Microsoft Accelerator – Week Nine

November 13, 2013 | Comment

IMG_7562Working from your spare room at home can be a lonely existence and having conversations with colleagues on Skype really is no substitute. It also can be a pretty sedentary life as the distance from my bed to the office is probably less than 20 paces. The distance to the kitchen where the biscuits live is slightly more but not so far as to be a distraction. So all in all home working is not good for your health and fitness.

On the other hand being in an office means you get to see great street art such as that … Read the rest

Microsoft Accelerator – Week Eight

November 5, 2013 | Comment

IMG_7081There was only one organised session this week and that was on “old school PR”. Unfortunately I had to attend a sales meeting and so wasn’t able to attend. However, what this did mean was that my diary was much clearer for getting on with the day job.

The stage your business is at when you join an accelerator will determine both how much you get out of it and how much of an impact it will have on your working day. When we joined we had already been in business a year and were making early sales. For us … Read the rest

Microsoft Accelerator – Week Seven

November 1, 2013 | Comment

IMG_7459A busy 7th week was started with an early morning meeting with one of our mentors from Yammer. We met in their offices where the meeting room tables converted to allow you to play table tennis and there was a pop-up sign in reception encouraging people to bring their dogs into work for  dog week, which seems like a recipe for disaster to me. We stuck to the meeting and got some sound advice once again.

From Yammer it was straight to TwiloCon Europe, a full days conference organised by Twilo and pretty impressive it was too. I have been … Read the rest

Microsoft Accelerator – The Video!

October 30, 2013 | Comment

If you have been following my adventures on the Microsoft Accelerator programme you can see a short video below of the VC early look evening that took place a couple of weeks ago.

I’m in there about a minute and half in but my time on camera was fortunately short!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zt3ewHNHZh8… Read the rest

Want an Outliner with Evernote Support? Today’s your Day!

October 28, 2013 | Comment

outline-editor-iphoneIf, like me, you want to use an outliner that is available across multiple platforms and syncs with Evernote then Xwavesoft’s Cloud Outliner could be for you. Especially as for today only it is available for free on iOS.

Available on Mac, iPhone and iPad the apps allow you to create structured lists which are synchronised between the devices and Evernote too if you wish.

Note that synchronisation is only available in the paid version of the apps and not the free “lite” version.

If this sounds like your sort of thing download the iOS version today as it … Read the rest

Microsoft Accelerator – Week Six

October 23, 2013 | 1 comment

IMG_7081The observant amongst you will have noticed that weeks four and five are missing. This is because that I have been away on holiday and so haven’t been around to do an update but I am back now and straight back into it.

Of course the accelerator doesn’t stop while I have been away sunning myself so there was some catching up to do along with all the emails and business as usual stuff I would have normally had to do.

Just before I went away we were assigned our mentors. You may remember that early on we had a … Read the rest

Holiday Kit

October 21, 2013 | Comment

IMG_7205This holiday I took with me a lot less technology that I have previously. For the the first time in years I didn’t take a laptop at all and relied solely on my iPad Mini. One reason that I needed to take less was simply because of the miserly luggage allocation on the flight.

So I thought it would be useful to explore what worked and what didn’t.

Firstly here is the list of “tech” I took with me:

  • iPad mini
  • Kensington Ultrathin keyboard case
  • iPhone 4S
  • Slingshot
  • olloclip
  • Kindle
  • Bose Quietcomfort 2
  • Panasonic TZ5

The combination of the iPad … Read the rest

Authorising 3rd Party Apps with Passcode Lock on in Evernote

October 10, 2013 | Comment

20131010-160152.jpgOn iOS Evernote provides a useful facility to be able to protect your notes by adding a four digit passcode lock that you have to enter before you can see them. You can also choose how long before the code is asked for on subsequent opens, such as immediately, after one minute etc.

Once enabled this means that you will be initially be asked for your four digit code on opening and then on subsequent opens after the time out period has expired unless you have chosen “immediate” as your option in which case you will always be asked for … Read the rest

Diary Apps

October 7, 2013 | 5 comments

20131007-191434.jpg

For some time now I have been keeping a personal diary for which I have been using a Moleskine page a day diary. This has worked well and I like the process of actually writing into the book but I am also trying to go paperless.

There are a few reasons for moving from paper to an electronic diary. The first and most important reason for me is to be able to backup my entries and out of choice I would want the entries to go to Evernote. Secondly, it is easier to be able to type a quick entry … Read the rest

Microsoft Accelerator – Week Three

September 26, 2013 | 2 comments

Microsoft PowerSo this week has turned out to be much quieter than the previous two. For me it is also shorter as I am off on holiday for two weeks from this evening. Consequently I will miss two weeks of the programme, which is a pity, but the leave has been planned a long time. It also means that I won’t be blogging during this period.

Two highlights on the programme this week for me. Firstly we got an opportunity to meet and talk with a number of the other residents of Central Working. It was a an interesting cross section … Read the rest