It’s time for more entrepreneurs to reset their focus, and shift their thinking to completely different ways of doing things. Everyone talks about innovation, but the majority of business plans I see still reflect linear thinking – one more social network with improved usability, one more wind-farm energy generator with a few more blades, or one more dating site with a new dimension of compatibility. Serious changes and great successes don’t come from linear thinking.

In searching for ways to get this message out, I came across a no excuse, no apology, new book by Brian Reich, called “Shift and Reset,” which makes some excellent points on ways to increase the range of change in a person’s thinking, or an organization’s results. Here are some key principles that he espouses and I support:

1. Force and expect change. Everyone knows change is hard and messy, and occasionally painful. But unless we force ourselves to change, innovate, and experiment with different ways of addressing serious issues, we won’t find solutions that are needed. Major innovation won’t happen without real commitment, sacrifice, and hard work.
2. Measure ability and results, not experience. Move to a model where people are measured on their deliverables, not how hard they are working, or how many years of experience they have. For entrepreneurs, this may mean more learning from experiments, and for organizations it may mean dumping a stagnant team to start over.
3. Don’t settle, demand the best. If you want to perform at the highest possible level, you need to hire the best people, who have produced consistent exceptional results. More energy needs to be spent on how the teams are organized and how the individuals work together. Leading an organization or a movement requires skills not taught in school.
4. Launch fast, fail quick, and learn more. Indeed, even the most capable, passionate, and well-supported entrepreneur will succeed only if he or she has a clear plan to follow. But don’t believe that any plan will develop and must remain unchanged throughout the execution process. Plan in your plan for constant change, with learning.
5. The time is now to think bigger. Great new ideas are emerging from the massive and frenetic coordination of people online and through connections. Let’s make sure they aren’t lost or ignored as we head into the future. Now is the time when smaller, yet dedicated groups can communicate and work to bring together disparate ideas.

Reich makes the point that everyone has a role to play in solving major issues, and driving greater innovation. The Internet and social media facilitates cooperation and collaboration, which is what we need to shift our thinking, then reset our goals and ways of attaining them. It’s much easier to challenge everything we know, and turn them on their sides.

Especially for change in serious social issues and infrastructures, it’s now easier to motivate people to care enough and take action. We will never innovate quickly by following the same, old, tired patterns. We need to realize what being connected really means, and makes possible. Now is the time to change.

Innovation begins with knowing your customer, so that’s always the first place to focus. The shift and reset in thinking applies to finding the solution, more than in defining the problem. Linear thinking on the solution can doom a startup or an entrepreneur. A good step in the right direction is to build a team with diverse backgrounds and perspectives.

This helps break linear thinking, and greatly reduces the probability that you’ll solve a problem in the same old way, or just like your competitors. Another approach is to bring in team members from outside your domain to challenge your thinking. You as an entrepreneur can either take the lead to make real change happen, watch it happen, or wonder what happened. You decide.

For some reason, I haven’t heard much about the next generation of the Internet (Web 3.0) lately, which probably means it isn’t happening as fast as everyone predicted. It’s already a couple of years behind schedule from my perspective. I suspect the real challenge is not the semantic web technology, but new attractive business models from smart entrepreneurs.

After some work, I’m still convinced that much of the Web 3.0 buzz has always been hype, but things are changing on the Internet, and bits and pieces of Web 3.0 are appearing. According to Michael Tasner, in his book “Marketing in the Moment: The Practical Guide to Using Web 3.0 Marketing to Reach Your Customers First,” here are the five key components to watch:

1. Micro-blogging. This is the ability to share your thoughts with a minimum number of characters. People are busy, with limited time, so why not get right to the point of the story, in 140 characters or fewer? Examples include Twitter, Plurk, and Jaiku.
2. Virtual reality worlds. These are places users visit to interact with others from around the world in a 3-D setting. Meetings are conducted in these spaces, and trade shows are being replaced with virtual reality shows. Examples include Second Life and Funsites.
3. Extended personalization. Web 3.0 will allow visitors to create an ever more personal experience. They are starting to expect their name to appear at the top of Web sites, personalized e-mails, and even advanced checkout options that suit their habits. Examples include SendOutCards, Google, and Amazon.
4. Mobile smart phones. There are billions of cell-phone users throughout the world, a number much larger than those who use PCs. Consumers are surfing the Web, purchasing products, and becoming instant photo journalists from their iPhone and Blackberry.
5. Real time on-demand collaboration. Users can now interact in real time on documents, collaboration, including making changes. Many software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications now allow on-demand collaboration. Examples include Google Docs, Salesforce.com, Slideshare.net, and Box.net.

According to Tasner, who is a marketing guru, business models and marketing in the Web 3.0 environment will need the most dramatic changes to be consistent with the new culture and technology. These include:

• Adapting to mobile, the largest and fastest-growing Web 3.0 trend. Marketing messages have to be adapted and directed to the smart phones, which all have web access, e-mail, video, texting, as well as voice.

• Accommodate the resistance to sharing all information with everyone. People are more and more worried about personal privacy and identity theft. This is driving a trend towards micro-community sites and smaller, more specialized social sites. Marketers need an effective presence on these sites for credibility and trust.

• Facilitate virtual communication versus face-to-face meetings. It’s too expensive to fly across country for marketing trade shows and big sales meetings. Virtual trade shows, GoToMeeting, and WebEx are attracting new customers like crazy.

• People on the Web now include everyone. Twelve-year-olds are running million-dollar-social networks, your grandma is tweeting, and your long-lost cousin runs a popular tribe on Second Life. This trend is escalating, and will not change.

The key driving factors to Web 3.0 include mobile and residential phones with high quality video, virtual shows surpassing live events, more intelligent semantic search information, and the openness of the Web. If you are a true entrepreneur, by now your head should be spinning with the possibilities. What do you see as the throttle?

I still get business plans, looking for an investor, that say all too clearly that the first goal of the new business is to do research and development (R&D) on some promising new technology, like superconductivity or cancer research. Investors are looking for commercial products to make money, rather than R&D sunk costs, so your investment hopes are sunk as well.

In fact, the term ‘research and development’ covers a continuum of activities, so you need to use a more precise term to optimize your funding considerations. There are opportunities all along the continuum, and they need to be mapped to the right academic environments and public- and private-sector development organizations before a funding source can be determined.

Let’s consider the six stages normally associated with R&D, and the boundaries and project-specific activities interwoven therein:

1. Basic technology research. The first stage is basic research on a technology that shows a potential for solving a difficult or expensive problem. Look only for grants, universities, and enterprise sponsors at this stage. Real products are only speculation at this stage, and mentioning a large list of them won’t help get outside investors.
2. Technology development. This stage is the transition to pilot-scale research on the technology. It may entail a number of false starts, but no products. A successful result is a one-of-a-kind technology that shows enough promise both technically and economically to warrant demonstration. Funding sources are still the same as stage one.
3. Prototype development. Now we are ready for demonstration tests conducted on first-time or early-stage products. The demonstration stage usually implies substantial redesign and debugging until final robustness can be established. Angel investors are definitely interested at this stage, but VCs usually wait until stage five or six.
4. Verification. Verification is testing and publicly reporting the performance of a commercial-ready technology using specific standards (EPA, FDA, etc.). Results, if positive, are used for marketing a product directly to customers. If these required tests are common and low risk, VCs may jump in at this stage.
5. Commercialization. The fifth stage includes preparing for, financing, and implementing full-scale manufacturing and marketing activities. The technology can be reliably replicated and produced. This includes entering into partnerships, arranging for manufacturing facilities, and developing channels for distribution. All is definitely fundable now.
6. Diversification. At this point the technology is ready for implementation with a full-scale marketing plan for an array of products, including interfacing with appropriate partners, and commercialization. The term research and development should never be mentioned, even though ongoing efforts for the next product are always required.

While I certainly applaud basic research, I try to remember that people buy solutions and products, rather than buying technology or a new platform. There is even a small group of customers, called ‘early adopters’ who seek out new technology solutions. However, we all need to remember that the mass market tends to wait for the product image to supersede the technology.

So investors, looking for a near-term large and growing market, see technology development as a big red flag. They defer to others, like government agencies, universities, and large corporations to take that risk. You can participate, of course, with private funds and grants, but don’t expect venture money to be thrown your way just yet. Get used to the message, “We love your proposal, so come back when you have a real product and a real customer!”

Even though I love technology, I always cringe when an entrepreneur starts his pitch by touting his new technology. He has forgotten that new technologies are perceived by most customers as causing more pain than the problems they hope to eliminate. I chastise these startups to highlight the solution created by the technology, rather than highlight the technology itself.

I usually get pushback about the success of all the great technology companies, like Intel and Apple. Let me be clear – technology and market-driven need not be mutually exclusive! The best companies find a way to drive the market with a solution based on their technology, rather than push their new technology as the solution for the marketplace.

Yet we all know that many customers delay their adoption of the latest software platform, and fancy new hardware, for a year or two until all the “kinks” are worked out of them. In reality, new technology alone is often assigned a negative value, as startups push out alpha and beta products earlier and earlier in the competitive rush.

Of course, there are always a few early adopters who love change and need to have the latest technology, but early adopters don’t make the market. Here are a few thoughts on a process that will keep you on the right track for the majority of your real customers:

• Get real customer input. Is your product tempered with actual market and customer feedback? Everyone’s personal perspectives and interests are different, so the key is starting from market problems, and going from there to technology – not vice versa.

• Quantify the pain points. What are the major points of pain experienced by the intended users of your product or service? Users with no pain who say “nice to have” will not likely pay money or endure change for your product.

• Keep it simple and easy to use. Are the user problems being solved in the simplest possible way, with the fewest possible features? Or have many features been thrown in, just because the technology can deliver them?

The easiest way to start this process is by starting from the market drivers and working forwards, not backwards. Don’t make the mistake of looking at market needs or requests as an afterthought to verify what’s already been planned.

Companies that are market-driven are externally focused: they identify opportunities and then capitalize on them. Technology-driven companies are internally focused: they identify what is possible with the technology and then look for customers who might like the results.

Market-driven also means knowing the overall dynamics and forces in the marketplace and understanding how those forces might impact the business – marketing and sales driven. A technology-driven business is driven by engineers. A great company finds a balance between these two forces, but makes the business side the driver.

In fact, technology is neither intrinsically good nor intrinsically bad. We all know that very few customers will buy technology, simply for the sake of technology. Technology tools and platforms are hard to sell, because the people who love and understand them are not usually the decision makers, or the budget owners.

But how do you manage “disruptive” technologies, where people don’t even know they have a need? Many entrepreneurs are convinced that they have the greatest invention ever, and others will believe when they see it. Investors know better, since dramatic changes in technology historically take a long time and lots of money go gain a foothold – with a few rare exceptions.

If you are looking for external investors, my advice is to take a hard look at your business plan and investor presentation. If they highlight your technology first, you will likely be tagged as a solution looking for a problem. Start by quantifying a customer problem, and show how you are using technology innovatively to solve this problem. That’s market-driven technology providing solutions, and every investor and customer will want a piece of that action.

I always advise software startups to file patents to protect their “secret sauce” from competitors, and to increase their valuation. The good news is that a patent can scare off or at least delay competitors, and as a “rule of thumb” every patent can add up to $1M to your startup valuation for investors, or for M&A exits (merger and acquisition).

The bad news is that patent trolls can squeeze the lifeblood out of innocent and unsuspecting entrepreneurs, as exemplified by the current mess around Lodsys patent No. 7222078. This patent holding company is charging infringement and demanding royalties from every app developer for the iPhone and Android, for a feature most agree has been in apps for many years.

Yes, the software patent process is a mess. I say this with conviction even after I survived the process, and have a software patent pending. Consider this list of commonly recognized software patent flaws, as summarized from my research, Paul Graham’s “Are Software Patents Evil?” essay, and the most recent “Enough is Enough” article by VC Fred Wilson, sparked by the Lodsys case.

• Process is onerous, expensive, and time consuming. Count on spending $10K to $20K per patent just for a USA application today, unless you do most of the work. Even after your application is accepted, the issuing process takes a lifetime in today’s technology (4-5 years). Then you need to repeat the process for every country of interest.

• Patents have become a tax on innovation. A lot of companies, like Lodsys above, buy up software patents that are over-broad, and hold startups hostage, after the fact, through royalties and litigation. They know that these entrepreneurs don’t have the skill or resources to defend themselves. Patents only help the big guys who want no change.

• Software technology changes rapidly. Software changes fast and the government moves slowly. The USPTO has been overwhelmed by both the volume and the novelty of applications for software patents, and they can’t maintain a qualified staff. Patents currently last 20 years, which is way too long in the software business.

• Patents granted that don’t meet the criteria. To be patentable, an invention has to be more than new. It also has to be “novel” and non-obvious. Moreover, patent law in most countries says that software “algorithms” aren’t patentable. So lawyers routinely frame a software algorithm as a “system and method” to meet the criteria.

• Valid patent can be overturned by unpatented prior art. The USPTO operates on the doctrine of “first to invent,” rather than first to patent. This is ugly, as it means that a valid patent can be overturned by another inventor with a preponderance of evidence of prior art. This happened to RIM (Research In Motion), and cost them nearly $650M to recover.

• Applying for a patent is a negotiation. As a result, lawyers always apply for a broader patent than they think will be granted, and the examiners reply by throwing out some of the claims and granting others. They don’t insist on something very narrow, with proper technical content.

• Different rules around the world. What I have described so far is the situation in the US. In Europe, software is already deemed not patentable, and other parts of the world are somewhere in between. In some countries, software patents are not recognized, and in others they are not enforced. We need a global solution.

So what’s the answer? I would argue to simply eliminate the software patent – since software is an implementation and is already covered by trademark and copyright law anyway. Another argument is that software by itself is information, not physical. It is in the jargon not “technical.” It is like a piece of music that is loaded into an iPod, or a record placed on a record player.

New computational technology algorithms would still be patentable, as long as the algorithm meets the defined requirements for novelty, usefulness and inventiveness. I’m a big supporter of building and protecting a portfolio of real intellectual property, and maximizing your startup’s valuation, but it shouldn’t be just a legal game.

Entrepreneurs are usually highly creative and innovative, but many innovative people are not entrepreneurs. Since it takes a team of people to build a great company, the challenge is to find that small percentage of innovative people, and then nurture the tendency, rather than stifle it.

A while back I read a book titled “The Rudolph Factor,” by Cyndi Laurin and Craig Morningstar, which is all about finding the bright lights that can drive innovation in your business. The story most specifically targets big companies, like Boeing, but the concepts are just as applicable to a startup with one or more employees.

The core message is that real innovation and competitive advantage are more people-based than product or process-based. Every good entrepreneur needs a people-centric focus to ferret out creativity and innovation in his team, and to build a sustainable competitive advantage.

The authors observe that people who behave as mentors tend to have an uncanny ability to recognize and nurture people who have innate capabilities along these lines. Here is a summary of the characteristics they and you should look for:

• Thinkers and problem solvers. Innovators are naturally creative and love new challenges. Some may appear a bit eccentric to people around them. They generally promote unconventional ways to solve problems and have an easier time than most at identifying the root cause of a problem.

• Passionate and inquisitive. These team members are passionate about their work and light up when talking about their role or a particular project they are working on. They often ask “Why?” even when it is not the most popular question to be asked.

• Challenge the status quo. They believe that questioning is of value and benefit to the organization. This is also how they discover what they need in order to solve a problem, so they aren’t rocking the boat just for the sake of rocking the boat.

• Connect the dots. Innovators have the ability to quickly synthesize many variables to solve problems or make improvements. To others, it may appear as if their ideas come out of the blue or that there is no rhyme or reason behind their thinking.

• See the big picture. They tend to be natural systems thinkers and see the whole forest rather than a single tree … or just the bark on the tree. They may express frustration if people around them are having conversations about the bark, rather than the forest.

• Collaborative and action oriented. They are not loners, and have the ability and confidence to turn their ideas into action. They act on their ideas, sometimes without knowing how they will accomplish them. The “how” is always revealed in time.

Your challenge is to go forth with this new awareness and thinking, to find and mentor those bright lights that will drive innovation and competitive advantage. The next step after finding innovators is to integrate them into your team. A key aspect is establishing a team-based culture that is a safe environment to share and execute ideas.

In fact, this safe and nurturing environment has to extend beyond a single team to the highest levels of the organization. It should embody a style of leadership that is essentially a commitment to the success of the people around you. That opens the door for anyone in the organization to lead from where they are, rather than waiting for management to “do something.”

Innovation is at the very heart of every successful startup. Everyone wins when you look at things very differently and wonder “why”, not “why not.” What better way to extend this power than to surround yourself with more highly creative people? Then you can make the world a place of possibilities, as well as probabilities.

Cloud computing is still all the rage in the business world these days. Yet I find that most business people don’t understand and fully trust it, and I defy even the technologists to define it in ten words or less for business people. Many say it’s just marketing hype applied to old principles that have been around for a long time.

A typical definition (from Wikipedia) is that “cloud computing, is Internet-based computing, whereby shared resources, software and information are provided to computers and other devices on-demand, like a public utility.” That’s about 25 words which I’m certain doesn’t paint a very precise picture to the entrepreneurs I know.

Putting aside the acronyms and technical jargon, I think I can distill the essence of the cloud computing vision to the following five key points:

1. Buy service from a central utility, rather than buy assets. Now you can pay for a metered service delivering compute power, data, and storage, based on your business demand, through the Internet. No need to buy and manage these as assets. This is a great cost leveling advantage to businesses, which used to be called time sharing.
2. Maintenance and support are provider responsibilities. Small companies no longer need an IT staff, with the inherent costs and management responsibilities. That allows them to focus on their core competencies, reduce overall costs, and be more agile in responding to market changes.
3. Access to new services and data is instantly global. Employees don’t need to come to an office to do their job, and customers don’t need special software installed access a new application. International standards and localizations are assumed from the beginning, rather than added much later.
4. Availability is 24/7, just like your electric utility. No more down time on weekends, or during the nightly backups. The Internet is a huge power grid that services computing needs (cloud computing) of businesses and consumers, just like the electricity grid services power needs (cloud power).
5. Easy integration of customized applications. People have traditionally bought their own computers simply to provide a common platform where all their applications could talk to each other, even though customized, and share data. The cloud provides these transformations with security and integrity.

Make no mistake about it, these are the dreams, not the reality today. Even the pundits agree that cloud computing is still for “early adopters,” meaning it’s not all there yet. Many people can quote cloud computing successes, like businesses using Amazon Web Services for huge scaling, or failures, like the Google App Service major outage a while back.

Other gray areas include how to do secure credit card transactions in the cloud, tax considerations for international operations, multiple virtual machines in one cloud, and properly addressing differing geographic regional requirements in a single cloud. Then there is the connection problem of sharing data with standard applications not in the cloud.

When a vendor starts talking about his paradigm shift to a dynamically scalable and virtualized solution in the cloud, with SaaS (software as a service), PaaS (platform as a service), MSP (managed service provider), or web services in the cloud, tell him to skip ahead to the chart which shows you how well he does on the five points above, and the five gray areas outlined.

Even though “the cloud” is a familiar cliché for the Internet, cloud computing is still very much an opportunity for startups, with lots of room for innovation and better solutions. Now is the time to jump on board, but a cloud usually means you should expect a few storms ahead before you see the sunshine.

It seems to be an accepted fact these days that big companies normally innovate by buying a startup with innovative products, rather than focusing on in-house innovations. This is a good thing for entrepreneurs and investors, who can win big, but it’s not a given. I see many startups who seem satisfied with a “me too” approach, building yet another social network or e-commerce site, rather than being truly innovative.

Much has been published on this subject, including a new book “Look at More: A Proven Approach to Innovation, Growth, and Change” by Andy Stefanovich, which is really a guide to established companies for unleashing creativity within their organizations. He asserts that the problem is lack of inspiration, and he supports this with twenty years of real case studies from his own experience.

The good news is that most entrepreneurs and startups have more inspiration than almost anything else, and it sometimes leads to success despite their lack of resources and business skills. Yet even entrepreneurs need to focus on the most effective way to unleash innovation, and maximize their chances for success.

Andy offers a simple mantra for innovation, expressed as “Look at more stuff; think about it harder.” This mantra is complemented by a framework known as the five M’s, which are five key principles for unleashing creativity in any environment:

• Mood. Inspiration and creativity requires the right context of attitudes, feelings, and emotions. Every business leader who wants innovation must constantly monitor and set the proper mood for the environment. You can set the right mood by purposefully disrupting the status quo, initiating change, asking provocative questions, and listening.

• Mindset. This is the intellectual foundation of creativity, the baseline capacity each of us has for getting inspired, staying inspired, and thinking differently. Four thinking disciplines which produce a creative, inspired mindset include changing your perspective, taking risks, finding your passion, and challenging assumptions to embrace ambiguity.

• Mechanisms. These are the tools and processes of creativity that help you engineer inspiration into the way you work and empower your organization to embrace the kind of behavior that fosters innovation. Four key steps include building a context, generating ideas, filtering ideas, and building a blueprint for implementing the best ideas.

• Measurement. Even creativity needs guidance and critical feedback on the qualitative and quantitative performance of individuals and organizations. Measurements send a strong signal of what is important and where people should focus their passion and energy. In addition to measuring results, you need to measure mood, mindset, and the mechanisms above.

• Momentum. This is accomplished by the active championing and celebrating of inspiration and creativity that foster a self-reinforcing cycle for increasing innovation. Momentum is an organizational priority for inspired leaders who have a clear understanding of the other four M’s.

Not everyone has to be a leader for innovation to work. Research has indicated that followers are just as important to consider as leaders when thinking about creating the mood and momentum for creativity, inspiration, and innovation. Likewise, the right mindset alone isn’t enough. You have to be able to convince others and sell your ideas.

Thus, even entrepreneurs must not assume that their efforts and their team will be creative and innovative. “Me too” startups don’t get funded, and they certainly don’t get bought for a premium by the sleeping giants who are looking for outside innovation to kick-start their growth again. Thus I suggest that every entrepreneur and every startup review their own environments for the five M’s, to avoid getting tagged as a “has been” before they even “have been.”

Entrepreneurs are always looking for “the next big thing,” when maybe in fact it’s a lot of little things that are only recognized after the fact as components of a big evolution or revolution. In my view, the Internet “connectivity anywhere” has already spawned several of these, but the global change has only begun.

Emily Nagle Green, in her recent book “ANYWHERE,” argues effectively that the future of the world and business is ubiquitous connectivity, the total interconnection of people, ideas, and products through a global digital network. Every person will have access to virtually anything in the world from virtually anywhere he or she happens to be at the moment. Key vehicles already include wireless for communication, and RFID for product location.

The implications for startups in this context are huge. On the hardware side we need better technology to provide a common digital network around the world, better broadband to satisfy the demand, and wireless ubiquity for connecting people, devices, and businesses. The needs for new software and services are just as pervasive.

So how do entrepreneurs train to lead the Anywhere Revolution, rather than be dragged along by its wave? Here are some principles I have adapted from Emily’s work:

1. Be eternally curious. You need to be an eager investigator, avoiding the temptation to write things off before you’ve opened your eyes to all the possibilities they offer. Don’t let yourself be talked out of powerful ideas. Develop a keen sense of customer appetites, as well as current solution strengths and weaknesses.
2. Be a ubiquitous connector. Some people are naturally “connectors,” using their links with others to create or promote opportunities between them. The Internet dramatically reduces the cost of being a connector. In fact, now we can all be connectors, and should be.
3. Be an analytic thinker. Already today, your skills in searching for information and then synthesizing that information, looking for patterns, and interpreting it, can be more valuable than the actual information you’ve amassed in your experience as a person and as an employee.

Entrepreneurs should be asking themselves for every consumer and business product, how can we add “anywhere” connectivity to this item? This is called the connectivity diffusion.

• If you can enhance the user’s experience with sending, or getting, real-time information, you should.

• If you can add value to the product with connectivity – perhaps contributing to the cost, too, and thus defraying the price of the product for the customer – you should.

• If you can extend the life of the product in the customer’s hands by providing service or updating it with new features, you should.

• If you can partner with a firm that can do any of these things to bring your service or message to more “surfaces” in the customer’s life, you should.

Also, put your marketing hat on and realize the wealth of new potential opportunities to create more awareness and consideration of your product or service in the future of ubiquitous connectivity. Whether it’s coupons, or advertisements on the mobile, the connected device with geo-location that’s always in a pocket or purse is literally a whole new world for marketers.

As an entrepreneur, don’t apologize for your self-interest and profit motivation. Be an optimistic adopter of connectivity. Be a connectivity evangelist and embrace the connectivity future that is opening before you. That’s a win-win for everyone anywhere.

In a second, with Google, I can find a phone number that was assigned to you ten years ago, but it takes me an hour to find your phone number on that business card you gave me last week. That’s just wrong. We need instant access to the most important of all resources, current contact info.

Too many of us have piles of business cards scattered around the office and home, as well as additional contacts on your cell phone, PDA, Outlook, LinkedIn, and Facebook. The result is we can’t find that key name and phone number quickly when we really need them.

The solution is simple to define. What we all need is a digital tool that can extract data from business cards, as well as sync it with your cell phone, your email, and the social networks you use. It needs to have great search and display capabilities as well as spreadsheet-like sorting so you can look at the information in various ways. Finally, we want it cheap (of course).

My old rolodex for 100 business cards doesn’t do the job any more. So I’ve been scouting around for something better, looking at the pluses and minuses. There are a wealth of alternatives, but no universal solutions:

• Bump. Here’s the latest technology. A new smart phone app that allows users to simply tap their smart phones together, and with the right setup, they will exchange contact info. This is great and it’s free! Of course, you both need to have compatible smart phones with the software already downloaded.

• CardScan Personal. Here is the old standby low-end hardware-based solution, a simple business card scanner for $150, with software to synchronize the data with Outlook, Windows mobile devices and smartphones. That doesn’t address social networks and other lists you may have. The scan hardware here is required for all software solutions.

• Sage ACT! If you prefer the software and data be all on your own computer for security and privacy, ACT! has been the standard for businesses and individuals for over 20 years (base $200). The cost goes up if you want to synchronize with Outlook and your PDA, but most of the features you might be looking for are available.

• Salesforce.com. In business, contact information management is a key part of customer relationship management (CRM). Salesforce.com is the most popular online service offering, meaning no software to install, and accessible from any computer. For individual entrepreneurs, it’s a high-end alternative (entry $5+/month), and it’s definitely a candidate for your business sales force. Basic sync functions are available.

• Shareware. I found dozens of software packages available on the Internet for free download, or a nominal price. Several of these have good reviews, including PIMEX, Diasho, Enhilex, and Advanced Contact Manager. Yet my experience is that shareware software is usually worth what you pay for it.

• Commercial software. There are hundreds of other alternatives and add-ons out there, like Quickbooks Customer Manager, Personal Information Manager, Beyond Contacts, and Goldmine. They range in price from $150 to over $4000, but check each for the features important to you.

Social networks have added additional layer of complexity to this challenge. LinkedIn supports the export of connection contact information to Outlook and Gmail, with no special software required. Facebook, however, does not provide this interface, and has specifically prohibited applications from being offered to solve the problem. They consider such data proprietary.

Even email is a problem. You need to capture contact details beyond the email address from email contents, including signature blocks. I did find a package named Copy2Contact, which can save you lots of cutting and pasting. Now if everyone included contact information in every email, I wouldn’t need to bump into you periodically to stay current.