Mobile website on Droid

I want to tell you how my Droid smartphone has more than paid for itself and my Verizon phone service for three years. My Droid has saved hundreds of hours of paper shuffeling, typing, fileing, a small forrest of trees and lots of expensive printer ink. Maybe thats why they call them smart phones?

Three years ago my daughter talked me into getting a smartphone for my business. After six months of arm twisting, I caved and bought a Droid with an unlimited data package from Verizon just like hers. I’m glad she’s so persistant. I’ll never go back to the old school mobile flip phones.

For twenty years rout drivers at my office snack service in North West Florida would write in daily work sheets at each stop. Then, the secretary would key everything into a desktop computer spreadsheet, crunch the numbers, print reports and work sheets for the next run, file everything, then get it all back out for the next run, then start all over.

Now everything is entered 1 time into the smartphone by the driver. The smart phone handles the rest.

Can you imagine how many expensive, boring hours typing, paper and ink this smartphone has saved my company? There are many other reasons to buy a smartphone but saving money and trees are my favorites.

So which smartphone should I buy next? Droid is the best smartphone, but I bought mine because my daughter had one. This technology is always changing so I review the top smartphone brands like iPhone, galaxy smartphones,lg smartphones, verizon and Samsung smartphones at www.amobilereview.com.They have many videos of new smartphone reviews from real users, test labs and news updated daily.

Now I am building a mobile website that displays very nicely on smartphones and intend to use it for mobile marketing to attract new office snack customers.

If you want a great ROI (return on investment), I suggest you buy a smartphone for your business. Don’t wait for someone to twist your arm for six months.

Author: gary dale is the Business Manager at Honest To Goodness Snacks in N.W.Florida

Almost half (49 percent) of the nation’s businesses are operated from home, and more than 6-in-10 owners used their own money to start the business, according to U.S. Census Bureau reports on characteristics of businesses and business owners.

Florida Cottage Food Act
On July 1st of 2011 the Florida Cottage Food Act became effective allowing individuals to manufacture, sell and store certain “cottage food products” in an unlicensed home kitchen.

Everyone knows someone who can create delicious snacks, cookies, pies, cakes, breads, candy or fudge. In fact, if you walk through the farmers market in any community you will see people selling their homemade goodies in an effort to make additional income and to show their culinary talents. The ability to sell specialty foods is possible in most states through the existence of cottage food laws, laws for home based food business.

In the United States, cottage food laws are different in each state for processing foods at home to sell. You should consult your individual state agency regulators to know the specific rules for food processing and food labeling requirements. Some states may require the use of a commercial kitchen and a commercial license.

Many residents hope that the cottage food laws will supply a much needed shot in the arm for local economies. There is no way to know how many small home bakers and food processors there are across the United States, however, one thing is certain, today’s consumers want fresh homemade snack foods.

In Florida, the best place to start looking into this kind of home based business opportunity is The Florida Department of Agriculture. They have an excellent free guidance document on their website here Cottage Food Advisory

Next, I would invest a little in education like;
How To Start a Cupcake Business From Home Tomorrow! and learn everything I need to know to turn a hobby of cooking cupcakes into a profitable home business. Who wouldn’t like turning cupcakes into cash, tomorrow?

I understand that wedding cakes, birthdays cakes, and other special occasion cakes can be quite profitable. You can learn how to decorate cakes here! Cake Boss and similar shows TV shows make cakes look like big fun.

The U.S. Census Bureau reports that “Home-based businesses collectively generated a remarkable amount of economic activity, especially for women and minorities,” The Census Bureau released data that also show most businesses are started by people and families who dig into their own pockets and that self-employed individuals who have no paid employees operate three-fourths of U.S. businesses.

This article written for Honorsystems.net

Top 10 Reasons For Honor Snacks At Work

There are many good reasons to have an honor snack vending tray at your place of business. In addition to an easy, no contract or fee start-up, the operation is reminiscent of old time Southern honor based on a handshake and trust between friends. Yes that is still a good viable system and has been for 25 years at Honest To Goodness Inc. in Florida and Alabama. Some of the more practical reasons to have a snack tray at your business are:

1. Convenience: it’s kind of like having a little of your home kitchen at work (only better).
2. Increased Productivity: There’s really no need to run out and grab a snack during work.
3. Affordable: No big overhead like a $3000 vending machine.
4. Small Footprint: Takes up very little room, usually next to the coffee machine.
5. No Electric Use: Simple low cost operation.
6. Maintain Personal Energy Levels: Gets you through that mid-day slump. Especially good for diabetics.
7. Freshness Guarantee: 100%
8. Excellent Variety: Items range from health food and granola bars to just plain good snacks and chips.
9. Legal Mood Enhancement: Chocolate candy, cookies and cakes are always included.
10. It’s All Good: Taste, packaging, freshness, honor, reasonable.

If you want to try a snack tray at your business in NW Florida from Pensacola to Fort Walton Beach and Panama City call Gary at 850-615-1850 or leave a message at our corporate website at Honest To Goodness Inc.

While vending in Pensacola yesterday I was listening to a course on mobile marketing, that I downloaded to my smartphone and was, playing through the stereo in the company vehicle. Then I noticed the person in the car next to me using her smartphone at the stop light. Now I am begining to believe the outrageous claims about mobile marketing.
It took my college educated daughter a year to convince me to upgrade my small old mobile phone to a droid smartphone like her’s and now I’ll never go back. This Droid has more than paid for itself in business savings. It eliminated keying in and printing rout sheets, saving entire forests of paper, ink, time and secretarial expense. The smartphone helps find and track customer accounts, I place orders online and listen to educational courses and seminars while traveling.
When I hear claims of 5 times more mobile phones than desktop computers and that people keep their mobile phones with them 90% of the time and I see many many people using mobile phones daily, I am convinced that mobile marketing really is the next big thing.
I have upgraded this website HonorSystems.net with a basic mobile component allowing it to show up correctly on smartphones. You can try it if you have a smartphone. In March 2012 of the 21,000 + hits on this site

• 79 were Androids
• 29 were Samsung phones
• 18 were from Iphones
• 2 from Blackberrys

These were small percentages but I’m expecting exponential growth.
Next I plan to upgrade and test improved graphics and mobile marketing tactics like sms, mobile messaging, mobile ads, tap to call and mobile email.

“If you can’t trust a man with small matters, how can you ever trust him with the big matters?’ is ancient wisdom good  managers understand. This should be critical when considering employee promotions. Considering the estimate that 80% of retail theft is employee based, this type of problem can, and has, shut down many small businesses when undetected or just ignored.

I have seen this scenario play out many times in my twenty some years managing hundreds of office snack tray honor systems. One of my favorite examples of diligent management happened in Pensacola Florida.

When their honor snack tray continued to come up short even after he mentioned it at 2 employee meetings the manager of a furniture company investigated the matter further and found $22,000 + in merchandise that had been stolen by an assistant, a little at a time… over years.

In another company their honor snack tray balanced perfectly for many months then suddenly started coming up short of funds immediately after a new employee had been hired. That should tell you something.

Vending machines have their place in big busy, public places but most small businesses don’t want or need a big vending machine using up floor space and electricity. We place our honor snack trays in small businesses that have 3 to 50 employees without a contract or upfront fees. Just a promise to try, to keep it honest. That’s a good thing!

The first video explains how to build a business website. It can help you do it yourself, have an employee do it, or hire someone to do it for you.

Marketing your business on the internet can be fun and one of your least expensive forms of advertising, yielding an excellent return on investment.

To watch the first video entitled “Your Business Website” just CLICK HERE.

If you enjoy that video, subscribe to our free Marketing Tactics news and I will email you a  brief summary and link to each of the following business videos after they are uploaded
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• Free Market Research For Your Business
• Google Places
• Facebook Business Tutorial
• Facebook Viral Tutorial
• Mobile Version Of Your Site

We have years of experience building business websites, including this one, so if you have any questions, comments or want help building Contact Us.

The business of business is business of course. Whether you deal primarily with end consumers or b2b business to business, marketing and advertising play a major role. Small business obviously has a completely different set of constraints than the big players. They, have an it service you, have a copy of “Marketing For Dummies”, somewhere. All is not lost. The internet has leveled the playing field a great deal. There are new marketing tactics becoming available daily to help smallbusiness  and mid size companies to compete online and in offline marketing. This  http://www.AlwaysThinkingSoftware.com site is dedicated to the best current marketing tactics for small business. You should check it out.

After 25 years managing the Honest To Goodness honor snack business I would like to sincerely thank the employees at the hundreds of small and mid size businesses along North West Florida’s Beautiful Emerald Coast for being so honest.

When I moved to Niceville from Pittsburgh 25 years ago people couldn’t believe there was a town named Niceville, and most scoffed at the idea of putting trays of snacks out at so called “honorable” businesses. I never thought I would still be in the honor business for a 25 year anniversary, yet here we are.

You would think that a snack business is all about snacks, but I can assure you it’s not. The recipe for a good honor snack business includes good and healthy snacks sure, but the main ingredient is honorable people. Without them, there would be no business.

We are a type of business to business, b2b or “b to b” service in that we place trays at other businesses. Finding and keeping honest businesses is an ongoing problem since just one “bad apple” can ruin the honor system at any business. Our strategy for dealing with the “bad apple” is persistence and a biblical “forgiveness” policy. Most companies that stay in business eventually find and get rid of their thief and we are always happy to restart service. I can tell you that if you see an honor snack tray at any business you can be pretty sure they are all good people there and they will treat you right too.

I can’t close a blog about honor without mentioning the many military personnel in this area who keep this whole free enterprise system free.

Thank you all for being honorable and know that you have helped raise four beautiful children. May God bless you, your families and your businesses for the next 25 years.

Consumption of low amounts of chocolate relates to a lower risk of cardiovascular disease, which is partly explained by a lower blood pressure. This is the conclusion of a study published in the European Heart Journal in March of 2010.

Are you aware that what you eat can affect your blood pressure? Watching your diet can be very beneficial to keeping your blood pressure normal. Even if you have never had a problem with high blood pressure, taking necessary precautions can be beneficial.

You could try a Vegetarian diet. In this diet you will get many of the following:

* Calcium
* Magnesium
* Vitamin A & C
* Potassium
* Complex Carbohydrates
* Polyunsaturated Fat
* Fiber

All of these can have a great influence on your blood pressure.

Sugar can increase your blood pressure, especially the common table sugar sucrose. Try to limit your intake of this. A diet high in fiber has been proven effective in lowering blood pressure. Along with lowering your blood pressure this diet will also help you reduce your cholesterol levels and even promote weight loss.

Eating plenty of fruits and vegetables is very important as well. Any diet that includes consuming fruits, vegetables, low-fat dairy foods and is low in total fat, cholesterol and saturated fat has proven to be effective in lowering blood pressure.

Many people use more salt than they are aware of. Maybe because some of us are just used to automatically salting our food unaware if it was salted when being cooked. (If eating out) Reducing your salt intake will also help lower your blood pressure.

A diet high in potassium and low in sodium reduces your blood pressure rise by reducing the effect of adrenaline. If you reduce your sodium intake you must also increase your potassium intake.

There are some vegetables and spices that help control your blood pressure. Many of these are very common vegetables and spices so you may be helping your blood pressure and not even know it.

Onions’ essential oil is very beneficial. If you have two to three tablespoons of this essential onion oil a day, it could help reduce your systolic levels. Tomatoes are also a beneficiary to controlling blood pressure. They are high in GABA, a compound that helps lower your blood pressure.

Broccoli contains several blood pressure reducing ingredients. Carrots also have many compounds that do the same. Introducing these vegetables to your diet will do wonders for your blood pressure. Even if you don’t suffer from high blood pressure, it’s best to keep it at a safe level and take the extra precautions to get there.

Garlic and celery are also great to add to your diet. Garlic is good for the heart which you’ve probably been told before. Eating just one clove of garlic a day has been proven to be beneficial.

Whatever diet you choose or whatever foods you try to limit, remember you are doing it for your health. Many people learn to enjoy healthier foods as they get older. If you have any questions or concerns about your blood pressure get with your doctor. They will be happy to assist you and answer any questions you might have. Taking care of your health is very important and will make you feel much better.