Another Google Gadget that I like

So, there are a lot of things that I like to keep track of online. I keep track of publicity and how often a few clients get mentioned (as well as a couple of friends and colleagues), there are a few political items that I am passionate about,  I also write blogs for a couple of other people/businesses.  So I like to try to see what other people are saying, doing, writing about etc.  Google offers a great alert system, you simply log in http://www.google.com/alerts and type in the words you want to keep track of.  As in most searches if you’re using a proper name you’ll want to put it in quotes, for instance “Total Resource Connection” will get items about us,  – Total Resource Connection  – will get many more results because it will pick up any of the three words.

Favorite Online Gadgets

One of the things that I notice is when I am doing research online, I sometimes get lost in the “well that looks interesting” maze. What should have been a 15 minute search becomes a lost hour or more because I end up surfing.

Here are a few great tools that I’ve found while surfing that are applicable to most anyone that runs their own business (and some even work for employees too).

This nifty little tool that Google has created is amazing. It’s the Google Notebook. It allows you to highlight text on a web page that you want to save, right click and add it to your notebook. It saves the text along with a link back to the site the text was on. The notebook can be categorized to easily organize your information, so if you’re researching a particular topic and want to save snippets of information, this is a great way to go! On a scale of 1-5, this definitely rates the highest 5 possible.

Jotcloud is another organizing type tool. They bill themselves as “the sticky note of the web”. Basically, you keep your sticky notes online instead of on your computer, phone, walls etc. Now, we all know that sticky notes aren’t the best place to keep information, but it is kind of a clever idea to be able to jot little things down that may not deserve a complete file in your office, plus you have access to it anywhere. My favorite part was the demo is in Japanese. No, I don’t read, speak, or understand Japanese, but I got the idea of the demo and understood their program better after watching it. Scale of 1-5, this is a solid 3. Sometimes you just need to jot things down. If you’re one of the anti-google folks, this may work for you.

We all need a little humor in our day. While I would not endorse being dishonest, there are times that we just need to end a conversation. We’ve tried “Well, I’ll let you go now.” Or the more to the point “you need to let me go now.” or even, “Hey, we’ll have to pick this up tomorrow” but that person is still chatting with you on the phone. Here’s a perfect site that gives you the back up of sound effects to really get off of the phone. http://www.sorrygottago.com/

Now, back to work. Many start ups, and others have limited space, but we sure have a lot of gadgets. I personally can’t have another gadget on my desk, credenza (or floor) so I love efax.com. All of my faxes come to my email where I open them and only print out the ones I need. Plus, the bonus of no more extra paper filing. I can file it all in that email folder, or by client. If you’re just receiving faxes, you can sign up for free, to send faxes it starts off at less than an extra phone line per month. This is also a good option for anyone that would like private faxes sent to them.

Finally, are you still doing your email campaigns through Outlook? Check out www.icontact.com for your email, newsletters, and blogging campaigns. Their program is incredibly easy to use, you don’t need to know any HTML, they even have templates that you just add content to. It lists bounced emails, and gives fabulous statistics that you can see who has opened your marketing message (and how many times), unsubscribers, and many more stats.