Starting An Online Business – Incorporation

We’re approaching the start of a new year and many of you are looking into starting an online business. One of the steps is deciding whether or not to incorporate your business.

As a small or home office business, you have four main choices for your business as a legal entity in the United States (for those of you in other countries you will have to check on your own business tax laws):

* Sole Proprietor
* General Partnership
* Limited Liability Company (LLC)
* Subchapter S Corporation

Of the other possible options, a “C” corporation is generally for large businesses and Limited Partnerships can be complicated, so I won’t get into them here.

Also, don’t forget your local business licenses. You may have to register your business in the city, county and/or state where you live. You should also set up a separate bank account for your business.

In general, your main considerations are going to be liability, taxes and how you intend to finance your business. Read more.
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Video – How To Avoid Adobe PDF Reader Vulnerability

PDF files usually seem harmless. People don’t think twice about opening a PDF, even if it’s an email attachment,  or reading one online.

Adobe has acknowledged a vulnerability in its Adobe Reader/Acrobat that allows hackers to hijack data from compromised computers. They are investigating the problem but haven’t come up with a patch yet.

You have two options: disable Javascript in Adobe Reader or use an alternate reader. The video below shows you how to do either option…

The alternate readers described in the video are:

Sumatra PDF

MuPDF Firefox Plugin

Further reading:

Adobe confirms PDF zero-day attacks.

How to mitigate Adobe PDF malware attacks

[Author's Note 1/18/2010] Adobe released a fix for Adobe Reader/Acrobat Jan 15th. If your software hasn’t automatically updated then go here for directions on how to update..
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Is Google Being Evil? – Part 2

In Is Google Being Evil? – Part 1 I stressed the importance of business owners protecting their brand. But first, you have to know where information is being written about your business.

Well, Google has come up with a way to post comments about your web site, on your web site, without your knowledge or consent.

It’s called Sidewiki. It’s part of the Google Toolbar and it opens up a separate window above your web pages for people to post and read comments from other visitors. You won’t even know about it unless you install Google’s Toolbar and use it on ALL of your web pages, loading page after page, to see what’s being written. To do this you must enable the ‘enhanced’ version of the toolbar, which means Google then tracks your web surfing. Read more.
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Is Google Being Evil? – Part 1

“Don’t be evil.”  Unofficial Google motto/slogan

If you own or run a business one of your major concerns is your “brand” or reputation. If someone is slamming your business online you need to know about it and respond.

But what if you can’t respond? What if there’s no way of telling who’s saying negative things about your business? What if it’s a disgruntled customer? What if it’s your competition?

This is the problem with Google now that they are including Twitter in their real time search results. Read more.
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A Rolltop Laptop

With the new technologies coming online such as OLED flexible screens, designers are putting that technology to use in some strange and wonderful ways.

I haven’t been able to get any information on the Rolltop laptop like a production date, etc. but it provides food for thought.

It’s like the Amazon Kindle book reader. All it does is let you read books. Where’s the portable tablet that will let you read books, watch movies and listen to MP3′s through an online subscription?

Steve Jobs, we need you. On second thought, if Apple came out with one it would be very expensive and you would have to send it in every year to replace the battery..
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