Work smarter by using dropbox for business

Remote access is one of the important features in using business apps.  Yes, Google Apps for Business would be one of the best choice for many, to organize their business and share documents.  Wherever you go, whatever you do, you have them all at your finger tips. 

But recently, I came across another cool app Dropbox that makes my work much more flexible and easier.  It works almost like my computer drive, with added features.  

No more  wasting time on email attachments, downloading or uploading files, to share them with your team members.  Create or edit your docs, images, videos and files in your dropbox folder and share it right away with your team.  It's that simple!

Once you install Dropbox on all your computers, mobile phones and tablets, you can access your files on these devices simultaneously by way of syncing (also known as File synchronization). 



This is one of the coolest business online software, that I have ever worked with and still lovin it.  

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Social sharing site generates revenue for publishers

A new social sharing platform has come forward with a brilliant idea that gives publishers the opportunity to monetize their websites.

New Social Sharing Platform

With the launch of Po.st by the popular Ad premium network RadiumOne, bloggers and website owners could earn an extra income that is pretty cool.  Does your website or blog receive high traffic?  Does your web content receive a good number of sharing through share buttons?

If your answer is yes, then Po.st could turn out to generate an extra income for your websites and blogs.  This is how it works.  Each time a visitor shares your website using the share buttons, a Premium Ad is displayed through a notification window that pops up.  You earn a guaranteed $15 CPM from those ads and 100% of all revenue generated from the ads are yours.  

Besides, you can check the analytics on what your users are sharing and details about other data.  Over 1800 sites including Weather Underground, CouponTrade, Dictionary.com and eBaumsWorld are already active users that are using Po.st.

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Benefits of having quality twitter followers

Having just a bunch of twitter followers who are interested to read your tweets, is equal to having millions of fans on facebook.  You are already aware how this happen. Each time you tweet and if it is interesting your followers would retweet your post.

I came across a very interesting post on SERPd - a community meant for SEO and Internet Marketing Professionals to learn and share.   It was all about a blogger, who got 150 retweets and it still keeps adding on.... just with a single post.   Imagine the no. of impressions, he would have got for his blog.  Most of the retweets he got through were by two dynamic tweeters, who kept the ball rolling.  It was a total of over 1,031,775 impressions on Twitter, where 508,962 impressions was from just one of those super charged tweeter itself. 

From the above stats, it is clear about the importance of connecting with quality twitter followers. This would benefit your business a lot and you would even gradually notice the increase in the number of followers each day.  It is always advisable to connect with people who share the same interest.  Maybe, you would even be lucky enough to have one or more connectors, as they are called, to get your message across the web.

So how would you track, who were those tweeters that added value to your tweet? 

You can either check the stats by using the retweet button shown on your twitter page or use BackType now acquired by twitter.  Tweetreach is another popular twitter stats tracking site, if you need more details in depth with graphs, charts and so on.  Now retweeting interesting tweets is equally important.  That is only if you find the tweet useful for those in your twitter circle.  

Obviously, you would be curious to check out the profile of the person, who retweeted your tweets.  If they are tweeters who share the same interest as yours, add them to your list of followers or at least return the favor by retweeting their tweets.

Grateful to Tristan, who brought this very helpful topic to our attention on SERPd (mentioned at the beginning of this post).  I'm glad to be a part of this seo community that is a real resource mine.

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Google Plus One would have a great impact on SEO

There have been a lot of mixed responses from the time Google Plus One button was introduced, though they are still in its initial stage.  But this cute little button could be thought provoking in terms of their great impact on SEO.

 

Google +1 impact on SEO

So lets examine closely, how Google Plus One can increase your site's SERP (search engine results page) rankings. 

• Get your website indexed more quickly 

To get your site indexed on google by linking from another website, would take weeks or nearly a month.  But if the same is done by a way of sharing it through Google +1, your site would get indexed in a couple of hours. 

Of course, users need to have a public profile and be signed in Google, when they share content with the plus one button.  The same applies if you would like to view the +1 on SERP.

•  Better Rankings on SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

Google +1 button is a great snippet that helps your site to get organic links. The annotations listed in a more personalized manner with search history, would encourage users to check your site again.  Besides when a content is shared via the +1 button, it easily helps to build links that are crawled by search engines.

• Impact through your circle of Google+ Friends

The more your circle of Google+ acquaintances and friends share via +1, the better visibility your site would get on SERP (search engine results page).  As a result, your site would notice an increase in organic traffic.  The small notes known as 'annotations' as shown in the figure below, helps your site to get better rankings.  The sole reason is that you are connected with another high profile Google+ user who shares a link through Facebook, Twitter or any other social sites.

Example of Annotations on SERP

Google plus one is in its infant stage and they have more to offer in the coming days.  If all works well, it would be one of the very best webmaster tools that Google has offered so far.  Once the business pages goes live, we could expect more features. But until then, let this be a learning period getting acquainted with social search and how they would improve your rankings.

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How to make use of Windows Live Writer for blogging

Windows Live Writer helps publishing your blog to any blogging platforms quickly with many cool features.  Use Live Writer to create your blog post and then publish them on WordPress, TypePad, LiveJournal, Blogger and Telligent Community (previously known as Community Server).

For instance, you created a blog post for wordpress and now you want the same post  to be published on another blogging platform. You can quickly post it through live writer  to typepad, blogger or livejournal.  You can even create  blog entries offline, once the live writer is downloaded to your desktop.  This is useful for bloggers  and writers with limited internet usage.

One of the best features is that the Live writer comes with a number of cool plugins to enhance your blog.  Simply download the Insert Video plugin and you can easily add videos from various sites like MSN SoapBox, YouTube, Google Video, Yahoo, MySpace Video, Video, muveeMix, myvideo.de and BrightCove.  Once the plugin is downloaded, copy and paste the video link from any of these video sites to your blog entry and the video plugin would ensure rest of the work is done.

Another cool feature is that you can edit and add effects to your images right from your blog.  Normally, you have to do this on your photo editing software.

This is just few among the lot and there is much more that you can do by using live writer.  It is recommended to writers and bloggers to make the best use of this tool.  Actually, this was suggested by one of my friends on a business network.  I'm just checking out these features and still in the process.

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A useful firefox plugin

A cool plugin that I came across by chance, while searching for video download softwares. I was previously using downloadhelper - a firefox plugin, but for some reason it was not working fine on my computer.

Apart from popular video sites, Ant Video Downloader helps you to download videos from unfamiliar video sites, social networks, articles, blogs and practically any site.

You don't need to ever copy and paste the video site url to download the video.  Once the software is downloaded to your computer, you would see a small icon on your status bar as shown in the image above.  Whenever the software detects a video site, the download icon starts blinking and you just have to click it, to download and save the video to your computer.

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A popular audio editor used for creating Podcasts

I stumbled upon on this tool and thought it would be worth sharing with people who create their own audios and videos  for business.  It is an open source user-friendly  tool with enormous features to broadcast your podcast. Audacity helps you to create ringtones, transfer, upload or edit audio files and recordings with ease.

You can even change the pitch and use effect settings to blend with your video tutorials.  It works well with Windows 7, XP, Mac OS X, GNU Linux and Windows Vista.  I downloaded the Audacity software and worked on few of the features and still need to explore more.  Try it out and you would love it! 

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How to check a website/blog is dofollow or nofollow

For newbies in internet marketing, this subject would be something new to them.  But some of us are still confused whether search engines do crawl, nofollow websites and blogs.

What is NoFollow ?

It is an attribute that is added to websites and blogs, instructing search engines not to follow the links on that site.  This helps to avoid spammers from getting credits  by a way of linking their site with nofollow websites, inorder to get crawled by search engines.

For example, if your html link is as follows:

Once your website or blog is coded in the above format, visitors who post a link on your site, would never be crawled by search engine robots.

So what could then be the benefit of posting your link on a nofollow site?

It is merely to get organic traffic to your site, when a visitor clicks your link on nofollow websites. But your link will never be spotted by search engine crawlers. So for that reason, posting comments on nofollow blog and article sites would be helpful.

How do we trace whether a website or blog is nofollow?

Seo professionals, this shouldn't be a problem.  They are able to figure out the nofollow html codes placed on the links of that site, when they check the source page of the website.

For non-techies, if you are using Firefox browser, there is a plugin in Tools - Add ons to check NoDoFollow sites.  On adding this plugin to your browser, each time you visit a site, it  would highlight the links which are DoFollow and NoFollow.  Those links highlighted in Pink are NoFollow and those with Blue are DoFollow.

                                      NoDoFollow

So if you notice a link in the comment already posted by members on a blog, it would be now much easier to trace out whether it is a DoFollow or NoFollow Blog from the color of the link.   When you post a comment on a blog, there is an option to enter your name and website link.  In the image above, you would notice it is a nofollow comment as the link is highlighted in red.

It now makes sense for posting comments on nofollow sites, though it does not contribute to increase rankings on search engines. 

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How to free disk space on your hard disk without upgrading

The other day, I was googling for a solution to move files from my hard disk to another drive.  My C drive is so full, that it was lacking even the minimum disk space required to work the system files.  There is no way that you could copy and paste system files from one drive to another, as the whole system itself would be in a mess.  Upgrading the system is time consuming, as all the softwares that I'm working on have to be downloaded again.

It is so happened that I bumped on a tool that does this function easily with a few clicks, without the need to upgrade the system.  EASEUS Partition Master helps to resize/move/split/merge files without any data loss and redistribute free space in the drives that is overloaded with data files.  The tool works on Windows 2000/XP/Vista/Windows7 32 bit and 64 bit system.

One of the main feature of Partition Master apart from speeding up your computer is that, it allows to recover deleted/lost partition and backup the disk.  It is highly recommended to backup your disk, before you proceed with any of the functions.  Thus ensuring your data is safe and  allows smooth functioning of your system files.

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Purpose and Tips to improve Alexa Ranking

Alexa rank is a method to calculate the number of visitors who visit your website or blog and  to determine the worth of a site for linking purpose.  These visitors could be advertisers, ad networks, webmasters, any interested business person or internet users looking out for quality content and educating info on your website.  A site with a high Alexa ranking helps visitors to track its popularity and eventually build a link with them on their website.   Linking high page ranking sites that are similar to your business is important to increase your website traffic and get solid prospects.  There are many methods adopted in linking sites through banners, widgets, blogs,  forums, articles and various other seo methods.

For Alexa ranking the ranking is calculated in the descending order.  

For example, on Alexa ranking toolbar if website A shows ranking as 8 and website B shows ranking as 2, then it is website B that would be considered with a ranking higher on Alexa.  Whereas for google page ranking it is the other way round.   If a website has a page ranking 8 out of 10, that site is considered with a high google page rank.

Few tips to improve the Alexa Ranking of your website

• Install the Alexa tool bar on your browser.  For Firefox users, you can find the toolbar in the addon menu.

• Embed the Alexa rank widget on your website or blog.  Each time a  visitor clicks on the widget it would be counted as a visit. 

• Educate your users and customers about the importance of using Alexa ranking toolbar for their websites and blogs.  The next time they visit your site, this would in turn highly contribute to your website alexa ranking.

•  Link your website or blog with quality and high page rank sites targeting your business.  Most webmasters and affiliate networks would have already installed the toolbar and this would again help to increase your site rating.

•  Post articles about the use of Alexa ranking on popular article sites with a link to your website in the resource box.

Following these tips, your website ranking would steadily increase over time.

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Your website and blog seen by millions on their browser

What can this little toolbar do for you?  Conduit can bring you tons of traffic as your website or blog is placed on the browser of users in the form of a small  app or toolbar.  Users all over the world can access your website tools, even if they don't download your customised toolbar. Thus visitors automatically  become your website or blog subscribers.

Lets take an example for the below customized toolbar

You can have a similar or your customized toolbar with an icon for each of your popular website products, rss feed, offers, gadgets and much more.  This can be shared with your friends, employees, business partners,  customers and do promote your toolbar.  Each time your website or blog content is updated, this would automatically reflect on your users toolbar.  There is an alert option   where a small screen would appear on your users computer, as and when your website is updated or when you need to convey an important message or offers to your toolbar users.  In this way there is a constant contact with your users and visitors round the globe.  

Now for users who do not want to install your toolbar, but at the same time they are interested in your website content and offers,  there is another option.  You can create a branded customized app with your website content and share it in the conduit marketplace.   Having an icon of your website on users browser, will attract and remind them to check your website updates regularly.

 Like this....

On clicking the Add button on conduit marketplace, the youtube app automatically gets added to the user browser.   Same way, create your website app and share it on conduit platform to get loads of traffic.

Conduit have a ranking of PR 8 on google with 250,000 publishers, 170 million users and new users every minute worldwide.  Thats a lot of traffic to your website once you share your toolbar and apps on this excellent user friendly platform.



Any number of apps can be created.  For this, you do not need any technical knowledge.  It is all done for you at conduit.  To enhance your customized toolbar, you can add apps that you feel users would be interested .  Apps like world radio,  popular videos, world clock, free games, weather and similar sites.

 

In a nutshell with Conduit your website would have:

Everything your users can do on your website, they can do on your branded app, wherever they are on the web.

• More exposure and traffic by millions of users worldwide.

• Helps to create brand awareness.

• A huge high ranking platform to promote your products easily.

Because your branded app will be in the browser window every time your users log onto the internet, your brand and best content will always be just a click away.

• Build up constant contact with customers and users.

Send messages, add a scrolling ticker, and even send Desktop Alerts to your users. If you have something to tell them, you can be sure they'll see it.

• Every updated content of your website is seen right away on the desktop of users, attracting them to peep into your site.

• Once users are addicted to your website content and products, they would be your return visitors.

• Alert message when you need to convey a message or offers to your users immediately.

Sticky components, useful tools, and cool gadgets make your app more engaging, and keep users coming back.

NOTE:  Just an update, many of you are familiar with Wibiya, a web application platform.  It is now taken over by Conduit for $45 million, according to an article that I read on techcrunch.

Because your app refreshes automatically, you can be sure that your users will immediately see any changes or additions you make to your offering.

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The best of cool Iphone Apps for business

There is a great list out there for Iphone Apps and it is confusing to know which is the best.   I have compiled a short list for some of the very best apps, that would be useful for your day to day business activities.  I believe people would feel comfortable to work on these cool Iphone Apps, as they are easy to use.

Analytics App

You can now finally, track the traffic to your websites and blogs on your Iphone with Analytics App.  It supports multiple accounts and websites with detailed report of your visitors and traffic to your site.  With Analytics app, you can get a quick overview report , a detailed report  and a report according to the date, week or month specified.

Practically, everybody who has a website and blog would love to own Analytics App as it is a very addictive app for your business.

Evernote

With Evernote iPhone, you could create notes, snap photos to remember notes and a voice recording feature for your memos.  You can access these notes later any time from your iPhone, computer or the web.  It works on iPhone OS 3.1.2 version or later.

Interesting to watch how Evernote works.  Excellent App!

Springnote

Springnote is an alternative for Evernote.  Both are equally good and is a choice for users. Sometimes we come up with ideas while we are travelling or when we are held up at a  shopping mall.  It is a good practice to jot down few notes for future reference.  With Springnote you can create notes online and  if necessary, share them with friends and co-workers.  Notes are automatically saved and can be viewed offline. 

Box.net

 The Box.net is a multi-tasking app which allow you --

• To easily view, access and share any files in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDFs, images and Box Web Documents on your iPhone.

• Files that are saved to your Iphone can be accessed offline.

• Help you to monitor updates on your Iphone as and when a file has been updated, downloaded, uploaded and comments on files are added or replied.

                         Sample 1                                  Sample 2                         

                                                   

                         Sample 3                                        Sample 4

                                     

                                    

Meetifyr

       

Meetifyr is a calendar where you can share it with friends to find a convenient time to meet up.  There is no sign-up required to create this shared calendar.  Just create the calendar with your availability, location and send the link around to friends.

Though Meetifyr calendar is used to meet up with friends, you can use it to for scheduling your business meetings as well.

MakeSomeTime

This is a simple online time and invoicing tracking app that help to keep your times organised by clients, projects and tasks in the most efficient manner.  There is nothing to be installed and it has a user-friendly interface.  All that's required is to load MakeSomeTime in your iPhone's browser and use it in the way you work.

 

HiTask

HiTask is a task management tool, with the main feature users can access this app on any mobile phone.  It helps you to maintain your personal to-do lists, track Log hours, share, delegate tasks for projects and track their progress.  With a simple drag-n-drop option, it allows you to organize your team and projects.

You can use HiTask both for your personal and business purpose with the option of keeping confidential information private.

Earthcomber

When we visit a place for the first time, we hardly have an idea about the new location.  Earthcomber is a cool and fun app to find businesses, friends and fun spots in the current location.  Once you arrive at a new place, on your Iphone tap “Set My Location Here” and it would also let your friends who use Earthcomber, know where you are.

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Powerpoint to Video Converter

I found this free Powerpoint to Video Converter tool very cool for personal and business purpose.  If you don't have a webcam or video recorder, this should not be a worry at all.

All you have to do is download this free tool, create a powerpoint presentation of your own and convert it into a video.

  Powerpoint to Video Converter

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You need to have an online backup for your computer files

It is a necessity to have an online backup for your computer files.  An external hard disk may serve the purpose to an extent.  What if your computer was completely destroyed by natural calamities or fire?  This is very alarming in the recent years.  All your precious data would be lost with no way to retrieve them.

To be on the safe side, it is advisable to have an online backup for atleast your important computer data files.  

One of the recommended source is MozyHome free edition which offers upto 2 GB online backup.

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Purpose of using RSS Feeds for your daily online activities

Have you wondered what is this icon seen on blogs and websites and what purpose does it serve? 

Well, it is the RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feed icon that provide updates for published works on blogs, news, videos and websites.  On clicking this icon, you are subscribed to that particular blog or website that you are interested in getting updated information.

An RSS feed is like a channel that provides a summarized text with a link to each of your favorite site.  So instead of wasting time going to each website to get updates, subscribing to these sites saves your valuable time.

If you have a gmail id, you can check all your favorite websites and blogs at one place with the help of Google Reader.  For website and blog owners, to create your RSS feeds, the best recommended is Google Feedburner

Having an RSS feed on your website or blog helps to build up backlinks and traffic tremendously, if your content is updated regularly.  Search Engines like google crawls RSS feeds to get fresh webpages, there by increasing your rankings and help your website or blog to get indexed faster.

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How cool is this tool? Check it for yourself

Sharing links for your websites and blogs individually to social bookmarking sites is a tedious process.  I came across a cool tool Socialmarker which allows you to instantly submit your links to 29 social bookmarking sites within few minutes.

If you are wondering what is social bookmarking, it is a method for users on the web to save, organize and share with others, bookmarks for websites that are of interest to them. It makes things easy to acess these sites for future reference and share links quickly to a group of people or certain networks like digg, facebook, twitter and so on.

Socialmarker is a free online tool and nothing to download.  Imagine the no. of backlinks that you can get quickly on submitting your links on most popular social bookmarking sites.  Your links get  indexed very fast by google and other search engines as well.

This video shows you how to use Socialmarker online tool.

You can also create a submission bookmarklet with Socialmarker for all your future posts in your blogs or websites with a simple quick action.

Just as how I have added socialmarker button above on this post, you could do the same by copying the code to your website or blog.  The code is provided at the bottom of the homepage on socialmarker website.

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Screenr - an Online Video Capture Tool

Screenr is a free video capture tool that does not require downloading any software.  You can Login to screenr with your twitter username and password.   On clicking the record button ,  your screen activity gets recorded and you can use your microphone for audio purpose.

The video capture or screencast is then published by Screenr in high-definition flash format. You can share your screencast on Twitter, YouTube and  other video sites.   One of the best feature in using screenr is iPhone users can view your screencast.

Screenr is best suitable for creating your personalized video tutorials and marketing campaigns.  Apart from this, uploading your own videos on popular video sites like youtube  and metacafe can fetch you some solid income.

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Simple to use HTML Editor

Page Breeze HTML Editor

Web Designing or creating a website is a professional skill.  Not everyone is gifted with this skill due to its complex coding programs.  PageBreeze is a free html editor which can be used by everyone  and anyone who does not have a basic knowledge of creating webpages.  It is a simple and easy to use html editor.

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Allows download of files at a convenient time

Download Accelerator Plus 9.4.0.5

A very useful free software which allows to download softwares, video and files at increased speeds.  Incase of  power failures or internet problems, Download Accelerator Plus (DAP) 9.4 help you to resume the downloads at a later time.  All the files and videos would be stored in this software until you delete them.  So it is not necessary to download the files once again right from the beginning.

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Computer Registry Cleaner

CCleaner

CCleaner is a very powerful free tool to quickly clean your computer of all registry files, temporary files, history, and cookies.  This makes your computer to run faster and more secure.  It is fast to download and takes only few seconds to do the clean ups.

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