Keeping up with every RSS feed item and tweet is hard enough for anybody, let alone someone trying to run a business. That’s why at the end of every week, ReadWriteBiz rounds up the week’s most important tech news and insights for small and medium-sized businesses.
There was a slew of announcements from Google this week pertaining to SMBs, starting with Monday’s unveiling of Hotpot, a recommendation engine for Google Places. In what many see as Google’s answer to Yelp, Hotpot recommends nearby places to users based on how they and their friends have rated local businesses in the past.
On Tuesday, Google made the announcement that Google Boost, a simplified new search advertising program, has been rolled out in 11 new cities. After an apparently successful pilot program in San Francisco, Houston and Chicago, Boost is now available in San Jose, Seattle, Wichita, Charlottesville (Virgina), Atlanta, Chapel Hill, Orlando, Washington D.C., Boston, Cross Plains (Texas) and Portland (Maine).
Also on the Google front, users of Google Docs were delighted Wednesday to learn that the ability to edit Google Docs from mobile devices became reality, two months after the feature was originally announced. Documents stored on Google’s cloud-based office suite can now be edited from Android or iOS phones and tablets.
Speaking of tablets, this week we saw the first online meeting app for Android tablets when Fuze Box announced the latest version of Fuze Meeting, which has been available on the iPad and iPhone for a few months.
Here on ReadWriteBiz, we discussed a recent survey from AVG showing that over 50% of SMBs do not have IT security guidelines in place. While the vast majority of small companies are aware of the need for tight Internet security, a startling number of respondents said they did not have any security measures in place.
