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Category: Malik-Moosa-Soomar

Facebook Cover Photo Features Webconsuls Team


Friday April 13, 2012

Reading Time: 6 minutes

Two weeks ago I talked about adding some finishing touches to your Facebook business page. In particular, I urged you to create your business Facebook “cover photo” and to think through what message you wanted to send with that photo. Of late, I used our Webconsuls Facebook page to feature our clients’ Facebook cover photos. All the while, I was working with our Webconsuls’ team members to determine what our cover photo should say about us.

Here is a little of how this process went: We are not a traditional brick and mortar business, so we knew we wouldn’t present a photo of our storefront. We also knew that our team members live in five different states and three time zones, so getting together for a group shot was not going to happen. Additionally, we felt that taking the approach that we use on our Twitter page, that is listing our services, would not really make us unique or tell our story.

So how do we tell Webconsuls’ story? What makes us unique?  I remember when Dick and Dennis first decided to form Webconsuls. They went back and forth about what to name their business, how would they convey their vision.  The good news is they committed this history to a press release and here is what they wrote November 16, 1999.

‘The name Webconsuls was chosen very deliberately. A consul is an official appointed by a government to advance the commercial interest of its citizens in a foreign country. Webconsuls is conceived as describing “a firm which advances the commercial interest of its clients on the World Wide Web.” As Dick Fay recently remarked, “Web sites do not automatically produce dollars. Success is realized when web sites are carefully marketed and targeted, those activities being integrated into a tailored, well–orchestrated business campaign.”‘

And so, between a few emails and phone calls the Webconsuls’ team decided our cover photo should be a collage of the team members. It is not about being techies or understanding all the latest software and tools, but more about being people who work with other people to promote the success of our clients’ businesses. It is a collaborative process and we think that is what our current cover photo says.

webconsuls facebook cover
Webconsuls’ FACEBOOK Cover Photo April 2012 – click on it to enlarge!

What do you think? Notice I said current, because we can refresh it and keep it vital. Like any collage it tells a story…Dennis, Judy and Dick meeting 31 years ago at an ARCO training seminar, Malik’s college graduation and enjoying a California sunset, Heidi receiving her master’s from NYU and “horsing around”, Alycia and Bill celebrating their wedding in Hawaii, Dick supporting his beloved DUKE and the Phillies, Dennis meeting with clients, Daniel working with animals and ‘dressing to the nines’, Keith enjoying life and supporting the Toronto Blue jays…the story goes on.

We look forward to your comments or stop by our FACEBOOK page and “like” us.

Reading Time: 8 minutes
reviewing 2010Image via Wikipedia
Webconsuls’ 2010/2011 Winter Newsletter
If 2010 was nothing else, it was a fast year. It seems only yesterday Dick Fay and I were working on our 2009 Winter Newsletter and now here we are writing our 2010/2011 Winter Newsletter. We want to take a few minutes to: Thank our Webconsuls’ clients, introduce our newest clients, highlight some marketing and software ideas, suggest two resolutions for you and support our not-for-profit clients who assist children in need.
Thanking our clients…
Webconsuls and our team appreciates our clients. We learn from each and every client by optimizing their sites, designing new sites, building blogs, coaching our clients on new software and responding to their marketing needs. As you may know, we have clients across the United States (actually in 11 states) and in two foreign countries, representing industries from hospitality to law, health care to home maintenance, real estate to retail, sports and recreation to performing arts. There is never a dull day.
Introducing our clients who joined us in 2010…
We invite you to meet our new clients and visit their websites.
Highlighting some marketing and software suggestions…

 

We know the internet is fluid. It changes daily. We try to keep our clients abreast of these changes by writing this blog, researching our clients’ requests, providing news’ feeds on our website, and publishing our newsletter. Over the past few years we have blogged a lot about social media/Google/Twitter. We have built blogs for our clients, we have worked with our clients to establish their Facebook business page.  Additionally, over the past year…
  • Dick has been particularly active assisting our clients by adding shopping carts with either PayPal or Authorize.net functionality.
  • Dennis worked with clients to add a LIVEPerson feature for online customer engagement.
  • Malik, our lead designer and web developer, is also proficient in designing clients’ e-newsletters using Constant Contact and Vertical Response.
  • Keith, our PPC specialist, works closely with several of our PPC clients to utilize phone conversion optimization software.  
  • Alycia, our branding expert, has been focused on improving Client Web 2.0 and specific SEO-related enhancements.
Suggesting two resolutions for you…

 

The first is to start reading our Webconsuls’ blog on a regular basis.  As we said above, with our blog we communicate new information that we think is important to on-line marketing and social media.


The second is to start and maintain your own blog.  Our clients with blogs generally receive more traffic than clients in similar fields without them.  Blogger now allows you to easily monitor your blog stats.  A blog is easy and relatively inexpensive to create.  Routinely writing posts can be a challenge, but it can  be rewarding with more virtual exposure, traffic, and new business.  You might start by also reading some of our clients’ blogs like –  Delytes – A ‘green’ fine foods company  or Attorney Carilyn Ibsen’s blog  or Attorney Will Bruzzo’s blog.

Finally supporting our not-for-profit clients…

 

This year, as in years past, Webconsuls made a donation in honor of our clients to those not-for- profit clients who work to support children and families in need.

Olive Crest Homes and Services for Abused Children
Since 1973, Olive Crest has transformed the lives of over 50,000 abused, neglected, and at-risk children and their families.

The Promises Foundation Miriam’s House
The Promises Foundation is committed to restoring hope for families by creating a safe environment for mothers and their children to grow and develop the tools they require to live meaningful and self-sufficient lives.

The Forrest General Healthcare Foundation is the philanthropic arm of Forrest General Hospital. The foundation helps ensure that the hospital’s vision of C.A.R.E. becomes a reality for the 17 county region that the hospital serves. Initiatives include the Inpatient Hospice Home Project, the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit Renovation Project and the Spiritual Grounds at Pine Grove.

We wish you a healthy and prosperous New Year. Let us know if 2011 is the year you want to add some new features to your on-line marketing. We will be happy to discuss these opportunities and plan a strategy with you.

Sincerely,
Dennis, Dick and Judy

Reading Time: 6 minutes
fit-PC Slim with car keysImage via Wikipedia

Do you ever fall asleep at night with the TV on? I think we all do this on occasion, some more often than not. The falling asleep part is not so bad; it is the waking up in the early morning hours to a strange infomercial. Have you noticed how these infomercials seem to make sense at 4:00AM? The other day I woke up to a real commercial for computer back-up software. I breathed a sigh of relief because we already use this software.

Can we talk about backing-up our computers?  This does not need to be a long discussion. I will say: “Schedule a regular back-up of your computer.” And all you have to say is, “Ok, will do.”  You might think this is a no-brainer. Maybe you have already learned the hard way: your PC becomes infected with a virus, sudden electrical surge wipes out your hard drive, you lose your laptop, you drop your laptop. Actually the list is endless.

We come to know and expect that our websites are backed-up daily by our host, but what about all of those word documents, photos, logos, pdfs and gifs that are stored on our own computers. Just the other day we received this email from a client:

“Give me a call. Got a speed bump. Accidentally deleted my web page folder. Fortunately I have done full and daily backups. Did a (full backup) restore from 3/7/10, then tried daily restore up to yesterday. Unfortunately the back up software did not include the html folder (it is in the job description). So now I am left with a 3/7/10 folder with the old website links. I will be calling back up tech support this morning to see if we can salvage. If not, and there is no way to convert pdf files to word perfect, we need to do a global link change again. Fortunately I can work off the website to make needed changes and additions.”

Malik Moosa, our web developer and designer, worked with the client and sent this follow-up message:

“I’m glad the files I had worked out for you. I would recommend copying those manually to a backup drive or on CD/DVD just to avoid and accidental deletions in the future.”

Be prepared. Backing-up isn’t hard to do. Dennis uses Carbonite. This is not an advertisement for Carbonite; it is a factual statement. He found it particularly useful when he had to get a new PC and he wanted to make sure that he had all of his files backed-up. Then he was able to do a restore. This is an on-line process, automatic, secure and reasonably priced. On my PC I use an external Seagate hard-drive. It is set to back-up my PC every day at 2:00AM.

Remember, not backing-up is like saying you didn’t know to purchase flood insurance even though you live in a flood plain. How about you?  What is your back-up plan?  Did you have to learn the hard way?

Speaking of learning the hard way, I am going to leave you today with a YouTube video from Sex and the City, Season 4, Episode 56 – “My Motherboard, My Self”

 

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Reading Time: 4 minutes

Exactly two months ago I wrote a blog about Twitter and the things that I learn from Tweets. That day I made the following observation:

“Here is some other interesting news I picked up by following Rick Klau. On March 11th Blogger announced a new Blogger Template designer. The reviews so far have been very exciting. I am thinking of trying it to create a new personal blog. What do you think of that idea?”

Guess what? Not one of my Webconsuls’ readers offered any feedback about me creating a personal blog.

Quite unexpectedly on June 5th, I watched the movie Julie and Julia. Have you seen the movie? What I love is that it tells a true story and allows us to eavesdrop on the lives of two couples from different generations struggling with identity and goals.  And of course, it also tells a successful story of a BLOG.  So, as the movie closed, the wheels were spinning in my head. On Sunday June 6th I joined in a #blogchat and the rest is history.

I invite you to visit Judy’s OP-ED blog, particularly the About Judy’s OP-ED page where you learn how #blogchat influenced my decision.

But today I would like our clients to mull over these facts:

  • Webconsuls has many clients and a good number of these clients have great blogs. These blogs have been customized to match their websites. They actively post interesting news about their business or their industry. You can see these clients on our Blogroll (in the left margin.)
  • Many of our clients look for guidance about blogging, both technical and creative guidance
  • Creating a personal blog can serve as a training ground for your business blog, allowing you to get comfortable with the software, adding images, videos, links, etc.
  • A personal blog can be a virtual family scrapbook. You can ‘turn the lens on your family’, involve other family members to participate with comments, be guest bloggers, etc.
  • You can keep your personal blog private, only share it with designated readers.

I want you to know that I built my personal blog by myself. I was tempted to call Malik Moosa-Soomar, but I felt strongely that I needed to learn how to do this by flying solo.

Now I hope you will read it, ask questions, post comments, and join in the fun.

And here for today’s fun is a trailer for Julie and Julia. 

Reading Time: 2 minutes
google maps traffic

Ever wonder how Google Maps can generate traffic data? It’s quite simple how it works.

When you turn on ‘My Location’ on your mobile phone, it sends data which includes your location and speed to Google’s headquarters which then provides accurate traffic data on Google Maps. With the amount of people using Google Maps now, it also provides the traffic on local streets (major streets that is).

Google Maps for Mobile is free. The website is compatible with Android, BlackBerry, Java enabled phones, Windows Mobile, Palm OS, Symbian S60, and of course the iPhone.

Reading Time: 3 minutes

LeapFish.com is a search engine portal that allows you to search through Google, Yahoo, and MSN (Now known as Bing). Some say that LeapFish might even be competing with Google but I don’t believe it can since its main search results are based off of Google’s engine.

LeapFish does have some nice features though; it displays the Market Summary, top News, and Latest Videos from Youtube. The interesting thing about the videos is you don’t have to hit play, simply place your mouse over the thumbnail and it will begin playing.

The search is nice because you have the ability to compare results from the top three engines and see where your site ranks based on the keywords you enter.

As for advertising on LeapFish you pay for the keywords as would with any other PPC Campaign except you keep the spot until you are willing to sell it. For Example, if you purchase “California Drug Rehab” you hold that spot for every time someone searches that until you want to sell it. It’s interesting but not sure if it will last.

LeapFish has also been known for taking their client’s money and it’s possible those rumors began because of their advertisement slots.

Have you used it? What are your thoughts on this website?

Reading Time: 2 minutes

USAA Bank allows you to deposit checks using the iPhone. USAA Bank already has an App on the iPhone, as do most banks. However, USAA Bank is the the first to allow their customers to simply take a picture and send in the deposit. This feature will only be available in San Antonio, TX initially and then grow, depending on the results from the first dispatch.

Customers take a picture of the front and back of the check with the iPhone’s camera and send it directly to the clearing system. The paper check can then be thrown away or filed for your records.

Check at the App Store this week for updates to see if you are able to deposit your check as well.

Reading Time: 2 minutes

PriorityClient.com enables businesses to enhance their relationships with their clients at a more personal level. Imagine having a service that would mail greeting cards to your preferred clients  birthdays, important occasions, and holidays.

Your client will never know it didn’t come directly from you. They even personalize it by having your digital signature printed on the cards for that personal touch. You can choose from a variety of cards and gifts to send. They have created five different categories which allow you to organize your clients and send gift card certificates as well.

Quite simple how it works: once you sign up, add your clients, select what you want to send during birthdays or holidays and they will do the rest. You will also receive an email notification on the day of their birthday to remind you of it.

We’ve all seen card services for consumers but rarely do you hear of a Business – Client relationship service.

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Top three remedies for canker sore treatment to relieve pain. The remedies help relieve the pain and speed up the healing process of canker sores/cold sores/mouth ulcers.

Different names: Canker Sore, aphthous ulcer, oral ulcer, aphthous stomatitis, Sutton’s Disease
Don’t know what a canker sore is? Read the Wiki here.

1) Fast Treatment: I found this to be very painful but very effective. Take a pinch of brown sugar and apply it to the infected area. Repeat two to three times to make sure it stays there and leave it there. Do this after brushing your teeth before going to bed and after breakfast. Brown sugar sucks the acid out allowing it to heal.

2) Fast Treatment: Take a glass of hot water and salt which most of you may already know and add a piece of alum salt rock. In my family we buy alum at the local Indian grocery store and it is a natural antibiotic salt rock which can heal many cuts and wounds. Once you have the hot water and salt, drop the piece of alum in there and gargle with it (do not swallow the water). Repeat this multiple times throughout the day.

3) Pain Relief: It’s very hard to eat or drink water so to relieve the pain temporarily I would recommend using Zilactin B. I have used Oragel, Anbesol, Cloraseptic but none of those work anywhere close to Zilactin B.

Here is a page that provides more steps you can take if my recommendations did not work out for you: http://www.wikihow.com/Treat-Canker-Sores-or-Mouth-Ulcers
(Thanks Judy for finding this link)

What are other remedies that have helped you? Share your input as I get these once a month.

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Navigon just released their GPS for the iPhone. Temporarily priced at $69.99 till August 15th then the price will jump to $99.99.

It’s a great price if you don’t want to carry an additional piece of hardware around when you have the iPhone already available to you. The only flaw is you cannot use your phone while Navigon is running.

Navigon on the iPhone works even if you do not have the data plan. It takes over 1GB of storage space. It downloads the maps directly to your phone (just as other handheld navigation systems). Although Navigon released their iPhone App before TomTom and Garmin did, TomTom has already announced that they will release their application with an iPhone car kit enabling you to charge the phone and use it as a hands free device.

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Push notifications will not work on your unlocked iphone. There is a problem with push which appeared few weeks ago when Apple released the iPhone OS 3.0 which included support for Push notifications. Weather the application is free or a paid version it will not work.

Keep in mind if you did not go through the process of unlocking your iPhone, which means you are still using AT&T as your carrier, you will not encounter this problem. I personally have not tested the push notifications personally yet but majority of the people using it on an unlocked phone said it either did not work or was not working correctly.

Will there be a solution? Probably not. Apple decided to sell the iPhone to AT&T and no other carrier. Therefore, this is not a problem Apple plans on resolving. Perhaps in the future if the iPhone is available on other carriers such as T-Mobile, then there might a possibility.

Have you tested your iPhone’s Push notification?

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Everyone has heard the frequency noise on their speakers when a phone call comes in. The same noise you hear when you receive a text message or when any other connection being made to a cell tower from your GSM phone.

The iPhone apparently makes this frequency noise continuously for some people. I happen to be one of those people and cannot figure out why. It is possible the EMI frequency noise is from one of my apps causing it but I have not confirmed it yet.

Is there a solution? Yes! After researching online, I found one home-made solution and another store bought which I have not tried yet.

1) If you take a piece of aluminum foil paper and place it underneath the phone while sitting at your desk, your computer speakers will not make this frequency noise as much. For me, it reduced it nearly 90%. It will still make the noise when you get a phone call or text message but at least it won’t be continuous.

2) Use Ferrite beads on the wire connecting to your speakers. This will reduce the EMI (electro-magnetic interference). Radio Shack has some.

Do you have any tips on how to reduce the EMI frequency interference?

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Downloading the original pictures uploaded to Picasa all at once is easy if you’re using Firefox. DownloadThemAll is a plug-in for Firefox which can be used for many things but I have found it most useful for me when needing access to original pictures from Picasa.

1) Download the plug-in DownloadThemAll and install it to your Firefox browser.
2) Go to the Picasa album where you want to download the pictures from
3) Picasa provides the RSS feed for the pictures so all you have to do is click on RSS on the right hand side of that page to bring up the feed.
4) Still with me? Now just right click on the screen and click on DownloadThemAll.
4-a) Save the files in a directory you specify and select Images under the filters.
5) PRESS START

One thing I am still trying to figure out with Picasa is how to display a random image from the album using the RSS feed… Any suggestions?

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Why would anyone want to risk breaking an iPhone worth few hundred dollars to use on another carrier? They say unlocking any phone allows you to use it on other carriers. Jailbreaking an iPhone allows you to install applications that have not been approved by the App Store (which also have the possibility of causing harm to your phone).

Now, why would someone want to risk buying an expensive phone for that? A better approach to using an iPhone is just signing up with AT&T. The best part of having an iPhone with AT&T is support. Since they are the only carriers for that phone, they are the only ones who can provide network support.

What are your thoughts on the risk involved with unlocking/jailbreaking your iPhone?

Reading Time: 3 minutes
A Southwest Airlines Boeing 737-3H4 A Southwest Airlines Boeing 737-3H4 aircraft (N540SW) pictured on the tarmac at Los Angeles International Airport in Los Angeles, California, United States in the airline’s original desert gold livery (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Airlines charge to check in each bag. In fact, the rate goes up depending on how many you check in. My wife, Zaheen, flew out to Austin, TX yesterday on Southwest Airlines and it turns out that they don’t charge for the first two bags. That’s how it use to be with all the airlines but seems like they are the only ones around that do not charge for the first two bags still.

Here are the airlines that I know of that charge
American Airline, America West/US Airways, Delta:
$15 for the first checked piece. ($30 on a round trip flight)
$25 for the second checked piece. ($25 + $15 = $40 x 2 = $80 on a round trip flight)

Next time you’re purchasing your ticket, depending on how many bags you’re checking in, it might be cheaper to fly Southwest than its competitors.

Oh and did I mention Southwest still serves snacks =)

Reading Time: 2 minutes

You’ve seen the Digg button on most blogs but how often have you seen a tweet button?

Twitter has been growing since it was developed and is more of a social trend to be on twitter more than anything else. Now you can allow your business or personal blog posts to be tweeted.

Here is how it works, Tweet Meme allows you to tweet a specific page or a specific blog post and provides the code for it (very friendly). What it does not show you is how to add it on a blogger template.

Here is how you can modify your blogger template to include a tweet button how we have here (look on the top right).

1) Locate the following line: <BlogDateHeader>
2) Place the following code:
<div style=”float:right;”>
<script type=”text/javascript”>
tweetmeme_url = ‘STEP-3‘;
</script>
<script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://tweetmeme.com/i/scripts/button.js”> </script></div>
</script>

3) change STEP-3 to <$BlogItemUrl$>
 
A bit of HTML or blogger template experience may be required.

Contact Webconsuls to get a FREE quote on a custom personal or business blog.

Reading Time: 2 minutes

INQ Mobile released a Facebook phone last year and plans on releasing a Twitter phone by the end of this year. No information has been released whether the phone will be released in North America or Europe. It should have a QWERTY keypad to easily post a 140 character message on twitter but not confirmed.

The phone will cost less than $140 and given the price, you can’t expect to have any high-end features on this device.

Personally, I feel that phones with the web browser allow you to access social networking sites. The only thing this phone has going for it is the price and somehow making it a reduced monthly fee for using the data plan on most service providers.

Will this handset last in the mobile market or has the Twitter trend run its course?

Reading Time: 2 minutes

You’ve heard of the Android Market for Google’s G1. You’ve heard of the App Store for Apple’s iPhone. Now we have the Ovi Store for Nokia phones.

Nokia launched the Ovi Store on 5/26/09 allowing developers to add their programs to an online catalog for Nokia users to download. The store has over 50 Nokia handsets that are compatible at the moment.

Nokie use to be one of the greatest phone manufacturers (and some believe they still are). Does it still have a chance in the industry where giant competitors such as Apple and Google already have a large market share?

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Sprint announced they will release the Pre on June 6th, 2009. New users will get it for $199.99 after $100 MIR. Right now, the Palm Pre will only be released to the US market. Sad to say, it’s not one of those phones you can unlock since it’s running on CDMA (Unlike T-Mobile and ATT running on GSM).

Sprint plans on having their $199 8GB Palm Pre compete with the new 16GB iPhone which is supposidly going to be released for the same price but after the Pre.

The Palm Pre running on WebOS runs applications on basic html, js, and css. Making an application easier for developers to design applications using desktop language.

How do you feel it will compete in the market with the iPhone and G1?

Reading Time: 3 minutes

T-Mobile G1 users will be getting an OTA (over-the-air) upgrade to the Android 1.5 “Cupcake” which is being pushed by T-Mobile randomly this month. Some of the features that are coming with the upgrade should have been there on the initial release and have been far pass due.

Some of the new features include an on-screen QWERTY keyboard (which helps prepare for the next Google phone which rumors say will be released this summer as the T-Mobile myTouch 3G). Other enhancements on the Cupcake include direct photo upload to Picasa and video upload to YouTube with the option to make them public or private. The picture or recorded video can also be sent as MMS and type in a title or caption.  Faster browser thanks to the new JavaScript and webkit engines.

A new radio has been added on this release which should help the battery life as well. A few things that were not mentioned on the release also include contacts photo appearing next to the contacts name, home screen widgets, voice search, and of course a call log that makes sense. The Android 1.0 told you how long ago the last call was made but not what time. The Android 1.5 displays what time the last call was made (this feature should have been available on the 1.0 release).

Would you like a Cupcake?