Small Scale Automation
Automation is a big thing in the manufacturing industry. Factories use robots and other “smart” machines to weave cloth, build cars, and almost everything in between. But automation has just as many applications for the small business as it does for a factory — the difference is that small business don’t know about it, or think it’s too expensive.
Now, I’m not suggesting you purchase a robot to handle the paperwork, but I am suggesting that if we made better use of the computer power we all have on hand to automate certain tasks, our lives could be much less stressful, and much more productive.
Many people can dramatically increase their work efficiency by simply teaching their desktop computers to help them keep organized. E-mail rules and calendar synchronization are great examples. If enough people use a service like Google calendar, you can even subscribe to those that are important, so that your own calendar is always up to date.
One thing I’ve successfully automated has been the synchronization of my cell phone with my computer. Since both my Mac and my phone support Bluetooth, the computer simply connects wirelessly to my phone each day and the two devices update each-other with any changes. This keeps my contacts and calendar updated, without me having to enter the same information in 2 different places.
Or what about our websites? What if you used RSS feeds to put the latest 5 blog posts from your blog on your home page? Or what if you could pull up ANY blog posts on a certain topic, and reference them on your site — without you doing a thing? Both are possible and easy to set up, yet few people use them.
Could you help automate things for your customers as well? Microformats such as hCalendar and hCard allow websites to display event and contact information in a way that both humans and computers can understand. By providing your business’s contact information as an hCard on your “about us” page, you can make it that much easier for those who use hCard enabled web browsers to get in touch with you: instead of having to write anything down one click puts your contact information in their address book!
Next time you sit down at your computer, think about 5 tasks you do every day, and then spend 30 minutes researching how to automate them. They may take some time to set up, but in the long run automation is always well worth the setup time.
Tags: automation, efficiency, microformats, syncronization
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