For the Online Entrepeneur

A great list of tools for the entrepeneur. From finances to online collaboration and office tools:

http://www.avivadirectory.com/entrepreneur-apps/

 

No such thing as a free lunch?

Well now there is. Here is a list of 300 free applications which can help small business get going and avoid some of those expensive startup costs.

We recommend...

Open Office - As a replacement to Microsoft Office; Word, Excel, Powerpoint. The most recent version can also generate PDF documents.

GIMP - Not as the name implies, this is a replacement for Photoshop. A little tricky to get started with but we use this for all our graphic editing. For our 3D graphics we like a mix of Blender and AutoCAD.

Thunderbird - A mail reader like Outlook. You can also use Sunbird for your calendar events.

TrueCrypt - Encrypt your hard drive or usb device and keep all the data secure. Caution: Always back up your data on a regular basis.

Google Earth - See the world, really. High detailed satellite maps of the world in an easy to use 3D interface.

We don't want to say that some of these apps are better than the Microsoft alternatives, but we find that most of our clients only utilise a small percentage of the functionality these programs have to offer, so by using Open Office, GIMP and Thunderbird you could be saving hundreds of pounds / dollars per user.

If you would like more information on saving your company money by moving to open source applications then please feel free to get in contact.

 

Understanding Googles ranking algorithm (technical)

We all use search engines to find websites, products and services on the World Wide Web. Google, one of the major search engines with around 24 billion webpages in it's library and ranked as the 3rd most popular site on the internet by alexa, has everyone who has an interest in page ranking wanting a place at the top. To understand how to get there though it sometimes takes an underlying knowledge of how your rank is calculated. An interesting read for the technical minded:

How Google finds your needle in the web's Haystack

For the non technical some of the best tips include:

  1. Making sure that the keywords / sentences you want people to type to find your webpage are in an indexable format (i.e. not within a Flash movie or JavaScript functonality including AJAX).
  2. Link to other websites and have them link to you.
  3. Look at the proximity of words to each other and the sentence structure. Is what is written the same as what someone might type to find your page? The closer the sentence match the higher the probability.
  4. Review your site statistics on a regular basis. A good set of statistics will tell you what words people are using to come to your site and from what locations. Use these figures to adapt your content.

And also remember to submit your webpage to the Search Engines first as this will get you indexed faster.