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Google have released public data to the world, it’s a marketers dream, but is also really handy for business users if you can spend the time sifting through the stats.

Here’s the link http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/statistics-for-changing-world-google.html and heres a video with a basic explanation.

Now there is more US data than UK data at the moment – this should get better over time, but if you do sell internationally (especially US) you will be able to look into for example specific growth areas of employment.

Granted some of the data will be a little out of date, but any marketer knows that it’s rare to get up to the month data like this (unless you spend a lot of money!). Most times it’s a best experience and knowledge estimate on trends using previous data to extrapolate how to exploit a particular area of a market.

This is why having someone who knows traditional marketing (generally referred to as offline marketing) as well as new marketing (generally referred to as online marketing) like we do is vital in being able to ensure there is a market place for a new website.

A slight side note and something that has been bugging me when I talk to new clients, every single one of them only want to pay for online makreting and they ignore the obvious offline marketing strategies. In today’s world too many people concentrate only on online marketing, what about the foot fall for retail, pubs, restaurants, events etc… you can’t possibly just do only online marketing, well not if you want to be successful, ok so mini edu-rant over.

Anyway this looks like it will become a great resource for the future and I look forward to keeping an eye on the updates Google make to the system.

Alan

Just a quick one today, if Google Adwords confuses you then head over to the wordtracker site put in your email address and you’ll have a PDF that helps explain it all.

If you are not sure you can trust your anti-virus program to know about every single virus out there, especially if you’re running a free one, then I would recommend going to this site to get your file scanned by many anti-virus programs.

http://www.virustotal.com

Alan

I’ve look all over the net and the following seems to be the best backup system out there. You get 2GB free, which should be more than enough for most people with documents to backup. If you need a little more let them email your contacts and get an extra 10GB free, so that’s 12GB FREE in total.

It even works on Mac, although how well, you’ll need to let me know

http://www.idrive.com

If it doesn’t work or you don’t like it you can try this one http://mozy.com as it seems to be the next best one on the market (2GB free and also works on Mac now).

Keep your data safe from a crash and back it up online.

P.S Did I mention that you can access the files from anywhere through a browser, NO, well you can.

Alan

I recently got talking to a potential client and during the discovery meeting over the telephone we talked about the fact that he wanted to be able to show a demo of his online software. Basically to show just how easy and useful it is to use and if we could do that for him. I of course told him that we can do that for him, but once we started to talk about budgets it became apparent that it might not be a possibility to do the video, even though it would be a great way to show off his product.

So we talked about various options for the project and I suggested that it might be something he could do himself, if he was willing to put in a little bit of time into learning the software and a little bit on what makes a good video.

Now it’s likely that we’ll be consulting on producing a script for the video so that it hit’s all the right customer buttons, but he can take care of the rest himself. The next step was software, what would he use, well I sent him this link which has many he can use and the great thing is that their free!

http://www.webresourcesdepot.com/10-free-screen-recording-softwares-for-creating-attractive-screencasts/

Now it may well be that later down the line he gets the video completely redone to be fully professional, but at least now he can put together something to test and see if it’s going to even be worth investing in later and all at a price that fits into his current budget. Now that’s a win win situation!

This is what we do with every client, try to find cost effective alternatives to test out marketing ideas, that will generate more revenue, which you can then re-invest to get more marketing done and make more profit for the company.

If you are about to consider getting your website redone, give us a call or an email, we think you’ll be happy you did as we always over deliver!

Alan

I poses this question as I wondered, I have control of my website, my blog and many other things, so I can back them up easily, but what about my twitter account.

What if the information I put up on there wasn’t saved anywhere else, what would I do if twitter closed it’s doors, how valuable is that information and what would it cost to replace?

FEAR NOT – Just go to the site below and let it back up for you – Genius!

http://www.tweetbackup.com

I came across this site during one of my research of new things on the internet and whilst this is not a new idea, it’s certainly got more of a Web 2.0 feel to it from most of the others I’ve used in the past.

What’s really good about this as well is how easy it is to use, honestly if you have a twitter or Facebook account login, choose a room name, invite people to it and blam! you’re good  to go – couldn’t be easier! You can even share your desktop with people, so it’s like having a free webinar program at your finger tips and will cost nothing!

Here’s the link http://tinychat.com

I’m going to try to schedule a chatroom session once every 1,2 or 4 weeks and give out web design advice, so basically a Q & A session, what could you do with it?

Before I do however I would like to guage how popular this would be so please leave a comment for me on this blog post, cheers.

Alan

I’m sure you’ve come across this scenario at least once.

Either you’re trying to install a new program or copy some files, but the system hits you with that lovely ERROR noise or if you’re lucky at the very least a little box saying insufficient space available.

So you think to yourself if only I didn’t have to go through all my folders and try to find out where the space is being taken up, because it’s going to take ages to do that. If only there was a program I could use to find out the folder sizes and files at an easy glance. At least then I can go to the biggest potential trouble spots quickly.

This is something all operating should have a better version of in my opinion. Anyway we don’t need to depend on them as other people out there know that this needs a better solution and thankfully have delivered.

For now the solutions below are for Windows only machines, I will do some research to see if there are Apple Mac versions (if you know of any please get in touch), I don’t think the Linux community need my help on this subject

http://windirstat.info

This is a fairly comprehensive one and the is the software I’m using on my desktop right now.It’s got a really nice way of visualising the folders and files once it’s done it’s scan. it even colour codes types of files for you that you can click an it highlights then in the box below – Genius!

Cost: Nada, nothing it’s completely FREE!

http://foldersize.codeplex.com

This one isn’t as detailed as the one above but it does have the advantage of being portable, which means it doesn’t need to be installed. So you can stick on an external hard hdrive or Thumb Drive and run it on any windows computer.

Cost: Again Nada, nothing it’s completely FREE!

I hope that this is useful to you.

Alan Fair

So you get the new windows 7 or you’ve had to re-install windows on your machine. You’ve lost all those great applications that you found online that were free.

What do you need to do? well here are the three annoying things that I had to do to find the programs I used, not just everyday, but occasionally once a year but it was handy to have.

First was that you had to remember them and find them online, second was to download them, then finallay third, spend all that time clicking next, next, next, tick the box I agree (of course I do if I don’t I can’t use the program and I’m never going to read you 1000 pages of terms).

If only there was a way to cut down on all that, if only some clever people came up with a site that had it all in one place, had a simple install procedure and only made you click next on the really important stuff.

Thank you internet and http://ninite.com

This is one of my favorite finds in recent weeks as there are many programs I use on there, so when I get my brand new laptop this is going to save me loads of time!

Alan

I had a previous post that had a site that checked for over 80 social media sites for your name. Now this was great and saved a lot of time and effort.

Imagine my surprise when I came across this site that has over 340 websites you can check in one go!

So without any further delay here is the link http://knowem.com