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Connectwise will be hosting another workshop in September. This workshop will cover what’s new in Windows 7 and how it compares to XP and Vista. There will be some time at the end for attendees to explore the Windows 7 laptops that will be available. The workshop is free to all attendees, but you need to register beforehand.
Thursday, Sep 24
Networking and Continental breakfast: 8:30 – 9:00am
Workshop: 9:00 – 10:30am
Click here to register or learn more.
One of the most under-used features of SharePoint are Document Libraries. Everyone know to use them to store documents, but did you know the power of the Document Library?
The 2 most under utilized features are Check Out/In and Version history. In this post we will talk about the basics of using a document library and some reasons to use the Check Out/In features.
Continue reading "Power of SharePoint: Document Libraries" »
If you know me, you know that recently I have been a traveling fool. I have taken three trips so far this year, and I have 2 more to go that I know of, not as many as many Road Warriors in my Company, but more than I have ever done in my life.
In the past, I would have posted travel details to my Outlook calendar to have in my phone and created word documents with all of the details to carry with me... that is up until this past June when I found a travel organization gem called TripIt.com
If you haven’t heard about Snapfish yet, you need to check them out. They offer great ways to organize, share, and enjoy your photos. You can upload, edit, and arrange your photos then share them with friends and family. You can create collages and slideshows. If you want a calendar with photos of your grandchildren for each of the months, you can do that too. Coffee mug with a panorama of your favorite ski resort? Check. It’s easy to sign up and easy to use.
Wow, it's been 5 months now since I promised to test out Microsoft's Office Live product (which is still in Beta) and I must say, my family was underwhelmed...
Not that the product has any faults that I could find. It integrates with Office 2007 perfectly, allowing me to open from and save to the Office live site with no problems. That actually worked quite easily. I also tried out the templates, no problems there, but they could use more. so what happened?
Continue reading "Office Live - the test that never was..." »
When you need to make up a quick brochure and you do not have the time or budget to get a professional involved, you can use Microsoft Publisher to accomplish the task in a relatively short amount of time. With Microsoft Publisher you can create brochures, business cards, gift certificates, flyers, forms, invitations, and more.
Microsoft Publisher comes bundled in the Office suite of products along with Word, Excel, and others. But it only comes in certain versions. Those versions are Small Business, Professional, and Ultimate. If you have any other version, you will need to upgrade before you can take advantage of the money and time-saving help that Publisher offers.
When you open Publisher, you start off with a new document. You choose the type of document, such as “Brochure”, then you can either create from scratch or use one of their built in templates. The templates are great because the layout and the elements are already in place for you. Often times, images will be included. This makes it quick and easy to build what you need.
If you want more options for templates, you can always go online to Microsoft’s Office Template download site http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/templates/default.aspx . There you will find many different templates that are free to download. Here are a couple examples of brochure templates designed specifically for Real Estate.
SO (Search Optimization) is a much broader territory. This effort takes into consideration your entire online presence, not just your website. Is your company listed on social networking sites such as Linked In or Facebook? Is your site listed in delicious or dig? Do other blog sites mention your company? Do you have any promotional videos up on youtube? In other words, how much exposure does your brand have to the websphere without people doing direct searches on search engines?
Some of these you have control over, the rest come from continually getting your name recognized by people and them ranking you, clicking you, following, you, saving you, etc. An online presence is definitely a momentum process. The more attention you draw, the bigger your exposure gets; the bigger your exposure gets, the easier it is to draw attention to your brand.
I won’t pretend. It takes work, effort, and commitment, but the rewards can be great. If you are not quite convinced of the impact that the online universe has on your business or industry, watch the video below.
When it comes to marketing your business online, there are currently 3 main acronyms that you will want to know. Those are SEO, SEM, and SO. They stand for Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Marketing, and Search Optimization. And yes, they each represent three VERY different disciplines. We will address each one individually.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the art of tweaking your website so that your website comes up at the top of the results list when someone uses a search engine to search for specific keywords. This takes quite a bit of time and know-how. However, there are a few basics you can adhere to that will help enhance your rankings.
First of all determine what keywords you want to target. The obvious thing to do is make a list of your products and services and let that be the seed of your keyword list. But you also need to think about what your customers will be searching for. Their state of mind may be different than yours. If you own a radiator shop, radiator will definitely be one of your keywords, but so should leak, leaks, and leaky.
Google is the biggest game in town, but not the only game in town. So even though they don’t put any value toward meta tags, other search engines do, so it is recommended that you go ahead and add them to your site. Explaining how to do that is beyond the scope of this blog article, so if you do not know how, get in touch with your web development team and they can help you out.
Use alt tags for all images on your site. Alt tags go into the HTML code and provide a description of what the image is. This is helpful for a few reasons. If an image will not load for whatever reason, the viewer will see the text description that you wrote in the alt tag. Also, if someone is visually impaired and using a screen reader, the screen reader will be able to read out loud the text that is in the alt tag. So if your text description in the alt tag is “New radiator being installed”, then that is what will be read. It helps your search results because when search spiders crawl the web, they cannot interpret what an image file represents, but if the spider can read the text in the alt tag, then those keywords will be added to your page ranking.
Use heading tags. When heading tags are used, that tells the search spider that those words are the most important words on the page. So if you have a page dedicated to radiator flushes, and those words are at the top of the page like a page header, then use heading tags to make the words bigger and bolder. The search spiders will know that the page is primarily about radiator flushes and those keywords will rank higher than if you had those words listed normally.
There is much, much more to Search Engine Optimization, but these few items will help to get you started. For more in depth strategy, talk to your web development team, and they will help you get in touch with a good SEO consultant.
Microsoft has released a chart to help consumers and retailers understand the upgrade path existing XP and Vista PC users can expect when upgrading to Windows 7. With 5 variations of Windows Vista and XP (both 32 and 64 bit) that can possibly be in place for a Vista upgrade, which itself has 4 variations (again both 32 and 64 bit); knowing if you can perform an "In-Place Upgrade" or must do a "Custom Install" can be a nightmare.
Custom Install - Better known as a "clean install", or not really an upgrade but rather wiping out my PC and starting over.
In-Place Upgrade - This option retains your beloved files and settings as you upgrade to Windows 7.
For most, an In-Place upgrade is the quick-dirty and therefore appealing route, otherwise you will likely find yourself performing the following steps:
Temporarily relocating your personal files to an external drive or other computer
Wiping your hard drive clean
Installing Windows 7
Moving your personal files back
Re-installing all of your programs from their original disks or download files
Reinstalling all updates and patches that may have been issued since the original installation files were released
Thankfully Microsoft does provide a free transfer program to assist, but it won’t transfer your applications, only your personal files and settings.
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