During my recent trip to the UK and Hungary I was able to fit in Xero’s presentation at the London Apple Store.

I had only been in the UK for 2 hours but decided it was the best way to catch up with Hamish and the team and see how things were going for Xero in the UK.

I have visited the Apple Store on numerous occassions but had never really appreciated how BIG it was till I had to find the presentation area towards the back of level 1.

I am continually amazed at what happens in an Apple Store – at one level it is basically a large, free, Mac based internet cafe. People check their email, update their Facebook and one guy was sorting himself a date on Polish Dating UK!

Anyway, back to the Xero presentation. Hamish and his team did a great overview and it was fantastic to see this NZ Company getting a great response and positive feedback to their innovative accounting software (who would have ever thought those two words would be used together!)

The Apple Store presents a somewhat difficult environment as it is hard to determine exactly how many of the people in the presentation area are there for the presentation and how many just are using it as seat and some timeout in an otherwise chaotic environment!

All I know is that Hamish believed the event to be a great succcess and is likely to do it again in the near future.

For any of you running a small business I definitely recommend Xero – currently available in NZ, the UK and soon AUS!

Like most Kiwi’s I appreciate a good coffee which leads to one of my pet hates regarding travelling! There are very few places that make a coffee as well as my local cafe Bar Italia, Takapuna.

Having been in London for the last few days I made it my mission to hunt out Flat White a kiwi-run coffee shop in Soho – winner Independent Coffee Bar of the Year in the UK 2007 – Project Cafe07.

So there I was standing in line waiting to order a long awaited Latte and low and behold, in Soho, London I am standing behind William Tozer, an old friend from my days studying Architecture at Auckland University.

What a coincidence! William was recently featured in Architecture NZ as after having completed his studies he has been practicing Architecture in London for the last 12 years. Having read the article, I had thought I should look him up if I got the chance!

During the short wait for my coffee William and I caught up on 12 years!

The coffee and the catch up were both superb and I strongly recommend all Kiwi Coffee Lovers in London to make a visit to Flat White – you never know who you may bump into!

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Over the last few days i have found screeds of items on the new Google Chrome. Rowan Simpson has taken the application view point further with some interesting results inlcuding a great Xero app for the Mac.

Over the last three months the directors of The Cadimage Group have invested significant time into reviewing and renewing our business strategy.

While the cost of doing this, both in $ and time, is significant I can’t recommend it more highly.

As a small business owner there is the constant trap of getting caught in the busy’ness of business. As I have heard many times you have to “work on you business not in your business.”

To help us with this process we used Helen and Greg Cross of Cross Ventures. They bring an immense amount of knowledge and experience to the table and effectively we “chewed the fat” for a couple of days talking about our business and where it could go. Helen then put together a comprehensive overview of where we are and where we want to go along with a great financial model.

Having undertaken this process I found a huge amount of clarity in what we are doing and when attending the Morgo conference I found it easy to talk about what we do and where we are going.

I was pleasantly surprised to also be congratulated by a number of people for actually taking the plunge and investing in our strategic plan. To me, having completed the exercise it seems so logical to have done it, but again it is easy to get caught in the day to day running of your business and failing to come up for air and see where you are going.

Helen and Greg provide an awesome service and are there to check up on us as we move along our path so it is now time to start implementing and constantly reviewing.

On reflection my only regret is not doing this sooner!

Google’s new browser Chrome was released today and while I haven’t had a great deal of time to put it through it’s paces I have certainly found it fast and like some of it’s features.

While traditional applications still exist there are an ever increasing number of web applications available.

Google Chrome provides a nice feature to allow you to Create application shortcuts…

This allows you to browse to a web application – take Xero for example – and have a short cut produced for your Desktop, Quick Launch Bar or Start menu.

Once the short-cut has been created you now simply click it to launch the application in a browser window without all the browser interface (address bar, bookmarks etc)

All good!