According to an announcement by Intel today, the computer giant has decided to purchase Wind River Systems, a software company, for $11.50 a share, totaling a whopping $884 million. By doing so, Intel hopes to diversify its product base by putting its chips into a wider variety of consumer electronic products.
 
Wind River, which serves several high profile clients, makes operating systems for electronic devices. By purchasing Wind River, Intel, which already dominates the processor market for personal computers, will be able to expand into new markets. Eventually, Intel hopes to absorb Wind River’s customer list in hopes of acquiring more chip contracts.
 
Intel has not undergone any major acquisitions since CEO Paul Otellini took over in 2005. Although Otellini himself has not released a statement about the acquisition, an Intel spokesman has confirmed Intel’s optimism about the potential for a much wider customer and product base due to Wind River.

Image: Flickr

With today being May Day, I decided to share business tools that could help you get to your pay day. I am sharing these tools as a way of providing business owners with suggested tools to help you run your business proficiently. The tools that will be suggested for you will cover a variety of topics and will help you streamline your business processes.

Image: sxc.hu

For those of you who don’t know, May Day is May 1st and actually is the host to many international celebrations. One of which is the International Workers’ Day which pertains to the the establishment of the 8 hour work day. Although many may not know but this holiday got it’s start in the Americas.

To help under more about how it all came about, I wanted to share an excerpt from an article on the Workers’ of the World website,

In the late nineteenth century, the working class was in constant struggle to gain the 8-hour work day. Working conditions were severe and it was quite common to work 10 to 16 hour days in unsafe conditions. Death and injury were commonplace at many work places and inspired such books as Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle and Jack London’s The Iron Heel. As early as the 1860’s, working people agitated to shorten the workday without a cut in pay, but it wasn’t until the late 1880’s that organized labor was able to garner enough strength to declare the 8-hour workday. This proclamation was without consent of employers, yet demanded by many of the working class. [Read more]

With all of this in mind and in celebration of International Workers’ Day of May Day, I thought it would be helpful to provide business tools that can help you reach your pay day as an entreprenuer. Tools that could help you shorten your work day but at the same time give your the same amount of creativity and pay day.

Today’s Business Tools Picks:

• Social media management:
  • Flock: browser that integrates social media + email management + internet browsing + RSS feeds all in one
  • FreeTwitterDesigner: allows you to personalize your Twitter background
  • SocialMention: a social media search engine that searches user-generated content such as blogs, comments, bookmarks, events, news, videos, and microblogging services
• Financial management:
  • Mint: to help you analyze your personal and business finances, you should check Mint out because it allows you to compile financial data from different sources into one location so that you can monitor your finances.
• Collaboration management: includes tools that can help you map out your business, manage your teams or manage your processes.
  • MindMeister: is a collaborative online mind mapping tool - you can capture your thoughts and share them instantly with friends and colleagues.
  • PBWiki now PBWorks: Online Collaboration and Project Management that is perfect for small businesses and small teams/groups in larger companies looking for an easy, secure way to collaborate at work.

I’ve always loved the slogan, Insanity is contagious; we get it from our children.

Well, I want to add another: Software makes you crazy!

My current gripe is when I’m writing along quite nicely thank you very much, and some weird set of mis-typed keystrokes changes the display, or hides a menu bar, or dumps the file altogether.

Or the fact that because, a couple of months ago, I traded my three year old computer for a new one, with the same operating system and the same programs, but for reasons that are totally unclear to me, the type size on everything has changed. Obviously, something changed, and if I knew what it was I could change it back. But I can’t find it so I’ve learned to live with it.

Or why Firefox on the new computer won’t let me use the WordPress preview feature…

I love computers… I particularly love how easy they make it to change manuscripts. (I’m old enough to remember having to retype a whole manuscript for minor changes on yes, a typewriter.) But geeze!

Maybe that’s why I’ve got only one curse I ever use. It’s: May Bill Gates, and his wife, be using his software.

Write well and often,

Two newsletters:
Abundant Freelance Writing - a resource for freelance writers including 3x a week job postings.
Writing With Vision - for those who want to get a book written.

Audrey Owen, editor, forum member and blogger, posted a link to Codswallop’s The Freelancer’s Toolset: 100 Web Apps for Everything You Will Possibly Need. Good heavens!

Yes, there are 100 websites, many with applications, that are aimed at freelancers of all stripes, including freelance writers.

Warning… this site can become a time sink. I worked my way through about the first 30, clicking on this, downloading that, when I realized I had a few other things to do today. So explore a bit and bookmark it.

Write well and often,

Two newsletters:
Abundant Freelance Writing - a resource for freelance writers including 3x a week job postings.
Writing With Vision - for those who want to get a book written.