Archive for Technology
Seven Ways To Use Skype in Your Business
Posted by: | CommentsTable of contents for How to Use Skype
- Seven Ways To Use Skype in Your Business
Skype is a free service (with some paid upgrades) that lets you make voice and video calls over the internet. For many people, this
free service is attractive because if you are in North America and have family or friends overseas, this can save you a lot of money.
However, if you run a business, long distance is often just the cost of doing business. I don’t really see the point of cheaping out when you have a business. Phone (even long distance) is essential.
On the other hand, free long distance isn’t the only reason to use this service. Many people laugh when they hear this, but the people I Skype with most often are local. In fact, one of them is only a 15 minute walk from my home office.
So why do we Skype?
We use it as an Read More→
Skype Explained Visually
Posted by: | CommentsWhen I was doing some research for a blog post about Skype, I came across this video. If you’ve never used Skype, it explains how it works and what you can do with it.
Or you can go to YouTube and watch it.
And keep your eyes open for my next post about how I use Skype. It’s a little different than how others use it.
Andrea J. Stenberg
My Computer is Dead! Don’t Let this Happen To You
Posted by: | CommentsLast Friday, after about seven hours on the phone with tech support, it was determined that while my laptop wasn’t quite dead yet, it was well on the way. And couldn’t be brought back to life without some major repairs: a new motherboard, memory and whatever else isn’t working.
On the plus side, this was three weeks BEFORE my warranty ran out. When was the last time you ever heard of that happening? I thought they were designed to break three weeks after! Not only that, but about a month ago I had purchased an external hard drive and had been backing up my data. I should have everything I need.
The downside is by the time I send the laptop off to Dell, they fix it and send it back, it will have been at least two weeks. I can’t run my business without a computer for that long.
As a result, Friday was one of the most stressful days I’ve had in a long time. By the end of my marathon session with tech support, my brains were melting out of my ears. All I was good for was having a nice glass of red and watching truly mindless t.v. Anything with a plot was beyond me.
I didn’t want to go out and buy a new computer; I’d have my old one back probably better than new in a few weeks. Not to mention I had not budgeted for a major purchase right now.
Guess all my brains hadn’t leaked out my ears because Read More→
Andrea’s 10 Favorite Free Online and Technology Tools
Posted by: | CommentsEveryone has favorite tools that get them through the day. I discovered most of the ones I use from Twitter or articles like these so I thought I’d share the love.
Here are the free online and technology tools I can’t live without:
1. Social media
I can’t imagine running my business without Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. But since I write about them all the time, ‘nough said.
2. Flock
Flock is a web browser created by the same folks who did Mozilla Firefox. It’s similar to Firefox except it is optimized to help manage your social media. You can have a sidebar with Twitter or Facebook (or other social media) updates running live. You can subscribe to your RSS feeds from a sidebar. You can use social bookmarking sites like Delicious as part of the browser. It’s very cool.
3. Thunderbird
Thunderbird is an email client made by Mozilla (can you see a theme here), similar to Outlook, but not a Microsoft product. More important, as a Mozilla product, it has tons of plug-ins (add-ons) you can add to customize what you do. I only use a few but they are really handy.
4. TweetDeck
TweetDeck is my newest favorite. It’s a free tool that lets you manage your Twitter account. The nice thing is you can have several panes open in your window at once. This way you don’t have to flip back and forth to monitor Tweets, @replies or direct messages. There’s all visible at once.
But the coolest feature has to be the ability to create groups. Once you’re following more than say 100 people, Tweets from people you really want to hear from can get lost in the noise. In TweetDeck you can create a group of key people you want to follow more closely than the rest. You can even create multiple groups. Now you don’t have to worry about who you’re missing.
5. WordPress
WordPress is the blogging software I use to run this blog. Like Mozilla products it’s open source so it’s easy to find tons of free themes and plug-ins to enhance what it does. It’s easy to use and if you need to figure out how to do something, you can bet someone has created a blog post or uTube video explaining it.
6. Cli.gs
Cli.gs is a free tool for tracking clicks to your links. If you’ve ever wondered if it’s worth sending a blog post link via Twitter or Facebook, here’s the way to test. Set up your free account, enter the url for your post into Cli.gs to get the short url. Spread the shortened Cli.gs url far and wide. Then go back and track where the clicks came from.
7. Errorlytics
Let’s you locate broken links and redirect people to the correct page to reduce 404 errors. (Read more about 404 errors.)
8. Google
It has to be said. Can you think of a day you don’t Google something?
9. Yahoo! Groups
Even though social media like LinkedIn and Facebook has overtaken Yahoo! Groups, this is still a great way to have the old fashioned type of discussions. I don’t belong to a ton of groups on Yahoo! But the ones I’ve kept are extremely valuable. I look forward to the email updates every day.
10. Skype
Love Skype. I have a great long distance plan so I don’t use it much for voice. However, I’m connected to a few colleagues via Skype and we use the messaging feature a lot. It allows me to ask a quick question and if the person is available I get an instant response. It’s also helpful when working odd hours. I’d never phone a colleague who works at home at 10pm or on a Sunday morning, but I can use Skype to check if they’re available without being intrusive.
Andrea J. Stenberg
Any tools you use daily that I’ve overlooked? Leave a comment and tell us what tool you can’t live without.
