I’ve caught my breath after MVP Nation! So let’s rock the bits this week with my monthly GeekSpeak newsletter. So I’ll keep the introduction short.

Be sure to vote for your favorite candidates in the popular SMB 150 election. Nancy Williams and I visit where she receives her BlackBerry PlayBook prize for being a lucky nominee. Did you know that ALL of the SMB 150 award winners will receive a BlackBerry PlayBook (64GB) at our awards dinner in LA, CA on May 16^th. Learn more and cast your votes at smb150.com. See below for more details.

Cheers…harrybbbb

PS – Be sure to catch the SMB 150 Influencer Election Town Hall Meeting and Debate! webinar Thurday, March 15, 2012 from 10:00am-11:30am Pacific

PPS – if you are an SMB 150 nominee and you would like to participate in the great debate above – I have a few seats remaining. It’s your opportunity to promote your candidacy and win! Contact me directly.

PPPS – Long-Time SMB Nation Partner, ChannelPro, is hosting their first ever event! March 13-14 in Orlando, FL!

Apple Launches iPad 3 with Much Fanfare

By Regina Ciardiello, Editor of SMB Nation Magazine

Apple announced, with much fanfare, another addition to its i-family, this time with the iPad 3 (or iPad HD as I’ve heard some refer to it as). The newest device release from the tech giant marks the third-generation of its category defining mobile device, featuring a new Retina display, Apple’s new A5X chip with quad-core graphics and a 5 megapixel iSight camera with advanced optics for capturing photos and 1080p HD video.

The iPad 3 also includes Wi-Fi + 4G connects to fast networks worldwide, including AT&T’s and Verizon’s 4G LTE networks, while delivering same all-day 10 hour battery life.* Beginning today, Apple says the iPad 2 will be offered at a lowered starting price of just $399.

The new iPad will have a high-resolution display and connect to 4G LTE services that are offered by carriers like AT&T and Verizon Wireless. The tablet will also have a five megapixel camera and a microphone to take dictation.

Apple said the new iPad will be available in black or white on Friday, March 16, at $499 for Wi-Fi only models—the same starting price as the previous model.

iPad will be sold in the U.S. through the Apple Store (www.apple.com), Apple’s retail stores, and select Apple Authorized Resellers.

For more information on the launch, click here to view a video of MACTECH Editor-in-Chief/Publisher Neil Ticktin discussing the iPad 3 launch at MACTECH today in Seattle; SMB Nation’s Harrybbb was front and center at this event held earlier today.

*Battery life depends on device settings, usage and other factors. Actual results vary.

An ERP for the rest of us!

Joint article by Harry Brelsford, Founder and Chairman of SMB Nation, Inc. and Cloud Nation and Joseph Walker, contributing writer for SMB Nation, Inc. and Cloud Nation.

This is a two-part story brought to you by me (Harrybbb) and Joseph Walker, contributing writer for SMB Nation and Cloud Nation. In the first part, I share a video interview (see below) and my experience with myERP. Joseph provides an extensive product review.

Harry’s Version of the TRUTH!

A popular technology writer’s paradigm is to have a “30-day journey” with a particular product or service (e.g. “My 30-days with the iPad”). In this case today, consider this my 30-mins with a robust SMB Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) cloud application called myERP.com.

On a recent trip to the Bay Area, I enjoyed a lengthy SMB Nation “Friday Afternoon Club” lunch in Palo Alto with Francois Nadal, CEO/founder of myERP and his team. Not surprisingly, we went to a French restaurant, given myERP’s French roots. In that time frame, we were able to compare ERP notes (I studied this area – then known as MRP – back in graduate school and have extensive ERP experience with Dynamics and Netsuite). It’s that ERP foundation that allows me to exclaim that myERP.com is totally appropriate for the small and medium-sized business (SMB). After using Net$uite (read expensive) for a few years, I had started to believe that no SMB should ever consider using an ERP system. The myERP.com cloud application has happily changed my view.

While speaking with Ron Snyder, Communications manager for myERP.com in a follow-up chat, I signed up and started using myERP.com within 30-mins (while chatting with Ron). Needless to say, I’ll play around with this cloud service over the next few months and report back to you on my progress. Stay tuned, turn on and go sign up for myERP.com and join me!

Joseph’s version of the TRUTH!

MyERP is a cloud-based, SaaS enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution. In other words, its goal is to allow users to run their businesses from any computer with an Internet connection. MyERP is a young, up-and-coming company, but its developers obviously know their code. The service has many of the basics nailed but is still very much in development. Its features combine elements of popular CRM, project management, and accounting software beneath a simple yet elegant interface.

In fact, MyERP’s interface is its most distinguishing feature. Like most SaaS solutions, MyERP runs well through any major browser, but its interface similarities with other SaaS products end there. When users log in, they’re greeted with a single search bar on an otherwise bare, sleek silver and white screen. MyERP’s “main page” manages to be even more spartan than Google’s but still conveys a sense of “being in the cloud.” The search bar asks, “What do you want to do?” and allows a user to type in anything. The software’s search algorithm then provides clickable search suggestions — or the user can press enter to go to the top suggestion.

As an example, a search for “add customer” offered the following actions/suggestions:

• New Customer

• New Customer Invoice

• View Customers Contact Addresses

• View Customers Addresses

• New Time Log

The top suggestion for “create bill” was New Vendor Bill. First on the list for “view leads” was View Leads.

But MyERP certainly isn’t perfect at understanding natural language input. For example, “customer history” gave New Customer Contact. Fourth on the list was View Customers, which brought up a searchable list of customers. Clicking on a customer loaded a screen that allows users to see a customer’s contact information and key “items” (i.e. leads, sales, etc.) By clicking on “Advanced” at the bottom of the View customer screen, I finally found what amounted to a complete customer history. While it took a few steps, it was all easy enough to sort out.

For times when MyERP’s natural language search feature fails, there’s an option to “Open the main menu” at the bottom of every search’s results. (Unfortunately, there’s no way users can access the main menu from the default page with only a single click.) The main menu is simple, offering a vertically collapsible list of options categorized by function.

Menu options include:

• Project (new project, view projects, new task, view tasks, new time log, view time logs, and bill time)

• Communication (new phone call, view phone calls)

• Customer (receive payment, new customer, new lead, view customers, view leads)

• Products & Services (a variety of options to create and view new products and services, product and service families, and price lists)

• Vendor (a variety of options to create and view purchases, returns, credit memos, and bills)

• Inventory (a variety of options to create, view, and convert entry lines, withdrawal lines, sales orders, picking lists, delivery notes, and receiving notes)

• Finances (a variety of options to create and view accounting transactions, checks, cash transactions, and credit card transactions)

• Reports (inventory report – current and forecast, physical inventory report, general ledger report, trial balance report, profit & loss report, balance sheet report, A/R aging receivable report, A/P aging payable report)

• Administration (company settings, manage users, manage user roles, new employee, view employee)

As the software expands, the menu could become less manageable than it is now, but it works for the software’s current feature set — and it could easily be adapted as features expand. The main menu actually offers a decent level of insight into what MyERP does well and what it doesn’t. For example, it works decently as a project management tool but does not yet have many communication related features. Developers promise that better communication tracking components will be added in its next update (coming soon). The software also offers a solid feature set for tracking customers, vendors, sales, basic finances, and inventory. But when it comes to employee management, it’s definitely not a payroll solution -- at least not yet.

MyERP's only truly disappointing weakness was its lack of customizability, but that’s true of many SaaS solutions — especially ones still in development. The ability to create custom form fields (in the customer and vendor records, for example) would be invaluable, as would the ability to create and run custom reports (especially financial and sales ones).

Overall, potential MyERP adopters should view this package as a promising work in progress — one that offers extraordinary potential, especially for start-ups and SMBs that don’t have the budget for pricier SaaS solutions from companies like Intuit, Microsoft, and Salesforce. The software has its glitches — it wasn’t able to successfully import a group of Google contacts, for example — and its help file isn’t as robust as it could be, but developers are listening to users’ input and rapidly working on introducing additional functionality. They’re also quick to answer users’ questions on the company’s forum. MyERP isn’t ready yet for adoption by large, established businesses, but it could work brilliantly for new and small business owners on a shoestring budget.

The SMB 150—a Quick How-To Guide on Voting

By Regina Ciardiello, Editor of SMB Nation Magazine

Many of our readers and tribal members have been calling and emailing (and even discussing on social media sites) specific questions on the voting process for this year’s SMB 150 Awards. Last week, Harrybbb put together a quick blog on how to cast your ballot. However, I also wanted to draw your attention to a couple of blogs posted by two industry members (and fellow SMB 150 nominees) that will offer additional insight.

The first blog you can check out is Karl Palachuk’s Small Biz Thoughts, focusing on SMB IT professionals, and the vendors who serve them. In his blog, Palachuk summarizes the voting process, and also offers his picks on those to watch for in the running.

Another blogger (and SMB 150 nominee) worth noting is Tubblog by IT consultant Richard Tubb, a UK-based SBSer. In his blog, Tubb not only outlines the voting, but also breaks down his SMB 150 contenders by category. This includes groups like “The Brits,” “The Bloggers,” “The Community Leaders,” The Vendors” and “MSPs and MSP Coaches.”

Voting for the SMB 150 will continue through this month, ending on Friday, April 6. Make sure you log on, each day, to www.SMB150.com, to get in your picks for your favorite SMB channel influencers.

Also, we will be holding a "Town Hall" style webinar on Thursday, March 15, at 10 am PST, asking 10 pre-selected SMB 150 nominees some of the toughest questions. Professional accomplishments, ethics, future aspirations are all topics on the table. Click here to register for what promises to be one of the hottest webinars of the year.

MVP Nation Recap!

Pictured above from left to right: Harrybbb giving the Welcome Address, the Exhibit Hall and the Windows 8 Expert Panel!

At the end of the day, our second annual MVP Nation event was blessed with fair weather, a newly released “Consumer Preview” download of Windows 8, great food, fantastic venue (the Microsoft Conference Center in Redmond) and a robust in-person and virtual audience including MVPs.

That alone could be the end of my recap. But there is more that share with you. The topic, Windows 8, was HOT! We attracted outside speakers including representatives from Windows8update.com, Directions on Microsoft and PCWorld. It was a single track experience in a single room. Basically we liked this – what you see is what you get! It was all Windows 8 baby! This format also allowed us to broadcast worldwide to attendees in APAC, LATAM, NORAM, EMEA and even Alaska!

The net-net on the show was this. By design, it was truly “Grad School for Geeks” with limited introductory content and seriously rich technical content. I personally witnessed old men crying from being overwhelmed with the SMB 2.2 protocol lecture. Others suffered meltdowns during the mobile phone application development lecture. Bravo!

Moving forward, paid attendees will receive a link to watch the conference again on video replay. The Windows 8 story is certainly poised to grow over the new few months and be highlighted at our Fall conference (October 12-14, 2012).

Finally, a shout out to our sponsors especially StorageCraft and HP!!!!

We also received this bit of reader feedback:

Harry

Don’t know if this will get to you ok, but we had a slight issue with Windows 8 64 on the HP Microservers.

After installation (an upgrade from Win7) the machine saw all the drives as single devices and the mirrored pairs had vanished. This was a bit of an issue as our test rig had 2 x 3Tb drives on it which windows was now offering to initialise for me.

The solution was to install the raid drivers – which actually did nothing other than put the shortcut to the web interface in the Start Screen. After that we re-build the drive mirror selection the option to NOT Initialise the drive. Then the drive popped back up into view with all it’s lovely data on it.

Just thought I’d give you a quick heads-up on this.

Kind regards and enjoy MVP Nation

Mike Hoffman BSc. MCP

Geek Show Recaps!

I wanted to file my reports from some recent shows I have attended including Consumer Camp, MacTech and GeekWire! These are all new shows for me and maybe you too!

Marcus Fenix discusses the mission of Consumer Camp on February 27th, 2012.

Todd Bishop talks about GeekWire's one year anniversary and plans for the future! February 29, 2012.

My interview with Neil Ticktin at the MacTech Boot Camp in Seattle, WA. March 7, 2012.

IT Pro Appreciation Day, March 23!

The Carolina IT Professionals Group (CITPG) is hosting a one-day event to honor IT Professionals on March 23, 2012 in Charlotte, NC! Topics for this event are diverse, and include:

• Hyper-V for Small Business
• Becoming the Next Private Cloud Expert in Your Organization
• Windows Multipoint Server 2011

Speakers include:

• Amy Babinchak, Owner of Harbor Computer Services and 9-time Microsoft MVP
• Yung Chou, Sr. IT Pro Evangelist in Microsoft US Developer and Platform Evangelism team
• Kevin Royalty, Managing Partner of Total Care Computer Consulting and 8-time Microsoft MVP

Admission for this event is $10.00, which will include access to all sessions, discussions, demonstrations and lunch! All proceeds from this conference go to local children’s charities. For more information about this event, or to register (for a head count,) please see the site here. The event will take place at the Pritchard Memorial Baptist Church, 1117 South Blvd, Charlotte. NC from 8:00am-6:30pm. This event is co-sponsored by Microsoft.