Download Squad

Twitter reportedly buying Summize

Jay Hathaway — 2008-07-07T22:30:00+00:00

Filed under: Business, Social Software, Search

There have been reports flying around Twitter and several prominent blogs that Twitter is making a move to acquire Summize, a popular Twitter search engine. In case this is the first you're hearing about Summize, here's a rundown of what it does. It can search Twitter for any string -- most importantly, an @name -- which makes it indispensable when Twitter's tracking function is down. Second, it aggregates and lists the most popular search terms, so you can get a sense of the Twitter zeitgeist.

It's too early to speculate about what effect the acquistion could have on Twitter itself, or how the resulting service would look with Summize's features integrated. We do love the idea of combining two services we use every day, though. Basically, we're keeping our fingers crossed that these rumors are true.

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Whipping Your Website into Shape

Sue Polinsky — 2008-07-03T12:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Business, Design, Open Source, Search

No more excuses: let's get your small business Website whipped into shape. People who are moderately online use the Web as their first search source. Phone books are dead trees; if your business is not online with an easy-to-find phone number, I'm clicking elsewhere. People spend money in browser-based shopping sprees and your Web site has to compete.

Let's whip your site into shape. We've already discussed how you can grade your own site; offered tips for upgrading your site; and suggested ways to increase your search-engine ranking. Let's take the next step and whip your small business Website into first-class shape.

What do your site visitors want most of all from your site?

LET ME SEARCH!
I want a search box, plain and visible, preferably at the top of every page but definitely at the top of the homepage. If you don't have a site search, you can get a great free search tool in phpDig but you'll probably have to pay someone to make it work. It's worth your money. Put it at the top of your list.

TALK TO ME!
Company contact information belongs on every page, preferably in the footer. The footer area should also tell me a mailing address, a fax number and not merely supply a link to a contact page. Think: single-clicking! One click to get where you most want to go should be a navigation goal.

HELP ME!
You can add online help to your site through volusion's Live Chat (free edition) or through the Open Source PHP Lively at Sourceforge (the holy grail of Open Source apps to try). Of course, you have to make an employee available to respond, even if only a few visitors click the icon. Surely, someone sits at a desk during the day. Think how important they will feel!

FEED ME!
I want to know what your company is up to and what new products you have that will benefit me. Send out an RSS feed of new information or products. The nitty-gritty of RSS is here and if you're not into coding, try one of several free Open Source apps to generate RSS from your Web site.

Pheeder claims to be easy to implement and has loads of documentation. RSS Genesis works on any type of server and is PHP4/5 compatible and RSS Feed Creator claims simply to generate RSS feed.

While you're at it, how about offering RSS feeds for companion products that might interest me? There are some free RSS services that enable adding feeds to your site relatively easy and, of course, FeedRoll.

While you're RSS'ing, you can create a feed of any Web page that interests you. Feedity is a free service that will create a feed for any page and alert you to changes or updates to any site's page. Keep on eye on the competition or sites of businesses that impact what you sell through easy RSS reading.

WHOLE PACKAGE ME!
Robert Scoble, an online evangelist, lists his best practices for your business cards. Why not incorporate these ideas into your small business Web site?

Start the conversation - make your site engage the visitor.
Make it a standard size and shape but be different - that's why you need a Web development firm with creative builds in their portfolio.
Make sure the basics are easy to find.
Tell us what you do. Unless your business is globally recognized, we need to see what you're selling in clear language on the home page.
Break some rules but stay on the good side of obnoxious.
Highlight your corporate tag line. Don't have one yet? Get one.
Use language options if appropriate.

Use the rest of 2008 to build a plan for your small business Web site to move toward as many best practices as possible. A site re-design isn't free and is also not a silver bullet that will increase sales dramatically in the first week. You still have to market your Web site. Stay tuned.

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The power of PowerPoint in a flash movie

Joey Celis — 2008-07-01T11:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Business, Windows, Productivity, Microsoft, Commercial, Freeware

Ever created a PowerPoint that everyone in your organization wanted a copy of? Sure you could go ahead and clog up your corporate email server with the 200MB + file or you could just convert your PowerPoint to a smaller flash file with iSpring and publish it to an internal or external website (slideboom account required) for others to view.

Converting your PowerPoint presentation to a flash movie couldn't be any easier as the iSpring installation puts the conversion buttons right in your PowerPoint menu bar. In addition to the one click conversion iSpring also allows for some customization such as generating HTML codes, looped and automatic playback, slide advance via mouse click as well as changing the duration of the slide.

iSpring comes in 3 flavors ranging from the free version which we tested on up to the Ultra version which allows the creation of E-learning content to additional playback controls. In our testing we found the free version more than adequate for most PowerPoint presentations.

So before you send that PowerPoint thru your company email, try converting it with iSpring instead.

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Intel to Vista: "I'm just not that into you."

Christina Warren — 2008-06-26T11:30:00+00:00

Filed under: Business, News, Windows, Microsoft

Windows 7 cannot come fast enough! The New York Times is reporting that Intel has decided against upgrading its 80,000 employees to Windows Vista. An Intel spokesperson told the Times that Vista is being tested and deployed in certain departments, but not company-wide.

Although the enterprise push to upgrade to Vista has fallen short of expectations, this is a particularly brutal blow. Intel is one of Microsoft's oldest and most important partners; both companies became industry leaders in large part because of that partnership.

Although the Times' Intel source made efforts to say that the decision wasn't about "dissing Microsoft," we doubt that will make Steve Ballmer feel any better. Can you imagine what that conversation is going to sound like?

Despite the lack of widespread corporate adoption, the install base for Windows Vista is 140 million worldwide -- hardly peanuts. Still, with large corporations declining to upgrade their systems, Microsoft has had to extend support for Windows XP through 2014.

Thanks Mike!

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Showcase your stuff with meOwns

Emily Price — 2008-06-25T14:30:00+00:00

Filed under: Business, Internet, Utilities

meOwns is a site designed to allow you to showcase the stuff you own. You can list items that you actually own, or items that you would like to own on the site and add photos to those lists so people can see what you're talking about. The lists you create on meOwns can then be put into a widget that you can embed on your website or MySpace profile, or you can add a Facebook widget to display your items for your Facebook friends.

According to the site, the idea is is to bring people together through "the one thing that connects us all - the yearn to own!" While we're not so sure ~~any normal person~~ anyone would want to upload all the stuff they own to the site, the site could have some use in getting rid of the stuff you already own and don't want anymore. The widget could be an easy way to showcase your old movies, CDs, computer monitors, clothing, etc. for your friends, and mention things that they might own you'd be interested in taking off their hands in exchange.

One huge downside is that right now the site requires you to upload photos from your computer for each item you add. It would be nice to see them add automatic photos for things like DVDs and CDs that are going to always look the same so you don't have to upload a new picture for each individual item which gets annoying pretty quickly particularly if you have that crazy "yearn to own" they were talking about.

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We think we just saw Ashton Kutcher, cuz you just got Netflix'd!

Drew Olanoff — 2008-06-20T15:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Business, Internet, Video

Netflix users are in an uproar, and rightfully so.

If you're not familiar with what Netflix is, then sorry...please move along.

Kidding...you can rent movies online, and you can create a queue of what you want to see, and they'll mail them to your house as they're available. It's like an autopilot feature and it frakkin rocks.

A few months ago the company put out an even cooler feature that let Netflix account holders create multiple queues under one account. So basically your baby daughter, mom, uncle Steve, and your parrot Whiskers could have their own queue of movies that they want to see.

Such a time saver, such a great function that really reminds you why you use and love (and pay for) Netflix.

Don't go and try to sign up just for that feature though, because Netflix just announced that they're taking it away.

Continue reading We think we just saw Ashton Kutcher, cuz you just got Netflix'd!

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I know what you downloaded last week

Drew Olanoff — 2008-06-20T12:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Business, Internet, Security

We're talking part one, the one with the hot version of Jennifer Love Hewitt. And oh yeah, that's who you were downloading last week, and we know alllllll about it.

A recent study by Cyber-Ark, who asked 300 IT Professionals about the topic of System Admins checking out what you're doing online at work, says that 1 in 3 IT professionals snoop on their co-workers surfing habits and stats.

I mean why not, right...all the info is right there! They're just "protecting the company from harmful usage".

Sheah, right.

IT Professionals download more pr0n than the entire state of Texas.

Even scarier? 47% of those surveyed said that they accessed info about you that had nothing to do with their job.

No wonder most SysAdmins have the password g0d. Oy!

What might be even worse, is that the other 2 in 3 surveyed lied out of fear that someone was snooping on them while they were taking the survey, thus uncovering the fact that they snoop on us. OMS our heads hurt!

SysAdmins, do you snoop? Worker folk, are you snooped upon?

You can hiphopanonymously write a comment here and let us know about it.

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Social networking with your money

Joey Celis — 2008-06-19T17:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Business, Finance, Web services, Social Software, web 2.0

Myspace, Facebook and Twitter, the concepts are pretty much the same. You follow someone with interests that intrigues you, see what their doing, what their saying and sometimes you do what they say. Now what if they told you where to spend your money, would you? Covestor thinks so.

Covestor takes the social networking formula and applies it to the stock market in a 2 part system. The first requires members with some sort of investment background (we'll call them experts) to build portfolios. The second has average users reviewing these members and if they like what they see, they follow them.

If these experts buy or sell a certain stocks, users get to see that and choose if they would like to buy or sell along side their experts. Covestor is currently working on a fully automated system as well. You'll just be able to put down a bunch of cash and the system will invest your money as your experts invest. Of course as an expert you get a percentage of the action, since people are following your advise.

So is this the next step in social networking? We already take advice on what to wear, where to go and what to eat. Why not take it a step further with having strangers tell you what to do with your money?

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Get a little help from your friends with GigPark

Emily Price — 2008-06-17T18:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Business, Internet, Web services, Social Software

A few years ago a ton of sites started popping up for you to review local businesses and services in your area. The idea behind the sites such as JudysBook was that reviews were written by average everyday people like you, therefore they could be trusted more than a review you read on another site. Sites allowed you to create a profile, upload a picture, and invite all your friends to join as well so you can share information.

GigPark works under the same principle, except the company assumes to some extent that the people you're friends with on the site are your actual friends, not just people who happened to find you on the site. You can import addresses from your yahoo, hotmail, or gmail account onto the site to find people you know who are already using the service, and invite those who are not.

GigPark also has a Facebook application, so you could pose questions like "Who know a great eye doctor" on facebook and solicit responses from your friends directly on Facebook. Of course your friends would also have to add the application in order for all this magic to happen, which given the multitude of annoying facebook applications kicking around these days, is probably unlikely. You can make your recommendations public however, so even without adding the application your friends can read how excited you are about your new plumber.

What do you think about sites like this? Would you use it to solicit recommendations, or would you rather just call a friend and ask?

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OneSpot launches publishing-as-a-service platform

Christina Warren — 2008-06-17T00:01:00+00:00

Filed under: Business, Internet, Blogging, Web services, Social Software, web 2.0

Today, OneSpot has formally announced the commerical availability of its OneSpot publishing-as-a-service[TM] platform. This subscription service allows publishers and businesses to deliver relevant content from across the web to a targeted audience. Think of OneSpot as a white-label Techmeme, Sphere Netvibes and Digg solution.

For instance, if you publish a site about social media, OneSpot will provide related content from relevant sources that you can feature alongside your original content, in sidebars, headline widgets, RSS feeds and more, giving full credit to the original author and source. Thus, instead of having to populate an entire site with news stories and haphazzard links, you can focus on creating quality original content, while still linking to the biggest stories in your particular area.

OneSpot tracks over 200,000 web feeds to find content in a specific area; these feeds are from trusted sources and the user has full control over which stories are featured, approved or blocked. How content is displayed and how frequently it is published is all determined by the user. The net result is something similar to the New York Times BlogRunner service, with the additional ability to have a branded "Meme" tracker and the ability to enable user-voting a la Digg or Reddit.

We think that OneSpot is an interesting approach to content aggregation and syndication. Looking at their site, the way related articles are collected and aggregated appears both efficient and timely -- a problem with many related-content engines is that the sources are sometimes old or out of date.

For businesses or publishers looking to add extra value to their sites, OneSpot might be a viable solution.

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Toggl offers desktop plugin for online time tracking

Brad Linder — 2008-06-16T11:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Business, Internet, Web services, web 2.0

Need to keep track of the time you're spending on a project, but don't feel like keeping a web browser window open all day just to use an online ~~stopwatch~~ time tracking app? Last year we discovered Toggl, an online tool that makes it simple to track the time you're spending on various projects, which makes it simple to figure out how many hours to bill to which project or boss. And today when we were looking for a good desktop tool that does the same thing, we noticed that Toggle had released a public beta of a desktop time tracker for Windows.

Toggle Desktop is tightly integrated with Toggl's online service. On the one hand that means you can't use the desktop application if you haven't signed up for a free account online. On the other hand, it means you can easily choose from a list of tasks that you've already set up. And you can access your reports from any computer with a web browser. You can also use Toggl Desktop on multiple computers, safe in the knowledge that all of your hours will be logged and stored online.

The desktop program will start counting your time as soon as you hit a task. Just click the big red button to pause a task, or if you need to switch gears and work on something else, you can always hit another task. If you accidentally log a few seconds or hours that you didn't actually work, you can always edit or delete a task from the Toggl Desktop interface.

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Now that Microsoft's out of picture, Yahoo! rebounds with Google

Brad Linder — 2008-06-12T23:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Business, Internet, Google, Yahoo!, Search

Now that Yahoo! has finally decided things are really over with Microsoft, the company has found room in its heart for a new love: Google. The two companies today announced an advertising partnership that will basically place Google AdSense advertisements alongside Yahoo! search results.

The deal isn't exactly comprehensive. It covers "some of" Yahoo!'s web properties, and the ads will only be displayed in the US and Canada. The agreement is non-exclusive, which means that Yahoo! may display its own ads or ads from other parties as well.

In a press release, Yahoo! says it expects to raise about $800 million in revenue per year from the deal. Google, in return, posted a blog entry saying the deal is "good for users, advertisers, and publishers." The US government isn't quite convinced yet. Back in April, the Justice Department responded to a test run of a Google/Yahoo! partnership with an investigation. And today the chairman of the US Senate Antitrust Subcommittee said the Senate will be closely examining the deal.

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Screenshot of Microsoft "TownSquare" - Social Networking at Work

Drew Olanoff — 2008-06-12T14:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Business, Web services, Microsoft, Social Software, web 2.0

We mentioned Microsoft TownSquare today, the new offering from Microsoft for internal social networking and document sharing, and we have a screenshot for you to check out.

From what we can see it looks like you get a steady stream of activity based on employee which is really, really cool and helpful, along with an RSS feed to track the activity. From a project management standpoint, this is a huge.

We'll keep an eye out for more info and keep you up to date. Is this something you would want to use at work, or would it creep you out?

Be sure to check out Microsoft Office Labs too.

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Microsoft, unable to buy Facebook, makes their own for Big Biz

Drew Olanoff — 2008-06-12T09:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Business, Internet, Web services, Microsoft, web 2.0

So we all know the saga of Microsoft and Yahoo, Microsoft and Facebook, Facebook and Yahoo, and so on and so forth.

But at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston Microsoft is expected to show off their own new social networking project that the company's been "incubating" for a while. It's called "TownSquare".

TownSquare is a social networking platform for your company to use internally. Apparently it even looks like Facebook. There's probably a village idiot in every company too that will use it for something inappropriate, which is the true test of a full on corporate piece of software.

The goal is to provide a system for storing anniversaries, job promotions, shared docs, and other information about employees. It actually sounds kind of neat and useful.

Microsoft has been using it since January with 8,000 employees and no word on whether it displays in Internet Explorer correctly (we told you all jokes aside, "for now")

Hopefully some screenshots will surface soon.

[via zdnet]

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Go from Twitter bird to Wall Street vulture with StockTwits

Jay Hathaway — 2008-06-11T12:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Business, Productivity, Social Software

Despite some recent competition from sites like Plurk, Twitter is hanging tough as the microblogging center of the web. Now stock-market investors are catching on to Twitter, too, with an add-on site called StockTwits. StockTwits collects tweets that mention a stock symbol, prefaces with a dollar sign. For example, $AAPL was very popular this week, with the Steve Jobs keynote at WWDC.

If you want to see what the Wall Street speculators on Twitter are talking about, head over to StockTwits and check out the info in tag cloud form, in stream form, or by searching. Each tweet is displayed under a graph of the recent performance of the stock mentioned. There's also a cloud of users, so you can easily locate your fellow investment junkies and connect with them over Twitter. Of course, we can't vouch for any of the advice you might get, but this looks like an intelligent use of microblogging technology.

[Via Tim Sykes]

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Find out just how underpaid you are with Glassdoor

Brad Linder — 2008-06-11T10:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Business, Internet, Web services, web 2.0

You remember how your boss told you when you were hired that you shouldn't go around discussing your salary with other employees because some of them were making less than you and you didn't want to make them feel bad? Yeah, you knew there was a good chance that wasn't true, but hey, company policy is company policy, so you... yeah, who are we kidding, first chance you got you went and compared your salary with all of your coworkers.

Glassdoor is kind of like that. But on the web. And anonymous. Anyone can submit a job title and salary for a position they currently or formerly held. You can also submit reviews of the company or the CEO. All reviews and salary submissions are anonymous, but if you're the only software engineer who worked at a small company for the last 3 years, you might want to think twice before giving away any trade secrets.

You need to register to get full access to the site. Registration is free, but you do need to submit a salary report, which helps build Glassdoor's databse. As a teaser, anyone can view data from Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, and Cisco.

Keep in mind, Glassdoor's data is all user generated. Some people may be lying about their salaries, or even about where they work. And the site is very new, having just launched this morning. So there's a good chance your company isn't even listed yet. But if Glassdoor catches on, and given the way people like to gossip about salaries, we think it probably will, the service could become a crucial part of your next job hunt.

[via The Inquisitor]

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280Slides: great new web-based presentation software

Jay Hathaway — 2008-06-05T11:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Business, Utilities, Office, Productivity, Web services, Beta, web 2.0

The first thing you'll probably notice about the new web-based presentation creator, 280Slides, is that it looks an awful lot like Apple's Keynote. As great as Keynote is, 280Slides has a few advantages: it's free and it's web-based. It's got all the features you would expect from good presentation software: you can present in full-screen mode straight from the web, download your slides, or share your presentation to SlideShare. Vimeo and Youtube integration let you add video to the mix, too.

We can already see 280slides saving numerous butts at conferences. Equipment failure? No big deal, just borrow a computer (any platform will do!) and pull your stuff from the web. Presentations were a good candidate for the next desktop function to hop aboard the "cloud computing" bandwagon and go web-based, and the folks at 280 North have pulled it off with style and functionality. Frankly, we're a little relieved that we'll never again have to ask, "Hey, does this machine have PowerPoint?"

[via Daring Fireball]

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Bandwidth Throttling and Small Business

Sue Polinsky — 2008-06-02T09:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Business, Internet, Features

Internet Service Providers are coming at high bandwidth users from all directions, but mostly poorly. Dave Winer once again is at the forefront with his Comcast controversy where the ISP threatened to cut off his service for using "too much" bandwidth but wouldn't tell him how much "too much" was. You can hear the DLS podcast here. Comcast is sending out threatening letters labeling customers as abusers, without telling them how much their download or upload caps really are.

The bottom line for Comcast appears to be: you're using too much. We're just not going to tell you how much is too much, because we're the ISP.

It's not just Comcast, either, back in 2002, CNet wrote that ISPs are considering new pricing plans that would adversely affect file-swapping. Bell Canada customers suffered through a 10Gb cap but complained that the monitoring software wasn't BC's responsibility.

Internet bandwidth usage is growing, some say wildly, for US businesses. Most companies buy broadband with speeds much higher than their workers have at home and with an inexpensive Flash key, a worker can download movies or songs and transfer them to their pockets with little trace, except for that pesky bandwidth usage.

ISPs are accused of bandwidth throttling, or traffic shaping, to slow down people using P2P software file sharing. Bell Canada calls it "downgrading the internet services of bandwidth hogs," and this month the Canadian Association of Internet Providers has asked the Canadian federal regulators to prohibit BC's throttling of Web traffic on their network.

The implications for small business? Last month, Bell informed smaller Internet Service Providers that it was bringing in traffic-shaping policies on the network space it sells to them, effectively downgrading the services these smaller companies are able to provide to their customers. How about US businesses? What sort of bandwidth regulation might they be looking toward?

Continue reading Bandwidth Throttling and Small Business

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Borders launches new Amazon-free web store

Brad Linder — 2008-05-28T11:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Business, Internet, Web services

While Borders may be one of the most recognizable bricks and mortar book sellers in the US, the company has been nearly invisible online. For the last seven years, Borders has basically relied on Amazon for its online presence. But now Borders is relaunching its website with a heavy focus on recommendations and recreating the experience of browsing in a book store

While you can certainly use the site to search for books, the most prominent features of the new site are recommendations for books, music, and movies. There are "staff picks," new fiction and non-fiction, and customized suggestions based on your tastes in media.

One area where Borders has the advantage over Amazon is that the company does have bricks and mortar stores throughout the country. That means you can place an order online and have it shipped for free to your neighborhood store where you can pick it up. If you don't have a safe, secure spot for receiving deliveries at your home, this could be an attractive feature.

[via AP]

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Seven Web Redesign Planning Tools

Sue Polinsky — 2008-05-28T10:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Business, Design, Internet, Productivity, Adobe, Google, Yahoo!, web 2.0

Let's pretend you read this column and agree that it's time to embark on a Web site overhaul for your small business. You understand a little about Web 2.0-ness, want some interactivity, are considering using new online tools and have created a real job for the webmaster to do site updates. What's on your Web Overhaul Due Diligence To-Do List? What steps should you take to ensure that your site gets architected, designed, programmed, launched, and updated correctly?

HOMEWORK - let's start browsing sites and making favorites/bookmarks out of the ones that catch your eye. Note that you like the drop-down menu in one and the fading background in another. Make a "how did they do this?" list of snazzy features to ask your designer about implementing. In fact, build a spreadsheet and make column headings such as: URL, feature, forms, Flash, menus and more so you can keep your design notes and questions in a handy electronic document to share with all the design firms you interview, and we want you to talk to more than one.

Continue reading Seven Web Redesign Planning Tools

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