SoHo Trends

Earlier this week, Amazon announced that their Elastic Computing Cloud (EC2) would support Microsoft Windows Server 2003.  In addition, EC2 for Windows also supports SQL Server Standard and Express databases.  This is terrific news for those of us in the non-LAMP camp.  Amazon EC2 has been around for a few years, but only recently did EC2 support the Microsoft Windows platform.

EC2 for Windows offers seamless integration with several other Amazon EC2 features, including Elastic Block Store (EBS) and Elastic IPs. At this point, the only limitation is that customers can only launch Windows instances in one Availability Zone.  Each availability zone runs on its own physically distinct, independent infrastructure, and is engineered to be highly reliable. Common points of failures like generators and cooling equipment are not shared across availability zones, and availability zones are designed to be independent with failure modes like fires and flooding.  One of the other limitations is that Microsoft Windows Server licensing does not currently support using your existing Windows license in Amazon EC2 or any other cloud environment.  Check the EC2 FAQ for further details.

Pricing for EC2 for Windows is pretty comparable to the Linux offering.  As of today, October 28, 2008, pricing for a Standard Small (default) Windows instance is $0.125 per hour.  This configuration provides a predictable amount of dedicated compute capacity equivalent to 1.7 GB of memory, 1 EC2 Compute Unit (1 virtual core with 1 EC2 Compute Unit), 160 GB of instance storage, on a 32-bit platform.  You pay for what you use.  There are other costs, such as data transfer in/out of EC2 (and data storage costs (Amazon Elastic Block Store).  Check here for up-to-date information about pricing.

I’ve been working with Amazon EC2 for Windows for the past few days and have found it to be extremely easy to use.  If you’re planning on trying out the service, you’ll definitely want to download ElasticFox, a FireFox plug-in which makes it very easy to manage your EC2 instances (Windows and Linux).  To learn more about ElasticFox, please see the ElasticFox Getting Started Guide.

What’s great about EC2 (and cloud computing in general) is that it lowers both barriers and costs for individuals and small businesses who wish to offer services over the web.  You don’t need a data center, you don’t need a dedicated server and you don’t even need a Virtual Private Server (VPS) anymore.  While the monthly cost for EC2 is higher than most standard hosting and VPS plans, it offers the ability to scale up (or down) much more easily than traditional web site and web application hosting plans.

One of the many challenges with starting a new business is finding out what you don’t know.  One resource that stands out for me is the Fairfax County Economic Development Authority (FCEDA).  A quick word about the FCEDA.  According to the FCEDA web site, it’s mission is to:

… promote Fairfax County, Virginia, as a world-class center of
commerce and trade and the technology hub of the east coast.

The FCEDA offers a half-day seminar entitled, Entrepreneurship 101: Starting a Business in Fairfax County, which is an introduction to starting a business in Fairfax County.  I attended the October 7, 2008 presentation and found it to be a very valuable resource for anyone who’s started a small business recently or is thinking about starting  a small business.

There were about 25 people who attended the seminar.  One of the highlights for me was the opportunity to network with others who, like me, had taken the plunge and started a small business.  Karen Smaw, the FCEDA staff person who hosted the seminar, asked us to introduce ourselves and tell the group one unique fact about one of the other attendees sitting next to us.  It never ceases to amaze me how many different ways people make a living.  In the room there were people who had started (or were thinking about starting) businesses that included:

• Hynotherapy
• Fitness and physical rehab consulting
• Travel management
• Tax preparation
• Antique gunsmith
• IT consulting
• Import/export of herbs and spices.

Once the introductions were finished, the reset of the seminar was divided into three parts.  The first part was led by Karen Smaw and dealt with the variety of resources available through FCEDA (or other organizations) to small businesses.  She started with a brief overview about the mission and structure of the FCEDA.  Next she gave us various facts and figures about Fairfax County.  Last, she talked about a six-step process for starting a new business.  The six steps are:

1. Determine your Legal Structure
2. Select a Location
3. Apply for a Business License
4. File for a Certificate of Occupancy or a Home Occupancy Permit
5. Register your Trade Name
6. Register your Company with D&B.

While you could find most, if not all, of this information on the web, it was helpful to see it all in one place.  In addition, people asked several detailed questions about the process, which was also very helpful to hear and discuss.

A woman from the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) led the second part of the seminar.  She went through a series of slides about the various resources that were available to small business owners through the SBA.  The information she provided was useful, but her presentation consisted mostly of reading the Powerpoint slides and there wasn’t much group interaction.

The final part of the seminar was led by a woman from the Virginia Department of Business Assistance.  She covered a couple slides about the services offered throught the VA DBA.  The state, uh I mean commonwealth, of Virginia offers some interesting programs to encourage the creation of new jobs in the state.  A program that caught my interest was the Virginia Jobs Investment Program which provides financial incentives for small business to create new full-time jobs in Virginia.

Immediately after the seminar, I applied for a D&B number.  A few days after the seminar, I went to the Fairfax County Government Center and applied for both a Home Occupancy Permit and a Business/Professional/Occupational License (BPOL).  I’ll cover those experiences in separate blog posts at a later date.

Overall, I learned a number of things by attending the Entrepreneurship 101 seminar offered by the Fairfax County Economic Development Authority and I recommend it to anyone living in/around Fairfax County who’s interested in starting a new business.  There’s a lot of information that’s provided and it’s a great way to network with others who are doing the same thing.

The Small Business Administration today urged banks to offer more flexibility to small firms interested in a special long-term loan program as entrepreneurs and established small business owners find it difficult to succeed as sources of credit like home equity loans diminish. As traditional bank lending tightens in the nation’s current economic turmoil, many small firms have been turning to resources offered by the federal government such as the 7(a) loan program, which provides long-term loans for small businesses. Most U.S. banks participate in the program and must structure these loans according to the SBA’s requirements. Both the lender and the SBA share the risk that a borrower might not be able to completely repay the loan. But the program is troubled. It has seen four consecutive fee increases since 2005. For small and mid-sized loans, the fees were doubled to $3,000, and for larger loans the fee can hit

Read more at Small Business at washingtonpost.com

For a decade, entrepreneur Jared Heyman steered clear of commercial lenders in favor of self-financing his Atlanta-based online market research firm, Infosurv Inc.; however, his company’s rapid growth intensified his need for outside funds. Ready for expansion, Heyman recently set out to obtain financing at a time when many companies are feeling the pain of a tightening credit market. With lenders treading more cautiously in the uncertain economy, Heyman decided to enlist a local Small Business Development Center to help him assemble his loan package—which experts agree can make or break a financing deal.

Read more at US News and World Report

The top five most pressing issues facing small business owners and entrepreneurs this year are strengthening the economy, taxes and regulation, health insurance, a quality workforce and global competition, according to a government economist. Chad Moutray, the chief economist at the Small Business Administration’s Office of Advocacy, also suggests in his new 19-page paper (pdf) “Looking Ahead: Opportunities and Challenges for Entrepreneurship and Small Business Owners,” five opportunities that small businesses should consider pursuing in the next decade. He says small firms would be wise to look toward investing in technology and innovation by grooming local entrepreneurs, a concept he refers to as “economic gardening.” Proponents of economic gardening, who essentially encourage communities to plow the dollars that would have been spent on luring big businesses to their town to promote local small businesses instead, argue that grooming existing firms will lead to greater payoffs and more local job creation.

Read more at Small Business at washingtonpost.com

Barack Obama today proposed a plan of tax cuts and loans for small businesses hurt by the current credit crisis, a temporary program he said is needed to help Main Street and complement what has already been done for Wall Street. In The Trail, a daily diary of campaign 2008 on washingtonpost.com, Robert Barnes writes that the Democratic presidential nominee told a courthouse crowd that the program would be a way of “extending our hand to the shops and restaurants, the start-ups and small firms that create jobs and make our economy grow. Main Street needs relief and you need it now.” Obama said the $5 billion Small Business Rescue Plan would be similar to one implemented after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and would be run through the Small Business Administration.

Read more at Small Business at washingtonpost.com

While I worked for a company, I took for granted the ability to purchase and use products (and sevices) such as Adobe Acrobat, GotoMeeting and Microsoft Office.  As a new entrepreneur, there are plenty of things that are competing for my limited funds and I’m always on the lookout for free or low-cost alternatives that provide similar benefits.  This is the first in a series of blog posts that will highlight my favorite open-source and commerical alternatives.

Adobe’s Portable Document Format (PDF) is everywhere.  In a few short years (15 years to be exact), it has become the de facto standard for displaying documents across platforms.  Yes, Adobe Reader is free to download and use.  You may be asking yourself, “OK… if Adobe Reader is free, how can there be a better alternative?”  Well, there are several alternatives.  My favorite is one called FoxIt Reader for Windows.

Why Foxit Reader?  First, the basic version is free.  The basic version allows you to view and annotate PDF documents.  It even allows you to convert an entire PDF document to a text file.  For the vast majority of people, the basic version is more than sufficient.  All I want to do is view and print PDF documents.  Foxit does offer four add-ons which I’ll talk about later on in the article.

Second, Foxit Reader is small.  It’s really small and really fast.  How small?  Well according to the Adobe web site, the download for the most recent version of Adobe Reader is 33.5MB.  Now granted, 33.5MB in this age of ubiquitous high-speed internet access and terabytes of storage seems like a small amount, and it is.  By comparison, Foxit Reader is a svelte 2.5MB.  Why does this matter?  Well, it matters because I’m tired of downloading bloated software that contain features that I just don’t use.

Lastly, Foxit Reader is super fast.  Instead of being bombarded with a splash screen with the names of people that developer the product or a list of modules that are being loaded, Foxit Reader simply loads the document you’re looking at.  That’s it.  Plain and simple.

So, why use Foxit Reader?  Three reasons.  It’s free.  It’s small.  It’s fast.

As access to loans becomes scarce, some middle-aged entrepreneurs are betting their retirement funds on small-business ventures.

About 16 percent of small-business owners have taken premature withdrawals or borrowed from their retirement accounts, according to a recent online survey of 512 small-business owners by Harris Interactive and ING Direct. “Raiding your retirement should always be a last resort,” says Stuart Robertson, general manager of ShareBuilder 401k, a subsidiary of ING Direct. “But, given the tough access to cash and credit … some small-business owners have made that difficult choice.”

Read more at US News and World Report

This morning, when browsing through one of my web sites with FireFox, I noticed that one of the pages came back with the following, ominous error.

Reported web forgery notice in Firefox

Needless to say, I was little concerned

I did some research online and was surprised not to find a lot of information about how Firefox determines if a web site is a phishing or malware site. I did find some complaints about being certain web sites being mislabeled and references to Firefox using Google Safe Browsing and perhaps McAfee’s SiteAdvisor service as blacklists.  It’s not at all clear from this page from Firefox how a site owner or webmaster can appeal being blacklisted.

I submitted an Incorrect Forgery Alert with Google Safe Browsing.  We’ll see if that does the trick.  I’ll update the situation if anything changes.

As a part of starting a new company, I’m currently working on some of the more mundane tasks associated with the startup of a new venture, like registering the LLC, setting up bank accounts, looking into options for office space, etc.  To balance these tasks, I’m also in the middle of getting a logo designed also.

I’m currently using a web site called 99designs to host a contest for the design of the logo for my new company and it’s worked very well so far.  Here’s how it works.

99designs hosts several different design competitions.  They include:

• web page design
• stationery design
• logo design
• button and icon design
• t-shirt design
• banner ad design
• print design.

People looking for one of these designs launch a contest on the 99designs web site and create a design brief that describes what they’re looking for.  For instance, my design brief says that I’m looking for:

• Simple, clean, professional and modern
• Include the words “Agile Media Ventures” with emphasis on the word “agile”
• Logo should be scalable
• Logo should look good in color and grayscale
• Prefer logo to include both text and graphics; however, I’m open to a design that only contains words
• Logo should be in vector format.

Designers review the brief, look at the amount of money awarded as the prize (more on that later) and decide whether or not to submit a design.  As designs are submitted, the contest owner can review designs, provide feedback (both public and private) to designers and, ultimately, select a winner.

A regular contest is seven days long; you can “fast track” a contest so that it’s completed in just two days.  I just launched my contest yesterday. As you can see, I’ve received a total of 50 designs already in less than 24 hours.  I’ve been blown away and how creative and talented many of the designers are.  Take a look at their online portfolios; there are some very talented designers on 99designs.com.

I’ll post updates as the process moves along.  I’m very encouraged by the entries I’ve received so far.