Business

This one's for people who use PayPal for their home business.

Apparently, the PayPal system isn't able to use the same address for home and business. When I moved, I created a new address, set it as my home address, and updated my credit cards. Problem was, the old address was still listed as my business address.

Facebook's notes application doesn't have a built-in way to handle multiple streams of RSS input. You only get to choose one URL to import your notes from and that's what appears on your profile. However, if you've got multiple streams of content you can still have it all published on Facebook.

It's been nearly a week since entrepreneur Stephen Jagger spoke at Third Tuesday but I wanted to post some of the highlights of his presentation, "Tools for Growth."

Now the title of the talk didn't quite describe the topic: Jagger's list of tools were more relevant to cutting costs and running virtual businesses. One of the businesses he's involved with runs a real estate website, Ubertor. Since it's founding eight years ago, the company made a transition from the typical office-based company to a virtual business where everybody worked from home.

The IRS requires companies in the United States to maintain a list of vendors, including a record of each company's Taxpayer Identification Number (TIN) also known as an Employer Identification Number (EIN). Individuals and most small companies don't seem to bother with it—at least for foreign businesses—but when the client has its own accounting department they'll be asking for your TIN.

I've got a good product which I've been constantly improving, a bunch of happy customers, and a website for sales and support. Most of these customers found me through a link from this blog or from a blog post about the online visualization market at FlowingData.

In that very same blog post, Nathan Chase expressed a bit of surprise that I hadn't done any marketing. Now I think it's finally time to do something about it.

Brain crack. According to video-blogging comedian Ze Frank, we get addicted to brain crack when we hoard a brilliant idea that's going to change everybody's lives and make us rich and famous. At least, that's how we see it in our minds.

Nathan Yau just posted an article about the market for online visualizations and featured Constellation Roamer as one of the available "premium visualization" products. It's an interesting comparison of the online visualization tools that are out there from a business perspective. He's already got quite a discussion going in the comments so go have look.

I was always under the impression that a business account is something desirable, that there were benefits of having one. Maybe lower fees or advantageous account types. If you're a web-based freelancer thinking about a business account you might want to reconsider.

Constellation Roamer, a Flash graph visualization tool, is now available for purchase at Asterisq.com.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that registering a small business—at least, in B.C.—is a pretty smooth process. Sure, you have to do your research beforehand, but once the decision is made it's not so bad. As for running a business...