After having our offices for 6-years in the Miami-Brickell area, WURLWIND Solutions moved its’ primary IT support office to Kendall, Florida. This move was key is assisting WURLWIND expand its’ current operations and allow supporting of more companies.

The internet has been buzzing for several weeks with rumors of an expected iPad 3 release in 2012.  There has been speculation that it will be an upgrade, to the iPad2, and not necessarily a new generation of iPad.   Apple is struggling with trademark issues and containment of counterfeit products in China, with a possible ban on sale of iPads there.  Some sources in China confirm that Foxconn is in full production mode and 65 Million orders for the touch-screen displays have been placed with several manufacturers.  Other notable tech-xperts affirm that the iPad3 will be launched at about the same time as the iPad 2 last year, in early March.  Quite a few analysts have applied what I call “crystal-ball algorithm” and point to a precise release date of March 7.  While others are focusing on the secondary market and planning how to implement the best iPad2 re-sell strategies.  For Apple-philes and non-believers alike, the countdown has already begun with echoes of “I want my iPad3”.

Do you LOVE your business? If you’re a small business owner who loves what you do, sacrifices long hours to get it just right, and lays awake at night dreaming up new ways to make your business better, then you deserve some inspiration today. Here is a list of memorable films that have captured the true spirit of entrepreneurship, with unlikely heroes who have persevered against all odds. Submit your favorites at www.wurlwindsolutions.com

Moneyball (2011)
The Social Network (2010)
The Pursuit of Happyness (2006)
The Aviator (2004)
Startup.com (2001)
Pirates of Silicon Valley (2000)
Chocolat (2000)
Office Space (1999)
Jerry McGuire (1996)
Forrest Gump (1994)
Tucker: A Man and His Dream (1988)
Cocktail (1988)
Baby Boom (1987)
Out of Africa (1985)
Ghostbusters (1984)
Rocky (1976)
How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1967)
It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)
Citizen Kane (1941)

Israeli media agency Haaretz reported this week that 78 email accounts at the
offices of Syria’s President were recently hacked. On
Monday the Anonymous collective leaked hundreds of emails from the
office of President Bashar al-Assad. A report later revealed that
Assad’s aides and advisers had used ’12345′ as their secure password.
The number sequence 12345 is considered one of the worst passwords of
all time. So are variations of that theme: 123456, 1234567, 12345678,
123123, and 111111. A list compiled by SplashData reveals other popular offenders:
password, passwOrd, qwerty, and iloveyou. The point of a secure password being NOT to make it easy
for people to remember. The logic is to make it unique to you, and
difficult for everyone else, which certainly does not apply to baseball and football,
which also made the list. When was the last time you changed your
personal and office passwords? Do you have robust passwords in place to
safeguard sensitive financial and business information? Does your
business have protocols in place to prevent hacking and data attacks?
We can help. Call Wurlwind Soutions today at 1-866-907-6161 to schedule a no-cost
security evaluation with one of our Security Specialists.

If you are in business to sell a product or service, it is essential that you turn each visit to your website into a sales lead.  For this you must gather information about your customer to then establish a relationship which could potentially blossom into a future sale.  This is relatively easy to do if you adopt a quid-pro-quo mindset.  Most visitors are looking for value they can take away at little or no cost.  In exchange for basic contact information, you can provide them with something they can’t find anywhere else: useful information about your product or service.  Devising interesting ways to engage your customers also helps to put your business in perspective.   Free Reports and Voting Polls are industry standards.  Your interface should be user friendly, and be sure to follow up with your own headline about how many reports have been ordered to date, or the final vote count by a specified date.  Offering Product Samples is similar to getting a taste of that new cheesy spread on a cracker at the supermarket.  This method will involve minimal shipping costs, so size and weight do matter here.  This is particularly effective for penetrating new products into existing markets. One variation is to offer e-Coupons which are valid on future purchases. Writing a Blog, and linking to your website, is another no-cost way of providing customers with added value.  Find topics that are trending in your industry and focus your writing there.  When it comes to writing, practice makes perfect, so keep at it, and soon you will develop your own individual style, and followers.  Producing a Demo-Video to show case your product or service, known in sales as a demo, is as easy as turning on your webcam and uploading the resulting video to YouTube.  No need to spend millions here; while kitschy and quirky can work for some market segments, when communicating what your product/service can do, honesty is always the best policy.  You can take it a step further and add video testimonials, so don’t forget to request customer feedback, and embed the video to your company’s website.  Wurlwind Solutions can help you incorporate these and other web marketing strategies into your business model.  Call us today for a free consultation at 1-866-907-6161, or visit us at www.wurlwindsolutions.com

http://www.apple.com/education/ibooks-textbooks/

Recently, and rather quietly, Apple unveiled its iPad Textbook initiative at New York’s Guggenheim Museum.  Apple’s new publishing and authoring tools will enable educators, as well as kitchen-sink authors, to publish textbooks for the iPad platform.  This initiative will no doubt help struggling traditional textbook publishers, and potentially revolutionize education altogether, bypassing the publishing companies, the distributors, and the ‘old-school’ textbook purchasing protocol altogether.  Wisely, the three major textbook publishers have partnered with Apple on this product launch, Apple bringing all the bells and whistles of interactive technology and publishers to ensure that the integrity of the content is not compromised.

At last count, there were 1.2 million iPads in use by students, and more than 20,000 apps developed for iPad.  With education in the U.S. seriously lagging behind the rest of the world, and 30%-40% of kids not graduating High School, this could be the perfect time for Apple to tackle the education market.  After all, Apple’s first product laboratory was the public school system:  remember the Mackintosh PC?

Because iPads are relatively affordable, most kids are already exposed to them by the time they enroll in school.  At a price point of $14.99 for High School level texts, the new textbooks for iPad are also quite affordable, and can be sold directly to students.

The iTunes-U app is also part of the mix, with a large percentage of those downloads being college lectures. A marriage of iPad to iTunes-U can free classroom teachers to be more creative and engaged, not to mention what it will do for remote learning.

Business applications here are obvious: interactive procedure manuals, compliance training, and development learning for staff.  How can your business benefit from this innovation?  Call us today for a free consultation, 1-866-907-6161, or find us on the web at www.wurlwindsolutions.com