Four Options for Sharing Big Files

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We’ve all faced the same problem: we need to send large photos, complex PDF reports or videos to friends, family members or co-workers. Unfortunately, these files are so big that they can clog even the fastest e-mail system.

There is good news: There are plenty of programs – many of which are free – that you can use to send large files with ease.

Here are four of the most popular:

YouSendIt

YouSendIt’s cloud-based online storage allows users to share everything from gigantic pictures to videos for free. The service is known for how easy it is to use.

YouSendIt also gives users control over their large files. For instance, they can set expiration dates for these files and control who can and can’t access them.

DropSend

DropSend operates in much the same way as YouSendIt. DropSend, though, offers file-sharing programs in a variety of option.

For instance, you can choose DropSend Lite, which is free. This version allows you to send five files a month. The basic version of the program costs $5 a month, and allows you to send 15 files a month. The business version — $99 a month – allows users to send an unlimited number of files each month.

SugarSync

SugarSync has grown in popularity along with the rise in smart phones and tablet computers. That’s because users can create a SugarSync account that instantly saves their files on all their devices at once – everything from their smart phones to their desktop computers to their tablets.

SugarSync also allows users to provide access to these large files to specific users. It’s an easy way to allow family members or co-workers to view movies, pictures and other big files without the use of e-mail.

Dropbox

Dropbox, too, has become a must-have program for mobile computing. Like SugarSync, it allows you to instantly store files on all of your devices at once. It also comes in both free and paid varieties.

Avoid the Most Common PowerPoint Mistakes

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PowerPoint presentations are the vacation slide shows of the business world: we’ve all sat through boring ones that seemed to last forever.

Fortunately, there are several tips that you can follow to avoid creating a PowerPoint presentation that bores your co-workers. This is important: You create PowerPoint presentations to spread your message, promote products and achieve results.

You can’t do this if no one’s paying attention to them.

Don’t Forget the Creativity

As the writers at Microsoft’s Business Hub say, PowerPoint doesn’t give you permission to get lazy. You still have to be creative if you want to develop a winning presentation that grabs the attention of your audience.

This means that you can’t let PowerPoint’s ease of use trick you into thinking that you don’t have to come up with compelling content. Just because you can create an endless series of text-filled slides doesn’t mean that you should.

So don’t. Come to your sales pitch or company meeting armed with interesting and useful information. Don’t just slap some sales numbers on a series of slides. Instead, explain what these numbers mean.

Come with Solutions

You’ll also want to come armed with ways in which your company’s employees can improve these sales numbers.

Another fault of many PowerPoint presentations: they provide information. But they don’t provide useful strategies for how employees can use that information to better the company’s performance.

If your PowerPoint presentation shows that sales are down, make sure you follow up with your own suggestions on why sales have fallen and what the company can do to boost them. If sales are up? Provide information on how your company can maintain its momentum.

Don’t Get Too Fancy

As TrainSignal Training says, it is possible to get too creative with PowerPoint. Many managers clutter their slides with unnecessary photos and graphics. Others stuff charts that are too small to read on their slides. Still others add moving images that do little other than distract.

Don’t fall into this trap. The best way to convey a business message is to do it as directly and simply as possible.

And don’t simply fill your PowerPoint slides with the same words that you’re going to read aloud to your audience. You’re not in the first grade. Your audience doesn’t want to read along while you repeat every word that’s on your PowerPoint slides.

PowerPoint remains a powerful business tool. But it’s one that is easy to misuse. Don’t make the mistake of creating a PowerPoint presentation that turns off your audience.

Squeeze More Life Out of Your Aging Servers

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Companies today rely heavily on the power of their servers. Unfortunately, servers have relatively short life spans. This means that businesses must frequently make the difficult, and costly, decision to junk their old servers and replace them with newer, faster versions.

However, if your company is running short on dollars, there is some good news. Even old servers often have more life in them than we suspect. By taking some fairly simple steps, companies can squeeze some extra years out of their aging fleet of servers.

The technology Web site TechRepublic listed some tips for managers hoping to prolong the lives of their servers. Following these tips won’t prevent you from ever having to replace your aging servers, but they will help you put off the replacements for as long as possible.

Turn old servers into network-attached storage devices: TechRepublic points out that businesses can purchase inexpensive software that can turn their old servers into network-attached storage devices that businesses can use as back-up servers.

The only products that your IT pros will need are that software, NASLite-2 CDD, and some large drives. This combination can transform that aging, inefficient server into a powerful back-up server.

Old servers and disk imaging: IT professionals know how important it is to have up-to-date disk clones, known as ghost images, of important machines. However, as TechRepublic points out, it can be challenging finding storage space for these large images.

This is another area in which an old server can come in handy. By adding large drives to an old server, your company’s IT professionals can easily store images in your business’ old servers.

Testing, testing: Finally, consider transforming your aging servers into test servers. As TechRepublic says, your IT professionals won’t the most current specs when they’re using a server strictly for testing purposes. With just a bit of extra RAM, IT pros can use old servers to test new applications or new server offerings.

In today’s challenging financial environment, companies are looking for a variety of ways to save money. Squeezing more life out of aging servers is one very powerful way to cut costs.

Have Access to an Unrestricted Internet Consider Yourself Lucky

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You surf to the online home of the New York Times every morning. You scan your Twitter account for messages from friends, family members, professional athletes, and celebrities. You read the gossip and news at the Huffington Post daily. And before you turn out for the night, you check out the antics of your favorite celebrities at TMZ.com.

Consider yourself lucky. There are citizens across the globe who can’t access any of these sites. That’s because they live under authoritarian regimes that block at least some of their access to the Internet.

Restricting access to the Web

Students in China, for instance, might not be able to log onto the Web home of the New York Times during times of political unrest. Government protesters in Iran might not be able to send messages to each other through Facebook. And residents of Burma might not have access to the global Internet entirely when political protests are taking place in that country.

Unfortunately, authoritarian regimes have several ways of blocking their citizens’ access to the Internet, and these methods have evolved over time just as the Web itself has evolved.

Blocking access to Web 2.0 apps

For instance, governments might block either permanently or temporarily the access that their citizens have to such Web 2.0 applications as YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook. Often, such blocks occur during political protests, election seasons or the violent crackdowns to protests that too often occur in such countries.

Countries can also be more subtle in squeezing off access to the Internet. Some, for instance, have restricted connection speeds. This, in essence, makes it impossible for users to download, share, or even see audio and video files.

Some authoritarian governments use what is known as technical filtering to prevent their citizens from accessing content that uses specific keywords. Others use this technology to block their citizens from logging onto specific domain names or Web addresses.

Human censors

This might sound surprising, but some governments even employ actual human censors to monitor and manually remove forum and blog posts that the government finds objectionable. Often, these censors will eliminate blog posts or forum messages that criticize government leaders or policies.

The United States, of course, has plenty of flaws. However, we can all be proud to live in a country in which the Internet remains largely unrestricted.

Collaborate on Documents without the Headaches

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Many companies employ workers across the globe. These workers – separated in some cases by thousands of miles – must at times collaborate to create mission statements, marketing plans, and other important work documents.

This can lead to headaches. What often happens, as writer Dawn Foster with the Web site Gigaom points out, is that collaborators send their documents to each other through e-mail messages. Eventually, this leaves companies with several versions of their documents, many of them conflicting with each other as workers make changes simultaneously but without consulting with each other.

This can lead to confusion.

Fortunately, there are steps businesses can take to simplify the document-collaboration process. Foster, in fact, points to a pair of key tools that can help make collaborating on documents a drama-free task.

The power of the Wiki

Foster writes that Wikis are great tools for companies that boast large teams that are all working together on documents. With Wikis, any member of a team can edit documents whenever they want. Their changes are then saved to a master document that is stored in the cloud, where other team members can also access it and edit as they see fit.

Companies can also use Wikis to share their documents with a large audience. Again, companies can determine exactly who gains access to their Wikis, making it easy for all team members to collaborate and share ideas with one another.

Google Docs still a top choice

Foster is also a fan of Google Docs… and with good reason. This popular free program works especially well for companies that want to share a limited number of documents with a smaller team. Google Docs also happens to be one of the best ways for team members to collaborate on spreadsheets, presentations, and other documents.

Again, after team members make changes to a document, they simply have to “share” or save it to make the changes or suggestions available to all other team members.

No more headaches

Both Google Docs and a Wiki can significantly reduce the headaches associated with collaborating on documents. And in doing so, they can make everyone’s work days a little less stressful.

Manage Your Employees the High-tech Way with These Apps

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Starting a new business is no easy task. It’s why so many businesses fail during their start-up years.

However, you can give yourself an edge in at least one area – how you manage people. Inc. magazine reviewed some of the best apps for managing employees. By using these apps, smart business owners can reduce the time they spend on making sure that their employees are as productive as possible.

If you’re not using the apps listed below, then, you’re not giving your small business its best chance to succeed.

Here is a look at three key apps for best managing your small business’s employees.

Labor Time Tracker

As Inc. says, it seems a bit old-fashioned to have your employees punch in and out using physical time sheets. A better option is Labor Time Tracker, an app that costs about $4.95 a month for every employee.

With this app, employees punch in their hours on a virtual card. This lets you see immediately who is working and who is out for the day. Labor Time Tracker also tracks overtime hours and pay. It will work, too, in multiple time zones.

Trello

As Inc. notes, Trello is one of a large number of organization apps designed to keep business owners on task, but Trello does differ in one important way: It lets business owners add employees and contractors to their various to-do lists. This way, everyone in a company can see these lists and keep track of what needs to be done throughout the day.

Trello also lets business owners assign tasks to their employees and send them messages related to the business’s various to-do lists.

TribeHR

TribeHR ranks among the best human-resources apps out there. Even more importantly, it’s inexpensive – just $2 a month for each user.

As Inc. says, the app allows business owners to track employee time off, schedule performance evaluations, manage recruiting efforts, and update employee profiles. In short, it does just about everything you’d expect a full-fledged human-resources department to do at a fraction of the cost.

If you’re trying to build a small business in today’s challenging economy, you need all the help you can get. Take a look at the people-management apps available today. You might be surprised at how powerful they are.

Don’t Drain Your Smartphone’s Battery

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Smartphones are wonderful tools. They let you watch movies while you’re taking the train to work. They let you make reservations at that hot new French restaurant, map out the quickest route to the theater in the next city, and give you access to the hottest online games.

But there’s one weakness that almost every smartphone shares: short battery life.

This is a frustrating problem. As you’re logging onto the Web, checking your e-mail messages, and making phone calls, you’re draining your phone’s battery. With many of the top smartphones on the market, you’re fortunate to make it home after the workday with enough battery life left to squeeze in one quick call for take-out food.

As PCWorld magazine explains, the problem comes down to this: Smartphones do too much. And by doing so, they consume more than their fair share of power.

There are steps, though, that you can take to increase the life of your smartphone’s battery. And PCWorld shares them with you. By shutting off some of your phone’s extra features, you might be able to squeeze enough extra juice out of your battery to keep your smartphone humming all day long.

Dimming that smartphone screen

First, PCWorld recommends that you dim your cell phone’s screen. A bright, cluttered screen display sucks the life out of batteries. By switching your screen’s brightness level to the lowest you can stand, you’ll already be doing much to boost the lifespan of your smartphone’s battery.

Screen lighting

You can save battery power, too, by adjusting how quickly your screen stays lit after receiving an input such as a screen tap. The longer your screen stays lit, the worse it is on your battery life.

Bluetooth

PCWorld also recommends that you turn off Bluetooth when you aren’t expecting a call or when you aren’t driving in your car. Bluetooth, because it is constantly listening for outside signals, is another major drain on your battery. By shutting it off, you’ll again significantly increase the life of your smartphone’s battery.

Huge Social Media Mistakes You Don’t Want to Make

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At this point we all know that social media isn’t an option, but a necessity, but on the other hand many aren’t sure how to do it with any degree of effectiveness.

Social media is amazing in its ability to extend your reach beyond what you might be able to generate on your own, but that is also the same way that it can hurt you. Let’s have a look at 5 mistakes you could be making that will hurt.

5 Social media marketing mistakes to avoid

  • Not enough visuals – Let’s face it, we love visual content. Whether it is a video, image or infographic, visuals are able to engage your audience in so many more ways, and for the better as well. Plus understand that often it doesn’t even need to be your own content you’re sharing; although you should not make it a habit to post only others visuals.
  • Selling too much – No one likes to be constantly sold to, and please don’t treat your social followers this way. They will quickly move on, leaving you with no one to talk to!
  • Deleting negative entries – If you are seen to be excising any negative comment from your pages, it will swiftly come back to bite you. People will wonder if what is being said about your company is true, and you’ve just thrown out a great opportunity to shine by providing exceptional customer service.
  • Buying likes and followers – This seems like a great idea, but in fact, those thousands of followers you bought for $5 don’t give a hoot about you, and there isn’t anything more damning than visiting a page with thousands of followers and absolutely no other engagement. Oops.
  • LikeBait – Similarly, crafting controversial or enticing headlines to generate tons of likes and shares, while sharing little of real value other than a cleverly worded headline is a sure way to send readers scampering to the exit. So much so, that recently Facebook announced they are instituting a fix in their algorithm to curb this.

Think Yelp Doesn’t Matter for Your Local Business? Think Again!  

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Why Your Business Should Care About Yelp

You may be of the opinion that the time of Yelp has passed, and that it’s not useful these days. You’d be wrong.

If you have a local business, Yelp is more important than ever before for the reputation and marketing of your business, and if you don’t believe us, just ask your competition! We would like to present you with a ton of reasons why your business should care about Yelp. Hopefully it opens up your eyes with regards to the opportunity that is still found on Yelp. So here goes!

10 good reasons to use Yelp more than ever!

  • 90 percent of Yelp users report that reading positive reviews influences their purchasing decisions and the lion’s share of these reviews are written.
  • 93 percent of folks that search review sites usually make purchases at the businesses for they investigate.
  • There is an average $8,000 increase in annual revenues for businesses that use Yelp.
  • There is a $23,000 increase in revenues for businesses that choose to use Yelp advertising.
  • 77 percent of Yelp users say that they have a renewed and more concentrated customer service initiative after using Yelp.
  • In spite of all these numbers, a full 87 percent of small businesses have yet to embrace Yelp.
  • Reviews by your guests that compliment your “customer service” in the review are considerably more likely to offer those coveted 5 star reviews.
  • Each star produces a 5-9 percent leap in resulting revenues.
  • Yelp favors small businesses over the McDonalds of the world.
  • Yelp’s fantastic new “Call to Action” button brings customers directly from your Yelp page to your website where a transaction can take place.

Yelp is far from over in the online review space. It still delivers a enormous opportunity for small business. As many online shoppers gravitate to online reviews and base their buying decisions on them, it would be financially careless to not use such a fantastic site for positive feedback about your brand. Yelp offers you the opportunity to engage with the public you seek to attract in a substantial and palpable way.

Give Your Visitors a Virtual Glimpse of Your Business with Google Business Photos

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Show Off Your Google+ local Listing with Google Business Photos

One of Google’s latest creations is the introduction of Google Business Photos. It is a virtual presentation of your place of business in a panoramic 360 degree picture found in search, your Google+ page or in Maps. There is also the option of embedding it on your site or social media properties.

Why is Google Business Photos a good idea?

Google Business Photos is a great way to invite searchers inside your business virtually. They can see and get a feel for what you do, and start to learn how you can help them. But, the best part about these photos is they really separate your listings from the others. The panoramic view of your pictures, when compared to regular text search results next to you makes it nearly impossible for the searcher not to click on yours. Another major benefit is that by using this program, you are further cementing your place as the authority for this brand. This can help in several ways, among them search rankings and reputation management.

How do you get these photos made?

It’s tempting to run right out and start snapping away with your camera, but you ought to know that Google requires these images are taken by a Google Business Photos Trusted Photographer. That’s mouthful to say that these professional photographers are already trained in how to create these for Google. You will need to hire one on your own, but it’s worth the money, as they will know how to present your business in a way that will work well on Google. You set the appointment, and then plan on “staging” your shoot. It usually takes about an hour or so, and Google would like to see as few humans in them as possible, we’re talking ambience and atmosphere, minus people here.

If this seems like a great way to enhance your Google+ Local listing, then you need to get the ball rolling today!