Your Web site represents that critical line of communication of your organization and brand. In most instances, it is the only touch point between your customers and your business. Establishing and expanding your brand online requires strategic planning, knowing your audience and embracing all forms of technology. From widgets, applications, plugins and blogs to social media integration, there are many areas to explore, some of which, can be challenge and requires much effort to implement and manage.
For many years, I have been involved in all facets of Web site development and strategy as well as network administration. I know what it takes to help build your online presence and engage with your customers. With that approach, I can help you find the right solution that fits your needs.
I’m also a believer in sharing information and resources with others, so feel free to peruse this site for the latest information and downloads. You can also contact me if you’re interested in building a site for your business or just want to chat about technology. Have fun out there!!
We all do screen captures-whether it’s to illustrate a point or troubleshoot a problem. However, there are very few free screen capture applications that can capture both video and static screenshots with the ability to share, save and email the captured media.
Thanks to a friend, I recently discovered Jing, a FREE screen capture program that can do it all and much more!! From project collaboration to producing narrations, Jing’s interface is elegant and simple, enabling you to use it for any project.
Some key features of this app:
Real-time screen capture of what you see on your computer monitor with the ability to do annotations
Capture both images and video, an ideal feature for doing live demos
Share it via email, IM, social or just save the file for future use
Basic package is FREE and is installed as a desktop application for easy access.
Click here to download the free version and let me know what you think of it.
Google announced today that Google Analytics, their popular site tracking platform, got a major upgrade by offering real-time tracking of sites.
For many years, I have used Google Analytics for site tracking and for a free tracking tool, it offers comprehensive and in-depth analysis of traffic patterns, user data, page performance and more. Now it will have real time reporting, so that site owners can see activity as it happens. The initial roll out started today to a select number of users and should be available to all users over the next weeks, according to Google’s blog. I can’t wait for the launch and I will post any updates on this post. Click here for more details.
After many months of being locked down in beta, Google+, the new Google-powered social network was recently unleashed to the masses. A recent Comscore estimated that there were 25 million visitors within the first five weeks. When it was first launched, many called it the “Facebook killer” with a full suite of applications, enough to make Facebook release a series of enhancements, most of which were not well received. For example, the Circles app allowed Google+ users to create and filter groups by any category including interests. Facebook’s response was rolling out their “Lists” feature.
“Hangouts” is another Google+ app that sets them apart from Facebook as it offers the unique ability to collaborate and share documents as well as perform screen sharing and have video chats between 10 users. The video functionality reminds me of a more robust version of Apple’s Facetime. It even has the ability to create instant webcasts over Google+, thereby expanding the reach to other users.
Is it ready for Businesses?
The short answer-not yet. The platform was always tailored for the consumer market, but according to Christian Olsten, Product Manager on the Google Plus project, it is under development at this time. They anticipate a new launch for businesses by the end of the year with tighter integration of AdWords and Analytics. Here’s the video:
To learn more about Google+, click here.
I have worked with many local businesses on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) projects and the need to increase visibility on local search remains strong. Especially for brick and mortar businesses (i.e.: restaurants, galleries), an optimized site translates into more site and foot traffic of people looking for that latte on the go. One of the key steps to optimizing your site for local search is exploring ways to incorporate your city and regional keywords in your site content. This includes, but is not limited, to your page content, title tags, header info and even your URL.
Here are some other best practice tips for optimizing your site for local search:
Time for a Blog
Blogging is a wonderful platform for rich and relevant content and I would recommend using geo-specific terms like “New Jersey soccer equipment” to your posts and tags. The key is making sure the blog is tailored for your readers, so avoid blatant promotion as readers can see right through that and it will do more harm than good. Keep the posts short and informative and include rich media like photos and videos as it enhances the posts.
Say No to Keyword Stuffing
I have seen this over and over and over and over and over again. Please do not stuff your site with keywords and this includes the page titles, footers and page content.
Link Strategy with local organizations
Establishing links with local organizations like the local Chamber of Commerce is a great way to build traffic and authority in local search, as it ties in with Google’s ranking algorithm and gives your site credibility a boost. From partner and association sites to social media (esp. Facebook and LinkedIn), look for sites within your network and find those groups and explore opportunities for reciprocal linking. If possible, set up a links page with links to those groups on your site.
Become an expert
Get your feet wet on discussion boards and advice sites like AllExperts.com and Yahoo!Answers and find areas of expertise. So if you have a shoe repair store, jump in on a thread that is within your space like “Repairing Golf Shoes” and sign up to become an expert in this category.
Get social
As most of you know, social media continues to be one of the most cost-efficient ways of driving local traffic to your site as well as establishing a local base of fans on all social media channels. FourSquare and Facebook in particular are excellent platforms for any local business, looking for ways to acquire and engage local visitors. The key is making sure you have the resources and energy to keep your fan page up to date and relevant. Restaurants will often use social media for promotions on dish specials and special events.
There are many ways to teach science, but to maintain that level of interest in the classroom can be challenge for some teachers. The reason is simple – we all want to be entertained. I recently stumbled upon this video that teaches the laws of physics behind fire, in a fun and creative way, and it’s accomplished in 1:29.
This video was created by YouTube user minutephysics and he launched a series of videos explaining other scientific principles, in a way that is both engaging and very cool. I encourage you to break out the bunsen burner and check them out here: http://www.youtube.com/user/minutephysics At the very least, it will keep your kids entertained. 
For many years, I’ve struggled to find the right tool for monitoring social media activity. From knowing the top tweets, posts, comments, likes and media, I always found myself pulling data from multiple sources and making that reporting cocktail in the end. Before diving into these applications, I would recommend creating a strategy first that would serve as your social media game plan for your organization. It’s truly a detailed process that requires listening, learning, engaging, measuring and optimizing along the way. In addition, these tools also require time and analysis so plan ahead and identify the key people within your group to handle the strategic planning and analysis.
Once that is done, I encourage you to explore these tools that I found to be quite helpful:
Social Mention is basically a social media search engine that indexes everything on all social platforms. This includes comments, blogs, events, news, videos and microblogging sites. One has access to all key metrics around these keywords and it does a fine job of displaying charts illustrating mentions per day or week. They also have a dedicated API for customizing your own keyword monitoring widgets.
Considered to be one of the top platforms to track, monitor and analyze social media, Radian6 is worth exploring. One can easily create dashboard reports and get a whole new perspective of all social media channels. Radian6 also is a great resource as they cover basic social media guidelines, best practices, case studies and more.
I love this Web-based application as it truly is the all-in-one tracking solution of all your social media channels with great integration with Google Analytics. I highly recommend it.
Crowdbooster
Establishing a Twitter account is only the first step to building your presence on this platform. Having those insights and knowing how your tweets are performing is essential. Crowdbooster is the solution for measuring your performance on Twitter with built-in tips to optimize your Twitter page and improve your engagement rate with a full suite of analytics. Ultimately, this enables you to improve what you’re tweeting and get real results from your followers. It also has audience insights for deeper analysis and knowing what your followers like and the optimal times to tweet. I signed up for the free version which is limited to one account and three profiles but it’s a great starting point. Give it a try: http://crowdbooster.com/
Social Bakers streamlines the process of analyzing social media traffic including Facebook. Twitter and LinkedIn with many options to build custom dashboard reporting as well as conduct competitive analysis.
There are very few FREE converter applications that can convert audio, video, and even images, between the most popular formats. Format Factory is the perfect solution and I have used it to convert across the multitude of formats including WMV, AVI, MPG, MP3, WMA, AAC, JPG, PNG, GIF, and many more. In addition, it also supports major mobile and portable devices including PSP, iPod, Blackberry and iPhone.
The process is pretty simple – you drag the source file into the main window and set the preferred format and targeted output directory and click start to convert it. In my experience, this application was quite handy when it came to converting from the popular Quicktime MOV format to a Windows-based format like WMV or AVI, making it a great solution. Another cool feature is the ability to convert across many audio formats so you can rip an audio CD to MP3, WMA and AAC in a matter of minutes.
Click here to download the latest version.
There is nothing more frustrating than seeing the Windows Media Player error message indicating that the “media format is not supported” in the player. Here’s your FREE solution: VLC Media Player
VLC Media Player is an open source media player and is considered to be one of the world’s best players since it can play almost any audio and video format. This media player’s most outstanding feature is that it brings its own codecs pack which makes it compatible with all media files you may come across. Its interface is very simple and intuitive with easy handling but advanced features such as client-streaming service that lets you send a video signal over the Internet. VLC Media Player also offers the possibility to add/change subtitles and to handle multiple audio tracks. Compared to other players, this is truly the catch-all for playing all content and works on all platforms. Give it a try and feel free to share your comments.
Twitter is all about following others but with over a hundred million Twitter users, the real challenge is finding the right followers that meet your interests.
In addition to the helpful built-in “Suggestions for You” functionality in Twitter, here are some helpful tools to help you find and mange followers as well as associated groups on Twitter:
WeFollow: Great tool for finding followers by categories and interests and you can get a high level snapshot of their reach.
Followerwonk: I started using this for competitive analysis but found it to be helpful to connect the dots between keywords and users as well as building your list of followers.
Twitoria: Need to do a little spring cleaning on your Twitter account? This tool enables you to identify friends that have not tweeted in a long time so that you can remove them, leaving room for real followers who really care about you.
Ever notice when you first boot up your PC machine, it’s loading all of these applications in the background? Ultimately, this contributes to longer load times and sucking up your memory resources on your system. In most cases, programs are configured to load on startup including new device registration reminders (HP is notorious for this), instant messaging apps and other third-party applications. In addition, these programs usually run hidden in the background so by disabling them, you will see a difference in your computer’s overall performance.
Disabling them is quite easy and can be done on all PC-based operating systems–from Windows 98 thru Windows 7. Here are the steps:
1) Launch Start (hit Windows key) and in the Run option type “msconfig” (sans quotes) in the window
2) A pop-up window will appear / Click on the Start-up tab and disable the items by unchecking them (see below). Once done, simply click OK and reboot your system and you’re good to go. Depending on your operating system, you might see a alert message when you reboot, confirming the details of your setup. You can dismiss this message by turning off the reminder.
For many years, I have used Handbrake for optimizing my movies for my iPod and iPad. Handbrake is a FREE, open-source video transcoder application that makes the process of video conversion an easy task. Available for Mac, Linux and Windows, the interface is really easy with the ability to export to a multitude of video output formats and settings, most notable the common ones like MKV and MP4 with presets for the iPad, iPhone, iPod and AppleTV. By default, Handbrake will output the files as an MP4 and you can also configure the screen size, chapter selection and frame rate so that the outputted file is tailored for your needs and that device.
The process is pretty simple–you browse to the source file and set your preferences and export it. Once done, it tells you to “put down that cocktail” and enjoy your movie.
Supported Sources:
• Most common multimedia files that libavformat and libavcodec support.
• File format: MP4(M4V) and MKV
• Video: MPEG-4(ffmpeg), H.264(x264), or Theora(libtheora)
• Audio: AAC, CoreAudio AAC (OS X Only), MP3, or Vorbis. AC-3 pass-through, DTS pass-thorugh (MKV only)
Misc features:
• Chapter selection, Chapter Markers and Subtitles
• Constant Quality or Average Bitrate Video Encoding
• Video: Deinterlacing, Decomb, Detelecine, Cropping and scaling
• Live Video Preview
Follow this link to download it: http://handbrake.fr/
The other day, I went into the local QuickTrip for a quick cup of coffee and I noticed this half eaten cookie, marked down 30% and several questions came to mind. How could they sell this cookie? Who would buy it? Would one eat it after buying it?
Computers also have cookies and they represent small files which are stored on your system. During the early days of dial-up modems and older browsers, cookies and temporary internet files helped with the load time while delivering a Web experience that was tailored for the user. So, if you would frequent a site that required some form of authentication (i.e.: bank site), the Web server would look for these cookies on your machine and deliver the appropriate page, based on your settings.
So, cookies are created when a Web page is loaded, unless the functionality is disabled in your browser settings.
By nature, cookies are NOT viruses as they are encoded in a plain text format and they cannot be executed. Unlike traditional computer viruses, the do not have the means to replicate and spread to other networks or systems. Given that, they are not an immediate threat to your system, unlike our half-eaten cookie at QuikTrip.
However, cookies can be used for malicious purposes as they contain user information as well as browsing history and preferences. As a result, they fall into the realm of spyware so I would recommend deleting your cookies by clicking on your Internet preferences and delete your session history.
Follow these links for steps using the most common browsers:
Internet Explorer: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/278835
Safari: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Safari/3.0/en/11471.html
Firefox: http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Deleting%20cookies
Marketing outreach on mobile devices is nothing new but finding a free, turnkey solution can sometimes be challenge. For the past few months, I have been using a neat WordPress plugin for sending mobile alerts to subscribers. Easy SMS works quite well and is easy to configure and use.
Users simply enter their phone number, carrier and once confirmed (via text message authorization), they are indexed to receive updates. From there, you can send SMS messages to groups with options to test and schedule alerts. The dashboard also offers a high level of stats, so that you can measure your outreach efforts as well as do basic list management. All you have to do is use the shortcode to embed the form on any post or page and you’re good to go. It also has the presets for 80+ carriers, with much room for adding new carriers as well as editing the carrier details.
For more specs and a full list of features, follow this link: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/easysms/
Microsoft Office is a fine product and is used by millions of users to create spreadsheets, manage email, write letters and create Powerpoint presentations. However, with all that functionality comes a hefty price tag and there are many alternatives to MS Office. For years, I have used OpenOffice, one of the best open source and free solutions with full integration and compatibility with MS Office. So, you can create a document in OpenOffice and someone on the other end of the globe can open it in MS Word.
Available on all platforms including PC and Mac, it is the best is the best open-source office solution for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. Free to download and use, I highly recommend it. The only thing lacking is an open source solution that is comparable to Outlook but you can always use one of the free mail clients like Thunderbird, IncrediMail or Mail. For a complete list of features and learn more about it, follow this link: http://why.openoffice.org/
My lovely wife sent this to me as she knows the dangers of texting while driving as she has been in one texting-induced car accident. NY Times recently rolled out this test and it truly makes you wonder if it’s worth it to text your friends about the latest Judd Apatow movie while doing 75 on the interstate.
I strongly recommend taking this test and let know what you think. Ready? Crack those knuckles and give it a spin:
Click here
btw, I tried it and actually scored better while texting but I don’t count because my brain is not wired correctly..:)
