Issue link: http://winesandvines.uberflip.com/i/152772
SEPTEMBER NEWS High Tech, Low Cost Symposium speakers outline practical tools Geni Whitehouse N apa, Calif.—Amid weightier discussions of cloud computing, data security, social media and data mining, one session at this week's Wine Industry Technology Symposium resonated with many attendees from small wine-making companies: free and low-cost software for wineries. Speakers CPA Geni Whitehouse and Internet consultant James Marshall Berry continued a four-year tradition of highlighting the best free and inexpensive computer-based technologies to help winery staff work more efficiently. And even though they discussed the topic a year ago, technology changes so fast that they had plenty of new ground to cover. "It's the no-brainer way to build a website." —James Marshall Berry Since every company and service needs a website, the duo discussed ways to create and optimize them. Surprisingly Berry, whose business is partly creating such sites, pointed out that anyone can produce a good website with WordPress. "It's the no-brainer way to build a website," he said. To help make your site conform with mobile platforms, ResponsiveCheck.com lets you check and adapt your site to collapse and display the most important information first. Likewise, BrowserStack can check your website for compatibility with any browser your viewers might use. The duo recommended Podio and Asana for product management, Intuit's Weave to create simple to-do lists, Flipboard to customize Twitter offerings and especially Expensify. "Just take a picture of your receipt, note the amount, and it will file it on the cloud and generate expense reports," Whitehouse noted. "It can even issue expense checks." Protonic.com offers free technical support for any subject, while Jiwire will find free local Wi-Fi hotspots. Join.me lets you control your computer remotely (or lets someone else troubleshoot it) as well as organize on-air meetings. And for those who don't want to buy Microsoft Office or subscribe to Office 365, OpenOffice is a free suite with almost all the same capabilities. Whitehall and Berry highlighted a number of useful graphics programs. Sxc.hu offers many royalty-free images but will also lead you to better ones available for purchase, while pixlr does almost everything Photoshop does—for free. Gliffy is a free alternative to Visio for creating flow charts, and while it's not free, LogoTournament.com organizes a contest among artists to design a logo for $250 and up. —Paul Franson 18 W in e s & V i ne s SE PT E M B E R 20 13