First published on Small Business Daily, Sep 17th 2009.

It’s astounding how many fantastic free resources are made available by some of the big technology vendors out there. It’s even more astounding to discover how many people fail to utilise, or even know about, these resources! So in this post, let me introduce you to a couple of resources you never knew about. These tools are so useful you’ll want to keep them a secret from others so you can “skill up” on the sly and become a genius!

HP Learning Centre – Free online classes, 24/7! This site is like a mini online university. It offers everything from quick “how-to” videos to comprehensive instructor-led online courses. Yes, that’s right; instructor led, for FREE. Click on the “See all classes” tab and you’ll find a long list of classes covering a broad range of topics. Try out “Create and print your own high-quality marketing materials” under home office, or “The other 90 percent: unlock your vast untapped potential” in business basics, or for the weekend, “Beyond basics: fundamental photography techniques” in the digital photography category.

Microsoft Business Resource Centre
An excellent resource for small businesses, courtesy of Microsoft, that offers personalised self-help, support, community connections, training and articles based on a simple profile created on sign up. So a small business owner with 10 employees in the finance industry will see content relevant to her, whereas a Creative Director in a 200 staff advertising agency will see different content more relevant to him. Note that this site is still in beta so it’s subject to changes and content may be a little light-on currently.

Jump on and sign up now – just do it!

Clayton Moulynox – Evolve IT Australia
We fix business problems, not computer problems - Develop, Solve, Evolve.
Follow me on Twitter: @claytonhm

Do you frequently struggle with creating PDF documents, sending large files through email, and converting various file types from one to another? If so, you may have found that some mainstream solutions are complicated and time consuming. But there are some online solutions that can help you with these common tasks without requiring you to learn complicated applications and workflows, or even install anything on your computer.

CutePDF – makes PDF a piece of cake

PDF files ave become a standard in document exchange between professionals around the world. The only problem with this is that you usually need expensive programs like Adobe InDesign or Photoshop to generate them, but thankfully CutePDF is here to save the day. CutePDF is an online tool that converts all compatible documents, such as MS Word or MS Excel files, into PDF format, which you can then send out. Simply download the easy-to-understand free version, and convert your documents to PDF in a jiffy. You can also purchase a pro version with more features if you need them.

Send large files through YouSendIt

If you exchange files on the web – especially audio or video files, or programs and installers – then you’ve probably been frustrated by most email servers’ inability to handle large files. Now you can use YouSendIt, a free online service that lets you send files up to 100MB easily and quickly. Just upload the files you want to send and enter the email address, and the recipient will get an email with instructions for downloading the files from the YouSendIt servers. If you register for a free account, you can opt to have your own email address appear as the sender. Again, there is also an optional paid version that increases the maximum size limit.

Convert your files using YouConvertIt

File conversion is yet another tricky and frustrating issue. Opening .docx (MS Office 2007) documents, for instance, in older versions, or using some video and audio files in foreign formats, requires the user of a special converter. The problem with converters is that you have to scour the internet looking for the specific converter you need for each situation, and often each operates differently. With YouConvertIt, you simply enter your email address, upload the file you want to convert, choose output file type, click convert, then follow the instructions given. It’s a simple as that.

The more professional and long-winded approaches to accomplishing these tasks do have their merits, but most of us don’t need or want the hassle. With these free, online solutions you can quickly accomplish what you need in just a few simple and easy steps.

We all know that when you want to find information on the web, you Google it. Be it product information, information on competitors, business reports, research, whatever…you feed some key words to Google and it spits out a bunch of relevant links. Easy.

But what about when we want to find information within our own organisation? When we want information from within our own four walls? You want some info on a product you sell, you chase a guy in the sales team. Looking for a financial report? You call Bob from accounts. Services brochure in PDF format - call marketing. And so it goes on. God forbid, you might even right click on your main shared network drive and choose “search” then wait for 3 hours and still get no useful information…

What if you could have a familiar web based search facility to find information in your enterprise, just like you’ve been doing for years on the web? How much easier would it be to throw is some keywords and get a result virtually instantly? Rather than calling marketing, you just search for “company profile brochure” and up comes a bunch of results, ranked by relevance and with metadata to give you as preview of what the resource is.

This is all possible with Microsoft’s free release of Search Server 2008. The free express edition may be all many companies will ever need, whereas other companies that fully adopt enterprise search and wish to integrate it with other applications will want the full blown enterprise version.

Download the release candidate of Search Server 2008 Express edition and give it a go - it’s straight-forward to configure!

Microsoft have released this fantastic assessment tool, the Windows Vista Hardware Assessment Tool 2.0, that allows you to quickly scan your network and produce a comprehensive report showing if PCs are ready to run Vista or not.

It will also assess a PCs readiness for Office 2007 - a feature I’ve personally found very handy as many of our clients are ready to move to the new Office.

It’s free of course - if you’re interested in the reports it produces, download it and give it a go!