Category Archives: cool tools

a potpourri of hardware, software, and website tools

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Zoho Projects

Project management software can help you keep any type of project on time and on budget. There is no need to spend big dollars for complicated software when online project management programs are easy to use and inexpensive.

Zoho Projects is one example. It is part of a suite of online products from Zoho. Any project you or your team create can include time tracking, a Gantt bar chart to show start/finish dates, a calendar, and RSS and iCal support so information can be easily transferred. You can track hours put into the project and document who did what. Zoho Projects works with multiple administrators, which is very handy if you’ve got more than one person overseeing the project.

For a single project you don’t pay anything. Once you’ve got multiple projects in the pipeline, it costs $5 a month for the minimum setup (three projects with 500MB of file storage), or $80 per month for unlimited projects and 25GB of storage. You probably don’t need the high-end version. Experiment with the free version to see if this tool can help you get projects done.

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Google Trends

One way to maximize your Web site’s visibility on Google is to understand what words people use to search for information. That’s just what the Google Trends tool does. It shows you the most popular searches on Google in any given hour, plus a list of related news articles and blog posts that support the rise and fall of the traffic surges. If any of them affects your business, you’ll see it first here and will be able to react faster.

You can click on any of the keywords to learn more, including the hourly volume of searches, whether popularity is going up or down and (in some cases) where, geographically, the majority of the searches are coming from. You can also enter your own keywords to see where that search stands over a selected period of time. To access the tool, simply go to www.google.com/trends.

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Google Adds Social Networking Tool

Google has released a new service called Google Friend Connect that makes it possible for Web sites to easily add social networking features that don’t require visitors to join a new social network. Google Friend Connect lets any Web site operator easily add functionality to a site that lets visitors join the site, see other users of the site, and participate in social networking activities such as commenting on and rating content.

From a strict feature standpoint, there isn’t much in Google Friend Connect that seems all that new. There are many other services already available that offer these types of services. What does make this service stand out is its extreme openness and potential for near-unlimited extensibility. That’s because, rather than using proprietary technology, Google Friend Connect heavily leverages open technologies such as OpenID, OpenSocial, and OAuth.

To get the service up and running on your site, you simply need to enter the site information on the Google Friend Connect site, download two files that need to be uploaded to your site’s root directory, and choose the gadgets you want to add to the site. For the gadgets, Google Friend Connect generated code that I then needed to add to my Web site templates and pages.

Gadgets include a Members gadget that displays visitors who have joined the site. This makes it possible for visitors to sign in, join the site, and utilize other social networking gadgets. Other gadgets include a Wall gadget that lets visitors comment on and link to a site, a ratings gadget, and a couple of demonstration gadgets. There is also a code snippet provided to aid developers in creating their own custom gadgets.

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Easily Send Video Emails

Getting your message through to clients and prospects takes creativity. Anything you can do to make your message stand out in overloaded Outlook inboxes is a good thing. Eyejot is a Web-based service that allows you to quickly and easily send video e-mail (v-mail) to anyone. All you need is a Webcam and an Eyejot account. The best part is that the basic service is free (at least for now).

Once you have a Webcam and an Eyejot account, creating and sending a v-mail is as easy as clicking “record” and speaking to the camera. The actual video is stored on Eyejot servers and an e-mail is sent to the recipient. The recipient clicks on a link in the e-mail to play the video message. The sender is then alerted when his or her video message has been viewed.

Consider using Eyejot in your agency to communicate with clients. If you like it, the PRO Plus version is worth the $100 per year price. With the PRO version, messages can be five minutes in length, you can upload pre-recorded video, you get extended message storage time, the video won’t contain advertising, and you have the ability to attach and send documents. You can also brand several Eyejot notification elements with your agency logo and color scheme.