Tips – Page 15 – The Web Authority

February 18, 2015February 18, 2015

MamaBear App – Teen Driving Tracker

I love to use technology and now that my kids have a new car, because the old one had been totaled, I felt that I needed to have a little better oversight on their driving habits.

I have triplet 18 year olds who are all three brand new drivers. They love the freedom and so do I, but I worry about their safety. With a new car, I felt that there should be some accountability on being a safe driver so there’s be no more wrecks. And no speeding tickets as the new car has much more power and coolness factor.

I have searched high and low for a smartphone app that would allow me to know how fast they were driving right when they were driving. I found MamaBear. This is one of the few apps for parents that is for Android (that’s me) and iPhone (that’s them).

It is easy to set up and although you can get very stalkerish with your kids on this app – monitoring them on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, I opted to only know where they were and to get an alert if they were driving over 55 mph.

In the app you can add multiple kids and multiple guardians. You can set what speed you want to get warned about. Where we live 55 mph was good. You can even set safe zones. For example I set up home and school as safe zones so I can be notified when they come home and when they are at school.

I don’t want to get too crazy about monitoring, and so am really only using this app for safe driving accountability, but I can see for some parents it may have way more uses.

So far so good. My kids can even see on a map where all family members are including Mom and Dad – that’s kind of cool. In fact that’s one of the things they liked.

You may want to check MamaBear out too. Oh, by the way, it is free. You can move to a paid version to get reports and more tracking and it is not too expensive if you felt you needed that. For me free is fine.

Get it at the following places:

Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.geowaggle.mamabear

IPhone App Store: https://itunes.apple.com/ke/app/mamabear/id542203931?mt=8

P.S. I am not being paid for this review, I just found the app, am using it and wanted to share it with other parents of teen drivers who may be just like me.

February 16, 2015February 12, 2015

Calendly – Fast and Friendly Appointment and Call Scheduling

OMG I love this calendar scheduling application. A prospect asked me to schedule a call with him this last week using Calendly. I thought it was such a cool online productivity tool that I jumped right in to use it for my own business.

First, it is important to know that Calendly is not paying me for this blog post. I have just started using it and really like it so far. For me, I schedule between 6 to 10 conference calls a week. Some of my clients have Outlook and I can do meeting invitations and others don’t. Sometimes I am stood up for my call and sometimes I have to chase a client around for a few days to either pin them down or hook up with them by phone.

Calendly looks like it is going to solve most of my problems. Here’s specifically what I like:

1. No more “What’s your time zone again?” or “Was our call Eastern or Pacific?” Calendly talks to your customer/prospect in their time zone. You enter information in yours and Calendly translates it to theirs. – Excellent!

2. You can set up all types of calls 15 minute, 30 minute, and 60 minutes are defaults in the Premium Level, but the free will just have 15 minutes or one custom sized call. I like 20 minutes for my calls but have some clients that need 30 minutes. I have full control of setting the appointment time. – Excellent again!

3. Reminders are sent to you and the client and you decide the frequency. I set mine up for 24 hours, 2 hours, and 30 minutes out. I am hoping that this will help my conference call attendees be on time and minimize being stood up on my call. – Loved this option.

4. It integrates with my Google Calendar which I sync to my desktop and all devices either with Google or with Companion Link for Outlook. Now here’s my tip. Outlook typically will take your appointments or things you put in your calendar and mark your time as busy. I found that on set up I had not times available as I have many repeating work appointments in my calendar. I opened them and set them as “free” availability – I did this in Outlook and double checked in my Google Calendar, and now I have tons of spots for clients to select from. – This is one of the best features!

5. With Calendly I feel that I am providing better customer service. Instead of me choosing a conference call time that works for me, I am letting my client be in the driver seat. I’ve even opened up evenings for chats as with my conference calling capability I can be on the road myself and call in for a conference call while on the go.

I am still trying to decide if I want to stay with the free level or upgrade to the Premium level, but so far I consider Calendly a real find and wanted to encourage you to check it out too if you live on your phone and calendar like I do.

January 28, 2015January 23, 2015

Should You Buy a Previously Owned Domain Name?

Confused senior man — Don’t Make a Big Mistake, Do Your Research!

Be careful, very careful, even if a domain is offered to you for a great price and it really looks like a great keyword match, take a deep breath and do your homework before you jump on buying that domain name.

Why should I be careful?

It today’s environment when great domains become available it is typically because they have been burned out by spammers. A domain will carry history, it is not just a name and when you take it over thinking you are getting a fresh start; it may be banned by spam registries, Internet Service Providers, and been used and abused by spamming or black hat SEO’s.

Even $200 is too much to pay for a domain that has been abused. You may never be able to use the domain name in an email address and the history may be so tainted that you will never be able to remediate it and place on any search engine with it.

My recommendation is – No Go.

My candid recommendation on buying a used domain, based on how things are, is that I would pass. A domain name does not assure SEO placement, and if you really love the domain you may be able to buy it fresh and clean and never used before as a .us or .biz.

If the price tag is even higher, hire an expert to do due diligence for you. I’ve seen domains go for $10,000. You’d hate to pay that kind of money and find out that the domain had been horribly abused making its value to you nearly nothing. Be careful and do some Google searches on this topic before you plunk down your cash to buy.

January 26, 2015January 23, 2015

Hacking Explained – Why You Are Targeted

Hands with red frame reaches out from big heap of crumpled papers — You may need help from professionals to remediate a hack attack.

It’s the worst case scenario, you get a note from Google saying it looks like you’ve been hacked. Your website now has a tag on Google that says “this site has been hacked”, your traffic has plummeted and sales are way off. Why you!

Not all hacking is about stealing credit card information. Sometimes a hack is about stealing your traffic and your SEO juice. Only sites that are well-placed and popular are targeted for this type of hack. The hackers know that you are doing something right and have Google’s attention and they want a piece of that action for their own benefit.

What hackers will typically do in this case is to sneak in via WordPress and then move directly into your website, installing snippets of code that create folders on your server and a brand new XML site map full of spammy links pointing to websites that they are wanting to improve the placement on with Google.

Try to just delete the folder and you’re fine, think again. These scripts are propagating. Delete a folder and it will be back tomorrow in a new location with a new name. Plus the hackers will be logging in to add more junk and update their benefiting site list. It is all done to bleed off your traffic and steal the SEO juice you have.

The only way to solve this type of problem is by brute force. You’ll need to take everything down, wipe it clean and then reload only clean files plus a full new fresh update of all WordPress files. You may even have to clean your WordPress database and manually review each and every website page you put back.

When you do, make sure you are hardening your security, updating passwords and deleting files you don’t need where code may be hiding. These are smart, tricky, and unscrupulous people. They are not targeting you but for any other reason that your website is well-placed and popular.