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PowerPoint has long been the tool of choice for creating business presentations, but Google Slides is worth a second look. We compare their strengths and weaknesses.

By Preston Gralla

Contributing Editor, Computerworld | MAR 27, 2018 3:00 AM PT

If you’re going to give business presentations, odds are you’ll be choosing between Microsoft PowerPoint and Google Slides, the two best-known presentation applications. They’re both solid, useful tools — and both have changed a great deal over the years. Given all their changes, you may want to reconsider what you’re using today. If you’re going to give business presentations, odds are you’ll be choosing between Microsoft PowerPoint and Google Slides, the two best-known presentation applications. They’re both solid, useful 

Everything is clear looking in the rearview mirror.

This is the story about how it all started with SMB Nation “back in the day.”  I can literally share the first chapter of this book, right here, right now. What’s not as clear is how it all ends; the final chapters have yet to be written LOL. 

For Your Consideration

Exhibit A below depicts the first newsletter I wrote in the SMB Nation community realm. It’s about Small Business Server (SBS) of course. Look closely at the date and you’ll see it was mid-2001; a timeline marker that only justifies the fact that life is short and time goes so fast. The first issue was only 400-readers; today we can click a button to hit 50,000 readers.

by Nathaniel Meyersohn   @CNNMoney

Dropbox wants to raise as much as $648 million when it debuts on the stock market.

The

company is selling 36 million shares for between $16 and $18, according to a regulatory filing released Monday.

Based on the number of shares of eligible for sale, Dropbox would have a valuation of about $7.4 billion. That's lower than the $10 billion Dropbox was reportedly valued at on the private market.

If there's more investor demand for the stock, Dropbox could sell another five million shares to bring the total to $745 million. Salesforce's (CRM) venture arm has agreed to buy $100 million in shares.

Dropbox will list on the Nasdaq under the stock ticker DBX.

We are pleased to announce that, effective March 19, 2018, ZLan Partners has joined the Sharp family.We are pleased to announce that, effective March 19, 2018, ZLan Partners has joined the Sharp family. 

As a newly created branch of Sharp Business Systems (SBS), the direct sales division of Sharp Imaging and Information Company of America (Sharp), ZLan Partners will operate under the new name of "ZLan Partners, a Sharp IT Company," and we will continue to provide our clients with network design, virtual CIO, cloud, IT security, and managed network services.

I’ve just returned from IBM PartnerWorld (inside of the Think conference) and over the next several blogs, I’ll share my experiences. Long story short – I got hand it to IBM for reinventing itself continuously and having crossed a decade+ in the analytics field. It declared that, in the IBM partner ecosystem, 2018 is the year of simplicity. I hear that three times: simple is hard! 

Concerning channel partners, there were four pillars messages to launch the PartnerWorld conferenceand it's 2,000+ attendees. 

Enabling ecosystem transformation. 

The basic premise: IBM is marking it easier for Business Partners who currently resell IBM technology to shift between engagement models and move up the client value chain

FILE PHOTO: The seal of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission hangs on the wall at SEC headquarters in Washington, DC, U.S., June 24, 2011. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst/File Photo

By Pete Schroeder

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said on Wednesday that many online trading platforms for cryptocurrencies should be registered with the regulator and subject to additional rules, in a further sign regulators are cracking down on the digital currency sector.

In a statement, the SEC said these “potentially unlawful” platforms may be giving investors an unearned sense of safety by labeling themselves as “exchanges.” The regulator said these platforms need to register with the SEC as a regulated national securities exchange or an alternate trading system, or ATS.

by Jon Arnold

As businesses shift to the cloud, the combination of Microsoft Office 365 and Skype for Business (SfB) Online provides a powerful solution for workplace communications. The tight integration between these provides a rich set of both productivity applications and communications capabilities that can seamlessly be managed in the cloud. Not only does this make IT’s job easier, but there’s really no need to look elsewhere for third party UC platforms that may or may work well with your Microsoft environment.

This is a "Where is he now? Dana Epp’s new startup!" startup piece. Read on. 

Few SMB Nation event speakers captivated like Dana Epp at our Fall Conferences. In SMB Nation 2009, Epp spoke in a packed, long narrow room at the now demolished Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas. He performed live hacking before a mesmerized audience (long before Kevin Mitnick started his current road show). Fast forward

As a small business owner, you understand through your first-hand challenges how difficult it is to accomplish specific goals because of a limited budget. Other challenges may stem from a lack of expertise in a specific and vital area. Specifically, building and IT infrastructure present challenges that small business owners in previous years and decades were stymied by. However, modern solutions to these challenges are available to today's small business owners through cloud-based services. Understanding the primary cloud-based solutions available to your small business may help you to make smarter decisions going forward.

SMB Group’s 2017 U.S. Small and Medium Business Digital Transformation Study reveals that today’s small and medium businesses (SMBs) have tuned into the digital revolution. As noted in Pulse Check: SMBs and Digital Transformation, roughly three-quarters of SMB (including small (1-99 employee), medium (100-999 employee) and upper midmarket (1,000-2,500 employee) businesses) decision-makers agree/strongly agree that digital technology is impacting their businesses and industries.

I’ve found this format to be surprisingly well-received and effective. It’s my quick hitters that quickly summarizes a few topics circulating around the SMB Nation MSP community.

Karl’s “Hear Ye, Here Ye!” Community Meeting
Longtime SMB Nation fan Karl Palachuk is at it again. He’s holding an innovative live community meeting that uses the power of video presence to create a greater sense of intimacy (the platform is based on Zoom which I recently experienced first hand via Steve Taylor’s MSP Webinars).

Sometimes the idea looks great on paper but doesn’t really work out when you try to configure it. And often, the only way to be sure is to break out the good old scientific method and try.  So I tried. And it didn’t work, so I’m putting here in case you get a similar wild idea in near future.

The goal was to start with a primary VNET in Azure for some VMs. This network was going to act as a collection point for data coming in from a number of remote physical sites all over the world. In addition, some machines on the primary network would need to send configuration data to the remote sites. Ultimately, we were looking at a classic hub