Category: Business Essentials
Hi everyone!
I’m excited to share that I’m in the June 2011 print edition of Black Enterprise magazine! The article I wrote is called, “Building A Better Website” and you’ll find it on page 50 in the magazine.
It’s focused on business owners who want to setup a website by themselves so they can have more control while keeping their marketing costs low.
Do you have a website where you’d like to easily manage incoming questions from visitors right within WordPress?
Maybe you’re a website development company who specializes in WordPress websites for your clients and it sure would be nice if they could ask you questions without having to leave the WordPress dashboard.
Well starting Monday, Zendesk will offer access to a new plugin they’re working on that will do just that!
Some companies do business on handshakes. Others want a signature. Scratch that, MOST companies want your signature if they’re going to engage in business with you. When you move into a new place, you sign a lease, when you buy a car, you agree to take ownership by signing on the dotted line and when someone captures you in a photograph or for a live event, they’ll ask you to sign a release form. Accepting a job, adopting a dog from the Humane Society and driving a Zipcar all pretty much will require your signature.
What if it could be less painful? What if you could simply type in your name onto a document and call it a day?
Well I’m here to tell you that you can with Echosign (aff), a web app that allows you to electronically sign documents.
It’s used by Fortune 500 companies like Intuit, Symantec, Dell, Google, SAP, The Associated Press, Comcast, Nike, HP, Blue Cross / Blue Shield, Citrix, Hilton hotels, Delta, GE, AOL (ahem), Citrix, MediaCom, P&G, American Express, TransUnion and CBS as well as fun, trendy companies like Facebook, Groupon, LivingSocial, Gigaom, Pandora and OpenTable plus nonprofits like Kiva and The American Lung Association.
But can it save you time if you’re an entrepreneur, consultant or freelancer? Heck yes! Read on…
This is the Dell Vostro V130. There was no tiger blood involved although it in the making of this video commercial. This is a great laptop that will make you stylish, professional and on point at work and in the boardroom.
While settling in for the evening at the Hilton Hotel the night before SXSW, the following crew of creative tech folks put together this video: @baratunde @waynesutton @hajjflemings @robertmurray @amoyal @adriarichards @drgoddess.
This was not created on an iPad2 although it could have been since Apple will have a pop up store Friday at SXSW.
Today, I ran across yet another person who still provides their email in the following format as some sort of maladaptive coping mechanism to spam protection:
myname at mydomain dot com
Folks, you don’t need to do this if you have Gmail or Google Apps and I’ll explain why in a bit. I’ve also seen people put annoying third-party email verification systems on top of Gmail. Completely unnecessary.
Whenever possible, I try to educate these folks and help them understand the root problem with spam and how Google addresses it for the millions of email users, businesses and organizations they support.
I just saw this cool email newsletter from Moo.com saying that they will hand deliver your business cards to SXSW if you order before March 1st. Use coupon code: sxswpickup at checkout and then pick your cards up Saturday, March 13th from 12 noon until 3pm in the exhibition hall.
Read More…
You’ve been hearing me talk about Zendesk. Now I’m going to share with you what I’ve been working on!
I’m happy to announce the webinars are now public and you can check out the list of Zendesk webinars for January on the blog.
Audio has been posted from the webinar I did with Chris Pirillo, What Every Geek Needs To Start a Company
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
We had a great time discussing all the basics of starting a geek business and the audience had great questions!
To get notified of the next one, sign up for the newsletter which goes out once a month.
People often ask me, “What’s the name of that software?” so in this video I give a run down of my updated tech wall…in my pajamas!
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpMif1UEQvU[/youtube]
AskAdria Ustream logo for my live, weekly technology show! You can watch it each Monday at 5:30pm CST
Windows XP will be supported until 2012 2014. It’s going to be the business mainstay for the next 5 years irregardless of Vista and Windows 7.
iPhones were built to be jailbroke. This allows you to run additional software that you wouldn’t find at the App store. The Electronic Frontier Foundation thinks Apple lost some marbles and that this is no different then when people modify their cars.
ThinkGeek makes awesome tech t-shirts for women! In addition to geek stuff, they have jewlery
WordPress is the most popular blogging platform in the world! Major newspapers including the New York Times use it to run their blogs. Wordpress also can run your website
Eventbrite is the best way to register for conferences and webinars! It makes the promotion and sales for your events easy. Post your event and get paid.
Ubuntu is an operating system. It’s a specific flavor of Linux. It’s become one of the most user friendly and popular Linux distros in the last 4 years.
Tux is the the mascot for Linux. Yay penguins!
Moo makes awesome business cards. I get lots of compliments on my business cards so I keep reordering from Moo!
Firefox is a web browser for the world and is made by Mozilla. It now makes up over 25% of the browser market as more people get sick and tired of using crappy Internet Explorer.
Timebridge makes meetings happen. It streamlines the process by allowing you to send multiple times to everyone you’re meeting with. They all click on the best times and Timebridge adds the confirmed time to your calendar.
Google is the most popular search engine in the world and they took the time to take photos of the planet Earth and share it via Google Earth. Sweet!
Dell is a great hardware platform if you’re going to stick with Windows. It’s a solid choice for business desktops, servers and home systems. You can net a sweet deal on a refurbished Dell for $300 with a 3 year warranty for your business. I picked up my 23″ Samsung monitor from Dell because they had the best price.
Apple makes great laptops. I have seen these macbooks last for years, find them to be made of high quality parts and most importantly, have excellent power management vs many pc based noteboooks which I won’t name. I will be getting a 13″ Macbook pro in the next few weeks (fingers crossed) and will rejoin the computer world as a cross platform IT person.
Lijit is a custom search plugin for your blog or website. It crawls your site and provides visitors with a Google-like results page. Lijit will also list content from folks on your blogroll. Pretty cool stuff plus @tarable and @micah work there!
Flickr is a social networking site based on images. It has huge Google juice so if you care about SEO for your website, find a way to incorporate Flickr. I have their pro account which allows me to upload a lot of images.
Netflix is a superior alternative to renting movies from your local video store because there are no late fees, you can queue up movies, no shipping charges, a much larger selection and they launched “Watch Instantly” in 2007 so you can watch movies on your computer. I’ve been using Netflix since 2003.
I didn’t mention two companies as I’m waiting for their logo banners but I’ll mention them here:
Zendesk is a web based helpdesk ticketing system which centralizes IT support requests and will save you time and money. It’s scalable so you can be a single consultant or helpdesk with 200+ support folks. I started using it last year, Twitter copied me this year as did MSNBC (probably because I was on The Rachel Maddow Show) and Viddler.
Harvest and is one of THE BEST solutions I’ve used for easy time tracking and invoicing that is cross platform. They support Quickbooks export, you can Tweet your time and they talk to Zendesk so I can bill right from my tickets. Did I mention they recently added the ability to collect payment via Paypal and create reoccurring invoices?
Tired of working for “The Man”?
Want to launch your own successful technology company?
This Thursday I’m holding a 2 hour webinar, What Every Geek Needs To Start A Company that will show you all the essentials of starting a tech consulting business.
My special co-host will be Chris Pirillo, founder of the Lockergnome community and Gnomedex conference!
I am honored that I’ve been asked to speak at tomorrow’s SCORE event, “Women in Business” Luncheon.
“Embrace Change” Tomorrow I will share how I adapted my consulting business to focus on what I enjoyed, located tools to help me work better, carved my niche and found the courage to step out of my comfort zone. Read More…
Moo turns three years old this week and they are giving everyone 25% off on business cards!
We all are busy people. The one thing we can never get back. Today I’ll share with you how I was able to quickly and easily accept a meeting time from Nic for our upcoming meeting on how to find and connect with the right sponsors for our websites. Nic and I were chatting via Skype and he said it sure would be nice if Timebridge worked on the iPhone. I told him I’d seen a blurb about it on the Timebridge site. Today was a great day to test it out:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-VCQU42hEE[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YAgrFInBjw[/youtube]
Mozy is an amazing solution for keeping your data safe. Computer data is usually lost to fire, theft and hardware failures. Mozy protects your data by securely uploading your files to a safe data center.
I’ve been using it for 2 years and it’s not let me or my clients down once!
It supports both Windows and Macs. The most I ever backed up was 46GB to my personal Mozy Account
Website – http://mozy.com
My new business cards just came in!
These are from moo.com, are printed on 100% recycled paper, feel sturdy yet professional. All the packaging is also recycled (a plus for my treehugging lifestyle).
Which design do you like best? Both of these designs struck me as unique. I could keep both and alternate when the mood strikes.
I’ve been using Paypal since 2000 and it’s my primary means of paying companies and people over the internet. I accept business payments through Paypal as well. The thing I like about using Paypal is that I have all my transactions in one place. It’s been a breeze at tax time to find my business related purchases and tie payments back to invoices.
How you can use Paypal to build your business
There are folks who say Paypal is horrible and a waste of time. They’re right. There are people who tell you they clear several thousand dollars a month through Paypal and it’s great. They’re right too. It keeps it’s promise; Easily send and receive payments online. I even pay my auto insurance with Progressive.com through Paypal.
Think of it like this: Everyone who goes to the Minnesota State Fair won’t have fun.
