Category: Small Biz Go Mobile

Box.net and GoogleApps – Complete Online Content Management

by BrothaTech

On the online content sharing/collaboration side, Box.net was one of the first cloud services that everyday consumers could use. Its services still make online collaboration a viable option for small business owners looking to move to the cloud. On the “everything else” side, there isn’t a bigger name than Google and its popular GoogleApps services that gives users access to online document editing, calendar and email organization, and more.

Add them together and you get the ability to move your entire business/IT structure to the cloud. Now with GoogleApps document editing integration into Box.net functionality, now you can stay in one application from start-to-finish content creation, collaboration, and management. You can upload and share files amongst colleagues and clients, edit documents with version control, and synchronize documents across most of your devices. No need to switch between Box.net for collaboration and sharing, Google Docs for document editing, Gmail for communication, and Google Calendar for time management. It can all be done in the Box.net platform.

Box.net also gives users mobile access so you can access, share and collaborate on files anywhere. Share folders in a tap, exchange feedback or save files for offline access. Box.net apps are available for iPhone, iPad, Android and via the Box.net mobile site.

A regular Box.net subscription of one user is free, but to take advantage of the new Google Apps integration and add up to three users on one account, it will cost you $15 per month. Both services on their own are ideal for any small business owner looking to use their time and resources more efficiently. Together, well, don’t take my word for it, visit Box.net and sign up for a free trial and let us know what you think in the comments section.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_KnRwoKbJs&feature=player_embedded#

Even Construction Workers are Doing Mobile Teleconferencing with ooVoo

by Justin Alcon

Last week I attended the “DIGITAL EXPERIENCE! 2011” conference (yes, that’s the official name) in NYC.  The event was a showcase for some exciting new mobile products that either launched recently or will launch soon. There was some great stuff there, and I’m definitely looking forward to using a lot of what I saw.

One exhibitor that really caught my attention was the ooVoo booth.  You may remember from my post a few weeks ago how I have trouble with Skype for teleconferencing.  Well, the folks over at ooVoo claim they can fix this problem, and from what I’ve seen in my brief experience with it so far they might be right.  Basically, ooVoo is a cloud-based service that allows up to 6 devices to connect in a video conference.  So, you can easily meet with the guys in LA, New York, Detroit, Austin, and Chicago simultaneously –  even from your mobile device.

When I dropped by the booth, Brogan Taylor at ooVoo told me a great story that really illustrates the changing world of small-biz-gone-mobile.  Brogan’s father-in-law is a contractor who manages several building sites.  In the morning he meets with supervisors at several remote sites.  Some of his guys are on laptops, some on tablets, some on smartphones.  The owner leads the meeting from his truck cab, a couple guys have Android devices, and one guy even uses a Motorola Zoom.  In just a few minutes all the guys are on the same page about supply chain issues, changing labor needs, and even impending bad weather.  A few years ago I could never visualize a guy with a hardhat pulling a touchscreen computer out of a tool belt; now, it’s apparently a daily occurrence.

ooVoo follows the freemium model by offering some enterprise goodies with its paid offering.  If you’d like to check it out, though, the free app is all you need to get started and it works on lots of devices.  The best part?   Unlike iPhone’s Facetime feature, WiFi is’t required because ooVoo does the heavy lifting on the server side; which means it can be used at regular 3g network speeds.

Win a Business Consultation with Mario Armstrong!

by Shy Mukerjee

Want to know how to best take advantage of your smartphone or tablet? Have questions about branding or social media? Just want someone to bounce some business ideas off of? Mario Armstrong is here to answer your pressing questions. We’re giving away three 20-minute business consultations with Mario, and entering couldn’t be easier. Just follow these simple steps and you’re good to go!

  • Send us an email to editor@smallbizgomobile.com with the subject line CONSULTATION. Explain in no more than 5 sentences what your business is and how you could benefit from a meeting with Mario. Our team of writers will be evaluating these and picking the three most-promising small businesses to meet with Mario. Let us know why you stand out but also what you need help with!
  • Like Small Biz Go Mobile on Facebook. That way you can easily stay on top of our tech tips, app and devices reviews, and more!
  • Follow SmBizGoMobile on Twitter and retweet our message to let everyone know about our contest.

Thats it! The contest is open to anyone worldwide, excluding employees and family members of employees of Mario Armstrong Media, LLC. We’ll be running this contest until 5pm on Friday, July 22nd, so get the word out and get your application in!

How Mobile Apps averted an IT Nightmare

by Justin Alcon

We’ve been talking about mobile apps that can help your team collaborate, make meetings more productive, or even get a new exciting job; but today’s installment is for you IT guys out there.  IT is a notoriously difficult and stressful field. As today’s business culture becomes increasingly tech and web oriented, the pressure on our IT teams only grows.  The good news is, there are lots of great mobile applications out there that can finally help unchain IT professionals from their computers and lighten the stress-load.

Popular right now are apps that make it easy to check your site’s Google analytics account. Various other apps can check your site’s speed and do basic web operations like pinging, log management, etc.  The coolest thing that I’ve seen are the mobile Terminal/ssh type apps like pTerm, which offer nearly complete reproductions of every computer geek’s favorite interface: the command line.  Apps like pTerm allow IT and computer professionals to access work computers via mobile devices, which can be a life/business saver.

An example of how vital this can be: a few weeks ago (and after many months of work) we launched a major redesign of our website.  We really shot for the stars as far as design, implementation and of course press coverage.  For technical folks this meant that a) a ton of new code was deployed and b) there was a ton of traffic to the site, mostly of parties interested in exploring our new features.  What did this all add up to?  For IT, it meant stress.   The IT team worried that something may not have been tested properly, the software may behave unexpectedly when it is under heavy use, or just gremlins in the system.

When the date came, we flipped the switch and the launch went off without a hitch at first. We were excited and for the first time in months, we celebrated.  The team was all out having drinks at Tom & Jerry’s when our head of IT saw an alert on his Android device.  The web site was under heavy load, with the new code beginning to crash after a few hours running. At the time we were all a few drinks in and several blocks from our computers.  Our site was going down, which could have been a nightmare.  However, crisis was averted when our fearless head of engineering, still with a pint in his hand, fired up pTerminal on his Nexus S and restarted the servers.  We continued to monitor the situation and strung the site along from our phones until we could get into the office and fix the problem the next morning.

With this said, there’s no reason that every IT and computer professional should not have some kind of terminal application on your handheld device.  It is literally the power of your data center in the palm of your hand.

Google Sites Adds Automatic Mobile Rendering

by BrothaTech
Before

Using the uber-powerful Google Apps service, small business owners can manage email, contacts, calendars, documents, and add-on additional business management tools/apps/services that can essentially handle ALL of your business needs. One service that may be under-valued is the ability to create a full-blown website for your business in a matter of minutes (maybe just a tad longer) using Google Sites. Maybe the addition of automatic mobile rendering of Google Sites may entice more small biz owners to create a Google site and also knock-out your site’s ability to be visually appealing on mobile devices in one fell swoop.

As fast as it takes users to create a Google site, it is as equally as fast to make your site mobile. A new option in the general settings named “Automatically adjust site for mobile phones” adjusts your site on the fly whenever it’s viewed by Apple  (OS 3.0+) and Android (OS 2.2+) devices.

After

Activate the above option, and several portions of your site (header, site width, sidebars, etc.) will be formatted to look all nice on iPhones and Androids. Additional modifications you can make include hiding or enabling “View Site as Desktop” option, “Sign-in” or “Print Page” link. You can view your changes and tweak them on the go as well by visiting http://sites.google.com from any iOS or Android device.

Now with the new Google Sites mobile rendering feature, there is NO EXCUSE for your business, no matter how small, to NOT have 1) A website 2) a mobile-friendly website.

Evernote Lands on Windows Phone 7

by BrothaTech

That’s right – The note/voice memo taking, task conquering, web clipping, all-in-one productivity app finally gets a native version for Windows Phone 7 (WP7). There are so many use-cases for the Evernote app. Now WP7 users can explore all the ways Evernote can be used for personal/business tasks.

I am a fan of the WP7 user interface – It’s just beautiful. The Evernote app for WP7 exploits that beauty and lets you save and find your ideas and memories any time, anywhere. All of the features that Android, BlackBerry, and iOS users are accustomed to make an appearance, in addition to some cool Microsoft-specific features that can only be found on the WP7 version like note mapping that uses Microsoft Bing mapping technology to to show you where your notes were created. To allow the app to save your location, go to the Location panel in the Settings menu and check off the options. Then, you can view you notes on a map.

For those users who want to share some of your ideas captured in Evernote, Facebook sharing is built-in as well. Simply connect your account and the Facebook post option is prominently displayed as one of the three note options for every note. Hopefully, Evernote will add Twitter and maybe Tumblr sharing as well in future updates for even greater social networking capabilities.

So if you’re one of the brave ones and stepped into the new mobile platform realm via WP7, visit the Evernote blog to learn more. If you’ve been waiting on Evernote to come to WP7, you can jump over to the WP7 Marketplace (be patient if it isn’t there), and download your copy…and let us know what you think in the comments section.

Three Productivity Updates to Google Sync for iPhone and iPad

by BrothaTech

Adding Google email accounts, contacts, and calendars to their iDevice is one of the first things Google software addicts do when they get their shiny new Apple hardware. Google recognizes that a huge chunk on their mobile customer base carry Apple gadgets, so they have updated some of their Google Sync features to further enhance the Google experience on the iPhone and iPad.

Now you can search through ALL of your emails versus just the range of messages you selected to sync on your device. Before, you had to access the mobile-friendly Gmail site to search all of your mail (live or archived) on your account.

You can also accept, decline, and edit calendar appointments directly from your device. Now I can turn off all of those email notifications to alert me somebody sends a calendar appointment!

Finally, “Send Mail as” works in any account you have set up on your device. In other words, if you manage multiple accounts from your device (I personally manage 5), without physically switching accounts, you can select from which account you want to send or reply to a message. For example, if somebody sends me a message to my personal account, I can [passive-aggressively] send them a reply from the right account by tapping the “From” field and selecting that address.

The new features work for both Gmail and for all the small businesses (myself included) using Google Apps accounts. Google Sync is a must-have if you live by Google software AND by Apple hardware. Visit the Google Mobile Site to learn how to setup Google Sync on your iDevice.

[via: Google Mobile Blog]

Disqus Blog Comments Give Your Visitors a Richer, More Social Experience

by Justin Alcon

Comments are a huge part of any website.  For all the work that we do to get traffic on our sites, it’s often the interaction with other users that keeps people coming back.  So, is there a superior yet simple way to implement this vital section of your business’s site?  Of course there is, and it’s called Disqus.  To see an example of Disqus commenting, look no further than the bottom of this post (we also use Disqus over at blip.tv).

Why Disqus?  As I mentioned in the earlier Yammer post, digital discussions that mimic in-person conversations are more useful for collaborative work.  Additionally, tools like Flowr highlight the need for collaborative conversations. This is not just true for those of us who are making the site; it’s true of our users as well.  Their best experiences with our site are the ones where they can collaborate and contribute. Disqus offers real time posting and updating, bringing a conversational feel to your comments threads.

Frankly, Disqus has the best social integration I’ve seen in any comments system.  Users can avoid the burden of creating separate username/passwords for every participatory website by simply logging in using their established social media accounts.  It’s a truism that bringing conversations from your site out into larger forums like Facebook and Twitter can then drive other interested parties back to your site, which then allows the largest possible group of people to participate in your community.  With social integration, people can comment using services that they are already comfortable with and already using.  This also has the added bonus of reducing “trolling” or negative comments – generally, users commenting without the cloak of anonymity are much more likely to contribute positively.

A unique feature of Disqus is the ‘community box’, which gives people an overview of the community and activity on your site.  This is a great way to make people who are new to your site, or perhaps just stumbled across it by chance, feel welcome.  They can quickly get up to speed and start participating without a steep learning curve.

Everyone is doing it.  Since so many sites like this one, CNN, Time, Fox News, IGN, Engadget, and many many more use Disqus, it instantly connects your site to an already-thriving community of users.  These people may even know each other from threads on other sites, and conversations can flow across several platforms freely.  The company offers easy plugins for WordPress, Tumblr, Drupal, and Blogger, and I had no problem using it in a completely custom site.  It works almost literally everywhere, so it is easy to use it for your site as well.

We are all about mobile here, so of course, Disqus is also the best commenting system for mobile browsers or we wouldn’t use it.  Last August on their product blog Disqus announced that it can now automatically detect mobile browsers and provide a clean and clutter-free theme optimized for mobile devices.  Now your comments section can now work just as well, including all the rich features, whether your users are visiting on a desktop or mobile device.

Chrome Notebook: Business in the Cloud

by Justin Alcon

“The cloud” is hot – you’d have to have your head buried in sand to have not heard the word “cloud” from the tech sector this year.  Apple has introduced iCloud, Microsoft has Windows Cloud and Amazon has introduced their Cloud Drive product. Although all of these products show great promise, I think that the Google Chrome notebook might be the coolest cloud product so far (given, that my definition of ‘cool’ means ‘getting business done’).  In fact, I’m writing these very words on a virtual machine mock-up of a Chrome Notebook made via Parallels 6.

A Google Chrome notebook is really any laptop that runs Google’s Chrome browser.  Yup, that’s it.  How can an OS be this simple?  Web apps.  The entire Google Chrome way of working is  a cloud-based version of  “there’s an app for that”.  You can use Google documents for your word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations.  You can even edit and store photos.  Outside of heavy design work or software development which requires a local Integrated Development Environment, there is pretty much nothing that this machine hasn’t been able to do for me.  Angry Birds is even available for free!

The consumer product is available in several flavors, including both 3g and WiFi models.  Acer makes a couple, Samsung makes a few, and all are less than $500.  The machines are simple, but quick – dual atom processors, 2gigs of ram (non upgradable), and 16gigs of solid state memory.  The unimpressive hardware is forgivable since most of the computing takes place in the cloud; additionally, it makes the machines very affordable.  Geek out to the full teardown over at iFixIt.

The great thing about the cloud is that your business can lose its attachment to physical devices.  The machine doesn’t matter- it’s a throwaway, a burner.  All your work is in the cloud. If your sales rep is on the road and pours coffee into their laptop, it’s no longer an IT emergency.  They can go to the local Best Buy, put $400 on the corporate card, log back into the Google account and keep working.  The rep’s pipeline is there, the sizzle reel is there, their contacts are all there…in the cloud.

I’m not quite ready to let go of my macbook, but I am very impressed with the Chrome notebook.  It embodies the true spirit of mobile productivity.  I had no problem blogging,  social networking, handling money management or any other task I do daily.  The machine only fell down when tasked with heavy design and development work that isn’t common to non-software developers.  Yay cloud.