websense

Always on the lookout for my small business clients and friends, I have happened across and interesting offer from RatePoint, Inc. RatePoint provides copy in the form of testimonials, customer feedback, that sort of thing, for use on it’s clients’ web sites. This is a free offer for small business owners who are trying to maintain their online reputation. The services includes:

•Unlimited collection of reviews and testimonials from customers
•Unlimited automatic posting of content, such as newsletters, coupons and offers to Facebook and Twitter by simply checking a box
•Unlimited use of online surveys to collect customer insights
•Unlimited e-mail campaigns to a list of up to 125 contacts

This might work for some of you who need a hand in this department, but aren’t looking to spend money on it. I’ve mentioned here numerous times how important it is to build your brand and maintain your reputation online. This service may be helpful to you. It’ll probably be a bit cookie cutter, after all, it is a free service, but I’d wager that it has some very good points to it. There is a catch, each of the services offered have limitations. Such as only 125 email contacts for each email, you can’t post a review after 30 days, etc. These carry extra fees, thought they are minimal.
Overall, it is for sure better than nothing. If you have tried it or are using it, let me know what you think of it, I’d be interested to hear.

As I am sure you have heard by now (if you don’t already have one) Apple came out with a nifty new toy a few weeks ago, the iPad. I can’t resist new technology so I picked one up. I have a couple of comments, but in general most of it can come from a humorous article over at Technorati, written by Phillip Winn. Since I love a great car analogy, I found this post particularly insightful.

The author likens the new ipad to an automatic transmission, which is the exact reason I think a lot of people will end up liking this new apple product. They won’t have to work too hard to figure it all out. As a result, my kids love it.

My personal take is that it’s a pretty cool toy. Cool, but not practical for anything other than surfing, very light email and reading books. The iPad should definitely kill the Kindle, but I wouldn’t think that people will rush out and actually replace a Kindle with the iPad. To be fair, I’ll include a link to a guy who thinks the iPad is a necessary addition to your tech toolbag. He happens to be my brother in law, but he’s pretty smart, so if you’re interested in a different take: http://noodleonthis.wordpress.com/2010/04/26/why-we-need-the-ipad/

The problem with the email; its okay, but actually harder to use than an iPhone because you can’t hold it in your hands and thumb type because its so big. The email app design is really cool, but the simple things (typing) are a pain in the ass neck.

I’d love to hear from others who have obtained iPad, or who has at least gotten to play with one. What do you think, is it as easy as Apple makes it out? Is the email ease or difficulty important to you? Is it going to replace the Macbook, Kindle and everything iPod? Post your review in the comments!

As a Web development company, we often use Flickr or YouTube for a variety of purposes. I’m certain many small businesses are able to make use of the commercial photos or videos available on these sites. I’ve recently read an article on Fox News Small Business that reviews some sites for business documents that might prove to be equally useful. I know it’s a pain in the neck every time you want a business plan or contract, you search the web and see what’s available for download. A couple of sites have thousands of these documents available.

1. Docstoc.com has documents categorized by legal, personal business, finance, education and so on. Some of their documents are free, and you are able to upload your documents to sell to others. As is the case with anything, the free documents are not going to be as high quality as the paid products, but if you are tight on cash, or just need to get the jist of something, then this is a really great resource.

2. MegaDox.com also provides document downloads, but for a fee. they have a huge library of forms, and you can pay per form, or buy a membership and get a discount on the forms. A bit more pricey, but still way cheaper than having an attorney draft everything.

3. InforDesk sells an All-Business-Documents downloadable program that consists of 6,000+ documents. The software includes a spell checker, grammar check and communications and sharing tools. A single user licenses costs $85, while a three-user license costs $185.

More and more, the Web has the answers you need to run your small business. I think it’s become second nature to go to the web to find the answer to just about any question, but we all know the old adage “buyer beware”. We’ve all looked up something on the web and found results that were just a little fishy. If you think that may be the case, especially when it comes to business documents, it might just be best practice to use one of these services rather than take a chance, and if it’s something high stakes, such as a contract with a lot of money attached, you may want to have your attorney at least give it a once over before you use the form or sign anything.

As always, I’m here, looking for ways to use the Web to your best advantage. Do you have an online product or service you think others could benefit from, or even just want to suggest one? I’d love to hear what you’ve been using, or what you think is really great…

So, I’m thinking it’s about time to comment on the new Microsoft product, Bing. Microsoft touts it as being the newest thing in Search, and it is, but is it really any different from what we’re all used to? And, is there anyway it can compete with search giant, Google? Will it change anything about the way we optimize for the search engines?

The hype leading up to the release of Bing would lead you to believe that other search results were so loosely tied to keyphrases that you could get almost anything on a results page. To a certain extent this is true, and has lead to the use of and optimization for the long tail phrase. Single word searches do tend to result in just about anything.

Just as a test, I plugged the word “jeep” into both Google and Bing. The results look pretty much the same to me, at least at the top of the page. As I scrolled down, however I did notice a few differences. The Bing results seemed to know what I was asking for, and did not give me results for a rock band named “Jeep” or anything else. I also really like the image results, and the other categorized results as seen in the screen shots below. I have also included the Google results page for the sake of comparison.

So, I had to wonder if this would work this well for a less well known term, something obscure, but still just one word, so as not to bring the long tail effect into play at all. I searched the word “blind”, as it has several meanings. The Bing results were less well defined, as there was no way for Bing to determine what I really wanted. I got results from sites for the blind, as well as sites where you can buy blinds, and what I think was a site for another rock band. Well, that’s one nice thing about Bing, you can hover over the results, and a site description pops up.

Similar results came up for Google, the first one being a skateboard site, not what I would have thought.

In the end, what it comes down to is that the hype about Bing being a more focused search engine may be just that, as it still needs a keyphrase to really know what the user wants. So, I guess the long tail phrases are not a thing of the past just yet!

-by Collyn Floyd

Social media and I got off to a bad start. It started a few years ago when my college-age brother told me about MySpace and how I just had to be on there. After all, he already had like 110 friends. It’s not that I didn’t already spent a lot of time online, I just didn’t want to spend it picking out background wallpaper, theme songs, and whatnot (& the same could probably be for most of my friends). I saw the point, but MySpace wasn’t for me.

Then last year, there was the Digg phenomenon. I checked it out, but I like a friendlier online environment without all the incendiary comments. There was also Twitter – you know, so I can tell my friends, “I’m going to the bathroom right now”? Um, no thanks.

So, it came as a surprise when social media recently came to my rescue. I was stumped as to how to remove some decorative shutters from our home’s exterior. Google produced no help. I thought about driving up to Home Depot, but didn’t want to deal with the Saturday crowd, hunt for someone in an orange apron to help me, etc, etc. On a whim, I logged into Yahoo! Answers and asked my question, “How do I remove/uninstall exterior shutters?” Within several minutes, I had two answers. Within a couple of hours, I had several more.

These were good answers, mind you; a contractor responded, as did someone who had clearly gone through the process before. In total, I got eight responses. Even better, Y! Answers invited me to vote on the best response, and the answer with the most votes moved to the top of the page.

The size of the Y! Answers community is astounding. You can ask just about anything and get a response: Does butter spoil if left unrefrigerated? What should I do about the annoying guy at work? How often are there general elections in Britain? Of course, you could go to the USDA’s website to find out about butter or an online encyclopedia for British election info, but getting those experienced-it-myself, community-driven responses on Y! Answers makes for much more fun.

So I guess all is not lost for me with Social Media. It was just a matter of finding the right community.