Working at Home on the Internet

Two Addictive Business Tools You Will Love to Hate

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@lizstrauss I’ll be there tonight for OCN.

@chrisgarrett Love that you post you did on Causality and Correlation.

@squishythefish have you tried to Skype me lately?

This is the way we seem to be doing a lot of our Networking these days. Yeah, I know you know it is the way we use Twitter to keep up with friends and business contacts on a personal level.

The new kid on the block is Plurk. Different look, same basic concept. Being social online. If you haven’t signed up yet, you can join as My Friend. (It would be nice to up my Karma so I can get more cool emoticons.)

Both are actually great tools to network and keep in contact with current clients and help build your profile online. But Both have one inherent problem.

THEY’RE ADDICTIVE!

Even when you’re not actively Twittering or Plurking, just a lurker as I am quite often, you can get sucked in. Get more friends, see what they are talking about, see what is happening on the net, see who’s blogging about what, see what the newest fad is… Keep checking, don’t want to miss the next big wave of interest.

Redeeming Qualities

They are also addictive to the people you want to communicate with daily. The people online you care about. The clients you want to touch base with on a different level. Let potential clients see how you can help them through examples of how you help others. Just plain communicate.

These two Tools are really good at helping you keep in touch for Business, but you must be cautious not to get caught up in either too deeply to the detriment of the other things you need to do to keep your business growing.

June 17th, 2008 at 04:44pm | Posted by Joe | Fun, Promotion, Tools, Work at Home | 5 reader remarks | Print This Post

Three Services that May (or May Not) Be the Future of Blogging for Business

 Just a little update on what I’ve been trying to accomplish recently in the World of Working at Home on the Internet.

I mentioned last week that I wanted to move more into the Future using Blogs/Video/Screencasts as a tool to increase business on the internet. While I won’t go so far as to say the efforts so far have been a failure, I will say they have been less than expected.

Not because there is anything wrong with the mediums per se, but some of the programs aren’t living up to their potential and frankly, neither am I.

• One service I do like is Revver. It is really easy to use, takes up no bandwidth on my server and produces quality video for presentation. No download to deal with, just upload your video to their service once you have signed up (it’s free). They even have the option of using Ads on your Vids (50/50) if you like. I did a Video using Revver about the next service, if you’d like to see it.
• Pamela for Skype is a Bust. (No link because I cannot recommend it to anyone in good faith) The concept is great, an addon for Skype (no affiliation) that allows for some features not included in the actual Skype service like recording Audio conversations that can be published. But the main thing that attracted me was the potential ability to record Video Interviews for publication at a reasonable price. The price is no problem ($24.95 for the Pro version), the Problem is that IT DOESN’T WORK.
• Lastly, I have been tinkering with a service called FreeScreecast. I have done a few “test” screencasts and the procedure is really quit simple. Download the Screencast Recorder, Record your screencast, Upload it to their server. You even have the ability to include Audio so you can describe what you are doing to your audience. My problem is that I keep on making mistakes during the recording. I get part way through and mess up on Audio or bring up the wrong screen on Video. I guess that will come with practice (I hope). But I plan on doing a lot more with this service once I get it right.

How about you, what have you been up to? Have you tried any of these services? Thoughts?

March 19th, 2008 at 06:47am | Posted by Joe | Attitude, Resources, Tools | reader remarks | Print This Post

WampServer-A Good Designer and Tweaker Tool

 As most of you already know, I do Computer Consulting for various Internet business applications as well as some problem solving for home business and individual use PC’s. A lot of what I do involves setting up Blogs, Websites, Forums, Shopping Carts and the like.

Going through my daily routine of reading feeds in my RSS feed reader, I came across something that grabbed my attention: Be Brave-Break Your Blog by Michael Martin who was guest posting on ProBlogger. The article itself was quite informative and gave different ways of testing Blogs before, during and after they are set up. If you have been around here for a little while, you know I know how to break a blog. I’m always tweaking and trying new things.

What intrigued me the most was the Last part of the post where he suggests installing WordPress on your computer using WampServer (Windows version). This is a program that allows installation of PHP, Apache and MySQL on your own computer. No need for using your Host to set up and test different templates, plugins and applications live on the web.

I have already downloaded and tested WampServer on my computer with WP and it seems to be working fine so far (just follow the instructions that Michael gives in his post, it’s easier than the “readme” that comes with the .zip file). I can see this being quite useful to developers and “tweakers” alike for such things as WordPress Blogs, Forums, or anything else that uses php, MySQl, or Apache to make things work.

I think this is a keeper. What do you think? Have you tried WampServer on Applications besides WordPress?

November 27th, 2007 at 05:03pm | Posted by Joe | Management, Organization, Tools | 2 reader remarks | Print This Post