Improve your Google Ranking with Page Speed
Google recently began adding a new criteria for placement ranking priority in the search engine. Not surprisingly, what is old is new again. Page load time is now a strong factor in Google Page Rank.
If your site uses alot of bloated images or scripts, you may be dealt a lower search engine ranking. So, how does one optimize their site for better performance and SEO? Google has added a new Firefox fox extension that builds on the FireBug architecture. It is called Page Speed. It does one thing: measure your page load time and inform you of possible culprits causing slower load times.
So clean up your images and code, and enjoy a happier web visitor and SEO rank all at the same time.
Pigs can fly, and It’s snowing in Hell and Apple just passed Microsoft in business value.
In one of the clearest signs yet of the renaissance that’s finally putting a close to The Dark Age of Personal Computing, Apple Inc. (AAPL) has overtaken Microsoft (MSFT) to become the second-most-valuable U.S. company.
What’s the difference between a company’s stock market capitalization and the value of its actual business (which is referred to as “enterprise value”)?
Apple stock market capitalization
Microsoft stock market capitalization
A company’s stock market capitalization includes the net value of the cash and debt on the company’s books. To figure out the imputed value of the company’s actual business, therefore, you have to adjust for the value of those other things.
Business facts aside, today marks a psychological triumph for Apple Computer fans that has been over 30 years in the making. Cheers to a company that has become the poster child of American success, and one that has done so while inspiring creativity in millions of designers, programmers, artists, and consumers alike.
Thinking different, while not grammatically or politically correct, can sometimes lead to a moment that can change the course of our lives forever.
What do you think? Have you bought into the whole Mac experience? We’d love to hear your thoughts.
7 things to stop doing now on Facebook
Take control of your information
You want to use Facebook, but you also want to keep your private information from being spread all over the Internet like wildfire. The key is to understand how Facebook works, where your information is stored, and how to navigate the site’s maze of privacy controls. If you accept Facebook’s default settings, you’ll likely be sharing a lot more than you may realize. Take the time to review and update your settings. Chances are you check Facebook every day anyway, so take a few minutes today, go into your privacy controls, and make some choices.
On Facebook, there are three basic levels of privacy: Friends, Friends of Friends,Everyone. You also have a set of public information, which helps your friends find and connect with you: your Name, Profile Picture, Gender, and any Connections you’ve made. This includes the friends, networks and Pages you’ve chosen to connect to. You also always have control over who can see your Connections on your profile.
Here are 7 things you should stop doing on Facebook now:
#1 Using a weak password
Avoid simple names or words you can find in a dictionary, even with numbers tacked on the end. Instead, mix upper- and lower-case letters, numbers, and symbols. A password should have at least eight characters. One good technique is to insert numbers or symbols in the middle of a word, such as this variant on the word “houses”: hO27usEs!
#2 Leaving your full birth date in your profile
It’s an ideal target for identity thieves, who could use it to obtain more information about you and potentially gain access to your bank or credit card account. If you’ve already entered a birth date, go to your profile page and click on the Info tab, then on Edit Information. Under the Basic Information section, choose to show only the month and day or no birthday at all.
#3 Overlooking useful privacy controls
For almost everything in your Facebook profile, you can limit access to only your friends, friends of friends, or yourself. Restrict access to photos, birth date, religious views, and family information, among other things. You can give only certain people or groups access to items such as photos, or block particular people from seeing them. Consider leaving out contact info, such as phone number and address, since you probably don’t want anyone to have access to that information anyway.
#4 Posting your child’s name in a caption
Don’t use a child’s name in photo tags or captions. If someone else does, delete it by clicking on Remove Tag. If your child isn’t on Facebook and someone includes his or her name in a caption, ask that person to remove the name.
#5 Mentioning that you’ll be away from home
That’s like putting a “no one’s home” sign on your door. Wait until you get home to tell everyone how awesome your vacation was and be vague about the date of any trip.
#6 Letting search engines find you
To help prevent strangers from accessing your page, go to the Search section of Facebook’s privacy controls and select Only Friends for Facebook search results. Be sure the box for public search results isn’t checked.
#7 Permitting youngsters to use Facebook unsupervised
Facebook limits its members to ages 13 and over, but children younger than that do use it. If you have a young child or teenager on Facebook, the best way to provide oversight is to become one of their online friends. Use your e-mail address as the contact for their account so that you receive their notifications and monitor their activities. “What they think is nothing can actually be pretty serious,” says Charles Pavelites, a supervisory special agent at the Internet Crime Complaint Center. For example, a child who posts the comment “Mom will be home soon, I need to do the dishes” every day at the same time is revealing too much about the parents’ regular comings and goings.
Take the time to protect your information, and the personal details of your life and the lives of those that matter to you. If not, you may find your child’s face downloaded to the computer of a stranger, or your hilarious bikini pose taped up in a high school gym locker.
How to promote your business to the whole planet for FREE
Did you know that there are FREE ways to promote your small business? Wait, you DIDN’T know that? Well you are not alone. A new small business survey by Citibank found this to be quite the norm among small businesses.
Few small business owners and managers are joining the consumer trend towards increasingly using social networking websites and services, according to a new Citibank / GfK Roper survey.
Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn…If you havn’t heard of these social media tools, then you REALLY net to get out more. Or get online more as it were. The buzz around social media is deafening, but a whopping 81 percent of respondents say they still haven’t tried it. Why not? Nearly half of respondents (47 percent) don’t believe that Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn are of value to their business, another 21 percent think the sites are for personal use, and 18 percent say they don’t know enough how to use the sites.
According to the survey of 500 small business executives across the United States, 76 percent have not found social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn to be helpful in generating business leads or for expanding their business during the last year, while 86 percent say they have not used social networking sites to get business advice or information.
The survey found that general search engine sites such as Google and Yahoo! trump small business-focused sites and the WSJ.com as destinations for small business owners to seek business advice or information. 61 percent of respondents say they rely on these search engine sites.
“Our survey suggests that small business owners are still feeling their way into social media, particularly when it comes to using these tools to grow their businesses,” said Maria Veltre, Executive Vice President of Citi’s Small Business Segment. “While social media can provide additional channels to network and help grow a business, many small businesses may not have the manpower or the time required take advantage of them.”
Other online tools that are going unused: Nearly 40 percent of small businesses surveyed don’t have a website, 62 percent don’t send marketing e-mails to promote their business, and 84 percent haven’t engaged in e-commerce. But among the companies that do have a website, 74 percent say it’s an effective way to bring in business.
What do you find to be the best online tool to promote your business?
100 FREE Tools to Supercharge Your Business
The gurus at Inc.com have released a library of tools and templates for your business. With forms, job description templates, interactive worksheets, spreadsheets, and contracts, including 100 tools from DocStoc, you will find a business owner’s candy store of professional documents.
Business areas covered include: Start-up, Running a Business, Money and Finance, Leadership and Managing, Sales and Marketing, Managing Technology.
If image is everything, these tools will give your business a competitive edge.
Business Plan Checklist
The Business Plan Checklist is used by individuals or entities who are creating a business plan. The Business Plan Checklist provides an outline for all the information necessary in creating a successful business plan and should be used as a guide for completion. View tool
Employee Handbook Sample
The Employee Handbook Sample is used by companies as a guide to create an employee handbook. The Employee Handbook Sample provides a comprehensive outline for employment policies, practices and procedures, standards of conduct, benefits, and company facilities. This sample is customizable for your company’s specific usage. View tool
Business Presentation Template
The Business Presentation Template is used by individuals or entities to explain their business plan to viewers in a clear, effective manner. The Business Presentation Template provides a format for an overview of a company’s mission, staff, goals, and competition. The template is used when giving a business introduction to the company’s basic plan. View tool
Go to Inc.com to begin supercharging your business!
Bellevue WA Based JF Designs Co. Completes New Web Site Design and Hosting Solution for TYNET Inc.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 21 , 2006
Bellevue WA Based JF Designs Co. Completes New Web Site Design and Hosting Solution for TYNET Inc.
BELLEVUE, WA January 21, 2006 — JF Designs was excited to be selected to design the web site for Seattle area TYNET Inc. (www.tynetinc.com). The project encompassed a new design to promote its computer printer and typewriter repair service. JF Designs created a total package solution for TYNET Inc. that included search engine optimization, web design and implementation and they are also providing the server technology for hosting the completed site.
JF Designs was tasked with the project of creating a web presence that was both intuitive, informative and cutting edge in consumer design. “The site design offers a strategic design advantage for TYNET Inc. over competitor’s web sites,” says Jay Forde of JF Designs. The design of this new web site captures the energy of the printer repair industry and delivers an impactful visual result.
TYNET has been serving Northwest Washington since 1979. They provide on-site repair, depot service and spare parts for printers and plotters.
TYNET specializes in the field service of HP and Okidata laser, color laser and dot matrix printers. Their factory trained warranty authorized technicians repair over 90% of all printer service requests on the first visit to your office. Their average response time from dispatch to repair is less than one business day. TYNET cellular dispatches fully stocked repair vans, which greatly reduce your printer downtime and repair expense. They unconditionally guarantee all services, parts and products.
JF Designs further establishes themselves as a design leader with this web site, and is proud to showcase this project. This site can be viewed at www.tynetinc.com.
JF Designs began in 1990 as a desktop publishing company. Today they offer a full suite of digital services that include web design and web hosting. JF Designs is committed to bringing the best personal and business class hosting experience to professionals and consumers around the world through its services and Internet offerings.
NOTE TO EDITORS: For additional information visit JFDesigns PR website (www.jfdesigns.com/press/ ), or call 1-866-845-7823
SOURCE: JF Designs.
CONTACT: Jay Forde of JF Designs, 1-866-845-7823, sales@jfdesigns.com
URL: http://www.jfdesigns.com/press/
http://www.jfdesigns.com
5 Business Lessons Learned from Undercover Boss
From Corner Office to Grunt Work
It was one of this year’s reality show standouts, beloved by viewers for the dose of schadenfreude they’d get by seeing executives fail at attempting the basics that make their companies tick. Undercover Boss took CEOs (such as 7-Eleven’s Joe DePinto, above) out of their corner offices and planted them as entry-level grunts in their own business. What ensued needn’t just be couch-potato fuel, though: We’ve compiled some notes so you can avoid these CEOs’ mistakes.
Do Sweat the Small Stuff
Joe DePinto, a West Point graduate who’s now the CEO of 7-Eleven, knows how to run a $13 billion company. But brewing coffee without overflowing the dispenser? Not so much. In investigating exactly how the 7-Eleven in Shirley, New York, manages to sell 2,500 cups of coffee a day, DePinto managed to mix up flavor batches and make a mess. But he took a lesson from middle-aged coffee-maker Dolores, whose precise brewing combined with impeccable customer service (she seemed to know the name of every person who entered the door) kept caffeine fiends coming back day after day.
Lesson: Pay attention to detail – and to your regular customers – and you will be rewarded with repeat business.
Even Small Jobs Require Confidence
It seems obvious: a CEO should intimately know – and ostensibly enjoy – the product or service they sell. On the episode about Churchill Downs, the racing park that’s part of the largest horse-racing business in the world, that wasn’t quite so for COO Bill Carstanjen. When he went out dressed as a new hire to work with a horse trainer, it was readily apparent he was afraid of feeding the horses. And though he learned how to play the “Call to Post” on the bugle, he discovered he was terrified of playing in front of a crowd.
Lesson: Inspiring confidence takes confidence especially in a highly-competitive environment.
Keep Your Customer Service Skills Sharp
Rick Arquilla, president and COO of Roto-Rooter, got his hands dirty in an episode of Undercover Boss. After cleaning some drains like a pro, he was tasked with working the phones at a dispatch call center. He struggled, in part because the call system is color-coded and Arquilla is colorblind. That’s no fault of his, but his phone skills also leave a lot to be desired – he sounded pushy and impatient when he talked to a customer.
Lesson: Your interactions with customers over the phone are deceptively difficult to get right, and require patience and foolproof systems.
Enforce High Standards
Coby Brooks was not ready to meet Jimbo. He was the manager of a Hooters restaurant to which CEO Brooks was assigned, and he liked to “inspect” female employees in a leering fashion. Brooks, who spoke with pride about his company’s donations to breast cancer research, was not amused. “The things I saw today,” he said on the show, “were inappropriate. They were wrong and I don’t want any part of it.”
Lesson: Even if your company image thrives on being a bit racy, employees must abide by clear standards set by human resources regarding harassment.
Find Out What Goals Mean in Human Terms
When Chris McCann, president of 1-800-Flowers and the younger brother of CEO Jim McCann, went undercover in his own company, it was with the aim of testing how well he understood the business. He suspected that the company needed to do better at connecting with its workers. And he was correct. For instance, when he struggled to keep up with his task at the chocolate bonbon conveyer belt, he struggled and lagged behind. An employee remained calm, telling him that the hefty goals are set by men who never visit the factory.
Lesson: Seek input from – and get to know – your front-line workers.
Source URL: http://www2.inc.com/ss/5-lessons-undercover-boss
How to Network: 5 Tips for Shy People
By Meridith Levinson, CIO.com
Dale Carnegie literally wrote the book on networking in 1936. How to Win Friends and Influence People demystified the process of making friends out of strangers and inspired legions of business coaches to carry on Carnegie’s message. Peter Handal, the chairman, CEO and president of Dale Carnegie & Associates, shared some of Carnegie’s rules for meeting new people with CIO.com.
Smile: “This is such a simple, basic rule, yet people just don’t think about it,” says Handal. They’re so focused on needing to network at a conference that they don’t realize they’re walking around with a scowl on their face. Scowling, serious, expressions are forbidding, says Handal. People are more likely to warm up to someone who says good morning with a broad smile than they are to someone with a dour countenance.
Ask a question: Joining a group engaged in conversation can be awkward. The best way to do so is to pose a question to the group after getting the gist of the conversation, says Handal. “You build your credibility by asking a question, and for a shy person, that’s a much easier way to engage than by barging in with an opinion,” he says.
Listen: One of the most profound points Carnegie made in How to Win Friends was that people love to talk about themselves. If you can get people to discuss their experiences and opinions—and listen with sincere interest—you can have a great conversation with someone without having to say much at all.
Business cards: Always have them handy, says Handal. “They’re an effective way for you to leave your name behind so that people remember who you are.”
Say the person’s name: “People like to hear their own name,” says Handal, pointing to another one of Carnegie’s basic principles—that a person’s name is the sweetest sound to that person. So when you meet someone, use his name in conversation. Doing so makes the other person feel more comfortable, like you really know him and he knows you.
Is Palm, maker of the beloved Pilot on its deathbed?
If you are one of the millions that once could not live without your “second brain” a.k.a the Palm Pilot®, the memories of such days may well be reduced to just that, only memories.
With an inability to stave of defections to the now ubiquitous BlackBerry® manufactured by Canadian company RIMM, or the now ubiquitous replacement to that corporate staple, known as the iPhone®, Palm now finds itself in desperate times.
It is always a sad day to see an everyday icon go by the way side. But such is tech and its gadgets. Its fans are ever demanding more. More design, more function, more features and more price reductions. Technology companies have tried to play this game of catch up and stay ahead at the cost of their own corporate vision, and profitability.
With the advent of the game-changing iPhone, Apple has reinvented the way smart electronics are expected to operate. More importantly, they have created the new standard for the customer experience. How ironic, that a company that once was also the headline king capturing death nell countdowns of its near demise, has reinvented not only itself, but entire media industries it dominates. Apple is now a top 5 company with a $200 billion market cap.
Palm, now with a huge inventory oversupply, a sales forecast cut in half and a roaring cash fire make Palm’s chances for survival slim.
Palm reported mixed fiscal third quarter results and troubling projections for the current quarter ending in May. Looking ahead, the company says sales will fall below $150-million (U.S.) in the quarter, which is more than 50% below the analyst target of $305 -million.
Analysts didn’t waste much time weighing in. Canaccord Adams cut Palm’s price target to $0 from $4, and Kaufman Brothers and Morgan Joseph cut Palm’s rating to sell.
Palm says it has $592-million in cash available, but executives didn’t provide a specific cash burn forecast for the current quarter or provide an answer to how many quarters it can continue to operate.
Morgan Stanley analyst Ehud Gelblum estimates Palm’s fiscal fourth quarter cash burn will be about $148-million. If true, that will consume 25% of Palm’s cash, leaving the company with $444-million left to live on.
Assuming the quarterly cash burn moderates to a mere $100-million a quarter, Palm has about a year’s worth of cash left.
Palm CEO Jon Rubenstein, a former Apple VP, has been leading Palm with apparently with only one goal: beat his former employer at their own game. Unfortunately, the goal of a CEO is lead a company into profitability. Not to satisfy personal grudge matches.
Palm was embroiled with Apple recently in a technology fight in which, rather than invent their own iTunes®, Palm decided to manipulate the USB hardware identification routines to allow the Palm Pre to pretend to be an iPhone. This allowed The Palm Pre to acquire the same iTunes synchronization ease -of-use that the iPhone has. Apple would release a new update to iTunes that would beak this Palm “hack”. The two companies went back and forth with updates to their respective products to leapfrog the other. Eventually Palm was criticized by the international standards organization because of the improper use of the USB standards, and Palm relented.
Palm’s customers were the real losers unfortunately, because Palm should have created their own solution from the beginning.
Palm may have realized all too late that sometimes the best thing to do, is what you do best. Not what your competitor does best.
Are Macs Really Cheaper To Manage Than PCs?
Editor’s Note: The following article is reprinted from CIO.com. Visit CIO’s Macs in the Enterprise page.
Does “I’m a Mac” mean “I’m less expensive to manage?” An Enterprise Desktop Alliance survey says Macs cost a lot less than PCs to manage — yet Macs come with special challenges for enterprise IT admins.
Keep in mind that Enterprise Desktop Alliance is a group of software developers who’ve bandied together to deploy and manage Macs in the enterprise. The group surveyed 260 IT administrators in large U.S. companies with both Macs and PCs who are involved in some degree with IT cost calculations. Enterprise Desktop Alliance members include Centrify, Absolute Software, Group Logic, Web Help Desk, and most recently IBM.
[ Another Enterprise Desktop Alliance survey shows two out of three companies buying Macs this year, which will bring integration challenges for IT admins, CIO.com reports. ] Read more
