ClickTime Blog

Projects Are the New Job Interviews

The best way to evaluate job candidates? Give them a job.

Our friends at Inc. Magazine published an interesting article, "Projects Are the New Job Interviews," on how many hiring managers are now putting candidates to the test with projects, rather than a simple slew of interviews.

Read the full article HERE.

 

A Google Perk Any Company Can Imitate: Employee-To-Employee Learning

Learn from Google! Fast Company Magazine published this excellent article laying out the benefits of employee-to-employee learning. Not only does this inspire collaboration, but it also promotes a culture of learning and improvement. Check out the full article HERE.

Microsoft Backpedals on Office Licensing

We discussed the new licensing and pricing changes with Microsoft Office 2013 a couple of weeks ago (here and here). Yesterday, Microsoft announced that it's reversing the most controversial policy change and will now allow users to transfer their Office 2013 license from one computer to another. Read more about the details at ReadWrite.

This policy change is good news for businesses who still have to weigh whether to upgrade to Office 2013 or Office 365.

Microsoft Pushes Everyone To The Cloud

Following up on yesterday's post about Microsoft Office's licensing changes for Windows, now it's been reported that Microsoft is also making changes to Office for Mac that pushes more businesses and home users towards using the subscription-based Office 365.

According to this week's ComputerWorld article, Microsoft stopped selling multi-user versions of Office for Mac and raised prices on one-license versions. These changes encourage Microsoft's customers to switch to a subscription-based model and start using Office 365, software in "the cloud."

The software industry has been moving to a subscription-based model and utilizing the cloud for some time (ClickTime has been at it for more than 13 years), but it's still major news when Microsoft, the biggest software company in the world, starts shifting its traditional installed-software to the cloud.

Office 365 vs. Office 2013 - A Difficult Decision

Most professional organizations still include Microsoft Office as a critical component of their business software suite. You can still expect to find a copy of Word and Excel on most business desktops. Every three years, a new version of Office comes out and the IT department coordinates the upgrade process. And if you ever work from home, you probably have a copy of Office on your home computer as well.

This year's new version of Office, however, is not the same. Microsoft released Office 2013 and Office 365. Office 2013 is the typical purchased-software option whereas Office 365 uses a monthly subscription model. Deciding which version to buy becomes complicated due to new wrinkles in Microsoft's licensing agreement. If you buy Office 2013, your license is tied to one computer. This means if you buy Office 2013 now, and then buy a new computer to replace your old one later this year, you can't move your copy of Office 2013 to the new computer. What?!?!?! Microsoft really wants people to switch to the Office 365 monthly subscription model.

Read more about the differences between Office 365 and Office 2013 to help you make an informed decision for your home and business.

Keep Your Company Computers Safe

Inc Magazine wrote this wonderful article advocating an alternative way of thought to keep your company computers and data safe.

See the full article here.

11 Ways to Save on Business Travel

The Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) is expecting business travel spending to increase in 2013, but there are methods to save money that don't require staying at seedy motels. USA Today recently published a list of 11 ways to save money on business travel. Check it out and see how you can save your company money this year.

And remember, you can capture and enter your expense receipts in the ClickTime Mobile App with your iPhone, iPad and Android phones everywhere you go, even when you're on a plane without Internet access.

 

Article: 11 Ways to Save on Business Travel

Firefox 18 Has Issues

Firefox 18 was released earlier this week and includes some significant changes. Unfortunately, there are also some bugs with the new browser (see the Bugzilla reports here and here).

Hopefully the Firefox team will resolve the issue shortly but, in the meantime, we are actively putting together a workaround for ClickTime and expect to have an update early next week.

Great Tool for Testing HTML Email

Do you send out email newsletters or other email communications to customers? If you do, we found a great tool for you. Creating HTML-based email isn't hard but making sure it looks good under all the different email clients is a pain (Outlook, Gmail, iPhone, Android, Windows Mobile and more, along with multiple versions of each one. Ugh!).

Thankfully, there's now a great web app called Litmus that makes testing your HTML email a breeze. We've started using it here at ClickTime and it's saved us hundreds of hours. It's quick and easy to use and they provide you some great tips regarding what works and doesn't work with specific email clients.

Check it out at Litmus.com.

Your Company May Be Safer in the Cloud

Our friends at Inc. Magazine wrote this great article highlighting why being in the cloud makes your business safer.