Kevin Cullis: How to Start a Business Mac Version

As an entrepreneur and start-up business I watch how others use their Macs in their business.

I recently received an email that had a company’s signature and Apple’s data detectors picked it up, but because of the way this person wrote their email signature the data detectors did not pick it all up and thus caused me time and energy to get things right. Here’s their signature:

John Doe

My Company, LLC – My Consulting

E-Mail:       mycompany@mycompany.com

The problem with this is Mail’s data detectors is that because of the spacing it saw the address and ONLY the “My Consulting” and not the rest of the line “My Company, LLC”. If this person had not added the “My Consulting” tag line for below their address then the data detectors would have picked up the whole business name and address. The correct way for the data detectors to work is to have the address as such:

This way ALL of the company address data is picked up. Adding other information before and after the address

The previous method left me having to work with many more mouse clicks that I was willing to endure, but a simpler solution is adding a vCard to his email signature which takes up far less of my time, and my perception of their view of my time, and thus improves my view of their business.

Or, do both. This allows one to cut and paste and address into something else such as another email or into a document and drag and drop the vCard onto Address Book with no typing needed.

Your thoughts?

There is a recent discussion about why iWork Pages were not getting through Windows servers for clients with their proposals and HR for job applicants. So why is this?

Well, seems like there are a number of reason:

• You’re sending the files as a Pages document to someone that has MS Word and they can’t read Pages documents.
• You’re sending the files through Apple’s Mail program and not selected the Edit > Attachments > Always send Windows friendly attachments.
• Their using Windows servers “virus” software is turned up WAY to high to allow any of them to get through.

Solutions?

1. File > Export or Print > Print to PDF any Pages document to send it to the intend client.
2. Check the Always send Windows friendly attachments.
3. Tell the client to to talk with their IT department or System Administrator  to ratchet down or lighten up the virus protection software to allow “false positives” to get through.
4. Export your file into a Word document and open and save that document in Word format.

Why this last step? Because of this comment from another person that has gone through the headache of this issue

I believe Alex might have solved the issue with the metadata comment. Firewalls that are screwed down too tight see the MAC PDF as a virus and stop the file at the wall with no bounce back. Chatted with an IT friend of mine at a large corporation and they have recently discovered the same issue and narrowed it down to the metadata issue. No simple resolution for them either other than adjust the firewall “rules” or advise staff to work with Word or know that recipient can receive a iWork ’09 PDF.

PS On Wednesday night I tried the Pages PDF conversion on my wife’s MACBook Pro running Snow Leopard with Pages 09 and same thing – no show at destination of municipal government office so I know problem wasn’t specific to my unit.

Hope this helps someone if you’re using iWork Pages