Over the past few weeks, I have explored hundreds of blog pages, finding one thing in common. Most bloggers are not focused. How do I know this? I’m one of them. The challenge of providing unique content relative to a single purpose has eluded most of us because of the glitz and glamour of a long held misnomer called, “Get Rich Quick.”

Get Rich Quick doesn’t exist outside of inheritance or the lottery. Following get rich quick schemes can lend to complete confusion for your reader. Here are a few problems I am currently working out, and I’m sure some of you have the same problems.

I am tempted to write about everything which creates

I only wish this article offered you a solution to the problem at hand.  Rather, it is a plea to those in the tech community to help the world find a solution when Microsoft Exchange is out of our reach.

The Benefits of Microsoft Exchange 

The combination of Outlook 2007, Windows Mobile 5.0 with Outlook, and Exchange Server makes a seamless, problem free e-mail and calendar and task and contact management system.

When I add a contact to my phone, shazaam! It appears in Outlook.  When I delete a message from Outlook, whabang!  Away it goes on my phone.  If I create an appointment in Outlook, bizong!  It’s on my phone.  Computer crashed?  No problem, just reconnect to Exchange and everything is there, except for personal preferences and signatures/stationery.

Exchange just makes my life without a day planner excellent.  I never forget anything.  Take that away and what do we have?

What Replaces Exchange for the Individual Business Owner?

I haven’t figured it out yet.  I abhor POP3.  I hate downloading multiple copies of my messages on different devices.  If I’ve read a message once, I don’t want it to remain unread in some other mail client.  I want it to be marked read on the server.

IMAP seems like it’s a great solution, but it doesn’t handle Calendar, Task, and Contact folders, so I’m back to manually synchronizing my phone to my computer(s) and at risk of generating duplicate information.  What to do?  Not to mention Outlook repeatedly crashes when I have it connected via IMAP to my hosting provider.  They’ve even come up with an application that runs as an add-on to Outlook that synchronizes Calendar, Task, and Contact folders.  The problem with this is that it’s yet another application I have to manage, and if I have a large number of contacts, it bogs the whole process down.

The synchronization tool even works on my mobile phone under windows, but again, it’s slower than crap, and I have to repeatedly manually initiate the synchronization.

So, this is a plea to all of you out there who know better than I.  I would love to maintain an Exchange Server hosted account, but I haven’t found one that won’t cost me more than it needs to, and unless I have my own server, I really have no creative control over how e-mail is managed on that server.  With that, I resort to something else, that I hope you can help me with.

My Treo 700W has turned out to be a pile of junk.  It’s missing 5 screws, which hold the phone together, and Verizon has offered no solution to fix the defect.  The phone crashes daily, won’t ring every time, and delivers messages a day late.  I find the iPhone to be the best bet, but AT&T service in this area is 10-years ago spotty, according to some of my friends.

I’m not sure why Google hasn’t solved this problem, and perhaps they have and I just haven’t stumbled upon the solution, nor the time to figure it out.

So my question is this:

If I have an iPhone and a PC, what tools are the best to use for e-mail, calendars, contacts, and tasks that will automatically synchronize without connecting directly to the computer and without using bluetooth?  When I add a contact to my iPhone (which I don’t have yet) I need that contact to show up on my computer and vice versa.

The key here is automation.  Does anyone have any thoughts on the best setup, or perhaps just insight on how you manage all of your inbound and outbound information?

I may just bite the bullet and move my MX record to a hosted exchange account provider…yish.  Any advice would greatly be appreciated.

Thanks for stopping by!

A pilot flies the plane.  He doesn’t fix the engine.  The technician installs the indicator lights, but the pilot needs only to know one thing.  What does it mean when it’s on, what does it mean when it’s off…

Finding yourself wasting time on tasks that you, to be frank, suck at?  Quit doing those tasks.  When you’re building your business, there’s something to be said for knowing what the indicators are, but that doesn’t mean you need to know how to take them apart and put them back together again.

In the world of blogging, which is basically marketing through copy editing, it’s critical that you find your place and pursue it.  Some of us design templates, some of us program features, some of us can do a little bit of everything.  While it’s nice to be able to say, “I know how to do that,” it can very easily become your downfall.

There are only so many days in a week, and so many hours in a day.  Spending your time working on a wider variety of tasks will make you a well rounded individual with an average compensation.  Why?  Because the more you show you know, the more they’ll demand, and likely without increased return on your invested time…and then you lose one important opportunity, the opportunity to strive for excellence in one area.

People who focus on one thing develop their craft to a much higher degree than those of us who attempt to do it all, and therefore are worth more.  In the search for purpose in this life, it’s fun to explore many different ideas.  It’s exciting to apply your talents to more than one area, but it will be even more rewarding if you become an expert in your field.  You might even find that focusing on one path opens up doors you thought would never appear.

The key to financial wealth and freedom in this economy is developing a support network and farming out the tasks that you just plain suck at.  Anyone who has built a successful business can tell you that.  Don’t spend your time doing what you don’t know how to do.  Evaluate your processes, make sure you understand how they work to help your business, but find the right person who is an expert at that task…or machine :).  Robots never talk back!

For those of you looking for a great deal on electronics and other goodies we have listed on eBay, head on over to our eBay Page to see a list of the 10 most recent items we’ve listed.  We have quite a few auctions closing today if you’d like to get in on the bidding.  Most auctions will be closing towards the end of the day, so you have plenty of time.

Our eBay Page is here.

Our eBay Listings can be seen here on eBay. 

I just read four articles on random blogs found through the Entrecard network, which is quickly losing its appeal.  I see one of the reasons.  For any of us to expect that someone’s “blog” is an authority on any topic can easily be dispelled the very second we sense the writer has no idea what he or she is talking about, nor has a clue about how to effectively use the English language to communicate in an intelligent manner. …

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