The internet is evolving at an alarmingly fast pace. Are your websites keeping up with the interactive demands and latest web trends happening within your niche?
Below are 6 (once advanced features) that have been increasingly commonplace. If your site does not have any of the following now is the time to fix it.
Twitter Updates (Feed)
You are on Twitter right? Having a twitter update stream, where you mention what you and your business is up to, and for running specials or deals, is an excellent way to earn more Twitter followers, let alone also gaining potential more customers, leading to sales leads, possibly more.
There’s an excellent write up on how to use Twitter with your website here.
An active Blog
Are your companies blogs actually being updated with interesting and up-to-date news and related articles? Consider consistently posting blog updates, and in which you could post links on twitter to get your followers to read your latest entry even that much quicker.
Live Chat (Interactive Support)
Most online shoppers simply demand a Live Chat option on your website, preferably in a pop-up or pop-in style window, so they can remain on the page they are needing assistance with, first impression of your talented sales or support team could be the cause of a sale or the potential customer leaving.
Here’s a few example paid and free services:
AJAX Interactive Suggested Search
You have most likely noticed a fairly recent trend of websites, mainly those selling products, allowing you to begin typing in a search phrase, and you get nearly instant suggestions based on what you’ve entered so far, this is very handy for online shoppers, making it even easier and quicker to identify and get to what they may be looking for.
Tutorial on How to use PHP and jQuery AJAX To make this possible
AJAX Interactive Add to Cart
Having interactive graphical user interface is very important these days, even simple things as an interactive way to add products to their shopping cart, makes your site snappy and keeps the customer from being annoyed by having to go back or leave the page, maybe they have a question your live chat needs to respond to before they’ll complete their purchase or filling out that form.
Is your site up to speed, code wise, actual loading speed and mobile-browser ready?
These three items are equally important while keeping your websites up with users demands and interactive needs, you should always test as much as possible before pushing any new features or improvements of your websites live.
More and more internet shoppers and surfers the like, are browsing via an mobile device in our tech-heavy industry, allowing them to hopefully utilize your websites to the fullest via their most convenient choice of using the internet.
Are your websites mobile compatible? Do they load fast and are the interactive actions fast to respond? Keep these questions on your mind while further developing your company and clients needs.
A commonly used page speed tester, is the Page Speed plugin for Firebug in Firefox.
On Monday, Facebook launched their new messaging system. This all-in-one communication network simplifies and combines all of the tools we use to talk to one another. The new Messages combines messages, texts, chats and emails allowing you to receive all forms of communication to whatever electronic device you choose. The new system will also automatically organize your incoming messages. All of your conversations with each individual will be grouped allowing you to easily see your history.
You will have the choice to sign up for @facebook.com account although it is not mandatory. The chief executive of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, feels e-mail is becoming outdated and their new Messages reflects what young people want. However, they do not expect Facebook users to abandon their Yahoo and Gmail accounts.
Many people are intrigued by how this system might change the way we communicate but are still hesitant as to what extent. This service is currently only being offered by invitation only, but will be available to all users within the next few months. This is just the latest update to Facebook in recent months, helping them to slowly become more than just a social networking site.
A healthy competition is continuing to brew between Facebook, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft for the future leader of the world wide web. Facebook and the new Messaging faces challenges in the next coming months to see how they will handle spam and how easy it is to use. The are battling spam by organizing your inbox by friends and those you are not Facebook friends with. You will have the ability to move people from folder to folder to make sure you receive your most important messages first. Facebook hopes to encourage businesses to incorporate the system into their interoffice communication. However, with a large number of companies banning the use of social media websites in the work place, how successful can it be.
Is this something you would consider introducing at work? Or would you simply use it for personal use?
Photo used is from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tsevis/4785888323/sizes/l/in/photostream.
The world’s most used social media site Facebook, is now chasing down and punishing several application developers for passing certain information about their users to a data broker. This is the latest move by the social networking site to control growing concerns over privacy and its users. The developers were being paid by a data broker for user IDs, unique numerical identifiers assigned to the site’s users, which can appear in a URL when they use the site.
The user IDs do not contain personal information, but could lead to information that the person has chosen to display publicly. The latest revelation shows that some application developers were then passing those user IDs to a data broker (which remains unnamed). The brokers would then take this data and compile information to sell to advertising networks so users can be targeted with ads that are related to their personal interests.
This is only one of several privacy concerns surrounding Facebook lately; A lawsuit recently against Zynga (a social games developer) and Facebook alleges that 218 million user IDs just about half of the Facebook population, were shared with third party advertisers collecting personal details for ad targeting. Facebook’s terms of use specifically promise not to use the data allegedly shared in the lawsuit complaint.
So where are the user’s rights? Well… Facebook is working on a “technical solution” to prevent the wrongful passing of user IDs and will also work with browser vendors on this issue. The technical fix, to be released next week, will allow application developers to share a unique but anonymous identifier with permitted third parties such as content partners, advertisers or service providers.
The developers being exiled from Facebook are not being named and Facebook has reached an agreement with a data broker called Rapleaf, which was storing user IDs. Rapleaf was one of many companies that stored user IDs and they confirmed that they will not be using the information and deleting it from their databases immediately.
Google has just launched a new site: http://www.demoslam.com
Demo Slam allows you to submit your YouTube tech demos, to their new site. Google hopes it will be, “A place where boring tech demos become (hopefully) gotta-show-my-friends awesome—thanks to the creativity of Google users like you.”
Your video will go head to head with other user submitted videos and a winner will be crowned each week. They are looking for funny and creative content that is about one minute long. Currently they seem to be only accepting videos from US residents.
They are only accepting videos about “Featured Google Products”
- Google Book Search
- Google Chrome
- Google Docs
- Google Earth
- Google Goggles
- Google Instant
- Google Image Search
- Google Translate
- Google Home Page Image
- Google Maps
- Picasa
- Google Product Search
- Google Realtime Search
- Google Sky Map
- Google Video Chat and Google Talk
- Google Voice Search
I have seen a few fluffy positive reviews of Demo Slam so far but if I had to guess I would say this will fail. Another user generated content site with voting…nothing to see here.
A major error on Google’s part is to only allow you to submit videos that show off their products. This will get old fast and really gives you 0 reasons to come back to the site.
With sites like this you need to hit the ground running. Google should have used this launch to announce a NEW feature, instead of making really lame videos about existing products.
I really have no words for how horrible this video is. It flips through the features so fast you can’t really see or learn anything about them. Is this going to make you come back to the site? Me either.
Anyhow, I know it is easy to rip on anything new but this seems to fit right in with the recent failures of Google Wave, Knol, and Google Buzz.
What do you think, will this succeed or fail?
Facebook is in the process of rolling our two new features to its users; the ability to download (and backup) your entire profile, and new security enhancements that allow you to control who and what is logged into your account, new one time password (OTP) support, and finally ability to be notified when someone signs into your account.
Ability to Download Your Information
The “Download Your Information” ability is quite useful as you can download a single zip archive file containing all of your profile information, photos, wall posts, messages, videos, friend lists, and other related content, this download also includes a table of contents-like HTML page for you to quickly access your information when you unzip the archive file.
This feature provides Facebook users with a simple way to backup or retrieve all of their information within their account, thus making it easy to back-up your information, as well all know data loss is never a fun experience.
Once the feature rolls out to your account, all you need to do is head to Account > Account Settings > Download Your Information, you will find a “learn more” link, which will take you to the Download Your Account page, and from there you will the popup below, letting you chose to download all the information.
Enhanced Facebook Security
One Time Passwords – If you have your cell phone registered on your Facebook account, you may now utilize the new one time password option by sending a text message of “otp” to 32665, it will reply with a unique single use password, allowing you to login with the single use password during the next 20 minutes, once.
This one time password option is an excellent way to help keep your account secure when logging in from a computer, device or network that you do not trust or are uncertain of, such as public wifi at an airport, or a local coffee shop.
Facebook Session Control – You may now view what devices are actively logged into your Facebook account, and you have the ability to end their sessions immediately. This feature does not appear to reflect sessions on my android mobile phone, only web browser sessions, I hope to see Facebook expand to support all devices soon.
Facebook Login Notification – While checking out Facebook’s new session controls, I also came across another new feature of Facebook, which is the ability to have an email, or a text (SMS) message sent to you when someone logs into your account.
It is nice to see big social networks such as Facebook stepping up to the plate and keeping up with today’s security needs and also providing its user base with new enhanced features. Let me know your thoughts on Facebook’s new features!
The primary image used was taken from http://www.flickr.com/photos/deneyterrio/2321206299/.
On Wednesday, the online social network Facebook unveiled their latest tool to connect you to your friends and family. The updated Groups feature allows you to share information with a select group of friends as opposed to all of your friends.
You will be able to create a group, add friends and share information, photos, etc more privately. Members of the group will also be able to add friends. Everyone added to the group will be posted as well as the name of the person who added them. The names of the groups and the member of each will be visible to everyone but the information shared is “closed” by default.
New features of Groups includes creating and editing group documents, e-mailing the entire group using a custom e-mail address, as well as the most requested item group chat. Facebook users were only allowed to chat one on one until now. When an individual posts an item within a group a notification will be sent to all members of the group ensuring everyone sees the post.
There are a number of reasons to create a “closed” group such as your baseball team, your closest friends and family, your various clubs, the possibilities are endless. What kind of groups would you find most appealing?
After reading about the latest update to Facebook, I created my own private Group of “out of town family members” who can now easily watch my children grow up through pictures, videos and stories while I can keep those memories private. The newest feature is user friendly and is a great addition to the world of social networking. The success of the updated Groups depends on you the users.
So, Facebook users will you be taking advantage of a “closed” group or will you continue sharing your information with all of your friends?
You probably have seen these little black and white codes on the back of catalogs, on the sides of buses, or maybe even downloaded one on your phone as a boarding pass. They seem to be popping up just about everywhere. The QR Code, Quick Response Code, is a two dimensional matrix barcode that can be read by QR Readers.
You will need a phone with an internal camera and a QR Reader. Some new phones will come with a QR Reader already installed, or you can download the software in the form of an app.
I suggest using the QR Code Reader and Scanner by Big in Japan. I downloaded three QR readers before finding this one that worked like a charm on my iphone. Once the app is on your phone, you are ready to go! There are a ton of difference uses for the QR Code, but I found these to be the top 5 best ways people have started using them.
1) Business Cards
Place a QR Code on your business cards. All your business associates have to do is scan the QR Code and your information is automatically added to their contacts. You can put as much or as little information on the QR Code as you want. You can order QR Code Business Cards on Tec-It right now, but I suspect these will become widely available in the near future. This would be great for having at tradeshows or large conventions!
2) E-Commerce Promotions
Place a QR Code on a print advertisement for your customers to reach your promotion quickly. Scanning the code can take them directly to the promotion section of your website, or provide a text with a discount coupon code. Super simple.
3) Real Estate
Placing QR Codes on lawn signs to allow for potential buyers to receive more information on the listing, and save the real estate agents contact details with one click. I wish this was available when I was looking for a home!
4) Product Instructions
Use a QR Code on the outside of product packaging that will allow the customer to scan the QR Code to get the instructions on how to assemble the product, either via video or written instructions. Save a tree and the cost of printing!
5) Travel
Download your boarding pass on your phone in the form of a QR Code, instead of printing it out. These are easy for the airlines to scan and you do not need a computer. One more way to save paper!
If you would like to create your own QR Code, Kaywa has a nice QR Code Generator available for free. The code can be used to sent a text message, go directly to a URL, send a phone number of an SMS. My favorite part of using the QR Codes is that it requires very little typing on the keypad. You will save a ton of time by scanning instead of typing. Let us know how you use QR Codes for your business, or how you would like to see them used in your everyday life.
Have you ever been misunderstood because of the tone you used in an email or interpreted an e-mail the wrong way? Or wondered what got a customer, friend, or colleague so upset – only to discover it was your perceived tone?
This is an embarrassing and sometimes business/relationship ending situation for both parties. Studies show e-mail messages are interpreted incorrectly 50% of the time. However there is now a new tool to prevent that from happening again, called Tone Check. T.C is an e-mail plug-in that flags sentences with words or phrases that may convey unintended emotion or tone, then helps you re-write them. Just like Spell Check… but for the Tone you use in your message. The old saying “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me” may have taught us to be respectful and strong towards others and ourselves when we were young, but these days when messages/conversations are shared via email, words can be loaded emotional weapons if not used properly. Tone Check ensures your tone is clearly communicated and understood before you hit the SEND button. It evaluates words and phrases for the intensity of 8 primary emotions, allowing you to make corrections and adjust the overall tone before you send the wrong message. Many companies battle productivity loss triggered by misread employee e-mail. Ensure everyone in your organization is communicating clearly with Tone Check. You use Tone Check like a spell checker – click the Tone Check button in the Outlook tool bar, and it will analyze your e-mail and make suggestions about which sentences which have strong emotional components. You don’t have to make any changes if you don’t want to, but it can be handy if your email is likely to offend the recipient.
Tone Check is an interesting idea, it’s not something I’d use all the time, but is perhaps a good tool to apply when sending a stressful e-mail late at night, towards the end of a project, or to especially sensitive business partners.
The Columbian TLD of “.co” was originally delegated on December 24th, 1991, to the Universidad de los Andes, which is located within Columbia. During 2001, the University explored the exploitation of the domain for commercial purposes, attempting to treat it as just another “.com” domain name.
Due to these actions, and in response, some legal action and activity was taken to prevent this, and the Minister of Communications wrote to the University asking them not to proceed with this course of action.
On February 12th, 2002, the current delegate of the TLD (the university) wrote to ICANN stating that it had “terminated the .CO country-code top-level domain commercialization process and has further decided not to appoint a new registry operator.” It further went on to say that the University was experiencing “great difficulty” in operating .CO in light of the December 2001 council decisions, as well as the legal actions concerning the commercialization.
A little later that same year, in May, the Minister and Vice-Minister of Communications along with the University parties met at ICANN’s offices in Los Angeles, CA to discuss the future administration of the TLD, the meeting was successful and thus allowed the University to keep control of the TLD.
Due to further problems with the University handling the needs of running a TLD, in late 2009 ICANN begun considering handing off the ownership and delegation of the TLD to a more capable and responsible party, and as of early 2010 the TLD is now owned and delegated by the “.CO Internet SAS (“The Concessionaire”)”.
Also, commercial organizations and personal entities may now register domains under the “.co” TLD, as of around this late summer, big companies such as GoDaddy and NameCheap begun allowing anyone to register domains under the TLD again.
This was a brief overview of what happened with the “.co” TLD, you may read the full length IANA article. This is important to the internet community since you could easily accidently mistype a “.co” for a “.com” and be misled or taken to an entirely incorrect website.
For Small Businesses, hiring new employees is a big financial leap. The good news is, there’s a temporary relief for business who are contemplating new hires.
A new Act was signed March 18th, 2010; Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment (HIRE) which combines payroll forgiveness for Social Security taxes paid by employers on qualified new hires with a tax credit for keeping new hires on the payroll for at least 52 consecutive weeks.
What this means, the HIRE Act provides employers with an exemption from Social Security payroll taxes for every worker hired after Feb 3rd 2010, and before Jan 1st 2011, who have been unemployed for at least 60 days. Considering the benefits to the employer are tied to the 6.2% of any salary paid, a qualified worker may be hired for any number of hours, part time or full time.
In order to claim these benefits, the Employer will have to fill out a Form 941 revised, and begin on the second quarter filing. In addition, a Form W-11 will have to filled out by the employee for proof of his working terms within the time. These forms are not filed with the IRS, but retained with other income and payroll tax records. Make sure you hold onto them in case of an audit.
In addition, HIRE gives $1,000 income tax credit for every new employee retained for over 52 weeks. Granted, the employer will have to wait till 2011 tax returns are filed to benefit since it is a consecutive 52 weeks prerequisite.
Included within the HIRE Act, a bipartisan Senate Vote extended the Section 179 deductions of 2008 & 2009 expense thresholds so that small businesses can continue to write off ‘Eligible Property‘ of up to $250,000 with a phase-out of $800,000 till Dec 31st of this year 2010. So if you haven’t already gone Christmas shopping for your company, now’s the time.
If you have any further questions, you can follow the IRS likes listed:
