The Company Web

Once you get into the GTD (Getting Things Done) methodology, you will want a system to store and organize all of the “stuff” you’ve been carrying around in your head (and all the sticky notes stuck everywhere). For my money, there is nothing better than BackPack.

I use BackPack for organizing today’s todos, waiting items, project notes, future ideas…pretty much everything. I have a shortcut on my desktop that I use whenever I have an idea I don’t want to forget. And since it’s on the web, I can get to it from anywhere.

The BackPack website is so easy to use, anyone can be an expert in minutes. Basically, BackPack allows you to set up pages that contain any combination of lists, notes, files, or pictures. It’s ridiculously easy to add, edit or delete items on pages. You can move things around by drag-and-drop. You can add tags to pages for organization.

There are write boards for group discussions, and a calendar for reminders.

You can email items to your pages, and request emails from your pages.

While it’s great for organizing your own stuff, you can also share selected pages with other designated users. You could even use it to share information inside your whole company, similar to an intranet. (Though, it is available as a hosted solution only).

There are different plans available depending on how much you want to store and for how many users. For my own use I have the Solo Plan. It’s only $7/month and includes 1 user, 100 pages, a personal calendar, 1 GB for files & photos, and SSL security. There are no long term contracts and you can upgrade, downgrade, or cancel your account at any time.

Sign up for your FREE 30 day trial BackPack account and give it a try. You’ll be up and running in 30 seconds!

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Getting Things Done is THE book for reducing stress and, of course, getting things done. It started a whole new category of products and services known as “GTD”.

One of the most important ideas in this book is how to reduce stress by eliminating “open loops”. Most people keep a “todo list” in their heads. This list has everything from taking your vitamin to refinancing your house. David Allen calls these “todos” open loops. Your mind keeps churning all of these open loops all  the time so that it can bring them up to you as needed. Unfortunately, the “as needed” is often at times when you can not take action… Like when you’re in the shower and that “pick up milk on the way home” todo pops into your head. These open loops tend to keep you from focusing on the task at hand and therefore, cause stress, and make you less effective.

This is just one example. Getting Things Done presents an entire system of dealing with things, closing the open loops and handling the “todos” more efficiently. There are many ideas, many of which will strike you as “a blinding flash of the obvious”. Simple ideas, that together, make up the GTD system.

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Ever since Adobe released the free Adobe Reader, the PDF file format has become “the standard” for electronically sending documents. Unlike other formats, PDF files will look exactly the same when printed or viewed on different computers, operating systems, browsers, etc.

Unfortunately, Adobe is very proud of their Adobe Acrobat PDF creation software. And when I say “proud”, I mean “expensive”. I’m sure their software is very good, but for those of us who just have an occasional desire to create a pdf file, it’s hard to justify.

I found a FREE software utility called CutePDF that let’s you create pdf files as easily as you can print. When installed, it acts just like a printer. You can go into Microsoft Office or any other program that allows you to choose a printer, and “print” directly to a pdf file. It’s that easy.

The software is for Windows only.

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How much are you paying for business telephone service?

Until recently I was paying over $100.00 a month for a single line business phone and POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service).

Then I found Ring Central. It was recommended in one of the Business Success Tips podcasts that I listen to. This service is amazing!

 
For less than half of what I was paying, I now have:

• An 800 number
• A local number
• A dedicated fax number
• Voicemail that I can access anywhere
• Outbound fax software that works just like a printer
• Conferencing
• 10 extensions

Plus, I can set up rules for each of the lines/extensions. These rules tell Ring Central how to direct the call. I can set rules based on time of day, day of week, or caller id. I can tell Ring Central to call one number, say my office phone, for 4 rings and then start ringing my cell phone for 3 rings. And then, if I still don’t answer, to transfer to voicemail. Or I can have it ring both numbers at the same time! While all of this is going on, I can have the caller hear ringing, music, or even custom messages.

I can set up a “dial by name directory” that a caller can access to find the extension for a particular person or service.

Each extension can have its own set of rules. Perfect for my virtual office! Each employee can have an extension that calls them whereever they are.

To replace the POTS service in my office, I bought a VoIP analog adapter. This is a little box that connects a regular telephone to the internet. I bought the box from Ring Central for around $20 and it came fully configured and ready to plug in. The digital line from Ring Central costs around $9 a month. To use this, you need a high speed internet connection (broadband, cable, DSL, Fios, etc.) So now I’m using the same telephone I was using before.

There are even more features that haven’t tried yet, like call screening, etc. Ring Central has more features than the PBX we paid thousands for at a previous company.

Getting all of this for less than half of what I was paying just blows me away!

I highly recommend Ring Central! You can even try it out for FREE!

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You’ve probably heard about GMail. Access email from anywhere with almost any web browser… Outlook, Thunderbird, and iPhone compatible (POP or IMAP)… over 6 GIGabytes of storage… searchable… free…

But have you heard about GMail for Domains? Now you can use GMail with your own domain name (like support@TheCompanyWeb.com) ! And you can have up to FIFTY (50) email accounts. Each Email account can have over 6 GIGabytes of storage. You can have distribution lists, forwarding, catchall address, spam filter, vacation responders…the whole shabang! And the price? FREE!

Why would you host your own mail server when you can have over 300 GIGabyes (50 x 6) of storage for FREE? Some Hosting companies want to charge you $16 or more per year per mailbox! And their max size is only 500 MegaBytes! ( I’m Not Saying who…  )

GMail has one of the best SPAM filters I’ve seen. Almost none of the SPAM gets through, but it very rarely calls my good email SPAM. Also included is virus and phishing protection. 

And, of course, you can search through your email with the Google search engine.

Unlike, MSN, Yahoo, or AOL, Gmail does not add advertising to the end of your emails, either. That looks very unprofessional for a business.

And, even with all of this, Gmail is only part of what you get FREE. Google Apps for Domains also includes integrated contact lists, calendars, documents, web pages if you want to take advantage of those also.

Is it reliable? Google only promises 99.99% uptime for it’s enterprise (over 50 users) version, but I’ve used Gmail for Domains for about 2 years, and it’s never been down when I needed it.

It’s hard to go wrong with this one. Check it out.

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How many passwords and user ids do you have? How do you keep track of them all? You’re not using the same passwords everywhere are you?

Doing so much of my business on the web, I have accumulated hundreds of passwords. There is no way I could remember all of them. I certainly don’t want to keep written lists around for someone to find. I used to keep a spreadsheet encrypted with PGP, but that was very cumbersome.

Enter Password Safe, a FREE software utility for Windows. This program allows you to enter and organize all of your userids and passwords into a “database”. You can also enter urls and notes. Password Safe keeps all of this information safely encrypted using the Blowfish algorithm. All you have to remember is a single password which is the combination to the safe.

What happens if something goes wrong with the “database”? Of course, that could always happen. Password Safe minimizes this possiblity by creating encrypted backups before each change and keeps a configurable number of backups. I have used Password Safe for over a year, upgraded twice, and never had a single problem.

Password Safe shows catagorized groups of your passwords. It allows you to right-click and copy a userid or password to the clipboard, then right-click and browse to the url. It makes it very easy to access multiple passworded systems.

Give it a shot. I think you’ll like it.

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I highly recommend WordPress software for setting up almost any kind of web site. Orginally released five years ago (today) as version 0.7, it is now at version 2.5.1. This FREE software allows you to easily create a website with minimal effort. For the purist, WordPress is blogging software, but it has gone way beyond that.

The software is very easy to install and configure. In fact, a lot of shared hosting companies have a one-click installation! WordPress is written in PHP and runs very well in inexpensive shared Linux web hosting accounts (more about that later).

After installing WordPress, you can then upload and configure a “theme”, which customizes the look and feel of the website. There are thousands of themes available, most of them are FREE.

You say you don’t want a blog. You want a “real” website? Not a problem. WordPress can be used as a CMS (Content Management System), providing the structure and administrative functions. This allows you to focus on the ever-important content of your website.

WordPress is even coded with software “hooks” which allow third-parties to create “plugins”  that can provide all kinds of functionality. Like themes, there are thousands of plugins available, most of them free. Some examples of the functions that plugins can provide are: showing the most recent comments, displaying a list of eBay items, creating a sitemap…the list goes on and on. Plugins are as easy to install as themes. Simply upload the plugin to your website, enable it on the Admin screen, and set any needed parameters.

Whatever kind of website you want to create, WordPress puts you way ahead of the development curve. Ok, you ask “what about support?”. There are some very active WordPress support forums. The last time I had a question, I got an answer on the forum within about an hour.

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