Business Hacks

Bing is no stranger to giving stuff away in order to spread the word about search alternatives to Google. Earlier this year I told you how to get cash back from purchases using Live Search (Bing’s predecessor) and more recently, there’s the whole get-free-Wi-Fi using Bing thing. Now I’ve got news of more cash savings via Bing.

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We’ve been hearing about Office 2010 for a while now, going all the way back to a post I made on my birthday earlier this year with a movie trailer-style tease about the new version of Office.

Well, Microsoft has come a long way in the last 6 months, and you can now install the public beta on your own work or home PC.

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Occasionally, debate will rage over the question of using two or more monitors. In my judgment, there’s no debate: No other single change to your desktop can have so profound an effect on your productivity. When I tell this to people that have never tried multiple displays, though, I get the same question every time: “What’s it good for?” Well, here are four ways to make that second monitor pay for itself.

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Well, do you? We talk a lot about Twitter around these parts, and we’re proud to count hundreds of Business Hacks readers as followers, but we’re still curious about whether you actually use the service.

For example, I do a fair bit of tweeting (mostly in the form of links to BH posts), but don’t actually read many tweets from others. That’s because Twitter quickly leads to information overload (”twoverload”?), and I just can’t keep up.

What about you? Are you actively hash-tagging and retweeting and all that? Vote in our latest poll, then hit the comments to follow up. If you use Twitter, what for? If you don’t, why not?

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More Twitter goodness:

• A Businessperson’s Guide to Using Twitter
• Manage Your Twitter Account in Outlook with TwInbox
• Five Great Twitter Tools for Business Users
• Ten Tips To Make Twitter Work for Your Business

Do you have a small business that operates out of your basement — and maybe a few other people’s basements? Wish you could have a single cohesive phone number, like 800-SOMETHING, with a slew of extensions? Well, you can, and it won’t cost very much (or anything at all).

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Getting feedback is important, which is why we often share Word documents with co-workers. Unfortunately, it’s rarely smooth sailing. Half the time, people edit your document directly without using revision marks, and even if they do, it doesn’t matter anyway, because you end up getting four different copies of the doc, each revised by different people. Making sense of it all and properly incorporating feedback into your original version can be a pain.

All those annoying days of meticulously comparing various versions of your documents are gone. I’ve got the bead on a free online service that makes comparing and reconciling your copies of Word documents as easy as pie.

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Microsoft Office 2010 is about to hit public beta (which I’m keenly interested in since I’m tech reviewing a new book on Office 2010). One of the more interesting developments is that Microsoft Works — that program that seemed to ship on every computer on the planet but no human being was ever known to have used — is discontinued. In its place will be a free, ad-supported version of Office, called Office Starter Edition. And Microsoft is looking for beta testers. Want to sign up?

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Traveling this holiday season? Well, it seems that pretty much all of the major search engines have conspired to bring you free Wi-Fi. Mind you, they’re not working together to make this happen; it just seems to have turned out this way.

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The cloud is the new floppy disk. Unfortunately, it’s hard to find a cloud with the right mix of features, capacity, and price. I love the way DropBox integrates itself into Windows, for example, but you only get 2GB for free. SkyDrive gives you 25GB, but there’s no desktop integration (aside from the nice-try-but-kinda-clumsy SkyDrive Explorer).

Now I’ve got a new option that has DropBox’s integration, a little more capacity, and a few other conveniences as well.

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What time is it when Walmart offers $100 off on the purchase of a BlackBerry? Time to buy a new phone, of course.

If you’re in the market for a new smartphone, this could be your lucky day. From November 14 - 20, if you buy a BlackBerry along with a two-year contract to AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile or Verizon, Walmart will give you a $100 Walmart gift card that you can use on anything in the store, from phone accessories to a new Rock Band guitar controller. You can even buy a holiday gift for me or Rick. Here’s a list of the eligible devices:

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