The invitations have been flowing fast and furious lately: “I'd like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn.” At first, it seemed like the thing to do and I indulged in what I will call LinkedIn promiscuity, accepting all invitations. There was also the phenomenon of LinkedIn Envy when I saw acquaintances with more than 500 connections and a plethora of recommendations.

Vertex has updated its O Series tax software, expanding the product's global tax management and compliance features.

Is there a Hispanic customer in your future?

Intuit reported that its fiscal 2008 revenue of $3.1 billion grew 15 percent from last year and its fourth quarter revenue of $478 million increased 11 percent from the year-ago quarter.

Petz Enterprises has introduced TextLink, a text-messaging service for its CrossLink 1040 Professional Tax Software.

Intuit introduced Quicken Beam, a free service that lets users check their bank balance from a cell phone, iPhone or other mobile device.

Is there life after Microsoft Office Accounting? Rephrase that: Is there life left in Office Accounting? There are times I think the employees charged with marketing Microsoft’s entry in the low-cost accounting market should sue their employer for nonsupport. With all the focus on Office Live, Xbox and Yahoo, there hasn’t been much energy left in the company for talking about this part of the accounting industry.

SpeedTax introduced an online CPA Questionnaire that allows accounting professionals to determine their clients' sales tax audit risk.

Prior to co-founding Adaptive Planning, a company that offers Web-based business intelligence software, Robert Hull described himself as a “frustrated” chief financial officer — and the chief culprit behind that frustration was Excel.“I was not happy continuing to use Excel as my budgeting, forecasting and reporting application, but was also a bit hampered by the resources needed to get to essentially the enterprise class of planning applications,” Hull recalled. “As I looked out at the marketplace, what I saw was a pretty big hole with respect to a mid-market application that was affordable, didn’t require a lot of resources to get going and actually solved my business problem in a non-technical way.”

SAGE RELEASES TIMESLIPS 2009Sage Software has released Timeslips by Sage 2009, an enhanced version of its time and billing application that includes a number of new features and improvements. These include streamlined billing, with customizable buttons that activate user-defined billing procedures; new reporting; and a new timekeeper report that enables businesses to track work in process, billed time, paid bills and write-offs for each timekeeper. Timeslips 2009 also offers the option to auto-fill transactions with a client’s current balance, automatically run conflict-of-interest checks during the client-entry process, and the ability to hide inactive references.

Ten years ago, not many would believe that e-mail would eventually become a mission-critical application. Yet today it has taken over many work lives and is gaining an even firmer grip as PDAs, BlackBerries and other mobile devices become widespread.Sadly, most users have little, if any, training in how to effectively organize and follow through with the mass of messages that they receive each day. Little or no planning goes into personal implementation.

“Technology is making it possible for smaller accounting firms to make sure their clients don’t get in trouble over payment of sales and use taxes. How have most firms handled this in the past?” was the speaker’s question. “They didn’t,” was the answer from attendees at MD Biz, Maryland Business & Accounting Expo, who were probably more interested in continuing education credits than the speaker’s comments (mine).

Universal Business Computing Co. has enhanced its payroll and write-up software with the ability to print special and foreign character sets, and has doubled the amount of reporting fields from 500 to 1,000.

Microsoft has decided not to upgrade its Microsoft Money personal finance software this year and will sell the software exclusively online now.

Sage Software has released the latest version of its contact and customer management software, Act by Sage 2009 (11.0), improving the program's Microsoft Outlook integration, calendar and activity visibility, and database search features.

Web-based accounting software developer NetSuite cut its net loss for the second quarter of 2008 and grew its revenue 43 percent compared to the year-ago quarter.

Kaspersky Lab rolled out the latest versions of its antivirus and security software.

Payroll is becoming a seminal battleground in accounting software, with more than a dozen major companies offering a variety of programs. And that doesn't begin to measure new competition from banks and other financial services firms.Nor is there any consensus on the format. Established online payroll services such as CompuPay and MPay are now seeing additional competition from the likes of ADP's Run and Intuit Online Payroll. But service bureaus are likewise making a comeback as they diversify their offerings and compete more strongly on price, as the new myPay service from Thomson-Reuters is demonstrating.

INTUIT TO CUT JOBS

Former General Electric CEO Jack Welch said this about trust: "You know it when you feel it." Trust is equivalent to confidence, and is critical to learning and change. By building trust, projects take less time, are less disruptive and more successful. This applies to any type of change within a firm, but is especially important to technology, where change is rapid and projects often cost more and take longer to complete than anticipated.