5.5 ways to make e-mail easier

If you have your own small business there are a couple of things you need to make your life easier.

1. Email first – The first thing is a gmail account. Sure there are other e-mail accounts but gmail includes lots of things that will really make your life easier.

If you have one, or two, or many e-mail accounts. You can use gmail to send and recieve all the e-mail from all your old accounts. I have about 8 that funnel into my gmail account. You can setup filters and labels to see were all the mail is coming from. There are settings that will allow you to automatically reply from the address they sent it to, or you can choose to send if from your new gmail account.

I could write a very long tutorial, but you just need to get in and start using it and then try some of the tweeks. here is a link to google e-mail help

2. Get a junk e-mail account. I rarely get use my main e-mail account to sign into services I am testing. I have a spam e-mail were all of my services testing gets sent. Companies are getting way better about not selling lists of e-mails, so I really don’t get that much spam. But It keeps me from getting junk I am kind of interested about out of my mail box.

3. Use the spam button. I am pretty sure all the major e-mail providers who use internet e-mail clients have a spam button. Some of the desk top clients it takes a couple of clicks but the same functionality is there. If I get e-mail that I can’t identify the sender I send it to spam. If I can’t get a company to take me off there e-mail list I send it to spam. I just checked my spam folder on g-mail 755 messages. I just went into the folder to delete it all with one click. Very nice. I smiled because at the top of the list was a company I originally wanted to get information from. But when they weren’t giving me good information I tried to take them off the list. Couldn’t get it done. So into the spam black hole for them.

4. Learn how to use filters. All e-mail programs I have used over the past 3 years have filters. Both internet based clients and desktop clients. These can help you sort label and even respond and forward. They really can save you a lot of time . gmail filter help

5. This is some advice I need to take to heart more. You really should only look at and respond to e-mail a couple of times a day. And only deal with one e-mail at a time. Some times things will work themselves out if you just give it a little time.

5.5 if you are in business, especially for yourself, you need to get a smart phone that you can read and respond to e-mail when you don’t have a computer. I know this sounds contradictory. I would say it is most useful when you think of something and need to send the message before you forget and two weeks later think I should have sent that two weeks ago.

While this list really isn’t complete It’s a basic start for making your life easier by doing these simple things.

WordPress formating troubles

I talked to a person today on twitter who spoke Dutch. I helped him with a problem with the formatting of texts in posts. I have had this problem several times also.

If you are posting in the visual editor. Which I believe most of us do and you start having a problem with the formatting switch to the HTML view. Go ahead don’t be afraid. You may see in there HTML tags that may have been added. HTML tags are things that look like <h2> … </h2> or <span>…</span> There are usually opening and closing.

Many times if you just switch back to the “visual editing” it will clear some of the editing. If it doesn’t fix the problem get back into the HTML and snoop around a little to see if there may be something weird going on. If you want to learn a little more about HTML tags go to W3Schools.com

good luck

PS
Thanks to Thomas Van Oppens for bringing this up.

Take a look at @ThomasVO on twitter. and his cool perspective @ his wordpress blog in Dutch. English with a little google translate magic

How to add mixpod to your wordpress.com account

In This blog post today I am going to explain how to put of the cool mixpod players into your WordPress.com account sidebar.

This is a result of a question that was asked on twitter by @itmustbebritt. I am also posting this to show her how to do it.

This of the coolest little things I have see this year is mixpod.com Basically it allows you to put songs on your website, your favorite songs by your favorite artists. I am not sure how it works. but it does and hopefully we are not all breaking some sort of copyright. But the site does indicate if you are an artist and you feel your music has been illegally shared you can complain and I assume they will take down the infringing party. Just to let everyone know I believe artists should be paid for their intellectually property.

Here we go:

Step 1: go to mixpod.com Select “Create Playlist” select the songs you want in your playlist. I If you’ve never been on the site this may take some time as you enjoy some of your favorite music. select a player and make a list.
(if you already have a list skip to step ) For this demo we are going to use the

Step 2: Select your player (for this demo we are going to use “Stick”. you can do all kids of things to change the color and styles. That is up to you. I am just going to leave the default.

Step 3: give your list a name all the other things are optional.

Step 4: Save your List(get code): if you don’t already have an account you will need to create one. (this will automatically log you onto your account.

Step 5: Login (if you didn’t have a list when you started when you save you will auto logged in)

Step 6: it will give options to save your code to myspace, facebook, etc. You will need to select other sites.

Step 7:in the list of other sites there is a button that says more you will need to click on that to get to WordPress.com (I tried to use the embed code at the bottom, but I couldn’t get it to work?)

Step 8:Click on the WordPress button: it will ask you for your for your login info. Put it in and post the information

Step 9:Log in to your wordpress.com account. Click on posts. You will see a new post. edit the post. and click on the html on the right just above the editing box. make sure to copy all the code in the box.  Just copy the code don’t cut or delete the code so if you have any problems you will be able to come back to this point.

step 10: Now click on the “Appearance” tab on the admin menu on the left. The same tab used to change the them.
it will open a little window and then click on “widget”

Step 11: Once Widget is selected you will see a list of widgets you can use. find the “text” widget towards the bottom. Click and drag the text widget to the sidebar at the top right of the page. If you are using a laptop, like I was it was difficult to get the text to the side bar. You will know you have done it correctly if it opens up a new window with a one line box with Title above it and then a larger text box.

step 12: Paste all the text from the post into the big text box. leave the Title blank so as to make it look like the player is just part of the page.

step 13:click the save at the bottom of the text widget you just installed.

step 14:(This is optional – but I wouldn’t skip it) You can view your blog now to see if the player is showing up in your widget.)

step 15:(also optional) you can take out the code so the ugly little buttons don’t appear blow your player.
if you have looked at the page you will need to navigate back to the widget page. You can open up the text widget by clicking on it.

(This is a new version of this instruction updated 10/14/2009)Muchas Gracias to Carlos Isaza
step 16:Once you are in there find the part in the code that looks like this <p style=”visibility:visible;”>[gigya width="  . . .  Erase everything before the <p style

There is a bunch more stuff here but the end looks like this  wmode="transparent" ] erase all the code from there to the end except for the “</p>” leave that little bit at the end.

The numbers listed after playlist will be different for your play list,  that is the id of your playlist.

Make sure to click the Save button on the text widget

At this point you should be done and you should have the player going.  If your player doesn’t show up on your blog you can start from step 9.

Please let me know if you have difficulty and I will try to help where I can.

Good luck

Get Ready for Google Wave – It will change the World!

It may be a little early to be predicting the future. But I believe Google Wave will quickly change the way people communicate on the internet. Check it out here. http://bit.ly/AHgzw

Social Media is becoming a new marketing tool

Check out this article from the Wall Street Journal

Business Week is syncing the comments on its social-networking site to Twitter, making it among the first major media companies to harness the popularity of the microblogging service.

Is Working Online from Home The way to financial freedom

Are online jobs the next big thing? As the U.S. economy continues to free-fall, millions of American are finding themselves without jobs, sufficient retirement or paychecks coming in. In March alone the number of unemployed increased by 694,000 to 13.2 million. Throughout history those on the cutting edge have adapted and prospered by knowing how to adapt to current economic climates, and this trend may once again be taking place on the internet.

Read more

Purpose Driven Websites – From Entrepeneur Magazine

I recently met an entrepreneur who told me her startup needed a website. When I asked why, she said, “Because every company has a website, so why should mine be any different?” When I pressed further and asked what end the website would serve, she paused, looking a little puzzled, and said, “Well, I don’t know–you tell me.”

Link to Full Article