Archive for November, 2011

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Weekly Tech Roundup for November 25, 2011

Friday, November 25th, 2011

Weekly Tech Roundup

Happy Thanksgiving weekend! This week’s Tech Roundup includes free templates, slow websites, a new WordPress magazine, and Black Friday deals for WordPress stuff.

Firefox 10, What’s New? – Not much new in the next-next version of Firefox. Which makes me wonder, why make it a major release?

Spellchecking in Internet Explorer 10, Test It Now – “Internet Explorer 10 will not only support spell checking but also auto correction of text which works identical to that of Microsoft’s Office suite.” That’s something to look forward to.

10 things your clients need to know – I think every designer & developer should read this list. I know I need reminding of them sometimes – mostly the first two. Great tips on how to effectively communicate with your clients about these everyday issues.

Free templates and icons from cxpartners – These are quite cool and free!

Seven Mistakes That Make Websites Slow – A must-read. I just worked with a client that was trying to speed up their website. I used YSlow and Page Speed extensively to determine the sources of the slowdowns. I have to say I much prefer Page Speed. While they mostly test the same things, I found Page Speed to provide some extras like the image optimization. (It provides you with the optimized versions of each image. You just have to click to download them.)

Introducing The WPCandy Quarterly magazine, pre-orders now available – Love WordPress? Here’s a new paper magazine that is all WordPress! It’s going to come out quarterly. If you sign up for a year, you get one issue free. Don’t be surprised by the shipping fee, though. Mine was $9.

Thanksgiving WordPress Coupons & Deals 2011 – Gotta have some tech Black Friday deals, too! Check these out – lots of 50% off.

Don’t forget tomorrow is Small Business Saturday! Show your support by shopping with the smaller guys!

Have a great weekend!

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Weekly Small Business Roundup for November 25, 2011

Friday, November 25th, 2011

Weekly Small Business Roundup

Happy Thanksgiving weekend! Hope you all had a great day with friends & family yesterday. This week’s Small Business Roundup includes social media calendars, collections tips, the new Gmail, and some Black Friday sales.

5 rules of small business advertising success – Some great, simple tips to use on your next marketing effort.

How to Create a Social Media Marketing Schedule – The social media schedule detailed here is kind of intense but it gives you some really good ideas for setting up your own schedule that meets your needs.

10 tips for making collection calls – The calls we never want to make. It’s never fun to have to track down money. If this is hard for you, keep in mind how you feel about paying your bills (on time and at all) when it’s time to send the late notices and make the past due phone calls. This is money you are owed for products and services you performed. It’s your customer’s responsibility to pay you for that and to do it on time. The “Be Proactive” tip is probably the best one in this article. It’s a nice gesture and it ensures your client received the invoice and allows you to answer any questions up front.

Master the New Gmail with These Tips, Shortcuts, and Add-Ons – If you use Gmail, check out these tips for making the most of the new version. There are a lot of goodies here!

Black Friday & Cyber Monday Sales!

(Disclaimer: I may get a small bonus if you purchase anything through these links but I wouldn’t tell you about them if they weren’t awesome!)
Today only, Host Gator is having a 50% off all hosting sale.

Now through Monday, MOO is having their annual Cyber MOOdays with 30% off everything. Stock up on business cards or get your holiday cards!

Now through Sunday, ING Direct is having an awesome sale on savings, checking, and investing accounts. Who couldn’t use an extra $107 just for setting up an account and spending money??

Don’t forget tomorrow is Small Business Saturday! Show your support by shopping with the smaller guys!

Tech news is up next. Have a great weekend!

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Happy Thanksgiving!

Thursday, November 24th, 2011

Wishing you and yours a Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving

I’m thankful for so much: my friends & family, my clients & readers, a warm house with 3 cats to snuggle, and the opportunity to do exactly what I love.

What are you thankful for?

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Weekly Tech Roundup for November 11, 2011

Friday, November 11th, 2011

Weekly Tech Roundup

This week’s Tech Roundup includes upgrading to Windows 8, Google Easter Eggs, and an iTunes adventure.

Should You Upgrade to Windows 8? – I could certainly handle a 6-second boot-up. Worth a read if you are considering upgrading to Windows 8 when it comes out.

10 Nifty Google Easter Eggs That Will Amuse You – These are fun! Take a couple of minutes to take a look.

Adobe Abandons Flash on Mobile Devices – I’m all for more HTML5 and less Flash. Glad to see this move by Adobe.

If you know me personally you know I’ve struggled with my iTunes library since I upgraded my machine to Windows 7 a few months ago. OMG. That was a nightmare! I wasn’t really without my music but I kinda was. And I didn’t feel like I could buy anything new because I knew I had a huge mess I needed to fix. I tried just about everything I could think of and research online and finally I decided I was just going to need to take a few hours and do a whole bunch of manual work. I had music files in 2 different places before the OS upgrade and each time I tried to fix my library before I’d end up with 3-6 duplicates of almost everything. Anyway… I finally fixed it! Here’s what I did:

  • Closed iTunes
  • Removed iTunes folder (where the library files live)
  • Removed all of my music folders
  • Fired up my external drive with my backed up music on it
  • Copied over one set of music directories
  • With the second set of directories, I went through each one and compared it to the one I had just copied. If there were duplicates I either didn’t copy them or I fixed them in some way (some weren’t in an album directory, for example).
  • With everything copied to my music directory, I fired up iTunes and added my music folder to the library. It worked for quite a while (almost 5500 songs, not to mention videos and podcasts) and then I imported my playlists.
  • I had iTunes show my all my duplicates and I removed the ones that were legit (I have some songs multiple times on different albums – think Christmas music). There were way fewer duplicates than even pre-upgrade.
  • I wiped and synced my iPod for the first time in months.
  • Finally, I squealed with joy and did a little dance. A huge weight was lifted off my shoulders and I happily started the Christmas music up. :)

That was my “geek” project for the week. Did you do anything geeky-fun this week?

Have a great weekend!

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Weekly Small Business Roundup for November 11, 2011

Friday, November 11th, 2011

Weekly Small Business Roundup

This week’s Small Business Roundup includes marketing tips, Square, home office tax tips, and Emergency Turnaround Clinic from IttyBiz.

Square Updates Mobile Payments App – How would you like to pay for something just by speaking your name? That’s one of the new features in the Square iPhone app. Coming soon to Android.

7 Steps To Sure Fire Marketing Success – Admittedly, I haven’t had a chance to read this in detail yet. That’s part of the reason I’m keeping it on the list – so I can remember to read it later. :) Looks like some good stuff.

What and How Much of Your Home Office Can be Deducted – As always, run any tax advice by your accountant first, but some good tips here if you have a home office. And I didn’t know you could deduct repairs and improvements. That’s super handy!

Google+ Pages: connect with all the things you care about – Google+ now allows companies and brands to sign up. Are you going to sign your business up? I probably will but it’s not high on my priority list right now. Here’s another article, including 4 reasons why you should give G+ a chance: From #BWELA: Why Guy Kawasaki and Chris Brogan are betting big on Google+

New Google Search Update Could Spell More Trouble for Business Websites – In case you needed another reason to keep your website updated (Do I sound like a broken record yet?), here’s more proof of the benefit. Google is focusing more on regular updates in its newest search algorithm. So if you haven’t updated your website in 5 years but have great search rankings – that might change.

Finally, I’m taking a class from IttyBiz this month. It’s called Emergency Turnaround Clinic. First off, I’m a huge fan of Naomi from IttyBiz. I think she’s amazing and a genius. I am so excited about this class. I’ve already had brilliant ideas and I’m not even halfway through. I can see taking myself through this class (or at least parts) once or twice a year. Yes, it’s that useful already. You can still sign up and you don’t have to be in “turnaround” mode but it is definitely geared toward that. It’s pay-what-you-can, so if you’re not in turnaround mode, I suggest you pay full price. :) If you are in turnaround, she really means pay-what-you-can.

Tech news is up next. Have a great weekend!

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Weekly Tech Roundup for November 4, 2011

Friday, November 4th, 2011

Weekly Tech Roundup

This week’s Tech Roundup includes WordPress infographics, free fonts, and a new security tool for small businesses.

New Tool to Help Small Businesses Plan for Cyberattack – The FCC is developing a tool to help small businesses with their security planning. The tool will ask a series of questions and output policies and suggestions based on those results. Be on the lookout for it later this month.

20 High Quality Free Fonts Every Designer Should Own – As an admitted font hoarder, I was excited to see this as a reminder of some of the fonts I lost in a recent upgrade (the one thing I forgot to back up – ugh!). It was great to somewhat replenish my stash.

WordPress Developer Tools – Two tools to check out if you make WordPress websites.

15 Entertaining & Informative WordPress Infographics – Exactly what the title indicates, these are interesting and fun infographics. If you work with WordPress you’ll appreciate them.

A Brief History of Web Standards – Another infographic. This one is very informative. It takes you all the way back to 1962! It covers technology, typography, and web standards.

15 Point Checklist: WordPress Start-Up Guide After Installation – A handy guide for what to do after you install WordPress. There’s an pared-down advanced version and a more detailed beginner version. I can see this being really useful for both types of users, particularly for beginners as it explains what everything what each is and why it should be done.

Have a great weekend!

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