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Sales tax continues to be a potentially thorny issue for e-commerce companies, and now New York state has thrown a wrench into the process by requiring out-of-state e-commerce retailers to collect sales tax for purchases that originated with affiliate programs from sites based in the state. Today, Amazon filed a lawsuit against the state of New York challenging the new requirement. Read the full New York Times article here.

Categories: General

If you use a computer for your business, you’ve probably got a few desktop applications – that is, programs you installed on your own computer using a CD or DVD – that you do most of your work in every day. Millions of us use Microsoft Office to create letters, give presentations and crunch sales numbers. Thousands of businesses use “off-the-shelf” accounting software like QuickBooks to handle their accounting. Email programs like Microsoft Outlook handle the communication of countless messages every day. You might be so dependent on these programs that you can’t imagine how you’d live without them.

Get ready to live without them.

Well, at least to live without the ones that come in a box and live on your hard drive. Software is rapidly moving to the web. It’s easier than ever to sign on to a high-speed connection just about anywhere, and the advantages of delivering business applications through a web browser are huge. Just think about it: All your business data, always backed up, always in sync with everyone else in your organization, always current. Your P&L for the month is right in front of you, no crunching and printing required. The proposal you’re working on? Share it instantly with a colleague to get their feedback and let them make the changes in real time.

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Categories: Articles

A comprehensive (and somewhat technical) overview of all the factors that influence search engine rankings. Very detailed, and also acknowledges the disagreement over the significance of many factors. Good reading if you want to understand the details of search engine optimization. Check it out.

Categories: General