LinkedIn Co-founder Reid Hoffman talks to Charlie Rose about LinkedIn. Reid covers a lot of ground talking about what linkedIn is and how it can be used, he also talks about entrepreneurship, what’s interesting for me in this interview are his views on entrepreneurshop and that the ability to manage risk being an important trait for entrepreneurs.
I think all this is self evident, however, he continues to make the point that people sometimes delude themselves regarding risk for example by taking a safe job in a large company, risk is everywhere, and those that learn how to manage risk correctly progress quicker than those that don’t.
I’ve been lucky enough to have had an early invite to use dbTwang ,a social network for guitar enthusiasts. The site is in early beta at the moment so I’m expecting a lot will change over the coming months,however, initial thoughts on the site are very good. There’s a huge amount of information that can be stored on each guitar; somewhere in the region 300+ items of information can be kept including the obligatory photographs, so far I’ve put my Ibanez Jem 7DBK with a few more to follow.
About dbTwang:
dbTwang was founded bny Fintan Blake Kelly & Keith Bohana in Kilkenny, the idea behind the site is simple; it’s designed to be a niche social network for guitar enthusiasts. I am only new to the site itself so am getting used to it. So expect a more thorough review in a while.
Keith has this to say about dbTwang:
“the site aims to become a trusted place on the web where players and collectors can keep information about their guitars securely, over time building a history for their instruments, be they electric, acoustic or bass.”
dbTwang have just gone through a round recent round of funding and securing close to €200,000 to date. It will be interesting to see to how the site evolves and how the social network aspect pans out.
Twestival (Twitter + Festival), is the brain child of Amanda Rose, is global fund raising event organised using social media, principally twitter.
Twestivals are held by volunteers in cities throughout the world.
This is the second time that Twestival has been done the first time was in February 2009, the focus of the original Twestival was to raise money for a global charity being charity: water, which raised over $250,000. This time around the Twestival has been dubbed Twestival Local i.e. a local charity chosen by each venue will be the recipient of the funds raised by each venue. In all over 150 cities are taking part this time around.
The twestival is only a few hours away now and I will post a follow blog entry to talk about how successful the night was and how close we got to our goal or raising €5,000.
One the main reasons we use software is to cut down on complexity, automate things where possible, and hopefully make it easy to do things. With that in mind I’ve compiled a list of popular 5 web applications that we use or have used in the past that should help you be more productive in day-to-day tasks from project management to sales & CRM. This is by no means a comprehensive list I have experience in using them.
37singal’s basecamp, changed the way project management should be thought of, I certainly did! From the outset the functionality seems way too simple but remarkably provides most of what we’ve needed when managing client & internal projects. It’s simple to use and in terms of functionality it allows you to create and monitor projects, create to do lists, milestones, upload files and time tracking. Where it doesn’t provide functionality chances are another web application will provide what you’re looking for.
A very comprehensive CRM application salesforce allows you to manage everything related to customer enquiries from contacts to leads. It’s very flexible and for this reason I found that it wasn’t all that intuitive, however, with some coaching it all made sense.
In my opinion the the best to-do application on the web, it’s very comprehensive, includes a bunch of API’s so you can do things like send you todo’s to your email/feed aggregator. It’s available as an IGoogle Plugin, IPhone application, BlackBerry Application, they really have thought of everything!
Part of the google apps suite of applications, Google Docs offers a powerful if limited word processor, useful for writing up quick docs and the ability to share documents, Google Docs also includes spreadsheets, form creator and a presentation tool.
I’ve been using gmail since the early days for my personal mail & recently I’ve chagned my company email to gmail also, gmail has eclisped outlook by a long shot, it’s simple to use and has all the usual email features: search, contacts, calendars, and tasks. I recently move from remember the milk to gmail tasks due to it’s simplicity and also that it integrates into gmail, however, while writing this blog I’ve noticed that remember the milk is available as a gmail gadget, I might need to revisit remember the milk
Save, Save, Save on all your web design, development, e-commerce, and online marketing.
For visitors of Search 2009, we are deligthed to announce special offers available for for the duration of the event.
20% discount on web startup package, this includes design development & deployment of full website
20% discount on any online marketing campaign, this includes SEO
Consultancy & Development of any call to action functionality
15% discount on any E-Commerce Package
20% discount on any Software services
Remember these offers are only available for the duration of Search 2009, email us at info[at]qhcconsulting.com or call us on +353 (1) 521 2357 to avail of these one time only special offers!
Search 2009 is only a few days away now and we are very excited to be attending it and showcasing our wares, the online expo itself is event aimed businesses of all sizes from startups to more established ones.
With 2 days left to go we are busy finishing our stand for the event. We will have special offers available only at the event so come see us and say Hi!
For more information on search and to register click here. We look forwad to seeing you there.
As website owners we all want to make sure that the time and money invested in having an online gives a return. How do we ensure a return on investment on our clients’ websites?
Building a website involves quite a few steps below each of which contributes to the overall ROI to the finished site:
Brainstorming
Content Creation/Gathering
Design
Layout
Navigation
Revision
Usability
Accessibility
Site Analytics setup
Optimize for Search Engine
Adword strategy
Analysis of results, page impressions, visitors, location of visitors,
Analysis of adwords
Website preformance measurement
Once the website has gone live continuous monitoring and measurement is the only way to ensure that the time invested in building the site is well spent.
Welcome to the QHC Consulting blog, we’ll be blogging regularly about the web, technology, mobile, it’s uses, design & how to make get the most out of the web and mobile for you and your business. So don’t forget to subscribe to our rss feed.
