Four easy steps to apply in potential Small Business

Work.com brings a “Guide to start a Gardening Business”, to help you get started in turning your hobby into a successful gardening business, but we can apply in almost every new project.

 In their own words: “By learning about the many local, regional and national resources available , you can increase both knowledge and profit, and build a strong client base in your local community.”

They give four outstanding action steps that I summarize bellow:

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How to introduce 2.0 tools in your company

Are you thinking in introducing a 2.0 service in your company? Blogs, wikis, social nets … Is undoubtedly a complicated world in which some advices will not come badly. In that way, Dion Hinchcliffe offers nine ideas for those chiefs who consider putting their company in the Web 2.0 world.

The most important thing, affirms Hinchcliffe, is to assure the facility of use. That anyone is capable of using the new tool without a workshop. Without forgetting that we must explain the users why it has introduced and how it is going to do easiest their life.

As for the application control, we must support ourselves in a balance: Not to make it empty and clean, hoping the workers to contribute the whole content, or to exaggerate the fear of losing control on what the users do with our tool. Instead of censuring, intervene only if it is indispensable.

We neither must forget to include in our wiki or our social net an effective search service. This way, when we upload the company contents that the workers should know, they will be able to find them without problems.

But not everything is going to be a technique in this adventure: To have attorneys who really are interested in the project (even if they are external and not habitual ones of the company) and to insure that the tool solves users needs, will be also two essential points.

Source: ZDNet

Weebly Vs. Noovo: The easiest way to create a Web

Few weeks ago I comment at Noovo, about this surprising html web editor, created by a small Korean company as a great application for web sites.

Well then, a lot of time did not happen and already the competition arose: Weebly. I am not going to comment about the System in deed, since it has many deficiencies if we compare it with others (and it’s not beta). Nevertheless, here we have a video that shows us quickly which are the characteristics by creating a web in 3 minutes.

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Free Book: Getting Real

Getting Real, a book elaborated by the company 37 signals (creators of Basecamp, Ta-da List and others), is already available and free, only online. The PDF version to download still continues costing US$ 19.00.

The book had very good reviews, for what is a recommended reading. It’s not a practical book but rather theoretically (planning, skills, advices and philosophy) that looks for the simplification of the Web cycle development and the orientation to the final user.

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Google Co-op

Google Co-opGoogle has just throw a new service (in beta), called Google Custom Search Engine (Google’s Personalize Seeker).

Actually, more than a new service, it’s the improvement of ” Adsense for search ” and also looks like the response to a very seemed service that Yahoo! offers. Between Google Co-op’s principal characteristics we have:

  • Define search engine
  • Refine searches (tags)
  • Add logo
  • Change result color and styles (title, text, links, and more)
  • Include AdSense ads.
  • Invite up to 100 collaborators for the seeker maintenance
  • Available API

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The simplest RSS feed reader you could create

UsefulCode have published two small php classes that allow us to have a RSS feed reader in our web site. Actually, I have been testing it and indeed it has several deficiencies and many if we compare it with a powerful class, as Magpie RSS.

Nevertheless, it’s so simple to put it in execution that is ideal to do practices and to learn more about RSS’s managing with PHP.

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Firefox Tip: Log simultaneously in two Gmail accounts

If you have multiple Gmail accounts and use Firefox, you don’t have to be opening and closing the accounts to see your mails, for it you can install the extension IE Tab, then open a tab with FF and log there; and then do the same thing, but with IE’s tab. You can see the result in this image.

Even when the trick does not turn out to be so convincing, it’s effective and the tip not only serves for Gmail, but in general for any web service. Once again, Firefox does easier to surf in the Internet.

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Subscribe to YouTube Tags easily

In our last post we mention that when you want to be updated on certain topics you can choose between several solutions; one of them is to subscribe to YouTube Video Tags.

Mostly if someday we need to realize a follow-up to certain type of videos in YouTube, we can do it in a very easy way subscribing to YouTube’s specific tags via RSS.

For example, if we want to follow the new Skakira videos we use this URL: “http: // www.youtube.com/rss/tag/shakira.rss“. Besides, when we want to subscribe to a tag with several words, we must use the plus sign (+) to relate them, for example “http: // www.youtube.com/rss/tag/criss+angel.rss” for “Criss Angel”.

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Technorati with new search feeds

When you want to be updated on certain topic you can choose between several solutions; such as, subscribe to google alerts and receive mail news, subscribe to youtube tags to know new videos or subscribe to Technorati’s feeds.

For those who didn’t know, Technorati is a blog searcher in “real time”. In other words, with results arranged by date (more recent first), unlike google where prevails the content relevancy and other factors.

Therefore, we can look for Firefox in Technorati and we will know the last published articles about it in different blogs. Now then, if we are interested in be always informed about this topic, we can subscribe to theirs feed very easily.

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