Inspirational Business

Easy Internet Collaboration with Adobe ConnectNow

I want to share some great free software I've been using to collaborate with clients recently: Adobe ConnectNow.

Do you sometimes have the need to be able to show someone a document or give step-by-step instructions to someone who's working on a different computer in a different location? I do! There are so many times when I need to teach someone how to do something on-line or in a software program, but it's hard to walk them through it by phone. I want them to be able to see my computer screen.

There are plenty of screen-sharing programs for sale. I've dabbled with a few of them, but found them to be either too clunky, too expensive, or in most cases, both--until now.

I just discovered Adobe's terrific free ConnectNow on-line software. Adobe? Terrific? Your first thought might be the same as mine, equating the Adobe brand with their painfully slow resource-hogging PDF's. There's nothing more annoying then accidentally clicking on a PDF link and having to stop whatever you were doing and wait for a PDF document (that you didn't want) to open. Yet sometimes negative expectations can set the stage for great surprises! Adobe's ConnectNow is easy, fast, and doesn't seem to slow my computer down at all. In fact, it's saving me a lot of time because rather than emailing documents back and forth, I'm able to collaborate with people in real time.

Here's how it works:

• You open a free account at http://www.adobe.com/acom/connectnow/
• Configure a few simple "meeting" preferences, such as do you want to use a web cam with microphone, use the free teleconference phone number Adobe gives you, or use the chat feature. 
• ConnectNow gives you a permanent custom URL as your meeting address.
• You send email invitations to people to join your meeting (up to 3 people can be in a meeting in this free version.)
• All attendees have to do is click on your link, dial the phone number you specified, and enter the meeting. They don't have to install anything. It's easy!
• As the host, you can choose to share a document, PowerPoint presentation, web page, even your entire computer screen with attendees. There's even a white board feature if you want to make visual notes.
• Does someone else need to share? You can assign them control (they will need to download a small application to use this feature.)
• Need to do a little remote tech support on their computer? They can give you control over their computer.
• One other blessing: it's cross platform, allowing PC's and Mac's to collaborate through the internet, so there doesn't (seem) to be any compatibility issues.

It's brilliant for trainers & consultants. The program has allowed me to do some hands-on tech work for my clients, but most importantly, teach them. Last week, I was able to help one client set up her blog and review another client's PowerPoint presentation with her live, as she clicked through and explained her slides. I'm just scratching the surface of what's possible.

This program would also be great for off-site managers, who want to review and discuss reports or help a new staff member learn something on the computer without having to come into the office. 

This program would also be fantastic for collaborating with your bookkeeper or accountant, without you needing to export a file as an email attachment.

Adobe ConnectNow also has a webinar-level service for groups at a monthly or pay-per-use fee. I've attended one webinar hosted on the Adobe service and it was the smoothest, easiest, best experience I've ever had. Next time I do a virtual class, I'll test it out and report on what's it like to use it to host one.

Twitter Tips: Create Your Company Profile Banner

When you first join Twitter, you're given a choice of pre-designed templates to customize your profile page. They look nice enough, but that design space can be put to much better use with a custom design that reflects your company image. Also, since Twitter only gives you 140 characters to say what you're all about, creating a custom design gives you a chance to include more descriptive text and contact information.

How do you create a custom banner on Twitter? Here are the steps I took to create mine:

Step 1: Decide to DIY or Use a Service
I Googled and read several articles, this one being the best: "HOW TO: Create Custom Twitter Backgrounds." That article gives you the basic dimensions if you want to create a truly custom background and also gives you links to some free on-line background generators. I tried a couple of the generator services. While a lot of people like them, I didn't because I wanted more control over my design so it would match my brand better.

Step 2: Choose a Graphic Design Program
I'm not a graphic designer, I'm a coach. Yet I don't want to hire a professional every time I want something designed for my internet marketing. Two years ago, I found an affordable on-line image editing program I love called Picnik. Since then, they've continued to add amazing new features, too. Picnik is one of the few on-line programs that lets you add text over images and also lets you layer images on top of images--two features that you'll want for this project. (There is a free version of the program, but you need to pay for the advanced version. Well worth it! You'll use this program again and again.)

Step 3: Choose a Full Page or Left Column Banner Image
The dimensions for both are given in that article I linked to in step one. I wasted a lot of time trying to make a full page design work and don't recommend it for graphic design novices! Ultimately, I chose to go back to my original plan for a simple left-column banner that measures 229 pixels wide x 580 pixels tall. Simpler always looks better!

Step 4: Think About What You Want to Promote
You can't go wrong by including a logo, a few words about your company, your contact information, and an offer, but I think it's much more interesting when people include some personality tidbits. Twitter is supposed to be a social networking site. Make yourself known as a person, not just a marketer!

The top of my banner describes my expertise in working with holistic businesses and invites people to have an introductory consultation with me. On the bottom half, I decided to let people know about my passion for wild elephant conservation, going so far as to show a couple photos of me with elephants in Kenya and mentioning my Sacred Elephants blog. [Click image at left to enlarge]

Step 5: Design Your Banner in Picnik
Without getting too technical, here are some key steps I followed to make my Twitter banner in Picnik.

1. Started with a plain image the same color as my Twitter page background, so it would blend seamlessly into the background. (I used white, so it looks clean and bright like our website.) Although a contrasting color could look nice, too.
2. Using the "Picnik basket" feature, I imported our company logo and other images I wanted to use, then dragged them up onto the banner.
3. On Picnik's "Create" tab, I added geometric "Stickers" to create the colored rectangular text boxes. Then I went to the "Text" tab to add my text on top of them.
4. After several revisions, I clicked the option button to "Combine Everything," and then save the completed image.

Step 6: Insert Your Banner Into Twitter
On your Twitter page, select "Settings" from the top menu. Choose the tab for "Design" not picture (or you'll accidentally delete your avatar.) Select "Change background image," then browse, upload, and save your new image.

Step 7: Coordinate Your Twitter Design Colors
You can further customize your page by selecting "Change background colors" (also on the Design tab.) Experiment with font, link, and background shades to make it all come together. Limiting yourself to 2-4 colors will make your page look the most professional.

It was pretty easy! If you've got some basic design skills, such as having created a flyer in Microsoft Word or Publisher before, you'll be able to quickly learn how to create a Twitter banner in Picnik. Be sure to show me yours when you're done!

Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/JayaSchillinger

Twitter Tips: Make Your Twitter Emails Go "Tweet!"

One of the first things I noticed after joining Twitter is that my email in-box started getting flooded with notifications about new Twitter followers and DM's (direct messages.) Rather than turn off notification emails altogether, I decided to practice a little Outlook Kung Fu and have Twitter emails automatically sort themselves into a special folder. 

I also created a special rule, so that when new Twitter mail arrives, I'm alerted by the cute (and not too distracting) sound of twittering birds. Sweet! (or is that tweet?!)

Here's how I did it (using Microsoft Outlook 2003 on Windows XP)

1. Right-click on the subject line of a Twitter email in my in-box preview pane.
2. Choose: Create Rule.
3. Select: Subject Contains.
4. Edit the subject so it just says "Twitter"
5. Select: Play a Selected Sound.
6. Choose: Browse. It should open your Windows Media folder. 
7. Choose: Jungle Open
8. Press the play (arrow) button to test the sound.
   If you don't have Jungle Open, you can try other pre-installed sounds or download a similar sound off the internet and save it in your media folder.
9. Select: Move email to folder.
10. Choose: Select Folder.
11. Highlight: In-box, then choose New Folder. Name it Twitter, then choose OK.
12. Click OK to save your rule.

If your rule is working properly (and you have your speakers turned on) you'll hear the twittering sound when new Twitter mail arrives, then see unread mail in the Twitter sub-folder in your Outlook in-box. Best of all, your real email won't be cluttered up with notifications and you can get batch your Twitter tasks for a later time!

Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/JayaSchillinger

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Snag a Free Download of TurboTax Business 2008 for Corporations & Partnerships

LOOKING FOR 2009 TAX SOFTWARE? There's another freebie.
Click here to read my post about the 2009 version of TurboTax.

***

I think I'm going to try doing my S-corp taxes myself, rather than spend $800-$1200 this year. I've used Turbo Tax for my personal taxes (and previously when I was a Schedule C business owner) and really liked it, so today I was looking into their corporate software program.

 

==> I just scored a free download copy of TurboTax Business 2008 for Corporations & Partnerships (for PC.) $100 savings!

 

They're giving it away as a promotion, "Because once you try it, we think you’ll be a customer for life." What a nice no-risk offer.

 

The offer is good until "mid February," so if you want to snag a copy too, you better hurry. I'm writing this on Feb 10th and just downloaded my free copy.

 

Download a Free Copy of TurboTax Business Here

(The link isn't otherwise viewable on the TurboTax website.)

 

Be forewarned that the download process had a couple glitches (server timeouts) probably because everyone is trying to get the freebie. Be patient. After a couple tries, it totally WORKED FINE.

 

If you have trouble getting it to download, click here to read a review thread at Amazon. It was through SMcmahon's post that I learned about the freebie, and the other user's tips about going back to the shopping cart page and clicking again is what worked for me.

 

Note: The State Tax version is separate and costs $50.

 

If you should discover that the offer has expired, let me know, please.

Easy Google Tricks and Shortcuts

The great thing about Google is that you can find any information you need. The hard thing about Google is that if you don't know how to search well, you get too much information to sort through. Smart searchers know how to get relevant answers fast.

Here is a basic search technique that a lot of people still don't know:

Use Quotes and +/- Symbols to Narrow Results
When looking up a person's name or a topic that has two or more words, you'll get better results by putting quotes around the phrase. Then Google will show results for the phrase, instead of the words individually. Also, by adding a "+" symbol before any word or quoted phrase, you are telling Google that the results must include what is attached to the "+" symbol. Similarly, if you add a "-" symbol before any word or quoted phrase, you are telling Google to not include results with those words.

The following example is where I want to find results specific to me (Jaya) about the work I do to raise awareness for elephant conservation, but not about my work as a business coach:

The quotes and +/- symbol search system helps so much that I rarely search Google without using that trick! But there are so many more cool things you can do. I was reading a great article on Lifehacker that gave me several new ones. I'm sharing my favorite ones below, but you might also like to read the article in it's entirety at: Top 10 Obscure Google Search Tricks

Get the Local Time Anywhere
Enter the word "time" and the city or country and Google tells you the time (and time zone) at the top of the search results.

*****

Track Flight Status
Enter the airline and flight number and Google tells you whether your flight is running on schedule or not.

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Visually Identify People, Objects, & Foreign Words
Want to know what someone or something looks like? Do a Google image search to get visuals instead of text.

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Get Tracking Status on Packages/Deliveries
Instead of going through the carrier's sometimes-cumbersome website, simply type your tracking or confirmation number into Google and get a direct link to the page you need.

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Weather Reports
You don't need to bookmark special weather sites when you have Google. Simply type in "weather" and the city (or zip code) that you want a for cast for.

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Get Movie Times
If you already know the name of the film you want to see, type in the name of the film and your zip code to see available times and theaters. There's even a small link to watch a trailer!

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Determine Someone's Location by Area Code
Sometimes you want to know what time zone someone is in so you can call them back at a reasonable time of day. Type in "area code" and the 3-digit prefix of their phone number to get their location. [Note: sometimes people have a cell phone from a different area than where they reside.]

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Learn About New Updates at Google Blog
The team at Google is always adding nifty new features. The trick here is finding out about them. If you're a Googleholic, stay updated by reading the Google blog at http://googleblog.blogspot.com/

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HOT TIP: GOOGLE on the GO!
You can also use these tips on your mobile phone, and now it's even easier with Google's new suite of downloads. Click to find out what's available for your phone: Google Mobile.

Happy Googling! And by all means, please share your favorite Google tricks with the rest of us, too!

The Email Cure Part I: Diagnosis, "You've Got Too Much Mail."

I love email. Really, I do. It provides a written history to keep communication and agreements clear. It allows a flexibility in response time so that we can all read and reply at different times of day/night. It saves money on phone bills and postage. Email is one of the best productivity inventions ever...er, um...at least in theory.

That productivity is a double-edged sword. Email has also doubled or tripled the workload for many of us. I know I receive around 100 emails per day on average to my business email address alone. Now that I'm working without an executive assistant, I have even more customer service inquiry mail to read and respond to. I could literally spend all day managing email and doing nothing else. That's not being very productive!

When swamped with email, most people tend to do one of two things in reaction to it:

1. Work late into the night or on weekends. For those of us with PDA's, this is also known as the Crackberry addiction of constantly reading and responding to emails. We multitask by emailing during dinnertime, on vacation, and even in the car. I made a committment to not working on weekends in 2008, and I have to say that email overload is the biggest obstacle to keeping normal work hours.

2. Become email avoidant. Sometimes, the overwhelm becomes too much. I was reading a great article on "email bankruptcy" that talks about people declaring "Chapter 7" on email and deleting their entire inbox. The article made me laugh out loud because part of me found it horrifying, while another part thought it sounded like a relief.

Both of these approaches attempt to treat the symptoms, but in fact make the overwhelm worse. If you run a small business, both of these strategies may eventually lead to business death and personal burnout. We need to find a better solution.

Can email overload be cured?
Or is this something that needs to be continually managed?
"Hi, I'm Jaya and I'm an emailaholic." There, I said it. If you saw the size of my in-box right now, you'd know I mean it humbly. Because I've got many years of working virtually under my belt, I really do have a lot of tips and tricks that work to keep email in check. Yet with the loss of my executive assistant and subsequent doubling of emails to process, I've found myself in a fever of overworking, leading up to an email-induced coma of avoidance. I'm sick of feeling dread every time I open my email inbox, and have decided to go on an email reduction program. Physician, heal thyself.

I'm being deliberately optimistic by labeling this post "The Email Cure Part I." Honestly, I don't think there is a cure for email overload. But I do know a few things that definitely help and have a few new ideas that I want to try. This will hardly be a clinical trial, but if you'd like to play along at home, I'm eager to hear how your results compare with my own. If we can save just one life from email burnout, then we're doing the world a favor.

Stay tuned for more parts in the series. As I get my email more under control, I intend to spend more time writing articles again. By the way, I do welcome feedback via email, especially your success stories. I hope those kinds of emails keep arriving in abundance.
Click here to email Jaya.

Picnik: Free Online Photo Editor

Note: the screenshot above was resized and converted to b/w in less than 5 minutes with Picnik.

Frustrated because you need to do simple photo editing for your marketing materials, but don't have a simple software program? Not all of us want to buy or learn to use Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop. I sure don't. For a long time now, I've managed to get by with the free image editing software that came with my digital camera, but it's really mediocre. Sometimes it distorts the images, making them look grainy.

For the last couple weeks, I've been using Picnik online photo editor. There is no software to download. You can upload photos from your computer or let Picnik access your photos hosted at Flickr. It's really easy to use, and the pictures come out clean, not distorted. And Picnik is free. A very cool tool, indeed!

Updating Microsoft Outlook for New Daylight Savings Time

Did you know that the government changed the dates for daylight savings time this year? The change is part of an energy-savings effort, and will now begin 3 weeks earlier on March 11th. Anyone using a software-based appointment system should check to see if they need a special update. Otherwise, your calender and appointments might be off by an hour.

We use Microsoft Exchange Server to share our calendars in Outlook. My assistant Debbie is already on Outlook 2007 and didn't need an update. However, I'm still running Outlook 2003 and noticed that all of the appointments she made from me past March 11th are skewed (since her computer is running correctly, and mine has old dates in it.)

To update my Outlook, Debbie sent me this link to a Microsoft video that explains the daylight savings updates. When I installed the update, it went pretty smoothly, but when I double checked my appointments, there was one day that was off (March 20th.) Everything else appears as it should now.

I still have to figure out what to do about my Blackberry. Is there anything else that might be affected? If anyone has any tips, please share them in the comments area. In the the wired-world some of us live and work in, these things are a lot more complex than resetting a wrist watch!

How to Use Email More Efficiently

I read this article on Life Hacker about a month ago, and it's really helped me to write more effective business emails.

For many of us, email has replaced the telephone in importance. It's actually a god-send in that email can be read and replied to at odd hours. Yet the use has also increased the volume of mail we all get. So it's more important than ever to learn to be efficient.

==> Read the article here, but also be sure to read the comment thread below it.

By the way, that little arrow technique I just used is one I learned from that article. It's a great way to draw the reader's eye to the most important part!

Sending Files Too Large to Email

Have you ever tried to email an attachment, only to find out that's way to big to email? Anything larger than 4 mb is usually problematic. So that includes some Word documents, but almost all audio files and a lot of photo files.

Media Fire file-sharing utility to the rescue. Hosted online, there is nothing to install, and there are no file size limits.

It's quick and easy to create a free account, then upload the file you want to share. Media Fire then gives you links for people to download the file via email or a website.

I've used it, and it works great!