Alans Tips and Tricks

Tip of the month- LinkedIn Introduces One Click Endorsements:

AlanMLee — Sun, 30 Sep 2012 02:43:00 +0000

LinkedIn Introduces One Click Endorsements: so you can give them and request them from your contacts. This is much easier than getting recommendations. You don’t have to write anything to do endorsements; just

LinkedIn Blog » Introducing Endorsements: Give Kudos with Just One Click http://blog.linkedin.com/2012/09/24/introducing-endorsements-give-kudos-with-just-one-click/

Add linkedin Endorsements with one click

Tip of the month- use a free web site monitering service

admin — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 19:49:37 +0000

You should know when your web site is down. You can get a SMS text message or email from a service. I use and recommend www.serviceuptime.com They monitor one site for free. I use the paid plan that does 10 web sites for $4.95 a month and get my key sites checked every 15 min.

Monitor your Web Site with ServiceUptime

Free Monitoring Service:
Free monitoring account includes one monitoring service (any port or service) checked every 30 minutes. Free account has all necessary features to keep the track of your website uptime and is limited in some advanced features and check frequency only. There is no limitations on worldwide locations so your service will be monitored from all over the world. All Premium detailed reports are also available for free monitoring accounts. No additional charges for using SMS notifications. Account lifetime statistics never deleted and available for the whole period of monitoring.

Tip of the Month: iTunes U – Videos

AlanMLee — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 13:55:19 +0000

I have been a podcast fan for many years and a new spin off has caught my attention: iTunes U ( as in University). It is free education from great institutions like MIT, Oxford, Stanford, and Harvard; Public TV stations, and corporations. Thank you APPLE! get iTunes free at www.apple.com you don’t need an iPod or Iphone to use it.

I was out for a walk last week with my iPhone watching”CrackBerrys: Exploring the Social Implications of Wireless Email Devices” by JoAnne Yates of MIT giving a lecture. WOW that is a step up from audio only podcasts. You get full video and sound. It was 45 minutes with a Q&A by students at the end. World Class learning- anywhere- anytime and free.

iTunes_U is a TAB in iTunes

Quick_Links and sections

Tip of the month: Salesforce.com is free for some not for profits

AlanMLee — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 14:00:03 +0000

I am frequently trying to help not for profits grow and be successful. A great CRM for a small 501c3 not for profit is a free account at Salesforce.com. It is customized for members, households, and donations. I have helped several not for profits convert to this and they are happy.

Here is what Salesforce says at http://www.salesforcefoundation.org/product

Manage your mission, not your technology.

The Salesforce.com Foundation helps social change organizations to focus more time on their mission and less time dealing with technology infrastructure. The Salesforce.com platform enables organizations to manage their data in one centralized location- the cloud.

This database in the cloud is very flexible, and allows a nonprofit to use Salesforce.com to centralize their program and donor management, communication, volunteer tracking and other critical operational functions.

Why use Salesforce.com?

Salesforce.com can help nonprofits keep track of all the constituents they work with, and all the work they do with them. Salesforce.com is:

A centralized repository for all the people and organizations you work with;
A place for tracking donations, grants, memberships and volunteering, as well as your organization’s programs;
A way to track progress toward program goals;
A real-time reporting and analytics engine;
A solution for decreasing administrative time and costs; and
A key to increasing your donor base and funds.

How can Salesforce.com help your organization?

With 10 donated Salesforce CRM licenses, you can use Salesforce.com to increase your capabilities for managing and tracking data—allowing more time to be strategic and focus on your core mission. We offer substantial product discounts to nonprofits using more than 10 licenses.

SalesForce Not for Profit edition

Tip of the Month: WebPosition.com

AlanMLee — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 03:59:59 +0000

Get a free monthly report on where your web site ranks for the key word phrases you are targeting. You can select 2 from these three: Google, Bing, and YAHOO. You see month to month your changes up or down. If you want to be in the top 10 on the SERP (search engine result page), you have to work at SEO search engine optimization, add fresh content, and evaluate your results.

WebPosition.com will email you a report each month telling you where you stand.

They say:

WebPosition: Measure the Impact of Your SEO Efforts

Check your search engine rankings and identify trends and changes. Anytime from anywhere.

Monitor the effectiveness of your search engine optimization efforts with WebPosition®, the innovative online SEO tool that provides key, in-depth reporting data on your search rankings. Quickly and easily track keyword performance, position changes and trends in your search engine placement with customizable views and automated reporting.

Optimizing a site for better search engine rankings requires constant monitoring and continual adjustment. But how do you know what works, what doesn’t and what changed? WebPosition® Reporter offers you an easy way to measure how your search rankings change over time, giving you greater insight into how your SEO efforts impact your position on major search engines.

WebPosition.com reports on search rankings

Tip of the Month: Evernote

AlanMLee — Thu, 06 May 2010 15:11:11 +0000

What a great free utility/service for your PCs, macs, and phones. It organizes your notes, screen shots, web clips, picture images, documents, etc. It automatically organizes them and does optical character recognition (OCR) on all the images! You can scan or take a digital image of your notes and they become searchable – WOW. Millions of users love it and I am one. Having all these miscellaneous notes from many sources all indexed and available from any of my PCs or iPhone is great. It is Free! It also has a paid premium version.

I love clipping info from various web sites and storing them in a folder in Evernote. You can encrypt sensitive info too. The search capability makes it easy to find your info later!

From http://www.evernote.com/about/learn_more/

1. Capture everything

Chances are, if you can see it or think of it, Evernote can help you remember it. Type a text note. Clip a web page. Snap a photo. Grab a screenshot. Evernote will keep it all safe.

2. Organize it (or let us do it)

Everything you capture is automatically processed, indexed, and made searchable. If you like, you can add tags or organize notes into different notebooks.

3. Find everything fast

Search for notes by keywords, titles, and tags. Evernote magically makes printed and handwritten text inside your images searchable, too.

Evernote can capture, oragaize and find everething

Tip of the Month: Xmarks.com Browser Bookmark sync

AlanMLee — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 02:41:42 +0000

Just like many users, I have created and lost my bookmarks in my Internet explorer as I have upgraded, switched to new PCs and browsers. That is a pain when it happens. I now use IE, FireFox and Chrome. Why?? I try all the new toys to see what I like best for what. I use them for different things. Since I have several PCs, virtual machines, a server and a Mac…. wouldn’t it be nice to have the same bookmarks across all that??? and have them all update when I make a change on any of them???

Xmarks does that and more! It is a free tool to keep your browser bookmarks synchronized across browsers and/or different machines. It is a free tool with many other features. It will let you rate sites and see the most popular new sites. It was formally know at foxMarks

www.xmarks.com

Xmarks Bookmark Synch screen shot

Tip of the Month: 12 Quick Tips To Search Google Like An Expert

AlanMLee — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 16:57:39 +0000

We all search Google regularly. Why not use a few more options to do better searches. Are you looking for PowerPoint??? use filetype:ppt or maybe include Synonyms, just, use a “~” in front of the word. These 12 tips and examples in this Hub Spot blog Post are great!

12-Quick_Tips_To_Search_Google_Better

Read the full list here

Tip of the month: tabbed browser tricks

AlanMLee — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 15:26:05 +0000

One of the features I have enjoyed since FireFox 2 and IE 7 is the tabs. You can open additional web pages on different tabs and then move easily between them. My tip this month is when you see a link on a site or in an email you can right mouse click (RMC) to get the menu and select “open in a new tab”. this will leave the current tab as is and create a new tab for the target of the link.

RMC on link in FireFox to SAVE AS A NEW TAB

RMC on link in IE 7 or later to SAVE AS A NEW TAB

Tip of the month: online printing at bestvaluecopy.com

AlanMLee — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 17:09:10 +0000

Online printing is getting cheaper. You upload a pdf and do your setup online I was using Kinkos for some color printing at about 50 cents each. I searched and found an online source for 9 cents each with a heaver paper. I will be using them again. They had no minimum order, same price all quantities, and no set up fee.

I printed 300 and had it shipped to my office for less than $30.00 total .

I used www.bestvaluecopy.com

Note: on some online printing sites you will get a higher price if you go directly to the site vs. look for cheap printing on a search engine and us that link. That did not seem to be the case with bestvaluecopy.com

BestValueCopy web site