Your Royal Webness

Read some Cookie Facts and then decide… instructions included!

• A cookie can be stored on your computer for a minute, a day, a week, a month. It really just depends on the cookie. A typical analytics cookie will be stored for usually 30-60 days.
• Cookies are information created by a Web server and stored on a user’s computer.
• Some web sites use cookies to identify visitors to that site, enabling more personalized information to be served upon return to the site. A Cookie can contain information such as user ID, user preferences, archive shopping cart information, browser, operating system, etc.

1st party cookies

• set by the website that the user is visiting.

Pros

• Remembers the user’s personal information once they have submitted it. Now whenever the user comes back to the site they will not have to re-enter all of their information again.
• Less frequently blocked and deleted
• Able to track what people do on your site. See how long they stayed, what keywords they used to find you, how they found you, how many pages they looked at, what pages they were on, track if they signed up or purchased something, etc…
• Great for serving up personalized content that is geared towards that specific user’s preferences
• Since the cookie can record what the user purchased it is great for cross selling and add-on items.
• Gain insight on which pages are performing better and which need improvement

Cons

• Unable to see what user’s do once they leave your site
• You are not able to track individual users on the same computer, unless they have their own login credentials

3rd Party Cookies

• 3rd party cookies are set by a 3rd party domain, like a web analytics company or online campaign management solution. For example if someone visits yoursite.com, that information will be routed to webanalyticscompany.com. 3rd party cookies can be used for banner ads, text ads, or any other 3rd party website.

Pros

• 3rd party cookies track a user across multiple websites
• Easy to identify what the user did after they visited your site
• Great for marketing research and identifying which marketing campaigns were successful

Cons

• Many 3rd party cookies are recognized as spam and get blocked
• 3rd party cookies information can be stolen if the session in unencrypted
• Possible tracking options that a 3rd party company add to the cookie that you are not aware of
• Some Anti-Spyware programs will often delete the cookie

Jupiter Research conducted a study on how often users delete their cookies. Jupiter Research reports that 58% of users delete their cookies regularly, with 40% of those deleting them every month. With that in mind, no analytics package will ever be 100%.

Today’s Web Therapy;

3rd Party Cookies have some important implications on the privacy and anonymity of Web users. Many 3rd party cookies reveal themselves as pop-ups. Here’s how to disable 3rd party cookies! In your Internet Explorer browser: Tools, Internet Options, Privacy, Advanced, Override Automatic Cookie Handling, click on block 3rd party cookies. If you have trouble signing into a site you always go to, then unblock 3rd Party cookies.

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1. Express your ideas more visually. Office 2010 opens up a world of design options to help you give life to your ideas. The new and improved picture formatting tools such as color saturation and artistic effects let you transform your document visuals into a work of art. Combined with a wide range of new pre-built Office themes and SmartArt® graphic layouts, Office 2010 gives you more ways to make your ideas stick.
 
2. Accomplish more when working together. Brainstorm ideas, provide better version control, and meet deadlines faster when you work in groups. The co-authoring experience for Microsoft® Word 2010, Microsoft PowerPoint 2010, Microsoft® Excel Web App and Microsoft OneNote shared notebooks let you work on a file with several people at once - even from different locations.
 
3. Enjoy the familiar Office experience from more locations and more devices. With Office 2010, you can get things done more easily, from more locations and more devices. Using a smartphone or virtually any computer with an Internet connection, you can work when and where you want to work.

Microsoft Office Web Apps
Extend your Office 2010 experience to the Web. Store your Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote files online and then access, view, edit, and share content through the web.
 
Microsoft Office Mobile 2010
Stay current and respond quickly using enhanced mobile versions of Office 2010 applications, specifically suited to your Windows Mobile-based smartphone.
  
4. Create powerful data insights and visuals. Track and highlight important trends with new data analysis and visualization features in Excel 2010. The new Sparklines feature delivers a clear and compact visual representation of your data with small charts within worksheet cells. Filter and segment your PivotTable data in multiple layers using Slicers to spend more time analyzing and less time formatting.
 
5. Deliver compelling presentations. Captivate your audience with personalized videos in your presentation. Insert and customize videos directly in PowerPoint 2010—trim, add fades and effects, or bookmark key points in the video to call attention to selected scenes. Videos you insert are now embedded by default, relieving you from managing and sending additional video files.
 
6.  Manage large volumes of e-mail with ease. Compress your long e-mail threads into a few conversations that can be categorized, filed, ignored, or cleaned up. The new Quick Steps feature let you perform multi-command tasks, such as reply and delete an e-mail in a single click, saving you time and in-box space.
 
7. Store and track all your ideas and notes in one place. Get the ultimate digital notebook for tracking, organizing, and sharing your text, picture, video and audio notes with OneNote 2010. New features such as version tracking, automatic highlighting, and Linked Notes give you more control over your notes so you’re always on top of where your ideas came from and the latest changes when working in teams.
 
8.  Get your message out instantly. Broadcast your PowerPoint presentation to a remote audience, whether or not they have PowerPoint installed. The new Broadcast Slide Show feature allows you to share your presentation through a web browser quickly without additional set up.
 
9. Get things done faster and easier. Microsoft Office Backstage™ view replaces the traditional File menu to give you a centralized space for all of your file management tasks, such as the ability to save, share, print, and publish. The enhanced Ribbon across Office 2010 applications lets you access commands quickly and customize tabs to personalize the experience to your work style.
 
10. Access work across devices and platforms. Enjoy the freedom of using Office 2010 from more locations on more devices. When you use Microsoft® Office 2010, you’re getting the familiar and intuitive Office experience across PCs, Smartphones, and Web browsers on the go.
 

Using one phone number, Google Voice is a FREE telephony service that allows for phone calls to find you wherever you may be.

With a Google Voice account you can have one phone number — forever.  As they say in the video, the number is tied to you, not a device or a location. This free service can easily be set up to provide you with complete control over which phone rings, voicemail transcription, caller grouping with customized greetings, sms notification of messages and many more features.

Complete this form to get on the waiting list.

Once you get an invitation for Google Voice, learn more about the service.

ALL ABOUT THE POLITICS OF GOOGLE VOICE
This phone service was formerly Grand Central until it was purchased in 2007 by Google. Google has improved the service so that it is becoming more readily available via invitation. There are some regulatory and business relationship controversies about the service.  Initial battles developed over the use of Google Voice on the iPhone, with AT&T concerned over ability to text and talk for free via an App. Read a Mashable article about banning Google Voice. Google still continues to claim they’ve been rejected, while Apple denies rejecting Google Voice.

Each and every day there are more than 30,000 new domains registered. There are also 2,000 domains that expire every day. Do you have direct control over your domain name? Or does your web hosting company? If the answer is your web hosting company… BEWARE!

If you have direct control over your domain name, you or your web development project manager (that’s me!) can login to your account (such as Godaddy.com) and control your DNS (Domain Name Servers). In the last month I have provided support to 2 different customers to reinstate their domain name because their hosting company messed up their annual renewal. One customer’s website was down for over 2 weeks right in the middle of a sign up campaign for a seminar! This customer had to pay $168.00 to reinstate her domain name and she had no access to her business email for over 2 weeks.

Expiring domain names is a real pain for website owners! Pay attention to the renewal notices that come into your email inbox. If you get an email that you aren’t sure is legitimate, CALL your domain registrar or CALL your web development project manager to check on this for you. Some registrars honor a 30 day “redemption period” allowing expired domains to be redeemed. It may be possible to save the registration within 30 days following expiration by contacting registrars during the 30 day domain redemption periods but you have to act quickly. If there is a problem, check out this link at the ICANN organization on redeeming domain names.

How does a domain owner find out who their registrar is if they’ve forgotten? A simple WHOIS inquiry will tell you everything about your domain. Public WHOIS records show the owner’s contact email, street address, phone and fax numbers. But that’s not all; it also shows the current registrar, DNS servers, and the creation and expiration dates of the domain name. Keep track of what’s going on with your domain name so you won’t have headaches as far as trying to redeem your URL name down the road.

This is by no means a complete list of Twitter apps - there are many, many others for desktop, iPhone apps, and mashups. Perhaps I’ll include them in a future post. For now, here’s a quick reference to perk your interest!

MyTweet16 When you want to step back into Twistory. View the first 16 tweets of any Twitter user.

TweetScan Search messages and profiles on Twitter and set up email alerts so you don’t miss a thing. Download an archive of your Tweets as a CSV for posterity.

Twellow A directory of people on Twitter sorted by business categories.

Tweetag Monitor Twitter from your iGoogle or Netvibes page in a tagcloud of your favorite keywords.

Twitangle Rate and tag your friends so you can filter by rating or tags to find those essential Twits.

Twalala Lets you filter streams related to particular keywords or usernames permanently or just until the shouting stops.

Twitterless Takes Qwitter one step further and tells you when people stop following you and graphs your follower history.

Twitree Displays your followers in a tree structure, complete with their latest tweets.

Doesfollow Enter two user names and find out if they are following each other.

FriendorFollow Helps you see who’s following you but you aren’t following back and vice versa.

Tweetworks Allows you to create groups and view threaded discussions.

Tweetparty Create groups and send direct messages straight to your team simultaneously.

Tweetstats Graph usage and trends for your own posts or friends.

Tweetcube Share files up to 10mb via Twitter.

TwitterFeed Feed your most recent blog posts title directly to Twitter with a link to the post.

MrTweet Helps identify those followers you need to follow but haven’t yet and view the influencers in your network.

TwitterFriends Quickly view your network by who’s active, who’s not and basic stats on activity.

LoudTwitter Posts your Tweets to your blog.

A what a con? It’s a web site icon, usually a very small version of your logo, that is displayed in your browser’s URL bar, RSS aggregator, and favorites folder. Favicon was originally short for “favorites icon”. 

The original favicon feature was created by, none other than, Microsoft for Internet Explorer. Most web browsers support the favicon feature now that it has been enhanced to conform to the World Wide Web Consortium recommendations.

Here are good examples of favicons:   

Why would you want to create a favicon? Well… that’s a simple answer. It adds a professional touch to your site and also makes your site stand out in your surfers favorites list.

So how do you create a favicon? Well… that’s pretty easy.

1. Go to http://www.htmlkit.com/services/favicon/ and upload your logo.

2. Click on “Generate Favicon.ico

3. Voila, you now have a favicon for your web site!

How do I get it to work?
Upload the favicon.ico file [can also use a .png file] to the root folder of your website. Note: Some sites may require the favicon.ico file in every folder. Also, enter the following code in the <head></head> portion of your web site’s code:

<link rel=”shortcut icon” href=”/images/favicon.png” mce_href=”/images/favicon.png” />

Are there other ways to get favicons?
Sure. Go to IconBuffet if you please. They have a fun system where you can get free icons and trade them with friends.

Check out the Your Royal Webness favicon.
At this writing, I am using a 16×16 image.

Other References
Wikipedia’s article, “Favicon” 

Have fun with it. It’s easy to create your own favicon and it gives your site that extra edge! Favicons definately boost your brand, identify your site, and enhance your online presence!

LinkedIn is a business-oriented social networking
site founded in December 2002.  As of December
2007, its site traffic was 3.2 milion visitors per
month, up 485% from the end of 2006.[1] 

To cut to the proverbial chase, LinkedIn has a
post-money valuation of approximately
$1 billion.[2]

Here’s some questions to ponder:

1.  Who do you trust in your past and present business relationships enough that you would make a personal recommendation?
2. Better yet, who are your professional business connections?
3. Are you willing to answer occasional quick questions from your colleagues, customers, or managers to help people?
4. Are you in an online discussion group with your peers in your field of expertise?
5. Have you lost contact with associates who would give you a great recommendation?

In keeping with the term “It’s a Small World”, you can enjoy the following benefits of maintaining a profile at LinkedIn:

• Benefit #1: a trusted contact network which can be used to gain an introduction to someone you wish to know through a mutual, trusted contact
• Benefit #2: a way to find jobs, people and business opportunities recommended by someone in one’s contact network
• Benefit #3: employers can list jobs and search for potential candidates
• Benefit #4: connections can get introduced directly to key decision makers
• Benefit #5: LinkedIn Groups allows user to join alumni, industry, or professional groups you need to be in to keep your career fresh

LinkedIn can make a big difference in your career. Your LinkedIn network should be easy to tap for recommendations, insights, and inquiries. Everyone in your company should have a profile, your product people should have profiles, and your technicians should have profiles, to serve as an example.  It’s a good choice to  make the most of it for you and your contacts. So go ahead and get going: create or update your public profile and be sure to upload a photo. Putting your face with your name is important and advantageous in many situations. You can always set your profile to private if this is an issue.

To learn more about LinkedIn, watch this 3 minute video that explains simply what value LinkedIn adds to your professional life. For help or advise with your LinkedIn account, contact Your Royal Webness.  To join our growing network, visit Sharon Sutherlin’s LinkedIn profile.

1. The Private Equity Value of LinkedIn.com to News Corp and the Wall Street Journal, by Beckel, Simon Dec 2007.2. LinkedIn networks way to $53-million investment. The Los Angeles Times (2008-06-17.

Did you know that AVG is quickly becoming one of the most popular antivirus programs available for its speed and low memory usage. Norton and McAfee, however, still hold the majority of the lion’s share in the market place.

If you are already using Grisoft’s antivirus program, known as AVG, you should know that Version 8 has been released.  When upgrading from a previous version of AVG, you do not need to uninstall your old version first. The installation procedure of AVG 8 will remove the previous version. You will notice that the user interface has changed dramatically from versions 7 and 7.5 and it is simply sweet! Of particular importance in version 8 is that it installs the Yahoo toolbar. If you are a detester of toolbars, be sure to do a custom install and uncheck this option!

Quick tips about the FREE Version
Even with the release of version 8, AVG is still available for free to home users. You can download it by visiting www.free.grisoft.com. Technical support is not available to users of the free version of AVG. 

Quick tip about the PAID version
The paid version of the the software includes some minor additions, including instant messaging and web page scans.

Do not under any circumstances run two antivirus products on one computer. It’s recommended that you uninstall any other antivirus products, such as Norton or McAfee, if you install AVG.

A prospective customer recently asked, “What is the first step to take to get a website”. That’s a good beginning question in what seems to be, for many people, a complex process to establish one’s online presence. 

I call this a green question. This question is greener than the greenest blade of grass on the greenest mountain in Ireland on the sunniest day of Spring.

Registering your domain name builds credibility and creates an identity for you or your business. Who are you more likely to buy from, Jane@yahoo.com or Jane@bettermarketing.com? It is extremely important that you take the first step and register your own domain name. At the very least, the name will become your property and, depending on the amount of work you put into building your web presence, may become very valuable one day.

It’s simple: 1) Search for a domain name and, 2) Purchase a domain name. This article will address how to take the first step in establishing your online presence. 

Search for a Domain Name

You will need a personalized address of your own on the Internet that people can find over and over again. Choosing a domain name requires a process of it’s own and you want to get the most from your domain name.  Here are some steps to take and things to consider.  

• Go to WhoIs.net and begin your search. Think of a short, memorable, descriptive domain name and type it in the WhoIs lookup field to see if it is available. Notice that .com [dot com] is not your only choice here. There are 30 different extensions you can now use to effectively describe yourself or your company. New domain extensions are being approved on a continuous basis.
• The maximum size allowed for a domain name is 67 characters, however keep your domain name as short as possible. Create a memorable name that is easy to describe over the phone. Good domain names are dwindling so if you must, use hyphens in your domain name (never described as “dash”) to differentiate from your competition.
• If your domain name is hard to spell, you may consider registering the various common misspelling’s of its name as well. Web hosting companies provide domain forwarding services that manage these domain names. This will make it even easier for people to find you on the world wide web.

Purchase a Domain Name

• You can shop around for the best price to satisfy your consumer instincts. You will pay a yearly fee for your domain for between $5 - $15 typically. Certain extensions can run close to $50 a year. You can also find specials on recycled domain names for under $4.
• Your Royal Webness recommends http://godaddy.com for purchasing your domain and managing your registration. You can also use godaddy.com to search for a domain name and you will see that GoDaddy has provided a tool to suggest names that they believe are similar to the name you are looking for.

Additional Notes

• The Federal Trade Commission [FTC] advises consumers to protect themselves by reading about domain names at the ICANN website. 
• Beware of companies that promise you a domain name with pre-registration. Pre-registering for a domain name does not guarantee you will get the domain name. Trademarks are a better route. If you already have a trademark, you get first pick among new domain names. 

Recommendation

Once you have your own domain name, stop using your sbcglobal.net or gmail email address, for example, for your business communications. Shop around and purchase web hosting that provides webmail with POP3 protocol. Then you can create a business-specific email address that communicates a professional image.

This is a great Project Management tip for you! Have you heard of MediaFire? This is an especially sweet tip for people who send and receive large files, such as videos. Thanks to Doug Collins of DM Productions, LLC for sharing the MediaFire tip, I am sending my webinar file to him as we speak so he can upload it to YouTube.com, convert it to flash video and then stream the video to each of our websites.

I am uploading my large webinar file for free, which incidently is ”3 Easy Steps to Developing Your Communications Plan“ that I had last night, and then I will just copy the link and send it to Doug for download off the MediaFire server. How cool is that?