WordPress Blog Plug In tools

AjaxWP -  Adds AJAX to all aspects of your WordPress site, which speeds up the load times.Alexa Rank – Display your Alexa rank with pride.

Ajax Comment Preview – Allows readers to preview their comment before submitting.

asTunes – Retrieves data from your Audioscrobbler/last.fm profile and posts it as a list on your blog.

Codebox – Creates a side scrolling box for displaying code snippets.

Crossroads – Adds thumbnails and comments from your Flickr account.

FireStats – Full featured statistics including referrers and popular pages.

Google PageRank – Allows you to display your Google Page Rank on your blog.

Hardened-Trackback – Generates a single-use trackback to help fight trackback spam.

imgViewJX – Refreshes an image on your main page from a selected directory.

Live Spell Checker – Adds a spell checker to your posts in the admin area.

Plug ‘n’ Play Google Map – If you include longitude and latitude in your post, this will automatically add it to a Google Map on a separate page. Very useful for blogs writing restaurant reviews or about events.

WordPress Mailing List – Have a mailing list? Let readers subscribe and unsubscribe from the front page of your site.

WP e-Commerce – Adds a shopping cart to your WordPress powered site.

WP-Polls – Adds fully customizable polls to your blog.

WP-Post Ratings – Allows readers to rate your posts.

Zorpia That’s Hot Box – Allows visitors to send posts they like to Zorpia.com and vote on their favorites.

AJAX Comments 2.0 – – Auto updates the comments page with no full reload, enabling much smoother commenting than the older full reload system.

AJAX Google Video Search – Search Google Video without leaving your favorite blog.

AJAX Shoutbox – Real time conversation with sound to alert you to new messages.

Cool Weather – Allows visitors to see the weather forecast for any location they choose.

Currency Converter – Adds a real time currency converter to the page with data from Yahoo Finance.

Google AJAX Search – Allows you to setup search for your site, the web, and another site such as your Flickr account.

Google MapSearch Widget – Allows readers to search Google Maps without ever leaving the page.

Gregarious – Social bookmarking plugin that adds Digg, Reddit, Feedburner FeedFlare buttons and more.

Hottaimoijiruna – Adds a self-updating clock to the site for a timezone defined by the blogger.

Inline Ajax Comments – Hides comments until the user clicks on them.

Inline Ajax Page – Displays a snippet of a post and then allows the reader to click a button to load the full entry without going to another page.

Tagboard Widget – Adds an auto-updating tagboard to your site that displays new messages as they are posted.

Units Converter – Converts hundreds of different units of length, area, volume, weight / mass, and speed without reloading the page.

WP Movie Ratings – Combines data from IMDB with the blogger’s movie review and allows the readers to add their own ratings.

XDTalk – Allows real-time conversation between registered users.

Akismet -  – Anti-spam plugin from the creators of WordPress that uses a central database of spam comments to identify spam. Requires a free API key from WordPress.com

Spam Karma – Analyzes comments for spam based on a karma system.

Bad Behavior – Prevents spam bots from accessing your site by analyzing their HTTP requests.

Did You Pass Math? – Asks users a simple math question before their comments are posted.

Comment Timeout – Closes comments on old posts.

Encourage Commenting

BlogFollow – Shows a snippet of the user’s blog beneath their comment.

DoFollow – Removes “nofollow” attributes from links in comments so search engines can follow them.

DoFollow Trackbacks – Removes “nofollow” attributes from trackbacks.

Show Top Commentators – Lists your most frequent commenters along with links to their blogs.

Improve Appearance

Nicer Trackbacks – Improves the appearance of trackbacks from other blogs.

WP-NoSh*t – Filters bad words from comments.

Numbered Comments Adds numbers to comments.

AuthorHighlight – Highlights comments by the blog’s author.

Comment Highlighter – Styles comments based on the author’s name, email, or URL.

wp-chunk – Truncates long URLs in comments to prevent them from stretching the page.

Enable Rich Comments

Custom Smileys – Adds clickable smiley emoticons to comments.

TinyMCEComments – Turns the comment box into a full-featured rich text editor.

Live Comment Preview – Allows readers to preview their comment before posting.

Edit Comments XT – Allows users to edit their own comments.

Enable Avatars

Gravatar – Displays user-selected avatars next to comments.

Favatars – Pulls the favicon from a commenter’s blog or website and uses it for their avatar.

MBLA – Adds user images from MyBlogLog to comments.

OpenID Comments – Lets readers comment with their OpenID identity.

Click here to find the rest.

What is Business Process Management?

Here is a great description of what Business Process Management involves:

Business process management (BPM) is a field of knowledge at the intersection between management and information technology, encompassing methods, techniques and tools to design, enact, control, and analyze operational business processes involving humans, organizations, applications, documents and other sources of information.

Business process management activities involves:

• 1.1 Process design
• 1.2 Process execution
• 1.3 Process monitoring

Click here to learn more.

Coming To Grips With The Time Management Myth

Coming To Grips With The Time Management Myth by Susan Ward

Do you feel the need to be more organized and/or more productive? Do you spend your day in a frenzy of activity and then wonder why you haven’t accomplished much?

Time management skills are especially important for small business people, who often find themselves performing many different jobs during the course of a single day.

These time management tips will help you increase your productivity and stay cool and collected.

1) Realize that time management is a myth.
No matter how organized we are, there are always only 24 hours in a day. Time doesn’t change. All we can actually manage is ourselves and what we do with the time that we have.

2) Find out where you’re wasting time.
Many of us are prey to time-wasters that steal time we could be using much more productively. What are your time-bandits? Do you spend too much time ‘Net surfing, reading email, or making personal calls? “Tracking Daily Activities” explains how to track your activities so you can form a accurate picture of what you actually do.

3) Create time management goals.
Remember, the focus of time management is actually changing your behaviors, not changing time. A good place to start is by eliminating your personal time-wasters. For one week, for example, set a goal that you’re not going to take personal phone calls while you’re working. See “Set Specific Goals” for help with goal setting. For a fun look at behaviors that can interfere with successful time management, see my article “Time Management Personality Types”. Find out if you’re a Fireman, an Aquarian or a Chatty Kathy!

4) Implement a time management plan. Think of this as an extension of time management tip # 3. The objective is to change your behaviors over time to achieve whatever general goal you’ve set for yourself, such as increasing your productivity or decreasing your stress. So you need to not only set your specific goals, but track them over time to see whether or not you’re accomplishing them..

Web 2.0 Internet Strategies article in Miami Herald

Web 2.0 goes to work, but does it always work?

Good question posed by the article:

So does this mean companies should spend a majority of their advertising budgets on reaching Internet users?

The answer was:

”It gets down to why are you doing it, and who are you trying to reach”

Too may people are jumping on the bandwagon and the article mentions how you should not do Web 2.0 for the sake of it. Its important to do it right and to stay on top of it. There are firms that will take care of managing these web 2.0 initiatives for you or coach you on how to do it yourself. However, if you are looking how to get started, click here to understand how to get started with blogging:

I will post additional articles on Delicious, technorati, RSS feeds, and how all these components compliments your Web 2.0 initiaitives. In the meantime, click here to read how social networking sites are providing their software code for free to spur growth.

True statements as to how the Web 2.0 strategies help your online marketing initiatives:

• Making use of such features as blogs, podcasts and other user-generated content, more businesses are incorporating Web 2.0 elements as marketing tools.
• Internet advertising revenues are at an all-time high, up 26 percent from the same time last year.
• It’s part of an effort to target the younger online audience that invests more time online. The study reports younger consumers upload more, with 57 percent of Generation Y’s total online population regularly putting content on online communities or social networking sites and 22 percent regularly uploading to photo, music and video sharing websites like YouTube and Flickr.
• Video is Key: ”I do think the whole video experience piece is going to be more and more of a requirement online because people are willing to buy more and more online but they want to understand, get a better feel of exactly what it is that they’re buying.
• Its a very simple business to monetize, Selmen said.
• Being a player in the Web 2.0 world was certainly well receivedby shareholders.

Click here to read full article.

Social-Networking Sites Open Up

The benefits of social networking sites opening up is allowing new applications to allow more people to discover your site, which can translate into greater revenues since more viewers mean higher ad rates.

Click here to read full article.

New Ideas in PR and Marketing for Your Small Business

Contact:

Valeska Jacques, Chapter Public Relations Director, (305) 443-4110,valeska@uvium.com
Or Anne B. Freedman, NAWBO president, (305) 273-6640, anne@speakoutinc.com

Faster! Bigger! Fresh! Better than Ever! What’s Hot!
New Ideas in PR and Marketing for Your Small Business
August 9, 11:30 a.m., at the Banker’s Club, Downtown Miami
National Association of Women Business Owners, Miami Chapter

Looking for new marketing strategies and public relations techniques to expand your business? Find out from three leading South Florida experts at the August 9 luncheon of the Miami Chapter, National Association of Women Business Owners. The meeting will be held at The Bankers Club, 2 S Biscayne Blvd, 14th Floor, from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.

Topics to be discussed are getting valuable publicity, realistic new advertising options for small businesses, marketing through events, and increasing sales and exposure using the five pillars of an effective internet strategy. The speakers are:

Alex Villoch, VP of Advertising, The Miami Herald

Gladys Mezrahi, president, Indigo Events, Inc.

Abdul Muhammad II, Chief Internet Strategist, uVium, Inc.

Cost is $40 for members, $45 for guests.
Reservations are required at rsvp@nawbomiami.org.
For further information, call 305-273-6640.

Blog Workshop in Miami

WEB 2.0 HAS EVERY BUSINESS BUZZING ABOUT NEW INTERNET STRATEGIES.

What every entrepreneur needs to know about the array of new tools that foster online collaboration — and currently revolutioning small businesses — should join us AUGUST 21st to attend our workshop on how to create a BLOG.

Creating a BLOG for yourself instantly boosts credibility, adds exposure to your business, helps you to build relationships, and boosts your search engine marketing efforts to optimize your company’s website. It’s easy to set up and available when you are inspired to share stories or post articles on your expertise.

When:
August 21, 2007 – 5:30pm. – 7:00 p.m.

Location:
4000 Ponce de Leon Ste 470
Coral Gables, FL 33146
*Between Village of Merrick Park and The Collection Dealership

Price:
$35 (Cash or checks only. No credit cards)

At the end of this workshop, you will understand:

• A new internet strategy
• How to build a BLOG for free
• How to promote your BLOG for free
• Create and Boost Credibility
• Search engine strategies
• Increase traffic to your website

Click here to read testimonials from those who attended:

The first 5 people to RSVP will receive a FREE reference guide on BLOGS. Space is VERY limited. Click here to RSVP:

First steps on how to create a blog

 

When creating a blog, it is important you do so correctly from the onset. Therefore, the instructions provided below specify the importance in selecting an appropriate domain name that will help you to optimize your business website. The value of creating your own blog, immediately sets the foundation for all business to start building a comprehensive internet business model.

 

1. Register with wordpress.com for Free
2. When creating an account for your blog, you will be prompted to assign a domain name for your blog. The “blog domain name” should tie with your expertise. Important you use “keywords” users will use in google or yahoo in order to find you. For example, fashiontips, business loans, miamihistory, miamihappenings, etc. You can create multiple names under different accounts.
3. Create categories in your blog. This way when you post an article you may categorize the relevant content. The benefits of doing this is so other websites may auto populate your article with relevant blog articles on the internet. You will find yourself appearing in sites such as: http://www.technorati.com, http://www.feedster.com/ and many others. Again this will boost your search engine rankings, due to the “relevancy” of your topic associated with your website.How to find content if you don’t have time to create your own. Check out this blog for tips: http://lorelle.wordpress.com/2006/01/23/blogging-tips-hundreds-of-resources-for-finding-content-for-your-blog/
4. As soon as you have your blog set up, make sure your company’s website links out to your blog to increase “link popularity” for your company’s website. Search crawlers look for how many sites your company’s website links out to (link popularity) in order to determine rankings for your site.

It is assumed you will use your personal blog to provide insight on your expertise or use it as a personal journal. The blog acts as a catalyst to boost your website so if you are considering to use your blog for business purposes, it is very important to think of keywords, while writing your articles, that potential clients will use to find your services.

If you have any questions, feel free to leave me a comment so I may be of assistance as you venture out into the internet world!

To understand more on how a blog may increases web visibility, feel free to sign up for one of our workshops, so you may learn how to put together an internet strategy that fits your business: http://uvium.com/workshops.cfm#blogs

Toxic Co-workers

Toxic Co-workers
‘Working With You Is Killing Me’

April 29 – Katherine Crowley and Kathi Elster are the authors of the new book “Working With You Is Killing Me.” They offer tips on how to deal with your most irritating co-workers and impossible boss.

Detach – accept who they are and that you are not going to change them

Depersonalize – understand its their behavior and its not you
Devise a plan – how to deal with the person

Click here to view video

http://feedroom.businessweek.com/ifr_main.jsp?nsid=a-24e9a213:11054f326d9:57b0&fr_story=FEEDROOM174642&st=1169660051833&mp=FLV&cpf=false&fvn=9&fr=112906_044222_62bb1020×10f35a1bbaaxw3cac&rdm=778740.3858717297

Recommended Internet Business Books

Call to action by Bryan Eisenberg, Jeffrey Eisenberg

Have you wondered how some of the most influential brands and site owners are achieving astonishing improvements in their online results? In one comprehensive volume, the founders of Future Now, Inc. present the tactics that are helping their clients convert website traffic based on the principles of persuasion architecture.

Call to Action includes the information you need to know to achieve dramatic results from your online efforts. Are you planning for top performance? Are you accurately evaluating that performance? Are you setting the best benchmarks for measuring success? How well are you communicating your value proposition?

Are you structured for change? Can you achieve the momentum you need to get the results you want? If you have the desire and commitment to create phenomenal online results, then this book is your Call to Action.

Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability
by Steve Krug

People won’t use your web site if they can’t find their way around it. Whether you call it usability, ease-of-use, or just good design, companies staking their fortunes and their futures on their Web sites are starting to recognize that it’s a bottom-line issue. In Don’t Make Me Think, usability expert Steve Krug distills his years of experience and observation into clear, practical–and often amusing–common sense advice for the people in the trenches (the designers, programmers, writers, editors, and Webmasters), the people who tell them what to do (project managers, business planners, and marketing people), and even the people who sign the checks.

Prioritizing web usability by Jakob Nielsen and Hoa Loranger Krug’s clearly explained, easily absorbed principles will help you sleep better at night knowing that all the hard work going into your site is producing something that people will actually want to use.

The legendary Jakob Nielsen has returned to tell you everything significant that’s been learned about web usability since his 2000 classic Designing Web Usability revolutionized the field.

This book’s every bit as indispensable as the last one. As before, while Nielsen (and new coauthor Hoa Loranger) may occasionally infuriate you, this book’s recommendations are based on immense amounts of user research. Ignore them at your peril.

You’ll find proven best practices for navigation, site organization and search, link design, improving content and readability, page design, layout, graphics, multimedia, sound, and e-commerce product catalogs. (Dos and don’ts are illustrated through sites ranging from Burger King to the House of Blues to the U.S. Social Security Administration.) Equally important, as per the title, you’ll find a realistic methodology for prioritizing usability issues — so you can deliver maximum improvement for minimum cost.