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Category: software

Reviewing 2010 and Ringing In 2011


Tuesday January 4, 2011

Reading Time: 8 minutes
reviewing 2010Image via Wikipedia
Webconsuls’ 2010/2011 Winter Newsletter
If 2010 was nothing else, it was a fast year. It seems only yesterday Dick Fay and I were working on our 2009 Winter Newsletter and now here we are writing our 2010/2011 Winter Newsletter. We want to take a few minutes to: Thank our Webconsuls’ clients, introduce our newest clients, highlight some marketing and software ideas, suggest two resolutions for you and support our not-for-profit clients who assist children in need.
Thanking our clients…
Webconsuls and our team appreciates our clients. We learn from each and every client by optimizing their sites, designing new sites, building blogs, coaching our clients on new software and responding to their marketing needs. As you may know, we have clients across the United States (actually in 11 states) and in two foreign countries, representing industries from hospitality to law, health care to home maintenance, real estate to retail, sports and recreation to performing arts. There is never a dull day.
Introducing our clients who joined us in 2010…
We invite you to meet our new clients and visit their websites.
Highlighting some marketing and software suggestions…

 

We know the internet is fluid. It changes daily. We try to keep our clients abreast of these changes by writing this blog, researching our clients’ requests, providing news’ feeds on our website, and publishing our newsletter. Over the past few years we have blogged a lot about social media/Google/Twitter. We have built blogs for our clients, we have worked with our clients to establish their Facebook business page.  Additionally, over the past year…
  • Dick has been particularly active assisting our clients by adding shopping carts with either PayPal or Authorize.net functionality.
  • Dennis worked with clients to add a LIVEPerson feature for online customer engagement.
  • Malik, our lead designer and web developer, is also proficient in designing clients’ e-newsletters using Constant Contact and Vertical Response.
  • Keith, our PPC specialist, works closely with several of our PPC clients to utilize phone conversion optimization software.  
  • Alycia, our branding expert, has been focused on improving Client Web 2.0 and specific SEO-related enhancements.
Suggesting two resolutions for you…

 

The first is to start reading our Webconsuls’ blog on a regular basis.  As we said above, with our blog we communicate new information that we think is important to on-line marketing and social media.


The second is to start and maintain your own blog.  Our clients with blogs generally receive more traffic than clients in similar fields without them.  Blogger now allows you to easily monitor your blog stats.  A blog is easy and relatively inexpensive to create.  Routinely writing posts can be a challenge, but it can  be rewarding with more virtual exposure, traffic, and new business.  You might start by also reading some of our clients’ blogs like –  Delytes – A ‘green’ fine foods company  or Attorney Carilyn Ibsen’s blog  or Attorney Will Bruzzo’s blog.

Finally supporting our not-for-profit clients…

 

This year, as in years past, Webconsuls made a donation in honor of our clients to those not-for- profit clients who work to support children and families in need.

Olive Crest Homes and Services for Abused Children
Since 1973, Olive Crest has transformed the lives of over 50,000 abused, neglected, and at-risk children and their families.

The Promises Foundation Miriam’s House
The Promises Foundation is committed to restoring hope for families by creating a safe environment for mothers and their children to grow and develop the tools they require to live meaningful and self-sufficient lives.

The Forrest General Healthcare Foundation is the philanthropic arm of Forrest General Hospital. The foundation helps ensure that the hospital’s vision of C.A.R.E. becomes a reality for the 17 county region that the hospital serves. Initiatives include the Inpatient Hospice Home Project, the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit Renovation Project and the Spiritual Grounds at Pine Grove.

We wish you a healthy and prosperous New Year. Let us know if 2011 is the year you want to add some new features to your on-line marketing. We will be happy to discuss these opportunities and plan a strategy with you.

Sincerely,
Dennis, Dick and Judy

Reading Time: 5 minutes

Yesterday a clean install was performed on my computer. The process refered to as a “clean install” means all your data is going to be wiped off your computer and your computer is going to be as clean as it was the day you purchased it, maybe cleaner.

In my case my clean install was prompted by the need to reinstall an operating system as my Windows 7 beta was going to expire and needed to be updated to Windows 7 Release Candidate 1. Other reasons to do a clean install might be to clean out the cobwebs and improve performance. Viruses and harddrive crashes as well as other hardware failures may also force a clean install.

The warnings to back up and then back up some more generally fall on deaf ears. When the question is posed to a group of people about their data backup strategy the room quickly divides.

In the first group you have your smug fellows who do backup their files, second you have your optimistic group who are sure such a catastophe will never befall them or they have this pragmatic confidence that while this could happen to them they will certainly have gotten their back up act together by then and will be prepared, the third group have lost data, they know the damage it can do and yet they know they do not have a backup and their heads hang in shame and maybe a little bit of fear.

But there is another group. A group that “Lives on the Cloud”, meaning the information in stored on the internet and not on your harddrive. Life on the cloud is “hardware independent” because your harddrive will die and you don’t want it to take out your data with it. Let me give you a taste of how this can work.

How My Gmail Account has Changed the Reinstall Forever
By using gmail for your domain my email and all the related attachments can be accessed on any computer with a username and password. So after a clean install has been performed I log in to my gmail account and there are all of my emails just as I left them.

  • Log into my gmail account and access all my email.
  • Reinstall my programs by searching gmail for program name to find activation code and download most recent version of the internet.
  • My documents are all saved as Google Doc and are available upon sign in
  • My iGoogle Page has my bookmarks to frequented sites and important information which I reference often.

And I am back working at my clean computer and I know that I have my data. Do you?

Reading Time: < 1 minute

This year the MacHeist III bundle is being sold for $39.00. MacHeist donates 25% of each bundle purchase to a partnering charity of your choice. With only one day remaining in the sale the quotas to unlock the full package have all been met.

This is the last day to grab the entire bundle of software from MacHeist.com.