Now thats a TV

Panasonic have released it’s largest TV to date, measuring a massive 103 inches, now that’s a serious gaming monitor

My Next Skype Phone

This is a pretty cool alternative to the USB phone I have now, Belins Wi-Fi Phone.

Buisness Winks

Winks have been available in Windows Live Messenger for a while now, so far they have been limited to fun things, I have wondered if there would be a more business usage for them, i.e. communicating market information to traders, in new and interesting ways, and delivering this in real-time.  Allowing traders/researchers to communicate information between each other, not that shouting across the room is more or less effective.

There appears to be little on the Web regarding the development of Winks, it seems that the API for this technology has not yet been made available for public usage, check out the following posting, so the jury is out for a while until a better understanding of the structure of Winks is available.

On a slightly different note: The Windows Live Messenger : Development Forum has some information, but not a great deal yet, but worth a look if you plan on extending Messenger, or have questions that you need answering.  Also worth a look is the Windows Live Messenger SDK.

Next Steps

After having a couple of months to relax, and work on my tan, I have started to think about where my next pay packet will be coming from.  After working for Finetix for the last 10 years, I wondered if going back to being a Fulltime Employee of a large Investment Bank or Hedge Fund would be the right thing to do, or perhaps going out on my own.  So before I jump back into the marketplace, some research needs to be done, as far as how easy going out on my own would actually be.

So what’s involved in striking out on your own, some of the options as far as legal structure are out lined at this link, the easiest seems to be the Sole Proprietorship
option, so what you then need is a snappy name, that people will remember, so a ‘Does Business As’ is required, there is even a web site that allows you to apply for the DBA online.  You will also need an EIN number as well.  So once you have that all completed, you are ready to start doing business, sounds simple enough.

Then there are the core back office functions that need to be considered

• Payroll
• Human Resources
• Recruitment

It would seem to me, that for someone starting out, that outsourcing is the way to go with as many of these functions as possible, Human Resources outsouring appears to be a huge market, check this link as well.  Payroll Outsouring asks some simple questions to help determine if it is appropriate to outsource this function, for me the answer would be yes, I would see no reason for hiring staff fulltime to take on this task, unless I was a huge corporate, perhaps an alternative solution here, would be to have a couple of small companies, group together and share backoffice functions, and split the costs.

Recruiting quality staff is not an easy one, and I have spent a fair amount of time interviewing the less than qualified candidates just to find that one person that fits, this is time that I would rather spend building out the organisation.  There are personality tests, intelligence tests, etc that can help identify the right candidate, but someone needs to administer those, and to filter out the good from the bad.  So this to me is a task that certainly needs to be outsourced. The following company Aon, is a good start for the outsourcing of recruitment.

A number of companies offer all three functions as part of their Human Resources function, so perhaps a one stop shop is a more prudent option, when you are first starting out.  Again check out Aon as an option

I am sure I have probably missed something, but I’m agile so I will deal with that as and when necessary.

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