Late payment is no joke

· The rush to provide people with free text messaging from their desktop computers continues unabated following Vodafone and Orange's moves into the area last month (see Business Solutions, October 28). Midentity, a "personal digital identity" specialist, operates by adding software to Outlook and Outlook Express so that you can get a picture of your contacts easily, as well as a history of your dealings with them, and synchronising with them when they change address. The comapny has added the facility to text fromthe desktop to its offering. The advantage the company believes it has over the mobile phone providers is that if you're a Midentity customer already you won't be tied to a particular network supplier, as this is independent of any mobile contract.


· Ontrack Data Recovery has compiled a list of odd things people do under the impression that it will help them preserve their data, and the ways that data is lost. The most bizarre include putting your laptop in the freezer because someone told you this would make it work again. One company fouled up plans for its new building when a steel girder fell on to the laptop that contained the architectural drawings. Another user put the laptop on the top of a car, forgot it was there and reversed over it when it slid off. Ontrack,being a specialist in rescuing data, stresses that help is often available when things look hopeless, but that there is no substitute for backing up data and practising restorations a couple of times to make sure it's working.


· Good news if your company is in e-commerce and sells to consumers - European e-commerce sales are set to overtake those happening in the US for the first time this Christmas. Forrester Research, the source of the figures, believes that European online spending will reach €13bn compared to €10bn in the US, because we're getting more affluent over here and buying larger items. The UK is expected to contribute around one-third of the total of online sales in Europe during the festive season.


· Internet management specialist Equiinet (www.equiinet.co.uk) has released new versions (version 3.1.1) of its NetPilot and Sentry ranges. The aimis to offer more controls over junk email or spam, this time based on Bayesian filtering, and to put in extra controls over corporate emails. It is aimed specifically at smaller companies who don't, for example, have any IT support staff so they need controls which are easy to use and manage. The Bayesian filtering is based on mathematical principles and aims to eliminate spam while throwing out few false positives. It also offers managers control over who may send an email into a company at a given time.


· Late payment is no joke for the small business, but Direct Credit has released an e-book of some of the more absurd excuses people have given out, which is available at www.directcredit.co.uk/ paymedirect. Including cartoons by Punch and Private Eye cartoonist Mike Mosedale, some of the more colourful reasons for non-payment include "thepost box was on fire", "the bank burned down and nobody could verify the account", "my boyfriend ran off with the money" and "they said the cheque writer was dead but we knew he was alive". The serious angle to the booklet is that it offers advice on recovering undelivered funds, which is important since the booklet states that 90% of small to medium enterprises believe they could be prevented from trading by late payments.


· Internet service provider Tiscali has decided to focus almost entirely on the small to medium business with three contract offerings for broadband, starting at ?15.99 per month. The cheaper end of the offerings is an always-on connection with spam and virus filtering, running at 256 kbps. This is about half the speed of most broadband connections but if a company's requirement is for immediate emailing of small messages rather than large files and downloads,it should be sufficient. Faster speeds cost progressively more, and each of the new accounts offers a gigabyte of storage space and 20 email accounts. For details go to www.tiscali.co.uk/offer. NTL is also muscling in on the small business sector with its Broadband Lite offering, which starts at ?24.99 for a 750kbps connection.



·Looking for a phone number? Then according to research from Easily.co.uk you're unlikely to be doing so using a paper telephone directory, but will almost certainly prefer to be searching for details online. Eighty-seven per cent of Londoners were found to be likely to use the net to look for a number, with the figure falling to 68% in Yorkshire - still a sizeable majority. This will be a source of concern to the 28% of small businesses who still don't have a website (see Business Solutions, September 24).