Intuit just reported small businesses added 25,000 jobs created in May and 250,000 since October. So it seemed a good time to do a hardly scientific quick scan of Monster.com postings. But that efforts suggested the tech business is improving slowly, like the rest of the economy. And things looked better than a few months ago when I last did this exercise. These counts are for April and May through yesterday, with no attempt to see if individual postings represented multiple jobs. Read more...

No details were given perhaps the recent move into the Sage X-3 line was in mind, but in sending along the first quarter financial for SWK Technologies, the company mentioned it is preparing for its next round of expansion as an explanation for an increase in SG&A expenses. SWK, based in Livingston, N.J., is a Sage reseller that is owned by Trey Resources and for the last two quarters has been providing the SWK-only results as a contrast with Trey. For the first quarter ended March 31, revenue was $1.83 million and SWK lost $106,527. Read more...

In the scheme of things, it sounds relatively minor. But Sage pleased resellers by announcing at its Insights conference that sales of Peachtree Quantum and Simply Accounting will count towards meeting reseller tier requirements. That’s a big improvement for all since VARs now have an incentive to sell those products. One said the previous status was a  disincentive to sell those other Sage products. And that’s part of the message from the show – Sage is becoming one company instead of a conglomeration of acquired products. Read more...

Intuit has spent the last two years saying free is not free and using products that initially have no charge to hook customers who will buy more services. But in this week's third-quarter earnings conference call, CEO Brad Smith said Intuit has downplayed the use of the free QB Simple Start package. Instead, Intuit is putting emphasis on getting new customers into the product franchise via offerings such as the QuickBooks Online edition and its Web site service. Read more...