1.       Social Intranet.

What if Facebook included all the elements of SalesForce, Dropbox, Google Calendar, BaseCamp, RememberTheMilk and WhatsApp? That’s social intranet for you – a private corporate social network that helps you work with clients, collaborate with co-workers, share files, exchange ideas and vote on next week’s cafeteria menu – accessible 24/7 from PC, mobile phone or iPad. Social intranets come in different shapes and sizes – some are small business friendly with a generous free package (like Bitrix24), while others are created for Fortune 500 type companies and can easily cost over a million dollars (like Jive Software).

2.       Social Bookmarks.

Reddit, StumbleUpon, Delicious and Digg are just two examples of social bookmarking sites. While they are fun just to browse, they do have a business angle to them. First, influencers (journalists, bloggers, early adopters) read them. Second, they (especially Reddit) are capable of driving tens of thousands of visitors to your site in a single day – that is, if the news about your website or service makes it to the front page. Finally, most social bookmarking sites offer very affordable (3-5 cents per click), ultra-targeted PPC campaigns that you can run in relevant subsections.

3.       Social HR

Social HR solutions tend to fall in two categories. The first kind, like TribeHR, is a lot like social intranet, making it easy for workers to communicate with their HR departments online for things like vacations, benefits and sick days. The second kind, like TalentBin, are used mostly for recruiting. They scan social networks, like Facebook, Twitter, Klout, LinkedIn and suggest candidates who have the biggest social footprint in the field you are interested in.

4.       Social Outsourcing.

OK, so it’s really called crowdsourcing – but since you have multiple applicants with ratings and different feedback mechanisms, that’s what modern crowdsourcing is – social outsourcing. Unlike social networks, where bigger is better, you’ll get the most value from relatively small highly specialize sites. Need cool domain name? For 50 bucks, the crowd at PickyDomains will generate hundreds of awesome unregistered suggestions and you only pay if you decide to use one of them. Need a new T-Shirt design? Yes, there’s a crowdsourcing service that does just that called Threadless. Ran out of marketing ideas? IdeaBounty to the rescue.

5.       Social CRM

Customer relationship management solutions that integrate social media (Nimble, Insightly, HootSuite) are now growing faster than traditional CRMs. Suppose you are about to meet a new client. What’s on his or her mind? With social CRM, with one click of a button you’ll see the last 10 tweets, Facebook posts and LinkedIn updates made by that person. Social CRMs are also capable of instantly notifying you when your company is mentioned in social media. You can also set it up to alert you of certain keywords, like ‘trademark lawsuit’ (if you are a lawyer) and create your own list of prospects as soon as these people need your services.

6.       Social Learning

While a lot of people think that the term ‘wiki’ comes from Wikipedia, the opposite is true – wikis were first and Wikipedia came later (the first wiki was called WikiWikiWeb and debuted in 1996). Modern social learning management systems (like Litmos, Moodle or Outstart) go way beyond simple wikis, and incorporate all the advantages of social networks into the learning process. You can use them to store knowledge inside the company, create learning materials, and test your employees.

7.       Social Reviews

While website owners tend to ignore social review sites like Yelp and Qype, talk to any restaurant owner and they’ll tell you how much their business can be affected by a single Yelp review. Social reviews are starting to play an important role internet based businesses as well. Rotten Tomatoes and MetaCritic, for instance, already have a visible effect on Netflix rentals and game sales. As with crowdsourcing – watch for small niche sites that can be highly relevant to your line of business.

Source - Beyond Facebook – Twenty Some Social Tools Your Business Should Be Using

See also:

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http://www.duplicate-finder.com/

Are duplicate photos eating up your hard disk space? Are they giving you a hard time organizing your photo filing system?

To give your hard disk drive some extra wiggle room while ensuring you have a clean and organized photo collection, Awesome Duplicate Photo Finder might be the tool you’re looking for. Awesome Duplicate Photo Finder is a software that’s absolutely free and can locate and remove duplicate photographs, even similar images, from your photo folders in your computer.

Awesome Duplicate Photo Finder requires no registration. It is adware-free, spyware-proof, no malware or other unwanted software.

After downloading the program into your computer, simply drag your photo folders into the folder where Awesome Duplicate Photo Finder is saved. The application should be able to compare pictures with enhanced colors and/or pictures that have been resized. It can support major image file types: PNG, BMP, JPG, GIF. Once located, you’re free to do as you please with your duplicate photos.

[Via - PickyDomains.com]

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Photo via budgetways.com

So with that out of the way, let’s say “aye, aye, captain” to Sir Francis Bacon and load up on information about six online businesses that even my innately frugal self may consider taking a hard look at one of these days:

1. IDPoster.com

IDPoster.com is an online service specializing in the printout and distribution of celebrity posters. The site has posters of singers, actors and actresses, athletes, models and many others. And if you want a picture of yourself turned into a poster to adorn a bare wall in your bedroom, simply upload your image to the site, specify the size and design, add to your cart and you’re done.

2. La-Z-Boy Spas/Hot Tubs

From the leader in comfortable seating for decades now, La-Z-Boy Spas/Hot Tubs takes seating comfort to the next level – this time, with water. Almost 80 years ago, cousins Edward Knabusch and Edwin Shoemaker started a furniture business. They invented a porch chair with a recline feature. Owing to their designing philosophy, “nature’s way of relaxing,” the chair was a phenomenal success, and the rest is history. No doubt, the company’s spa line is poised to garner the same success.

3. Northern Hot Tub Covers

If you choose to get yourself a hot tub, you should consider getting a hot tub cover, too. It has been shown that even a hot tub cover with the least possible heat insulation value can potentially save up to 75% on heating costs, definitely a lot better than simply leaving the hot tub’s surface exposed when it’s not being used. Northern Hot Tub Covers is a Canadian company that specializes in hot tub covers that are guaranteed to withstand even the worst of Canadian weather.

4. Ermitage Jewelers

Ever since the time of our forefathers, jewelries and hand-crafted timepieces are the accessories of choice. Ermitage Jewelers has been in the business of buying, selling and trading Switch watches and authentic jewelry for almost three decades now. Domiciled in Atlanta, Georgia, the company also has an online business that carries the same stock as the brick-and-mortar store.

5. MegaFlowers.com

Women love flowers, and I’m generalizing. There may be some that don’t, but they’re a minority compared to the overall female population. So if you’re planning on making your girl feel extra special, especially if she’s in another part of the world, consider MegaFlowers.com, an online flower shop that specializes in the delivery of fresh flowers all over the world. With their partner florists and delivery companies in every country in the world, delivery time range from 3 to 24 hours depending on location and at prices that need not be headache-inducing.

6. Education4Drivers.com

If you’re a driver or would-be driver, you should realize that having a license is not just about being able to drive around. Education4Drivers.com is an online driving database that tackles everything a driver needs to know about state laws, navigating state roads, the driver’s permit, which actually is needed to apply for a driving license, driver’s manual, parent-taught driving and tons of other materials. So for first time or refresher courses, head on to the site and get your daily dose of driving-related information.

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http://allphotolenses.com/

A hobby or your bread-and-butter, photography never goes out of fashion, not today, not tomorrow, not in the too-distant future. Why, you might ask. For the simple reason that a photograph memorializes a moment that can never be captured by the human mind for very long.

And believe it or not, photography is an art as well. While some people may argue that photography is nothing but capturing what already is in existence, whenever you look at a photo, you see the image the way the photographer selects to present and frame his photo - the lighting, the angle, the vividness of the color scheme, every small detail that adds to the overall quality. If that isn’t art, I probably have the wrong definition of the word “art.”

As art has a wide audience appeal, it’s no surprise that a lot of tools, tips, tricks, enhancements, whatever you call them, have cropped up in the market. In the case of photography, photo lenses have been introduced. Several different brands and makes are now vying for attention, all created to allow the flexibility photographers hope to achieve in terms of sharpness, color and other parameters.

As the domain would suggest, AllPhotoLenses.com is a site where photographers, professional or otherwise, meet, review and discuss photo lenses. Through the site, they also get to upload and see actual photos taken using a particular type of lens. The members themselves upload news, articles and other online resourcesfor other members to benefit from. Additionally, they can opt to buy, sell and trade photo lenses and other equipment with other members.

Founded by Sergey Borodin, a professional photographer himself, AllPhotoLenses.com aspires to become the biggest online database for everything related to photo lenses. It was first introduced in the Russian language through Lens-Club.ru.

[Via - Bitrix24.Com]

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1. PrintLuna.Com

PrintLuna is a new service that allows you do design and print any book online. Its speciality is quality photoalbums, moderately prices ($7.70 to start with) with no minimum number of copies required, meaning you can order only one. Books are normally shipped to your home or, if intented as gift, to the address you enter, but you can also sell your books through PrintLuna and they’ll take care of everything from shipping to handling transactions.

2. MP3Mixx.com

MP3 revolution has already drastically cut the costs of how much you pay for your music. Remember, only a decade ago, paying $20 for a CD seemed perfectly ‘normal’. Nowadays, you can get any track for 99 cents or even less. MP3Mixx is a MusicLine Limited affiliate that sells music for as low as 15 cents per track. Unfrortunatelly, you have to register and log in (it’s free) first, before you can get access to full library and payment plans.

3. Logaster.com

Every business needs a logo and if you call your local designer, you’ll quickly how expensive creation of even the simplest logo can be. But don’t pull your wallet out yet - head over to Logaster, free logo creating service with a unique twist. A lot of online services offer free logo creation. Logaster is the only one that offers $4,99 a month subscription plan that enables you to also create branded products, like business card, envelopes, etc.

4. YoutubeDownloaderHD.com

If you are a YouTube regular, you know YouTube doesn’t want you to download any videos from the site, since they make money only by showing you ads with the video they stream. So if you need to download YouTube video and you don’t know how it’s done - head over to YouTubeDownloaderHD.com, 100% free software that downloads high definition YouTube videos without quality loss.

5. Bitrix24.com

Another cool freebie here. Bitrix24.com is a suite of online business tools that are free for small businesses (defined as 12 employees or less). You get free CRM, free intranet, free task manager, free document sharing and other cool goodies, like photogallery.

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http://jetradar.com

Commercial air travel has become more affordable today than in the last two decades. Ticket prices are lower mainly because of two game changers that appeared in the advent of modern technology: online ticket brokering and the focus on low-cost air travel. Airlines that were not able to cope with this change have been forced to drop out.

Passengers today are more conscious of prices and quality. Various websites and online services such as Orbitz, CheapFlights and Expedia are now widely used to track the cheapest ticket that you can buy when coming and going to specific places. This method of tracking prices is not exactly a hundred percent effective. Most airlines now make the best ticket prices, deals and promos accessible only through their own websites to encourage customers in patronizing their company thus preventing the loss of customers to rival companies while strengthening their own commercial marketability.

So how can you find the best deals without scouring all the airline s’ websites one by one? The answer is a cunning new innovation that when successful, can once again change the game of airline ticket sales and be the best cheap ticket retailer in the market- JetRadar.

JetRadar is unique because it can identify special ticket deals from the database of 35 companies and 728 airlines even with their individual websites .Then it conducts a search for the cheapest price with the prizes available in the public database. This has never been done by anyone else before. It was initially tested in small scale local markets and has quickly become a strong presence in ticket brokering. From a few local branches like AviaSales, Ru in Russia, plans to open local branches in Thailand and Hong Kong, as well as a central office to dominate the cheap ticket sales market internationally has been set.

[Via - Webiot.com]

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CRM

One-Stop Workstation
We’ve probably all been there – keeping several different passwords for different applications, updating different worksheets for this process and that. Even worse, because of all the disparate tools employees utilize, reports generation takes longer than one would care to admit. This archaic practice requires a lot of employee log hours and doesn’t do much for efficiency. Bitrix24 replaces all of the separate tools you use for correspondence, contacts, projects, tasks, everything. A single platform, and at the end of the day, whatever information you need is right at your fingertips.

CRM
CRM, or customer relationship management, is a tool that allows businesses to manage their interactions with clients, customers, agents, sales prospects and other contacts. Without CRM or the efficient usage of CRM, most businesses are doomed to die a natural death. With Bitrix24’s CRM functionality, contact history, interaction and new events such as messages, phone calls and/or meetings are logged, stored and managed.

Sales Funnel
Sales funnel, commonly referred to as sales process, is another Bitrix24 functionality that serves as graphical representation of the performance of transactions and the stages they are in. And because it’s graphical, data interpretation is easier than it’s ever been.

Sales funnel

Security
Cloud-based data storage is fast becoming the trend nowadays. And when people think about storing, disseminating and managing sensitive data through the cloud, the questions that are oftentimes foremost in their minds are, “How safe is it? Does it really work?” Bitrix24 employs a seven-layer security system that is perhaps unparalleled in the industry, so that even in unsecured connections such as public Wi-Fi, e-mail and data access is as safe as access on a secure server.

Convinced already? Like, seriously? Believe me, you ain’t seen nothing yet. The features I described above are just a few of so many. But don’t just take my word for it. Head on to their site now and see for yourself what they’ve got.

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http://www.mobocruiser.com/

Entrepreneurism runs in Melody Hsieh’s blood. Her parents operated an auto parts factory in Taiwan, where she once worked at the age of 8.

“I learned early in life that hard work and smart work are the essential ingredients to running a successful business,” she said.

So after college in 2000, Hsieh decided to start a company, with family money, that sold scooters. By 2003, sales at her ASA Products surged to $3 million.

But in the next three years, annual sales quickly plummeted to $300,000. “My mistake was that I had no long-term strategy to build my brand,” she said. “I was just pursuing a hot trend, and not paying attention to competition, customer service or marketing.”

In 2006, she took a hiatus from her company and went back to school for her MBA. In late 2006, she relaunched a new product — Mobo Cruisers — a line of three-wheeled cruisers for kids and adults. “This time I applied what I learned in school about marketing, operations and research before I launched the brand,” said Hsieh.

Today, Mobo Cruisers is sold through Target and Toys “R” Us and expanding into Canada. Hsieh, who’s a new mom to her three-month-old son, said she’s busier than ever now. “Women can do it. It’s hard but you don’t have to give up one role for the other,” she said. “Have a routine that works for you and stick to it.”

[Via - CNNMoney, HT - Easy Money]

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http://scan.me/

Before Apple released the iPad 2, Garrett Gee made a lucky guess. “I knew it was going to have a camera, and because of that I just imagined that there would be a blog post or something similar on the top 10 new apps for the iPad 2,” he says.

Gee wasn’t just the average college student geeking out. A student at Brigham Young University (BYU) in Provo, Utah, he is one of the founders of Scan (scan.me), which allows iPad, iPhone and Droid users to scan quick-response (QR) codes.

Gee’s push to get his hands on the iPad 2 and get it to his iOS developer was motivated by his desire for Scan to be the first QR-scanner app available specifically for the device–thereby earning a spot on those top 10 lists. Thanks to two sleepless nights, he succeeded.

Gee’s path from student to entrepreneur started in 2009, when he received a smartphone for Christmas. With that device, the then-freshman scanned his first QR code and realized there could be apps and software that were less clunky and easier to use. At a web-design conference, he met Twitter creative director Doug Bowman, who encouraged him to pursue his idea.

Gee recruited classmates Kirk Ouimet and Ben Turley to help launch Scan in February 2011. The idea was to use simple online and mobile tools to give users a better option for scanning QR codes, and to offer a polished option for businesses that wanted to create those codes.

“There are many, many sites where you can go and create your own QR code,” Gee concedes. “Remember when Facebook and Twitter were first getting popular, and businesses large and small all hopped on and started creating Twitter accounts and Facebook pages? They didn’t really know how or why; they were just doing it because they thought it was important. It’s been the same story with QR codes. People see them popping up all over the place, and they’re like, ‘Yeah, we should probably use QR codes for our marketing.’”

Gee, Ouimet and Turley took second place in BYU’s business plan competition in April 2011–a status they parlayed into funding. After 16 trips to pitch to investors such as Google Ventures, Menlo Ventures and the co-owner of the Boston Celtics, they had $1.5 million. Gee waded through the offers while balancing school and travel as a forward on BYU’s semiprofessional soccer team, often taking conference calls in airport bathrooms along the way.

The team used that capital to build a platform and user base that earned Scan 10 million downloads in the first year. The actual scans derived from those downloads grew from 12 million to 21 million between September and October 2011. The next move is to develop a monetization plan. Today the software to read or create codes is free of charge; future options will include premium content and mobile-commerce templates.

Gee, now 25, is working toward graduating from BYU. For now, the dual student-CEO role is serving him well. “People relate to the student world quite well,” he says. “You could say I play the ‘student card’ quite often when I’m meeting with big companies. It definitely scores me empathy points.”

[Via - YoungEntrepreneur.Com]

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http://www.trademarkia.com/

Trademarkia is an online search engine that helps small-business owners sift through the more than six million names, slogans and logos that have been trademarked in America since 1870. The Web site, which went live in September 2009, grafts a user-friendly interface onto a colossal database, built with free information provided by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. It also serves as a lure, steering visitors who want to apply for their own trademarks to the law firm of Trademarkia’s co-founder, Raj Abhyanker, and offering other fee-based services such as domain registration, logo design and automated alerts that notify trademark holders when marks similar to their own are filed.

Employees: Eight full-time. In addition, in the last three years, Trademarkia has generated enough business to help Mr. Abhyanker’s law firm grow from a solo practice to an international operation with more than 190 employees, including more than 60 lawyers.

Founders: Mr. Abhyanker, 36, Trademarkia’s chief executive, is a lawyer and serial entrepreneur who previously founded FatDoor, a social networking site for neighbors. (In 2007, Mr. Abhyanker was ousted as chief executive of FatDoor, which later transformed into The Dealmap and was purchased by Google in 2011.) He founded Trademarkia with Dongxia Liu, 39, a software developer and the former vice president of engineering at Imagekind. Ms. Liu now serves as chief technology officer.

Location: Trademarkia is headquartered in Mountain View, Calif., in the same building as Mr. Abhyanker’s law firm, which also has satellite offices in India, China and France.

Pitch: “We want to make applying for a trademark as easy as getting a domain name,” Mr. Abhyanker said.

Traction: Based on the strength of Trademarkia, which gets nearly three million page views each month, Mr. Abhyanker expects his legal practice to file for more than 13,000 trademarks this year (about 10,000 American and 3,000 overseas). “We’re basically the law firm that represents the most small businesses in terms of intellectual property,” he said.

Revenue: In 2011, according to Mr. Abhyanker, Trademarkia brought in $1.3 million in revenue and the law firm brought in $5.5 million, excluding government filing fees that passed through both companies. He said he expected both figures to grow by 50 percent this year.

Financing: No outside money. “I had a bad taste about venture capital,” Mr. Abhyanker explained, after losing control of FatDoor. He bootstrapped Trademarkia with about $25,000 in seed money. As for the law firm, he added, that began in 2005 with $1,000 from his savings, a small office over a Palo Alto rug store, a used desk from Craigslist and a Web site he built himself. While he doesn’t plan to pursue venture capital, “I’d like to have investors that are other lawyers,” he said, adding that, he’s considering using crowdfunding from California-licensed attorneys.

Marketing: Trademarkia spends roughly $1 million each year on paid search advertising, mostly Google AdWords. Even so, Mr. Abhyanker said, most of Trademarkia’s traffic relies on word of mouth and in-bound links from other sites, such as Wikipedia.

Competition: Online rivals include LegalZoom, the legal documents company that offers a smorgasbord of services, and The Trademark Company, which offers registration packages starting at $149, undercutting Trademarkia’s basic offering by $10. Competitors also include big international law firms, such as Greenberg Traurig and K&L Gates, which have dominated the trademark space.

Challenge: Mr. Abhyanker isn’t shy about his ambitions. “Our goal, in the end, is to build the biggest law firm in the world,” he said. He wants to do that in two ways: first, by making other types of public data – including patents, copyrights and incorporations – “more interesting and accessible” to consumers. He also plans to rebrand Trademarkia with a new name, LegalForce, and wants to pivot the company into a hybrid with both a strong online presence and brick-and-mortar storefronts serving mostly business owners, available for franchise by independent attorneys. He envisions the latter as “the Apple store meets H&R Block” and hopes to have between five and 10 of them open within 18 months.

[Via - NYTimes.com]

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