the phone, nobody knows,” says Mr Sernovitz. “If you solve that same problem in writing on a blog, it costs you no more, but thousands of people are satisfied. And then, if 100 people never call because they found the answer, you very, very quickly get to multimillion-dollar savings.” (Bolding mine.)

Proactive, pre-emptive and smart. Easy to find and follow information on the web raises your brand’s public image immeasurably.

This article is a really great jumping off point in understanding the different ways the internet can enhance or detract public opinion of your brand, and a compelling call to action for any business, small or large, with no strategy in place to handle internet word of mouth to their advantage.

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