Most web users of a certain age have grown up with outlook (or for those of us who are old enough – outlook express).
Outlook though, has it’s limitations. Here are ten tell tale signs you may need to look for something else.

1. You have bookmarked more that 2 microsoft technical help pages.

2. You saved an attachment but you can’t remember where

3. You get an error message when you open outlook “An unexpected error has occurred”

4. You have mistyped someones email and now it is in your address book wrong seemingly forever,

5. Your machine has crashed and you have lost your entire history of messages.

6. You have had an outlook or email related virus.

7. You find yourself on the “wrong” computer unable to send or receive email.

8. You have set up signatures and mail filters (to be more efficient) more than once (ever)

9. You work mobile or on more than one machine

10. You don’t use any other microsoft products.

Help is available >> http://www.emailmanagement.biz

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Blog post originally from Sharp End Training

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So, the gotomeeting application is superb. It just works. Straight out of the box.

Even better, when I click record, it just records the conference onto my (external) hard drive.

BUT (and it’s big BUT)

The .wmv file output won’t go into camtasia for editing. Well it will but when I try to edit the gotomeeting output the rendering gets to 1.9% and then hangs.

(If you are really interested that I *think* it is to do with “time points” on the recording). Whatever the cause – it is a problem.

This is no problem if I don’t need to edit the gotomeeting recording at all. (And assuming my viewers are all windows based and happy to watch .wmv files). Gotomeeting also records the WHOLE SCREEN – toolbars and all the other required junk on my screen.

There are loads of blog posts about this but I sorted (and I am using camtasia 7) doing the following workflow.

Take the raw .wmv file and make a copy of it – so whatever happens – that isn’t changed. By default it will be stored in your “My documents” folder if you are on PC. (You can change this in your gotomeeting settings). Store this somewhere safely elsewhere.

I downloaded windows media encoder (free) – just google for it. I got version 9.

Next, I imported the COPY of the gotomeeting .wmv into media encoder and clicked the “convert”

This takes a while and you now end up with three versions of the same file. Obviously the longer the event (or the bigger the file) and more activity on the screen – the longer it will take to encode. While this is happening, you can’t do anything with that machine – so plan when you will do this task wisely.

The original, the copy and the windows media encoder produced. They will all probably be called the same thing although you can specify where the “output” file will be located.

So I rename them “raw” and “final.” Then I can edit the “final” in camtasia or any other video editing program.

Then I can export to flash video or mp4 or whatever I want. I can also add intro’s, outro’s and so called “callouts”

You can also rip out the audio with camtasia – “export as mp3″ and voila – you have a podcast. Two for the price of one..

(By the way – this procedure also works exactly the same for gotowebinar).

A bit messy but anyone got any other suggestions?

Let’s ‘ave em…

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The other day, we posted this article about domains.

But I realised that maybe, the cart had gone before the horse. Most people can be forgiven for not knowing their .biz from their .mobi extensions.

Plus the domain registrar companies aren’t going to bend over backwards to explain all the details to you. So we will…

All the top business strategists talk consistently about brand and personal branding. What is little talked about is the value of a domain in your brand.

The domain is the www people type in to get to your website and it really should be the corner stone of your business.

So which domain to buy and why?

(Of course you are free to register which ever domain you want and I won’t be there holding your hand on the mouse as you press the “buy” button – so use you own judgement).

.com

is obviously the heavyweight of the domain world. It’s been around the longest, people trust it. The thing to remember though is that in a few years time, the internet will still be here and .com’s (especially short ones) will be a scarce resource.

Short, pronouncable .com’s are almost all taken already.

.net

Is usually referred to as the second level behind .com. Like .com they are respected and still freely available. They were originally intended for network & IT professionals but that is no longer the case.

Get a .net domain but be careful if the .com has been taken and be even more careful if it has been developed into a site. Your customers and visitors maybe confused.

.org

.org (or .org.uk) domains are usually used by non profit making organisations and charities.

If you plan on developing some sort of advice site then .org would be a perfect choice.

.biz

.biz domains are aimed at business owners and business pure and simple. If you are a business, a .biz is a good choice.

.info

These are relatively new and can be cheaper to register than other top level domains. They don’t carry the same “weight” as the other extensions mentioned already.

.tv

.tv is actually the top level domain for the tiny pacific Island country of Tuvalu. The country sold the rights to the domain and invested the money in the infrastructure if the country.

.tv domains are generally more expensive than most top level domains but if you have a video, film or TV related business, they are an ideal choice.

.mobi

These are intended for use with mobile devices and not generally to be used on a top level development site.

There are other domain extensions which are marketed heavily by domain registrars – but – be true to yourself and remember – you are spending real money…

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If you are a start up, work from home, “mumpreneur” or any other 21st Century “new age business”, it’s likely that your website will be your primary marketing vehicle and shop window.

As far as “buying” it – you don’t actually buy it. You effectively lease the rights for sole use for a specific period. If you don’t pay the renewal fee – the domain will “drop” (watch for a future article) and the website and email attached to it will stop working.

Remember, some domains are valuable and it is worth paying for more than one year and making a note of when it expires – so you don’t lose it.

It is obviously a vital choice. Something you need to get right – so which domain to buy?

If you are a solo professional or 1 person business, you should always register your own name .com and preferably .net. If you are outside the US, get the country top level domain also. So in the UK – this would be .co.uk

Registering your own name will stop so called “cyber squatters” putting up site and asking you for a lot of money to buy it off them.

If you head a small business, think about registering your business name as follows.

1. Remember the “phone test” – Think about how you would explain your website or email over the phone. (Maybe to someone who doesn’t speak english as a native language). As a rule of thumb, if you think you are likely to run into trouble… You will…

2. Don’t worry about hyphens. There are theories that they are not liked by search engines. But as few people are party to what search engines like and don’t like, you can think of hyphens to just break up words.

3. Be careful what words you put together which normally have a space in between them. These can make the domain harder to remember and pronounce. Not what you want.

4. The shorter the better, As a general rule – short is easy to brand and fit round a logo. If possible under 10 characters.

5. Think about who you chose as your registrar. All companies offering domain registration should be registered with ICANN. But if you ever want to sell the domain, if it is not registered with one of the main players, your chances of selling it are likely to be less.
Also, some registrars will offer you cheap first year and then be more expensive afterwards. Think strategically as to how long you intend to keep the domain for.

6. You don’t have to get your hosting from the same place as your domain. Registrars will often give you a cheap domain but make up the shortfall on hosting. Don’t be taken in, again be strategic in your thinking.

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Most of us get spam – this is usually unwanted email. This can be from sales material we never requested to more unpleasant “adult” products. Spam can also be text messages, facebook group spam, incoming telephone call spam and blog comment spam.

But now there is yet another spam

The spam of other people. Spam from other people’s blogs.

Like most, I comment on other blogs to help them build their community. After all, what goes around, comes around.

There are all sorts of comment plugins for wordpress and the various content management systems and blog engines. These do various things to make the content sticky. Allowing you to do things like post to facebook, blah de blah.

So I get a bit annoyed when I click “keep me informed of future comments” box to keep up with the debate and the next thing I get is an inbox full of comment spam.

Remember guys, protection is better than cure and I am unlikely to be back.

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Browser plugins – Which do I need?

With the boundaries of the web being stretched with all manner of applications and different technologies being flung together, the average non technical user can be forgiven for being a bit lost.

It is not uncommon for people buying a new PC or laptop from a high street vendor to have no idea of what software is installed on it.

So which browser plugin do you need?

(And which can you do without?)

(Note there are browser plugins to do various tasks and shortcuts – especially for the firefox browser – so I have kept this list relevant to people wanting to view video and play games online.

Adobe Flash Player

One of the major reasons why Adobe bought Macromedia in 2005 was to acquire the technology behind flash.

Flash player is free and it allows you to watch videos and animations created using the paid for flash authoring tool. (Or compatible tools)

Flash player will generally prompt you when it needs to update and you should update when prompted. Flash player is installed in over 97% of new computers.

Alas, if you own an ipad or various other apple devices, you will be unable to see any flash on your device.

Shockwave player

Shockwave is the format of video and animation outputted by Macromedia Director. However, since the Adobe buyout, question marks persist over the future lifespan of Director. As a result, you probably won’t need shockwave player.

Authorware player

Authorware is a no longer supported elearning application. You should look closely at any sites requiring the authorware player. (Last time I checked, it was quite a large download also).

Quicktime player

Quicktime is a format of video produced by apple. Similar to the flash player, the free player allows you to watch media created with the paid for authoring tool.

Maybe it is because I use a PC, but I have always found this format to be unreliable and buggy.

Windows Media Player

Good old windows media player. I have no recent experience of this and it is used to watch video rather than animation and games.

So which browser plugin?

The only player you should really need to watch videos is the flash player. That’s the reason why the Sharp End Training courses are made using it.

What about you ?

Which browser plugins have you used and which have you installed and not needed?

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Just a quick note to say that our helpdesk has moved to a new home on a new server. Unfortunately, we need to re upload some the “how to’s” and canned responses.

We will be doing this in the next week or so so please bear with us.

In the meantime though, the support desk is fully operational and you can submit tickets as normal.

All existing tickets have been moved over.

Thank you for your patience and we hope you didn’t notice any “downtime”.

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A couple of posts ago, we started talking about readability.

Like most things these days, readability can be given a numeric score. The one we tend to use is the Flesch reading ease score. (To see how  Microsoft word actually works this out for you, click here)

There are other indicators but broadly, they judge a document on 2 things.

1. The length of sentances (number of words) and
2. The number syllables in each word

(The exact formulas are available on sites like wikipedia but to be honest, they do look very scary..)

Armed with these 2 simple facts and very little else, we can make very powerful inroads into improving our readability scores.

Let’s look at two sample passages of text/strong

“the purpose of this document is to ensure that all staff are aware of the required safety procedures” (18 words)

includes a lot of what we called “clearing the throat” text. It can be shortened to

“this document shows staff the safety procedures” (7 words)

Now, we want to get our flesch reading ease score as high as possible.

Why?

Because we want our document to be read and most people stop reading at the age of about 15 or 16 (when they leave school).

Here is the Flesch reading ease table.

90-100 : Very Easy
80-89 : Easy
70-79 : Fairly Easy
60-69 : Standard
50-59 : Fairly Difficult
30-49 : Difficult
0-29 : Very Confusing

How easy is this to do?

Very, if you know where to look. Look for “clearing the throat” words & phrases.

The most obvious ones are “In order to”, “the purpose of” etc.

Also, read the classified ads in the Sunday Papers – they have to be absolutely miserly with words. “Lose weight – free book shows you how” is just 7 words (and just 7 syllables also) but gets the message over perfectly…

Ok – Now off you go to look over your own documents…

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Hiding toolbars in firefox makes for more screen area and less “squash”

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In most business organisations, email has become the standard way of sending information backwards and forwards. If a manager needs to send something to the team, they just send an email. Sales figures, customer service reports, whatever.

So far so good – but using email as a management tool has a number of weaknesses that aren’t readily obvious.

Most people have no clue how to save a document from an email. (The default location in windows is something called a temp file. When you try to explain this to people, their eyes will just glaze over).

As a result of this, most will just leave the attachment attached to the document and clog up the PC’s hard drive, network server space or both. Plus they have to go rummaging through old emails to find something. (IT is supposed to make it easy to find things not rely on humans to remember..but that’s another blog post)

New starters are supposed to do what? A new install of standard email software like outlook isn’t very much use and newcomers will have to listen to a second or third hand account of why things are as they are in the workplace.

Again, wasteful and not using the technology.

So what is the answer?

Well, taking a leaf out of Google’s own playbook, why not give every member staff has a personal internal blog.

What goes on a personal blog?

As well as the standard personal stuff, users can post minutes or meetings & away days they may attend. How to’s are all stored in one place and personal & team targets can be posted.

Of course, all this is indexable & searchable by tags and you can even set it up so that when a new post is made, an email alert is posted out to everyone.

Now, doesn’t this seem like a much better way to make the technology work for you rather than the other way round?

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