Nor was I very impressed when Microsoft first introduced its first generation streaming video product called Silverlight.  With Adobe Flash and Quicktime dominating the web scene, it seemed that there was little that Microsoft had to offer the marketplace that could not be more easily found in products already in widespread use.

I was wrong.

Silverlight is, in fact, somewhat revolutionary in the evolving world of streaming media.  And while it may have had a slow start, it is quickly gaining ground in a world where streaming movies and television programs for multiple formates (from big screen TV to desktop PC to 2×2″ smartphone screens) are quickly dominating the use of the Internet.  Silverlight 4, released to developers in April of this year, expands the number of controls and platforms available.  And, more to the point, it allows the rendering of HTML inside a  Silverlight package.

I don’t want to get goofy technical about this, because we don’t need to and because the video experts are much better at this than I am.  Just remember this:  the present state of the art for streaming video used in IPTV (that is, television over the Internet) was based on a simple little platform called UDP  – the User Datagram Platform.  UDP was an early method of sending messages, called datagrams, from one computer to another.  Unfortunately, this became widely used despite such major weaknesses as a lack of reliability and message integrity.

The follow-on Transmission Control Protocal (or TCP) brought better reliability and message ordering, but even with its ability to stream data and use a reserved point-to-point socket architecture, TCP today is proving to be too limited for today’s fast-paced streaming video services.

If you have not fallen asleep at all the acronyms, or become dismayed by this extrememly simplified explanation, stay with me for a couple of sentences more.  Silverlight allows for reliable streaming using TCP/IP over the Internet that also encompasses HTML and other core internet technologies.  And it is gaining on the market leader Flash, which uses less IP-centric technologies like vector and raster graphic rendering.  And Silverlight’s ZIP and XML standards-based accessibility contrasts with that of Flash, which uses specialized non-standardized formats for which specifications are only available from Adobe.  Finally, it is notable that Microsoft has not bludgeoned the marketplace with this product, but rather produced steady enhancements while wooing customers to it.

If you go online and look up Silverlight, you will find scores of comments to the effect that if Flash is around, you can safely skip Silverlight.  I disagree.  People who believe that Silverlight is simply another graphics format were not paying attention when Netflicks selected this platform for its streaming of movies and television.  Or when the Country Music Association last year picked Silverlight as its choice to spiff up its features on some 90 major artists.  You see, Silverlight is not the next generation of old-style web graphics. 

It is the next generation of Internet based movies and television.

Which is why it matters.

For professional accounting  firms, payroll services have been somewhat of a roller coaster ride over the past couple of decades, and many firms are eagerly diving back into the client service. 

Why? Because this core need of businesses of all sizes is still a great client relationship strengthener and, perhaps just as importantly, because technology has finally caught up to the needs of professional firms, making managing multiple, dozens or even 100+ client payrolls not only possible,t) but very profitable. Yes, payroll is becoming a core revenue center, with the result that many firms are taking back their client relationships from the big national service bureaus.

In our September issue, we will offer our annual review of professional payroll management systems (which will be available online and in print), with categories of payroll systems that can suit the needs of any firm, whether you prefer to let your clients do most or all of the work, or if you want your staff to cover all the bases, and variations in between.

In the meantime, let us know what your perspective is on payroll services and what you’d like your payroll programs to do better.    

After speaking to the LSIA’s president, I knew I had to keep the program pretty basic. He admitted that many attendees would prefer not to attempt e-filing, something that’s routine to most accountants. He also asked me to stay away from “that Twitter stuff.”

Of course, I included an entire section on social media in my talk because I knew the group would want to know about LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter strategies, even though they may have thought they didn’t want to hear about it.

The talk went well - and I found the group engaging, hospitable and more than anything else, like sponges. They were hungry to hear my main points on retention strategies, something I explained any accounting firm - regardless of size, location or service delivery - wants to know more about, especially in this economy. After my talk, several members came up and told me they were going straight back to their offices to try some of these strategies.

Here are a few retention strategies I presented:

• Contact clients more than once a year. Most accountants are only in touch with their clients before tax season. Instead, find ways to “touch” the client more often to demonstrate how much you really care about their personal and professional lives.
• Pick up the phone and call the client. Most everyone wants to only communicate by e-mail. Skip the impersonal e-mail and pick up the phone. Your client will be really glad to hear from you and will almost certainly welcome the call.
• Discuss what’s changed and what’s new. Tell the client the clock isn’t running, and you want to discuss what’s changed for the client since you last talked, as well as what changes might be in his or her future.
• Meet for coffee, lunch or some other social event. Schedule a time to meet with the client in person, away from the office. This provides a common ground that is usually more relaxed and informal.
• Exchange referrals. This is perhaps the step most accountants forget; you want referrals for your practice, but you also should offer referrals to your clients. You are in a unique position to help virtually any client because of your own client base and the people you know. However, don’t jump in to the conversation like a smarmy insurance salesman; discuss your businesses and then develop referrals.

Believe it or not, as “basic” as these points seem to some, they are very unique to others - especially accountants who have been content for far too long to do business on the golf course or wait for the phone to ring with repeat or new business. Let’s face facts: in today’s business environment, those who wait for the phone to ring aren’t going to survive for the long haul.

We are giving away a free registration to the Bay Area full-day seminar “Taking Your Clients Online.” Go to www.cpatechadvisor.com/sleeteronline to register, and for more information on the seminar. Regular pricing for the event starts at $129 for early-bird registers, including a continental breakfast.

The seminar will be offered later in the summer in Chicago, Dallas, Atlanta and Los Angeles.

The program is completely free. Nominations can be made on our website at www.cpatechadvisor.com/40under40.

The conference was jointly hosted by the US Internet Industry Association, Net Literacy and Broadband for America, with the support of Verizon.  It featured such speakers as Blair Levin, architect of the national broadband plan; John Horvath, the consumer research guru from the Federal Communications Commission; Brian David, who worked on the broadband adoption parts of the plan; Emy Tseng from the National Telecommunications and Information Agency; the best from Cisco Systems, Intel, the Fiber To The Home Council; and yours truly.

If you are beginning to nod off here, don’t.  Because the forty-some programs that make up the $7 billion in broadband stimulus grants have accounting and reporting requirements that will water your eyes, and they present an opportunity (as do follow-on grants that are in the works) for high-visibility, important-to-the-nation kind of accounting work.

How do you get into the process?  I have been working for the past year with one of the grant recipients, and suggest strongly that you send your best rain-maker to www.broadband.gov to track down the list of grant recipients…then approach them to determine whether they are hip-deep in alligators and in need of accounting help.  Just as an aside, it would not hurt to familiarize yourself with the bewildering requirements of grant management for these grant.  And cosy up to the engineering firms for these projects (as they are selected) to participate in the budgeting process.

Hint:  Engineers never budget enough for the accounting and reporting, so you will need to work with them to bump it up.

This is just one tiny part of the stimulus package grants, and there are others worth pursuing — particularly in an economy where new business is hard to find.  But it is the part I am in the thick of, and I can attest that good accounting is always hard to come by if you are on your own.

• Apple released the new iPhone 4 to amazingly strong sales, which (coupled with the growing use of the iPad among corporations) gives the Apple franchises a much stronger life.  Microsoft should be paying attention…
• Which they apparently are, as the leaked previews of Windows 8 hit the wires and (gasp!  awe!) look remarkably like and Apple interface.  I, for one, and very happy with Windows 7 and will hold judgment on the new version until we see actual working screen shots.
• The US Supreme Court either tore apart Sarbannes Oxley (on the one hand), or mostly upheld that law (on the other).  What appears to have most happened was that they made a minor tweak, acknowledging that the way the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board is organized is unconstitutional, but then allowing it to continue to operate and made no major changes to the law itself.
• Verizon kicked off a new logo and ad campaign for its wireless services, built around the Droid smartphone as a hedge against the iPhone.
• Economists are warning of a third, deeper recession on the way for the US, which if it occurs will make this winter a very difficult time for all of us.  Or not.

But the most interesting news of the week came out of the Federal Trade Commission, which has managed to track down the insidious credit card penny scams.  It’s a mega-million dollar industry in which your stolen credit card number is hit for…well, a few pennies here and a few pennies there, maybe even a dollar or two.  You see the monthly charge, but it is such a small amount you can’t be bothered to track it down…but against millions of stolen credit card numbers, it adds up.  The FTC is now chasing the master-mind behind the scheme.

I’m betting it is the same people who hit your smartphone with spurious text messages that cost $9 or so each…insidious, and originating in Eastern Europe.

There is a lesson here:  pursue and cancel any recurring credit card charge you do not authorize specifically, and refuse to accept downloads via text messages from anyone not known to you.

Meanwhile, I’m off to pursue Windows 8, and will report back when I have some more concrete information.

From the professional accountant’s perspective, having clients that use web-based programs and collaboration tools can also greatly streamline in-firm workflow processes and help the practice be more profitable. Just as the paperless movement of the past decade-plus took a little while to gain momentum and, eventually, wide-spread adoption, it has taken a few years for professionals to embrace web-based programs in their practices and for their clients.

Web-based systems such as ASP, SaaS and Web 2.0 services are the business tools of the future, and the firms who are most successful at getting their clients to the cloud, will be the ones who experience the greatest benefit from the technologies.

For those professionals looking for some guidance in getting you and your clients into web-based programs, The Sleeter Group will be offering a seminar at several cities across the country specifically geared toward helping accounting firms find the best technologies, how to implement them, security concerns, best practices, and other ways to get the most of the time saving and productivity-boosting benefits. The Sleeter Group is headed by Doug Sleeter, who writes a column for our publication. He will be joined in giving the seminars by our Executive Editor Darren Root, CPA.CITP.

Titled, “Taking Your Clients Online: How to Transform Your Client Relationships Using Cloud Computing,” the seminar will be held in the San Francisco Bay Area on July 20, followed by Chicago, Dallas, Atlanta and Los Angeles. Pricing starts at $129 for the full-day event, which includes continental breakfast. More information on the seminars is available at www.sleeter.com/online.

This is the first time the AICPA combined the two conferences, and if there is strength in numbers, it’s very evident at this year’s conference, held June 6-9 at the Bellagio Hotel in Vegas. Rumors for the number of attendees range from 800 to 1,000+. Pretty impressive.

The exhibitors seem pleased, albeit the occasional grinch that there is too much time between breaks while attendees are in session. There’s also the thinking on the part of attendees, of course, that once you’ve done the trade show floor … well, you’ve done the trade show floor.

The sessions I attended were fine, although there is not much new in terms of trends other than lots of talk about SaaS (Software as a Service) or cloud solutions. There’s quite a bit of buzz about this, despite reports that accountants are still slow to adopt cloud-computing solutions. I think that’s going to change in a big way, thanks to the efforts of many vendors who are implementing and promoting cloud solutions.

Several announcements were made during the show. One event was the Press Appreciation Reception sponsored by SpeedTax and Fujitsu ScanSnap, at which the companies released a new, joint white paper authored by CPA Tech Guru Jim Bourke of WithumSmith+Brown. I understand the white paper will be available soon from SpeedTax and Fujitsu, so as soon as it’s available, I’ll update this post with a link.

CPA2Biz and its CEO Erik Asgeirsson hosted a press luncheon with the company’s six “Trusted Business Advisor” Solutions Partners: Bill.com, Capital Confirmation, Copanion, Intacct, Paychex and XCM Solutions. Applause to CPA2Biz for continuing to grow and serve the market. I’m impressed with Eric’s vision for the company that certainly has taken its share of criticism over the years. They certainly seem to be headed in the right direction.

More to report in another upcoming blog.

Intuit’s websites were first reported down around 7:00 p.m. on Tuesday, June 15. The offline websites included QuickBooks, QuickBooksOnline, Quicken, Lacerte Software, ProSeries and the main corporate website for Intuit. The websites for two recent acquisitions by Intuit, Mint.com and Intuit Online Payroll (formerly PayCycle), remained online.

As of 7:30pm CDT Wednesday, the company had not resolved the down website issues, which was resulting in problems for small businesses and professionals who rely on the web-based resources and programs. Will this pose a longer-term problem for Intuit and for web-based programs in general. Whether these website difficulties prove to be purely technical or the result of external sabotage, there may be a resulting lack of confidence in the SaaS systems.

What do you think?