Tag: Reviews

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If This Happens Then Do That

I found a cool website and wanted to share it with you, it is called www.Ifttt.com. With this interactive website you can connect your social networking sites like Twitter or Facebook and use their premade “recipes” or action steps to react automatically when an action happens.

This is what I have set up. When someone mentions me on Twitter on #FF or Follow Friday. I have Ifttt set up to send an automatic thank you to the sender – cool!

I’ve also got my blog feeding to Google+ using Ifttt also. There are literally hundreds of actions that you can use or you can easily create your own. It’s worth a quick look, you might just find and action that needs your action too.

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Amazon’s Kindle Fire Reviewed – A Real WOW

I just bought my Kindle Fire yesterday from Staples and wanted to add a bonus blog post today telling you what I think about it. First, WOW, this is really revolutionary! I can afford any technology I want, money is not a problem, but  with the iPad over $500+ I just could not rationalize the purchase. I was just not sure how much I would really use it. I have a laptop, I have a smart phone, I wasn’t sure I would drag something so big around. Besides that, it is heavy and large a 10 inch screen. Way too big to fit in my purse.

When I saw the first announcements on the Kindle Fire back in September and October in the Washington Post, it was the price that made me look and the reviews that said it was a real competitor to the iPad. I wanted to hold one before I purchased it however, and so did not buy one in the presale period. Staples sent me a newsletter via email yesterday and I went to our nearest store to check it out.

This is what made me buy it and what I like about the Kindle Fire:

1. It feels nice in your hand; not cheap and lightweight. The unit weighs 14.4 ounces.

2. It has a glass cover and very slim almost non-existent shell border. Very nice and polished looking. It looks expensive. Don’t confuse the Kindle Fire with the regular Kindle. It looks and feels different.

3. It took me a while to learn how to use my smartphone and so I was also looking for out of the box simplicity and ease of use. I was not disappointed. There was only a card in the box to explain how to turn it on. You turn it on, add your Amazon account number, and Fire does the rest. I downloaded my first book and app in the first five minutes.

4. I read a lot, I mean really a lot, and so when my library said they now had Kindle integration to borrow books, that was very important. You select the book from your local library site and then the library forwards you to Amazon.com to check the book out.

5. I already have a NetFlix account for our home TV. I just connected my Kindle Fire to that and my kids watched the Gumby movie last night on my new Fire.

6. I can do email. Although I use my Droid for mail, I have connected my GMail account to my Kindle Fire. It was done in two easy steps.

7. I can use the Amazon app store. I have already bought games and downloaded several free ones.

8. The screen resolution is excellent. Viewing quality is totally wonderful – crisp and clear. Web pages are not so small you cannot read them and the browsing experience is excellent. You can swipe and scrunch to change the screen size just like you do on a smartphone.

9. Make sure when you buy yours you get a micro USB cord. I did not, and will need to buy one. This will make it easier to move files and music from my PC to my Kindle Fire.

10. Get a case with a stand. I got mine for $40. It allows you to set your Fire up for viewing on a desk top for you to share.

I have to say I just cannot believe that this bit of technology cost only $200. The Kindle Fire lives up to the other reviews you have seen online. Everyone who has seen mine now wants one. Although it doesn’t do some of the things the iPad does, for me it is a very smart tool that is more for fun than work. Besides that, it fits in my purse to be on the go with me so I can use it anytime with my smartphone’s mifi hotspot.

Way to go Amazon! You have created an innovative tool that is sure to bring you an excellent new revenue stream. I have never bought ebooks or online movies at Amazon and now with my Fire and 1-click easy purchase at Amazon I am have already bought several things and am making my purchase list.

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Want to Check Your Backlinks Here is an Easy Tool

If you are concerned about organic search placement, then you need to keep an eye on your website’s backlinks or more commonly known as inbound links. I’ve found an easy to use free tool that allows you to check your link numbers quickly and even review links that are follow and nofollow. The tool is called the Open Site Explorer and can give you a snapshot picture of link on the Web being pointed back to a page or domain.

As you review your statistics and numbers you may wonder what a nofollow or follow link are. A nofollow link is one that a search engine robot will not be following to discover your site. You receive no search engine “juice” from this link. You may still get site traffic, but no organic placement benefit. On the other had follow links are goldmines. That means that the search spider will follow the link all the way to your website from the original website. You may get an authority rank benefit as well as a link number benefit that may raise your own organic search placement. Follow links are good as long as they are from legitimate non-spammy sources.

Try the tool out for yourself and see what you think. I think it is pretty cool!

I am not receiving any compensation for writing this blog post from the site owner. I just found the tool, like it, and wanted to let you know about it.

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HootSuite and Seesmic Reviewed

If you are involved in social media using Facebook or Twitter you will want to be using one of these applications for posting your updates. In this post I will be reviewing HootSuite and Seesmic.

HootSuite
I use this product and own two Pro accounts. I have been using the HootSuite product since it came out and like it. I have four team members using one account and write for over 10 client social networks using the application. This is what I personally like about the product:

  1. The Pro account allows me to add unlimited social networks and easily helps me to link Facebook personal pages, Facebook Business Pages, and Twitter accounts.
  2. It is very simple to add team members to my account. My team members only see in their personal control panel the accounts that I have given them access to and not all client accounts.
  3. When I have several team members working on one account, I can see in my master control panel who has done what, who has responded to a comment, and who has posted which update.
  4. I like that I can schedule updates for future dates. Some of our writers work several days ahead or at night and set up updates to publish the next day. When you work on the volume of clients that we do you need this flexibility for your staff.
  5. HootSuite Pro account have a bulk upload option. Although I don’t routinely use this option, it is there and allows for greater flexibility to feed out content over time.
  6. Reusable updates. This is one of my personal favorites. I like the feature that I can save an update and then reuse is and schedule it to be sent on days I select. Where we have something very important to get out for a client this feature is valuable.

If you want to check out HootSuite, you can for free. If you use my link, set up an account and upgrade to the Pro Account HootSuite will pay me a small commission.

Seesmic
I don’t use this product routinely, but am always on the look out for new applications that can make our work easier. Seesmic is great for a single user or for someone is just managing Twitter account. Seesmic does support Facebook, but only the Facebook personal profile, while HootSuite allows you to post to Facebook personal profiles AND Facebook Business Pages.

The Seesmic interface is easy to set up, but not as intuitive as that of HootSuite. You do not have the option to show columns for each account such as pending for one Twitter account, but you can see the pending updates for all accounts in one column. I set up my Seesmic account with three Twitter accounts and two Facebook accounts. I could not however set up or send to my Facebook Business Page.

Seesmic has a control panel for each account on the left side bar instead of tabs like HootSuite has at the top. This could be an issue if you were managing many Twitter accounts as you would have to scroll up and down to interact with accounts near the left bottom as your account list grows.

In Seesmic you can see, for Twitter only, retweets, mentions, sent, favorites, and searches but not pending. Remember pending appears as a column on your screen and is not sorted by account but rather by date. For Facebook you don’t have any options other than the home feed.

I feel that for professional users HootSuite is a much more usable product. For small accounts Seesmic certainly is an alternative to HootSuite. If you have more than five social networks you have to upgrade to the Pro Level in HootSuite but with Seesmic you are still at a free level. I think that as an alternative to HootSuite for do it yourselfers on a budget, Seesmic certainly is a nice choice, but not one that I would want to work with everyday, day in and day out as a power user.

That being said for clients that want to watch what we are doing and to respond to tweets, I think that a Seesmic account would be fine for them as this solves the problem of having to add them as a team member in HootSuite. They can’t see pending updates with this approach, but can see what has been posted after the fact. I will look forward to improvements as Seesmic grows and tries to establish its market share. In some ways it is similar to Sendible.

Seesmic has not paid me for this post and I do not make a commission on your use of the application or download.