Friday, August 15, 2008

Tube Mogul - for those of you using video to sell your business

TubeMogul is the first online video analytics and distribution company serving people who need independent information about video performance on the Internet and automated upload to the Web's top video sharing sites. Basically TubeMogul's analytic technology aggregates video-viewing data from multiple sources to give people wanting to post business-related videos an improved understanding of when, where and how often videos are watched, track and compare what's hot and what's not, measure the impact of marketing campaigns, gather competitive intelligence. Yes, its F.R.E.E.

Sites that TubeMogul supports include: AOL Video - Blip.tv — Google Video — Myspace - Yahoo Video - YouTube and quite a few more.

Thursday, August 14, 2008

Tiny URL

I just went to TinyURL and typed in the URL for an article I co-authored a few years ago (on Human Rights and Music if you really want to know !) it gave me this as a shortened URL http://tinyurl.com/57aamg which is a lot shorter than the real URL:
http://www.scena.org/lsm/sm10-2/universalite-musique-en.htm

I'm sure you have seen these little URLs especially if you use Facebook or Twitter.TinyURL is the most commonly used of these services to shorten long URLs.

The advantages of a shortened URL are:

- URL's are embedded in an e-mail message if they are very long can be spread over two lines and can be off putting.

- Twitter only allows you 140 characters so you don't want to be using up valuable space with a very long URL.

- On Facebook you have a limited space for your "Status" entry so again you don't want to take up valuable space with a very long URL.

Of course for people reading the URL there is no indication where it is going to take them whereas a longer URL can give you a clue to the destination. Having said that would you have guessed that the URL I used as an example would have lead you to an article on Music and Human Rights ?

At the end of the day its all down to the reader having confidence in the person that sent it to them or who is using it in their Twitter Tweet or their Facebook status.

Saturday, August 9, 2008

Time Snapper

TimeSnapper is an Automatic Screenshot Journal. It runs in the background of your computer, taking screenshots of your desktop every few seconds all week long.

Use TimeSnapper to:

- Keep track of your time using the screenshots and note recording. Useful for anyone who charges by the hour (e.g. consultants, lawyers, technicians)
- Track time spent in each program or the computer (see report)
- Measure your productivity using the Productivity Calculator
- Get a scorecard with a grade every day! Use it to improve yourself
- Use the Note Reminder / Auto-popup to remind you to write down notes throughout the day (without getting knocked out of the zone)
- Recover lost data easily by extracting text from the screenshots *
- Make sure no one is using your computer without your knowledge

And.... its F.R.E.E. Download it clicking here.

Thursday, August 7, 2008

Using Facebook ....advice from Brian Campbell

My Facebook friend Brian Campbell has just posted a note that is a must-read for Facebookers for business. Not only does it provide further evidence that Brian Campbell is a canny businessman and a generous person, it also provides great opportunities to spread the word about you and your business offering. Do click on the link and read the full version.

Mindset is so important

I read a great blog post today that set me thinking: launching and/or growing a business is not just about feasiblity studies, biz plans, road maps and marketing strategies it's also mindset - in fact one could perhaps argue that mindset is more important than all the others.

The blogpost is about walking on water (in a metaphoric way)and starts with a joke about three Buddhist monks - two of whom walk across the lake to the monastery and the third one keeps sinking into the lake each time he tries to walk across. Eventually the first monk says to the second one "Do you think we should we tell him where the stones are ?". The blog post takes the idea of stones which enable us to 'walk on water' - stones that are vital to the success of any business venture. These include:

Walk With Open Arms

Walk with Unwavering Faith

Walking Starts With A Single Purposeful Step

Walk With Courage

Walk With Awareness

Gain Speed With The Flow


Go read the entire article (Walk on Water) - its thought-provoking.

Sunday, August 3, 2008

Desk Top Publishing

I've just come across a free, open source software package for desktop publishing - Scribus. Really useful if you're getting into producing information products. I have downloaded it but not used it yet. Will report back when I have.

Who's visiting your blog ?

If you look at the right hand side of my blogs you will find that I have added a widget from feedjit.com - Live Traffic Feed which shows who has visited. It shows what country and also by what means they got to my blog. This is providing me with some interesting information on visiters. I have also added MyBlogLog which shows me which MyBlogLog members have been to my blog.

How to protect your work

I was just reading an interesting post on Mari Smith's blog - How not to do business on Facebook or anywhere about someone who plagiarised all her work. This prompted me to make the following comment on her post:

A variation on a similar theme - I used to do a lot of feasiblility studies and business plans.I once found that a client had revised the 3 year financial projections I had prepared to make the project profitable (and therefore eligible for a grant) when it was destined to be a major loss maker ... fortunately the person reviewing the document knew me and knew that I would never have produced some optimisitic figures. This scared the heck out of me though ... naively perhaps but it had never occurred to me that someone would take my work and then change it and present as my professional judgement in order to raise financing. I also experienced someone using my CV and adding me as a consultant adviser in order to win a contract without my knowledge or consent. I have not figured out how to avoid this - short of restricting my work to business coaching.

Does anyone have suggestions ?