Worldwide we are paying tribute to Randy Pausch, dead at only 47 last week, some five months after the six months he announced he had been given to live.
Dr Pausch of Carnegie Mellon University gave the now famous 'Last Lecture' that has had such a profound impact that on so very many people.
He has touched millions.
July 29, 2008
July 17, 2008
Four top online sites to use daily
Today’s blog is a straightforward share of my “top sites I couldn’t do without daily and weekly at work”. There are easily 10-15 sites that I rely on heavily and visit in high rotation, but if I had to nominate my most frequently-used services this small group wins out immediately.
Skype – What business wouldn’t want free phone calls worldwide to slash costs? The phrase ‘what’s your Skype username?’ is now becoming a standard business question, with users including it on business cards & communications, email signatures and other marketing materials.
In the past 2-3 years, Skype has quietly become the undisputed leader in offering calls from your computer to other users and last year added on cheap calls to other phones and mobiles. Quality is good, connecting with existing and new contacts is made easy, and you can choose to use their instant message function as well as phone or video calls.
Just download the software and set up your headphones and voice mic and you’re plugged in. If you’re addicted to hands-free and the ability to roam while conversing, remind yourself of the cost savings and buy a more comfortable and ergonomic desk chair. As an add-on benefit, business travelers worldwide are using Skype to check in with their partners and families while on the road.
Google Analytics – The invaluable information we still have to pay for offline is at your fingertips for free and works just as well for solo businesses and multinationals.
This is where you go to find out which referring sites your visitors arrive from, where they spend their time, what keywords brought them here, which pages are most popular and converting profits or inquiries, where your visitors are coming from worldwide; and which pages are performing abysmally in converting visitors.
Drill down and get familiar with the site’s functions and you have the facts, figures and trends to study and implement in your marketing and business activity. All for nothing and totally ‘real time’.
For active online marketers you can measure keywords across multiple search engines as well as Google, campaign or email metrics, re-seller and affiliate activity, referral pages, etc. Businesses running Google Adwords campaigns can track performance and metrics through the two services’ integrated interface.
Anecdotal business feedback points to Google Analytics numbers usually underperforming your own tracking data, but with that factored in, the service still provides independent statistics of your traffic and visitors and the ability to benchmark against competitors who have chosen to make their own metrics public.
Alexa.com – Alexa remains the online leader for monitoring and tracking traffic and site performance and the phrases “Our Alexa ranking is…” and “What’s their Alexa ranking?” are part of business vocabulary. I go there automatically to check out new partners or sites, as well as check traffic and data for my own projects and client sites.
Nielsen and Comscore remain financially out of range for the vast majority of small to medium businesses. Hitwise data relies on businesses signing up for that paid service, while sophisticated competitors like Compete.com and Quantcast.com remain US-oriented, so can’t offer Alexa’s international overview. Alexa has made adjustments to its panel-based structure in 2nd quarter 2008, satisfying some critics and upgrading accuracy in its reporting.
I regularly use its graph function to benchmark against competitors over recent months, or research competitor traffic, corporate presentation, user reviews and ‘related links’. Its ‘top sites’ listings break out by either category or language.
Delicious – Web-based ‘social bookmarking’ and tagging are part of the business landscape online now. Personally this cyber-tracking takes the worry out of losing all my valuable links and bookmarks if my computer goes down or meets a laptop thief on its travels. For ease of use and reference it wins hands down over toolbar bookmarks and the multiple folders with complicated titles I used to keep on my system.
Another free service with a toolbar button, even your CEO can use it without a tutorial. Save any page that you’re on – an article, business site, video story, white paper etc – just by clicking the toolbar link and adding in tags and keywords for quick retrieval when needed.
Go deeper and cross-reference with other members’ favourites and shared links to get a broader picture or deeper information of that business sector or topic under peer discussion. When you need that information again, you can pull it up from any computer with online access. Share tools let you upload your tags (one word or phrase bookmarking words) and bookmarks to other social media sites or your blog or home page. Competitors include StumbleUpon.com and Reddit.com.
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