Twitter not just another time sink

Some people are calling Twitter the next big tech-fad……. other people are just calling it a fad and a waste of time.  Whatever your view of Twitter (and you might not have a view at all) it is an application that is garnering considerable mainstream attention and support.

Software companies are integrating Twitter updates into the contact databases of their applications.  Australian online accounting company Saasu have added a Twitter field to the contacts database (along with buttons for other social media such as LinkedIn and Facebook).  Earlier today 37Signals (the people that are behind Basecamp, Highrise and Backpack) announced basic integration between Highrise and Twitter.  Once you have added your contact’s Twitter account details it will present you with their last 3 tweets on your screen.

So what you say; how can this really make a difference to your business?

37Signals captured it well in their article -

Tweets are great conversation starters that show you’re paying attention to what’s going on in their world.

So it is really about paying attention to people that matter a lot to your business – your customers.

And as for paying attention……. if you were paying attention to your good old fashion Fairfax media newspaper last week you may have seen an article on Twitter that I was interviewed for.  Here is the online version (same words but no nice picture) http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/biztech/forget-golf-twitter-can-help-lift-your-game/2009/05/04/1241289099699.html

I’d be interested to hear about your views and ideas about Twitter, whether it is useful for you and what you think about software, like that mentioned above, integrating with Twitter.

New Year, New Tools

The new year brings many things, especially for small business owners …. new plans, new goals, new ways of doing things and hopefully new clients.

I’ve only been back at the desk officially for 3 days but already there are new opportunities popping up and there are loads of new ideas on better ways to work.  One of my commitments for 2009 is to deliver what many readers had been asking for right throughout 2008 … more interesting and useful articles on this blog.  But before I dive head-long into the new stuff I wanted to quickly share with you a couple of the cool tools that I came across late last year or over the Christmas/New Year break.

Wordpress 2.7 aka Coltrane

Wordpress is our CMS of choice here and the hotly anticipated release of the new look Version 2.7 (called Coltrane in line with Automattic’s naming of Wordpress version after jazz ledgends) was welcomed.  If you are a Wordpress user then I would suggest that you upgrade to this version.  If you want more details on Coltrane then check out the announcement  post and 2:39 minute video.

MultiColr Search Lab

The very clever people at Idee Labs have extracted the colours from 10 million of the most “interesting” Creative Commons images on Flickr and enabled you to search for these Flickr images a up to 10 colours as the selection criteria.  This tool uses their visual similarity technology to navigate the collection by colour. If you are not into Flickr then you can also search Alamy Stock Photography using the same tool.  Go and have a try of it now … it is outstanding.

Backups

This really isn’t a tool as such – more a tip for the new year.  Find yourself a backup tool and USE IT!  The new year is the perfect time to ensure that you have a full backup of all your business critical files.  I use an online tool called Jungle Disk and the files are stored on Amazon’s S3 service.  You may prefer an external hard-drive or some other method but the key is to backup early & backup often (as the used to say about voting in the old days).

Keeping in Contact

Synchronising contacts between various platforms and devices can be a real challenge.  Even though it is only  in beta stage Soocial looks a very interesting tool that may save some of the hair-pulling when it comes to having information on different devices and across different platforms.

.   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .

So with the first post of the year done, I hope that you have an interesting 2009 ahead of you and that it brings all the satisfaction that you are looking for.

What to Do When They Cut Your Connection

So you’ve got a backup plan for your computer data (you do don’t you?) and you have started using SaaS services to ensure you have access to your business information from anywhere. But what plans do you have in place for the day that some bright spark takes to your telco’s infrastructure with an angle-grinder or back-hoe?

Thousands of services on the Telstra network were effected when vandals managed to cut 2 fibre optic cables in Sydney’s west on Saturday. Many businesses and homes they are still without service. The Sydney Morning Hearld is reporting that -

About 5000 western Sydney homes and businesses remain without phone, internet and cable television services after vandals cut a Telstra communications cable.

Even though this type of incident doesn’t happen everyday, it is not a one-off occurrence. Almost 20 years ago when I was working for Telstra someone with a big grudge and even bigger angle-grinder stepped into a communications tunnel in front of a major central Sydney telephone exchange and proceeded to take down tens of thousands of services. There are also numerous tales of cables being dug up during roadworks, general construction and even whilst laying other cables.

So what would you do if you came into work this morning and their was not telephone, internet, eftpos terminal …? Use your mobile? Ever thought how mobile phone traffic is carried across the network?

” … there are still thousands of customers without services like phones, Foxtel, internet, businesses without Eftpos and several base stations are still not working for mobiles …”
-Warwick Ponder, Telstra spokesman from SMH article [my emphasis]

So that area can forget about using their mobiles as a backup, unless they decide to do business away from the out of action base stations.

The chances of you not having communications are not restricted to Telstra customers or Sydney. Char Polansky at Essential Keystrokes had to deal with a hi-speed cable outage just a couple of weeks ago. Char asked readers of her blog for suggestions to get around not having communications. My suggestion was that she develop a relationship with another small business where she could set up her laptop and work from their premises (this is my suggestion to everyone by the way).

What would you do if you couldn’t communicate digitally with the world?

BTW – Go and have a look at my article in the latest edition of The Calm Space. It has a suggestion that might be useful during short term outage.

How Highrise Works for Working Solo

Yesterday in the Linkedin BloggersYahoo group, Karen Ferrero asked a question about Highrise.

I am looking into some lightweight and user-friendly CRM packages for
my individual use. I really like Basecamp and see some good reviews
on Highrise. Can anyone with some experience actually using Highrise
give me their opinions on it? I would really appreciate it.

I dropped Karen a quick message back saying I loved Highrise and that I would fill in more details offline if she was interested. Stephen Collins from Acidlabs quickly jumped in and asked me to share more of my Highrise story with the group.

I’d actually appreciate you telling us all a short story of how you use
Highrise and for what purposes. I think those of us that don’t already
use a CRM system will gain a lot and those that do might gain
additional insight. I would certainly appreciate you sharing your
experiences.

So instead of just sharing with the Linkedin Bloggers Group I thought I would share with you all how I use Highrise and the difference that it has made for Working Solo.

My Highrise story starts in October last year – I was using Outlook for emails and contacts but having been a previous user of ACT is was looking for something a little more (but not as muc of the full CRM offering that ACT provided). I’d been using Basecamp for projects since earlier in the year, was very impressed and decided to give Highrise a go.

The export/import process for my contacts from Outlook to Highrise was a breeze. I then set to work allocating tags to each of my contacts. I love the flexibility that tags give me to sort contacts on any range of things – clients, suppliers, friends, family, colleagues (many of my contacts fall across multiple categories). I can also add tags for things like “referred by Sue” and then count up all the wonderful people that Sue referred to me and send her a person thank you note. The tags have allowed me to be a lot more efficient when finding information and people.

One of the things that I love the most is being able to see every contact’s history on one page. I can see their co-workers, an photo (I like to upload an image in particular for my clients so I get a more personal feel for them), contact details, images or files, and even bio information. Saves me time hunting things down in different places.

I also love the ability to use Highrise to track emails to and from my contacts. I’ve set up Outlook (yes I still use Outlook as an email client) with rules so that when I receive and email from a person in my contact list a copy of the incoming email is sent to my Highrise dropbox and filed next to the email address of the sender. If I’m in Highrise and click on the contact’s email address Outlook will open a new message with the recipient’s email address in the to field and my Highrise dropbox in the bcc field so that I can have a copy of the sent email filed against the contact’s record.

Even though I do an email backup to my external hard drive every Friday evening, using the Highrise dropbox option has been a great back-up alternative. I have peace-of-mind knowing that Highrise has all my emails to and from my clients, suppliers and major contacts covered even if the external hard drive has a problem (I don’t really need to worry about all the miscellaneous emails anyway).

As I use Basecamp for tracking to-do’s relating to the business I don’t really use the task option in Highrise for anything else except some personal reminders and tasks. It is great that I can see at a glance the tasks that are group under the headings of Today, This Week, Next Week, Later. I can see that changing though as I start adding extra team members to Working Solo. Instead of sending emails regarding things or people they want me to follow up, they will just be able to send me a follow up task instead.

The other thing that makes Highrise cool are the Cases. I have set up Cases for each of the internal Working Solo projects that I’m working on (client projects are tracked through Basecamp). This allows me to keep a track of all notes, communications and information relating to that project without having to check across multiple contacts.

Now all I want to do is find someone who can write me some hooks to link the API for Highrise to some of my other favourite SaaS applications like Campaign Monitor and Saasu.

All in all Highrise is a perfect fit for the way that I work and run Working Solo. 37Signals (the company that created Highrise) are quite clear that they don’t design their applications to be all things to all people, but it is a perfect for for this working solo business owner (soon to be team working solo??)

So … I hope this has answered Karen and Stephen’s questions about how Highrise works for me. If you have any questions or want to share how Highrise might work for you then just leave a comment.

Wordpress 2.5 Has Hit the Streets

If you are into reading geeky focused blogs you will know that the latest version of Wordpress (2.5) hit the streets yesterday. This is a major upgrade that contains the hard work of hundreds of people and provides some significant improvements in many areas.

If you’re interested in the details then I suggest you read Matt’s post over at Wordpress.org.

I’ll be leaving doing the upgrade here for 7-10 days just to see what might be learnt from other early upgraders. If you are one of my clients I’ll be in touch and we start doing upgrades after I’ve done Working Solo and proven it all OK. If you are doing your own upgrade then I suggest that you do all the regular things – backup your database and theme, disable your plugins, upgrade to 2.5 files, then enable the plugins one by one (just to make sure that none of them conflict with 2.5).

As this upgrade has changed the look and feel of Wordpress I’m going to be running a tech-talk call for clients in 2 weeks time (by then everyone should be upgraded). I’ll contact you with more details soon.

If you’re not a client but would be interested in me runing a “public” Wordpress tech-talk session then let me know. If there is enough interest then I’ll put together a very low cost something (probably around $35/person for 90 mins).

Making Wordpress and Flickr Even Easier

You will probably remember my post from 2 weeks ago, How to Use and Understand Flickr Images. It seems to have hit just the right note for many of you (which I’m so pleased about) and today’s post will make Flickr images even easier to use for those of you that use Wordpress.

Enter Photodropper .

This is a WordPress plugin that allows you to place Flickr photos into your posts or pages without leaving the WordPress admin area. You will still need to click through to Flickr to check the image’s Creative Commons license (remember to choose wisely). It will save you time by adding the photo credit for Creative Commons attribution that you have chosen.

Find our more here http://www.photodropper.com and if you wan to download and try it then right click this link and away you go http://www.photodropper.com/wordpress-plugin/

How to Use and Understand Flickr Images

iStockphoto
is a favourite image resource with many readers here, but did you also
know that you could be tapping into the hugh repository of images by
both professional and amateur photographers at Flickr?

Image by *L*u*z*a*

There are 2 main things that stop many small business owners using
Flickr images online or in other documents – 1) the overwhelming number
of images that you need to wade through, and 2) not fully understanding
the usage rules under Creative Commons.

Below I will give you some insight into what each of the main
Creative Commons licenses mean, and where and how you can use each of
them, and how you can find images under each category. And at the end I
will give you a hot tip on cutting to the good stuff without wading
through the average images.

What You Can Use

There are 2 main categories of images on Flick those that you can’t use
(labelled “All rights reserved” or “copyrighted”) unless you have the
explicit authority of the photographer, and those that you can use. The
images that you can use have a range of different license conditions
that are governed by Creative Commons. Whether you can use the image depends on

• where you want to use the image
• whether it is for commercial gain
• whether you are going to modify the image

Understanding How the Licenses Work

Each of the “available” images on Flickr is available under one of the six Creative Commons licenses.

Attribution License

This license allows you to modify the images (eg. cropping them,
resizing, colouring or adding content to them) and allows use in both
commercial and non-commercial situations. The only requirement is that
you credit the author with a link back to their profile (like you see
in the image above).

Link to browse the Attribution Licensed photos

Attribution-NoDerivs License

This license allows you to use the photo in both commercial and
non-commercial contexts as long as you credit the photographer. The
difference between this and the above license is that you are forbidden
to modify the work in any way (that includes cropping and adding other
content on the image).

Link to browse the Attribution-NoDerivs Licensed photos

Attribution-ShareAlike License

This license allows you to modify the photo and display it in both
commercial and non-commercial situations as long as you do 2 things -
1) link to the photographer’s profile in Flickr and 2) link to the
distribution license for the photo.

Link to browse the Attribution-ShareAlike licensed photos

Image by Chris (archi3d)

Attribution-NonCommercial License

This license allows you to display and modify the image in any
non-commercial space with a link to the photographer’s profile. In
short this means anywhere that it could be argued the image helps
increase your income. Examples of non commercial contexts include: blogs displaying ads (any ads at all), inside products, online stores.

Even if you are not generating income from your web/blog space at
the moment but might conisder doing so in the future, it would be a
good idea to stick with the licenses that allow commerical usage.

Link to browse the Attribution-NonCommercial licensed photos

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License

This license allows you to use photos that are not modified (as
mentioned above), with a credit to the author and as long as you’re not
profiting from the context of the image.

Once again, if you plan to profit from the space in future, you’re
better off sticking with the more flexible Attribution License.

Link to browse the Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs licensed photos

Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License

This license allows you to use photos in non-commercial spaces with
1) credit the image owner and a link to their profile and 2) a link to
the license page with the image credit (alongside a link to the
photographer’s profile). Share Alike means you need to make clear the
license of the image wherever you use it.

Link to browse the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike licensed photos.

Hot Tip for Getting to the Good Stuff

One of the challenges of Flickr is separating the excellent from the
average (or irrelevant). One of the easiest ways to do that is with the
“most interesting” tag. After you have done a search, for say “nature”,
and you get a very long list of possibilities you can cut that down to
just the images that the Flickr community consider interesting.

Clicking on this “most interesting” link will definitely save you time and frustration.

So what are you waiting for? I’m looking forward to seeing what you can find in Flickr.

is your Business Saas-y?

There are more and more saas-y business women out there … Rosa Say at Say Leadership Coaching is one; and Jen Harwood at Direct Incite is definitely getting there, as are the girls (and guys) at Shopportunity.

What I’m talking about here is not an attitude (although all of these women definitely have a wonderfully positive and sassy attitude), what I’m talking about is an acronym.

Yep I know …. I can hear some of you sighing now “not another bloody technology acronym”.

Firstly, SaaS stands for “software as service”. In lay-woman’s terms it means that the software that you use is web-based vs box-based. If you want a wikipedia explanation have a look here.

Secondly, why should you care?

Have you thought what might happen in the following scenarios ….

1. Your working on a project with that requires in the input of others and you need to share documents, calendars, view designs, collaborate on proposals, track projects or share notes about who said what to which client. How do you do all that without having an endless stream of emails, word processing documents and spreadsheets that aren’t linked?
2. Your laptop goes missing or your computer hard-drive decides that it wants to take a holiday. Sure you’ve got all your data backed up (you do don’t you?) and you have all those software dics stored away in boxes. But do you have time available in the next 48-72 hours to load everything back onto your computer?

These are only 2 scenarios when having your software and your data stored on a web-based server provided by a sotware-as-a-service based company makes sense – but there are plenty more (drop a comment below if you can think of some other scenarios).

One of my favourite SaaS companies, wonderfully named Saasu, recently wrote a wonderful post on why Saas will prevail over software that highlighted for me one of the good reasons that I’m comfortable using web-based applications vs box-based applications.

Guards on the front door, hundreds of cameras, concrete all round – including the roof, biometric security, multiple levels of steel access doors and cages, multiple levels of redundant power, telecommunications and air conditioning

I know that as a small business owner, and a geeky one at that, even I can’t justify that level of commitment when it comes to my office-based technology. Thankfully the Saas services that I use do and I know that if I need to access these services from another computer, another office or in case of emergency it will be there. It also means that I can share access tothese services and the data with other people (like my clients and my accountant).

So let me share with you some of the SaaS that I use and love and also some others that you might find interesting.

My SaaS includes – NetAccounts (from Saasu), Basecamp and Highrise (from 37 Signals), Wordpress , Google Analytics, Campaign Monitor and MailBuild (from Freshview), FoxyCart, Flickr.

Some of the others to consider and keep an eye on – Picnik (image editing application), Free Agent (money management tool), Salesforce (high-end CRM tool but a little pricey for most small business), Typepad (blogging), Google Docs (office applications) … and the list goes on.

If you’re into the SaaS-y mode of working you business drop me a note and let me know what you favourites are.

PDF – How to Create Your Own

Charlene Polanosky (from Essential Kystrokes) has beat me to the punch this week and has written a great explanation of how to create your own PDF files from any other file that you might have.

I had been meaning to write something similar and then send it through to all the sites that are still posting links to Word documents on their websites (a pet peeve of mine).

What many people don’t realise is that office-type documents (word processing, spreadsheets, presentations) as well as most other applications are very specific in who can read the file you create (you must have the smae applications, at the same or new version). Applications have different versions, on different operating systems and will render the document layout in different ways.

What you might think is a great looking document can end up looking like a pre-schooler just got through with it. Or the person trying to read it may not be able to open it at all. Worst of all is that many of those office documents are open to attracting viruses (achoo! sorry you must have caught that cold/virus too).

If you create a PDF file (which standards for Portable Document Format) you will increase the readability, deliverability and professionalism of your electronic documents.

No excuses now! Thanks to Char for ticking that one off the list for me.

Why Email Standards Should Matter to Everyone

The headline above will probably have readers of this blog take up a position in one (or maybe even 2) of 5 “email” camps -

1. the true-blue standards techos that say there is really only oneway to do email and that’s plain text and html (and css) should be kept to websites
2. the designers who love to show all their creative abilities, and have clients demanding html email newsletters, but hate the fact they have to use html coding from 1999
3. the business owners or marketing managers that wants to to look good and convey their brand in all its glory but wonder why they have to worry about something as confusing as standards
4. the regular readers of email and subscribe to newsletters that believe that a picture tells a thousand stories and want to see the product (or other images) rather than being told about it and doesn’t really care if the email can’t be read in other email systems as long as it works on theirs.
5. vision impared-readers of email that rely on support devices such as screen readers due difficulties in viewing the html emails.

These 5 groups are the loose communities of concern when it comes to html email but don’t be fooled that it is this classical carving up of interests and positions is straight-forward.

At the moment the discussion (sometimes it escalated into a conflict) about the future of html emails is being waged between the developers (programmers, standards experts, software developers, email client providers, etc) and designers.

Only yesterday a shot was fired in the support of emails standards and it came from Australia. The guys at Freshview (Dave, Ben, Mat and crew) are the project management and logistics behind a campaign to get wider acceptance and implementation of css standards across all the various email platforms. They have started the Email Standards Project and I for one are behind them 100%.

As a reader of this blog you will probably fit into 1 of 2 broad categories : either you are a techie-type that is interested in the details of this project (in that case you should head over to the Email Standards Project website to find out more details), or you are a business owner and really wondering what this has to do with you (then stick with me because this has everything to do with you).

As a business owner you may not be clear on what standards actually mean in the web or email world, but you should be caring what it means to how your business looks online. Like most business owners you will spend a good deal of time and/or money crafting your brand, deciding how to get your message across in a busy online world and communicating in a way that you hope people will buy from you.

All the time and effort that goes into this online communications must be doubled, tripled or more if you need to craft your communications in a way that matches the technology that your marketplace is using. If one part of your market sees a beautifully crafted marketing message and other parts get something that looks like a 3-year-old’s finger painting then your effort and money is being wasted in what might be a crucial sector. It is for reasons like these that you need to be aware of web and email standards – even if you don’t understand them.

Back in 1994 the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) was founded as an industry consortium dedicated to building consensus around Web technologies. In 2007, 13 years later things are much better but we still don’t have consensus and designers must ensure that website work across multiple versions of browsers and computer platforms. There are really only 3 main areas to be concerned with full css (cascading style sheet) compliant browsers, partially compliant browsers and Internet Explorer 6 <g>.

The state of css-supported email systems (aslo known as email clients) is a lot worse than this. Have a look at the current compliance of the various email clients on the Email Standards Project or, if you interested in more detail, visit the 2007 Guide to CSS Support in Email that the Freshview guys have on the Campaign Monitor blog.

So as a business owner you might want to know what you can do about this (without having to learn CSS standards). Just 3 easy steps for now -

• Transfer your own email client over to one that strongly supports css standards (there is more to email than Outlook and Outlook Express and it won’t cost you the earth)
• Make your opinion known about what you, your business and your customers would like by writing about this in your blog or newsletter
• Grab the “I support email standards” image above and put in on your site or on your email newsletters.

Don’t let the guys who think that email should only come in black and white determine how your communicate with your customers!

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