I didn’t blog this morning because Google rolled out Google sites yesterday and I got caught up in creating an extranet for a client. Google Sites is an incredible addition to Google Apps for Domains and yes, it’s free [again]…
“Google Sites, a new offering from Google Apps, makes creating a team site as easy as editing a document. Use Google Sites to centralize all types of information — from videos to presentations — and share your site with just a few people, your entire organization, or the world.”
Just one more reason to love Google Apps for Domains! Click the title to go to Google sites…
Regardless of what the government says, most business owners feel we’re still in a recession…
“The recession is cutting into small and midsized businesses’ IT spending, and some industries are hurting more than others, according to the results of the latest IT Effectiveness Index (ITEI) survey.
The ITEI is a benchmarking tool that measures the technology effectiveness of small and midsized businesses. (Small Business Trends is one of the partners of the study.) According to the latest survey, the manufacturing industry has been hit hardest, with 66 percent of people in this industry delaying, halting or canceling IT projects, and a similar number reducing capital expenses.
Also hard hit were the communications industry (at 55 percent), wholesale businesses (52 percent) and service providers with 48 percent reporting an IT spending slowdown. Not surprisingly, the computer industry was the least affected — only a third of the respondents in that industry said their IT projects had been affected by the recession. And the woes don’t end there. Half of the manufacturing industry respondents said their IT operations were either understaffed or critically understaffed. Thirty-three percent of service providers said the same, as did nearly a quarter of the respondents in the computer industry.” Source: SMB IT Budgets and Staffing Hit Hard by Recession | Small Business Trends
From where I sit, most small businesses squander money unnecessarily by not thinking about saving money where possible on IT. Here are three easy ways to stretch your technology dollar…
Outsource your email and back office collaboration to Google; Google Apps is a powerful, cost effective way to communicate both internally and externally.
Explore using a Content Management System like WordPress as a website; link it to social media outposts to drive your internet marketing.
Get off the Microsoft licensing treadmill; no one NEEDS Windows 7, in face, most end users haven’t mastered XP and 2003 yet. Consider buying older computers on eBay, using Ubuntu, OpenOffice, and other money saving strategies and tactics.
These are just a few of the many ways small businesses can stretch their IT dollars and smart business leaders look to months like December when much of the world loses focus to implement ideas like these. Let’s talk about how you can start the new year with more cost effective tools for IT…
Looking for ways to save money? Who isn’t these days…
“The economy is bad and the stock market is hitting all-time lows. If there was any time to be a little more frugal, this would be it. Thankfully, Google Tools can easily substitute the other expensive software programs you might normally think of first.
Here are the Google Tools, and those they substitute, that can help you keep some cash in your pocket. Some tools will save you more than others, anywhere from dollars ($) to hundreds ($$).” Source: 6 Ways to Save Money Using Google Tools
…to put my business online using only tools that are freely available from Google. The purpose of the exercise is to ‘eat my own dog food’ so to speak and thereby demonstrate that it’s possible for any entrepreneur, SMB, volunteer group, etc. to have a robust web presence and take advantage of these tools for their own purposes. Sign up for updates in the Feedblitz box in the right hand column and track my progress…
Update, November 9: I ultimately had to pass on this project in favor of adding WordPress and a few other tools to the mix. Since the time of this original post, I’ve learned 10x more about ‘good, fast and cheap’ tools to put your business on the internet. Questions? Feedback? Comment, call or write!
What is 15x you say? 15X is the multiple by which the traffic to the blog increased over 3 months. In July I was serving up a paltry 4 pageviews per day. Then I got serious. In October that number increased to 63. I have no reason to believe that it will stop growing either, unless I get lazy and stop working at it… ;-)
How did I do it? Through an easy, repeatable process that begins with Google Reader, continues with this WordPress blog, and ends with social media integration. Question? Feedback? Leave a comment or use the contact page…
I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve posted on the joys of using Google Reader. I consider my use of that tool to be one of the three greatest competitive advantages I have. In seminars I tell people that mastering rss feeds with Google Reader may be the most important skill I learned in the past decade and most of the time the response is crickets chirping…
What is Google Reader and why do I think it’s SOOO important?
“When RSS became a standard for publishing material on the web, the way that we received our information changed very quickly. No longer did users have to go find content; now it could come to them automatically. With the world at their fingertips, something had to be created to sort all of the information. Feed Readers soon started popping up, and power house Google (Google) created their own version.
Google Reader is robust in features, and can be used “out of the box” for those that just want a point and click solution, or tweaked so that power users can play around.” Source: HOW TO: Use Google Reader Like A Rockstar
If you want to know more about how this stuff works, I’ll be doing a FREE ONLINE TRAINING CLASS for the first 200 people who register here for a class at noon central today. So clear your calendar, grab a sandwich from Jimmy John‘s and get smart! Question? Feedback? Leave a comment or use the contact page…
A recurring theme on this blog is using one one online [platform independent] tool to use or store resources. Bookmarks are no exception, although in this case I actually use two – one for public, one for private [nothing racy here — actually is the stuff that’s too boring to share] bookmarks. If you scroll down to the bottom of this page, you’ll see what is called a ‘tag cloud’ from del.icio.us [online at del.icio.us.com] — it’s a ‘cloud’ of bookmarks that I have tagged with descriptors so that I can share them with other people. Check it out — del.icio.us is what you call a social bookmarking tool meaning that you can share the good stuff that you find and categorize it to either share it or be able to find it again. If you use firefox, there are a couple of addons that will allow you to replace the firefox bookmarks with del.icio.us. You can also use it to import your firefox bookmarks into del.icio.us as well. You can share your bookmarks as clouds on your blogs or through a newsfeed if you prefer…
The other tool I use is Google bookmarks which part of the Google toolbar. Google bookmarks doesn’t have the rich sharing capabilities of del.icio.us so that’s where I keep my boring stuff that’s not really worth sharing. You can log on to Google bookmarks anywhere so your toolkit can be with you whenever and wherever you are. The Google bookmarks also integrate nicely with Google search and Google notebook…
Tactic #3 in the series ‘tactics and tools for tightening your tribe using social media’ is blogging and I’ll be covering not only the why but the how. Admittedly, though, the more obvious something is to me, the harder it is to write about it and blogging falls into the ‘duh’ category as in “Do you blog?” “Duh!” The benefits are that obvious! Let me back off a little though and see if I can make my case…
In the olden days — the days when my boys tell me I grew up — freedom of the press belonged to those with a printing press. Now, anyone who can fill out a form on a website can have a blog. Seriously, it’s that easy — why do you think there are so many bad blogs out there? ;-)
A good blog, however, is a powerful tool for establishing thought leadership in an area. My good friend Dana VanDen Heuvel @ MarketingSavant describes it this way — the difference between a thinker and a thought LEADER is that the thought leader has a public point of view. That public point of view leads to share of voice, which leads to share of mind, which leads to share of market and that improves your bottom line! Personally, I know of know better way to make your point of view known than using a blog. Continue reading “Tactic #3: Blogging. The ‘why’ and the ‘how’…”→
Today I’m announcing a new feature on the site; the ‘Five Minute University’. What’s that about? Well, the tool I use for screencasts, Jing, limits me to a five minute screencast. Todd, you say! Wake up — use Camtasia, use Flashback Express, use something that allows you to record longer. No, I say. I have a tendency to bloviate on topic that I’m passionate about and five minutes forces me to get my thoughts together!
The ‘Five Minute University’ is also an homage to one of the funniest bits I ever saw on Saturday Night Live [back in the days when it was actually funny]; Don Novello as Father Guido Sarducci outlines the concept here:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kO8x8eoU3L4
Now, here’s my first 5 minute course on using Google Reader as your inbox for the internet…
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zvf8E6knJtY
Questions? Feedback? Leave a comment or use the contact page to reach me…
First, what’s this nonsense about ‘Tightening your Tribe’? Well, it’s a reference to Seth Godin’s social media masterpiece ‘Tribes‘. As I read the book, I really enjoyed the strategic discussion but found any reference to practical, tactical tools was missing. I therefore decided to create a series of posts on tools that could possibly accompany the book. This is the first post — there are 9 more. I hope you enjoy them all!
Just in time for the first major entry in my series ‘Top 10 Tactics and Tools for Tightening your Tribe’, Google was kind enough to do a short video on the topic of browsers…
They even launched a new site called What Browser? for people who are unclear on the concept. The truth is there are dozens, maybe hundreds, of different browsers you can use to view content on the internet, but most people never venture beyond the familiarity of Internet Explorer. Personally, I go back and forth between the 5 browsers [Internet Explorer, Firefox, Flock, Chrome and Safari] I have installed on my computer and many times I have multiple browsers open at the same time because not only is it possible, but also desirable, to use a certain browser for a specific task.
I have joked before that Firefox is my wife and Chrome is my mistress, but my wife does not think that analogy is very funny. Maybe it’s better said that Firefox is my workhorse and Chrome is my show pony. In either case, I do most of my work in Firefox, although I am using Chrome more and more — especially with web-based Google products. So why do I love Firefox so much? Let me break it down for you… Continue reading “Tactic #1: Master Firefox!”→
‘For him who has ears to hear!’ as the Good Book says. It’s possible to have a powerful computing experience without using a single Microsoft product [or paying a single penny to Bill Gates]…
“The only reason I’ve opened Microsoft Outlook or any other desktop e-mail program in the last year is to test tips. Since I added my ISP account to my Gmail in-box, and moved my Outlook appointments to Google Calendar, I get all the information I need in my browser.
Now I’m getting ready to boot Word, Excel, and PowerPoint for their Web alternatives, but before I bail on Office entirely, I stuck a toe in the Web-apps water by using the free ThinkFree Online service irregularly over the past few weeks. So far, I haven’t missed Word, Excel, or PowerPoint one bit. In fact, I appreciate the comparative simplicity of their Web counterparts, which have worked without a hitch–so far, at least.”
Google Wave be the most innovative email tool since the dawn of email itself and the first 100k users have received access…
“Google Wave is one of the most anticipated new products to come out of Google this year. Technology blogs have been abuzz with excitement about this new communications and collaboration tool since Google first showcased it in May.
But so far, Wave, a shared online desktop where groups of users can exchange messages, share and edit documents, drag and drop widgets and play games, has been available only to a select group of developers. On Tuesday, Google is rolling out Wave to a slightly-less-select group: 100,000 users, including developers, people who signed up early on and some users of Google Apps, the company’s package of online applications.
In a blog post, Lars Rasmussen, an engineering manager for the group that created Wave at Google’s Australian offices, said that since the product was first shown publicly, Google has “focused almost exclusively on scalability, stability, speed and usability.” But he warned that bugs are still likely: “You will still experience the occasional downtime, a crash every now and then, part of the system being a bit sluggish and some of the user interface being, well, quirky.” (Of course, well-established Google products, like Gmail, also have had frequent bouts of downtime recently, including last week.)” Google’s Much-Anticipated Wave Opens Up a Bit – Bits Blog – NYTimes.com
Unfortunately, no matter how much I begged, Google wouldn’t include me. Stay tuned for details as they become available…
Gathering information via newsfeeds is a critical part of the inbox zero approach to email. It will help you get distracting newsletters out of your inbox and into a newsreader where they belong.
“If you don’t have time to search though multiple blogs I recommend you check out Alltop. The site was launched by marketing wiz, blogger, author, entrepreneur & venture capitalist Guy Kawasaki.
What’s different about Alltop? It’s really a selection of the top 50 RSS feeds (i.e. mostly blogs) in 20 categories. All that information is collected listed in a single page. Personally, I’m finding Alltop useful for keeping up with other topics I’m interested in but don’t want to spend a lot of time on.
“Where are you going to put all the great stuff you find on Alltop? My suggestion is use Google Reader to collect and organize the feeds. Reader works with Gmail as a 1-2 combination to end clutter in your inbox. Gmail is for ‘just in time’ information and Reader is for ‘just in case’. Don’t let the two get mixed together…
No, I’m not talking Seinfeld here. ;-) Do you own your internet domain? I thought I did, but when I purchased it, I made a huge mistake — I got it through Google when I set up Google Apps. Don’t get me wrong — I love Google Apps! What I don’t love is what happens when you purchase a domain through Google while signing up for Google Apps…
When you purchase a domain as part of the signup process, Google assigns the domain to one of 7 different partners on an automated basis and it falls into some automated bit bucket. In reality, the process is like the ‘Hotel California‘ — you know, you can check in any time you want but you can never leave. I recently spent the better part of a month trying to get my corporate domain transferred to GoDaddy — after two failed attempts, I finally became master of my domain a week ago today.
How can you avoid this nightmare? By all means use Google Apps, but purchase your domain through your favorite hosting provider where you will have full control over the domain THEN make the necessary changes from there. Me? I prefer GoDaddy although I have tried HostGator and they have a great product too [although they charge too much for their domains, imho]! If you want corporate emails or your own website and this is all Greek to you, then give me a call and I’ll walk you through it — I’ll help you avoid the same mistake I made…
Although this post was written in the UK, it’s applicable here…
“In a 2005 report the Government quango Becta showed that schools could effect considerable savings by making use of Free Open Source software such as Open Office. In their study they simply looked at “like for like” software replacement using existing networks and computers.
Since this study we have seen the emergence of the new breed of ultra-portable Linux-based computers aimed squarely at the education sector and the inexorable build of Web 2 services such as Google Apps.
This week the Elonex One, a Linux-based laptop costing less than £100, was launched at the Education Show in Birmingham causing much excitement amongst the visitors and a very serious discussion about how best to support this new breed of Linux laptops in schools.
So much has changed so quickly that a model of Open Source school computing is emerging which could save the UK taxpayer billions of pounds and provide enormous opportunities for the home-grown technology sector based around Open Source software.”
Local school districts would do well to shed their expensive Microsoft licenses and move to open source. Not only would it reduce costs, but it would also breath life into aging equipment as Linux is much more efficient than the bloated Windows operating system. Click the title to read more…
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](https://i0.wp.com/img.zemanta.com/reblog_b.png)
Bright, shiny objects! 