Web Consulting Washington DC

How many of you out there have registered more than a few domain names? Considering how hard it is to simply find an available “.com” domain name, I would venture to say there’s a lot of you that have more than one. It make sense, you want to sure they’re available to you when someday in the future when you’re ready to do something with them, they’ll be there. And, if you like some of my more entrepreneurial clients, a few domain names can sometimes be a lot of domain names.

As much as I deplore the illegal practice of domain squatting (aka cybersquatting), it is certainly legal to register domain name for a future use. If you’re lucky enough to even find a decent domain name that isn’t already held by someone else, you should consider registering today, because really may not be there for you tomorrow.

That being said, NameDrive is a great service to park your domain names with them and here’s why:

If you use Register.com or GoDaddy as your registrar, you duly pay your annual registration fee to keep the domain under your ownership and control. Then, like most of us, we get to work on creating a masterpiece of a website, which of course takes time.

Until the website is complete, what is actually running under your shiny new domain name? Advertisements. And guess who’s profiting from them? Surprise! Not you. Your beloved registrar, yes, the company you just seemingly paid for the privilege for them to advertise on your domain name.

Argh, ok, so why not you? I agree, why not you!? It’s your domain name right?

Ok, queue in NameDrive. They help you sort this mess out. You sign up with them, they run ads on you domain name… and generously split the ad proceeds with you. Far better deal if you ask me.

How?

You simply point your domain name’s DNS to their servers, and they handle the rest. You can pick from a variety of templates. You can select what types of ads are suitable to run under you domain name (you wouldn’t run football ads under a “KittensNPuppiesForMe.com” would you? No of course not.) Or you can just let NameDrive put up a generic template and forget about it.

They’ll manage the ads, rotate out lower performing ads out, rotating better performing ads in, and provide you with statistics of how many visitors and click-throughs your domain names have attracted on their very own.

There are several other companies that compete against NameDrive, but most of them are for professional domain name… hogs. They offer services to questionable practice of bulk domain name buying and dumping. It’s not quiet illegal but not exactly nice either. These competitors want the big fish, and they set a minimum number of domain names you should have in tote. Usually anyone with less than 100 domains they’re not interested.

But you can place your one domain name if you like with NameDrive, they’re happy to have you no matter what. There’s no minimum stay, no contract, no setup fees, nothing. You put your domains in, and keep them there until your ready to do something else with them.

How much can I make with them and how do I know what they’re earning?

From NameDrive’s reports, you’ll easily see what kind of traffic they get without any heavy lifting. But before you get too excited with delusions of easy money, its not exactly easy.

In fact most of your domain names will likely not earn a dime. But don’t throw in the towel, it just means these domain names need to be developed into a full fledge website before traffic starts to generate. It’s a rare gem, that you domain name alone, has enough typed-in and residual traffic to make cash.

Regardless of your luck, NameDrive can still help you. Apart from identifying if your domain name is a diamond or dud, they have additional services available to you that can still help you make some cash. For example, if you want to sell your domain name, you can put it on the chopping block with them. They’ll help you find a buyer and broker a sale for you.

Or more interesting, NameDrive’s latest service called BuildingBlocks helps domain name owners find interested professional web developers, to help you develop your website concepts as part of a revenue sharing approach.

Whatever you end up doing, if you have a few domain names just sitting there collecting ad revenue for your registrar, I would consider parking them with NameDrive and make sure that revenue goes into your pocket, not the registrar. Good luck!

Callwave.com

On average, studies are indicating that the average professional is interrupted every three minutes with email, answering calls, chat requests, etc. This apparently is costing us all about 2 hours out of each day, just trying to get back to completing our primary work.

How does anyone is actually anything done?
When I consult professionals about their communications, one of the usual “ah ha!” moments I get is when we get around to talking about it means to be mobile, starting with their cell phones.

I usually ask a few questions:

at your office
Do you get a lot of calls during the day?
Do you have to stop your work to answer them?
Have you ever considered using an office assistant to handle your calls?

outside of your office
Do you have to call your office voicemail to check your voice messages?
If you are able to forward office calls to your cell phone, do you often forget to do so?
Do you use your voicemail to screen your calls?

If you answered “Yes” to any of these, read on.

Setting up your cell phone as your single source of voice communications is the one the first basic steps to going fully mobile as well as maintaining your sanity.

I tried that already, but I couldn’t screen my calls on my cell phone like I can with my office line.

With Callwave, now you can, and far better than what your office line could ever do.

Callwave is another free service that I consider a must-have for professional or small business. At its core service, it is a Voicemail-to-Text transcription service* (a-la-Jott.com’s voice-to-text transcription service). By enabling certain Callwave features, it can help you gain serious productivity and allow you to be completely mobile.

If you’re like me, most of your calls tend to be urgent but very few of them are not drop-everything-right-now type of emergencies. So, I have to be able to screen these calls, at the same time I have to maintain my interruptions to a minimum if I’m expected to get anything done.

Here’s how I recommend setting things up

Step 1
Forward all calls to Callwave’s voicemail.Whenever I don’t pick a call or I have my cell phone turned off, all my callers are sent to voicemail on Callwave’s service. In order to make that work, you have to use what most major cell phone carriers call Busy Call Forwarding (Verizon is *71). What this does is send the caller to Callwave’s Vtxt enabled voicemail instead of your carrier’s default voicemail.

Step 2
Have Callwave send voicemail transcriptions to your cell phone’s SMS. As soon as my callers are done leaving a voicemail, Callwave sends a txt message to my cell phone with the transcribed voicemail. This feature comes in very handy whenever I happen to be somewhere that I can’t take calls but I can read txt messages.

Step 3
Make sure Callwave sends an email message with the full audio to your email account. Callwave then sends an email of this message to my Outlook Hosted Exchange service. I filter them into an Outlook folder that archives them. This enables me to store the audio of every message I ever received, with searchable transcribed text as record of my messages. No more full voicemail boxes or lost messages.

Step 4
Install Callwave’s Internet Answering Machine to screen your calls at your office (or laptop). Last but not least, when I am my office, it plays voicemail audio through my speakers with the use of Callwave’s Internet Answering Machine. This lets me screen the calls for emergencies, without having to stop whatever it is that I’m doing.

The last tip I recommend is setting up twice day to return calls, once in the morning, and once before COB. With Callwave, you definitely rely on your cell phone as the single communications point, while keeping the interruptions to a minimum, but allow for truly important emergencies to get through.

This agrees entirely with the principal of centralizing your information storage, while distributing access across various mediums. A topic I will be coming back to from time to time.

*These transcriptions are sophisticated automated transcribers. While not entirely accurate, it helps you get to the gist of the call without having to pay for expensive human transcribers. But trust me, it’s pretty darn good.

BTW, this post falls under a new category, Total Mobility. This is category will cover services and gear that I use that keep things going smooth, wherever I happen to be.

Jott.com is one of the best new services I have come across recently. If you’re a web marketing or technology consultant like me, you probably find yourself driving to and from client locations a good deal part of your working week. The time I have then lets me collect my thoughts about the meeting I just had or the next steps on a project that I am working on. For whatever reason, it tends to be a particularly productive time to brainstorm for SEO phrases and content ideas.

Unfortunately, these productive brainstorming sessions leave me with thoughts that I need to annotate somewhere, but wait a second, what am I crazy, I’m driving! I need to keep both hands on the wheel. Oh and how temping it is to grab my Moto Q, usually charging in the seat over. It almost seems too easy to just pick it up and attempt to type a note to myself.

Yeah, I know, bad idea.

Thankfully, Jott can save my ideas and my life, by transcribing my voice instructs into my email, while I keep my hands on the wheel.

What’s Jott about?

“Jott™ is a revolutionary new service that automatically converts your voice into e-mail and text messages—anytime, anywhere, with any cell phone. Jott™ makes you more productive and efficient by capturing your ideas, notes to self, tasks, and more without using your keypad.”

- Jott.com

For road warriors, here’s four easy steps to setup Jott on your phone.

Step 1
First, sign up with an account on Jott.com. They will send you a typical email with a link to verify your account. Then fill out a couple of questions to let them know what type of cell phone service you have and whether or not you want Jott to email you, text message you, or both.

Step 2
What you to do next is add 1866-Jott-123 in your contacts list and then save it as one of your quick dial numbers. Mine is #5. If I press and hold 5 on my cell phone, it automatically dials and connects to Jott’s service. By reading the caller id, Jott knows I’m the one calling, and presto, you get the pleasant,”Who do you want to jott?” question. Setting up quick dial depends what type of phone you have, but most modern cell phones work roughly the same.

“Ok, but your still picking up your cell phone while your driving to press 5, that’s not quiet safe is it?”

Step 3
The next step is to get familiarize yourself with your voice-activation services. Again, this depends in large part to the type of phone and/or type of service you may have. Moto Q’s have built in voice-activation in the phone itself. My hands free device allows me to voice-activate Jott’s service with a quick press of button, nothing more complicated than turning the radio in your car.

Step 4
Use it. I have all my voice notes sent to my inbox for future reference and processing. But I also like getting them sent to my cell phone via SMS. By asking Jott for a “Reminder”, I can set Jott to send me a note at a future time and date. If I happen to be in a meeting or in an environment where I can’t leave my cell phone ringer on, I will be get a transcribed version of my note via SMS Text*.

There are a number of uses for Jott but collecting my thoughts on the go and sending myself reminders, I have found to be what I use it for most frequently. It’s quiet remarkable how easy it is to use and how sophisticated it’s transcribing technology has to be to make this magic happen so accurately. I haven’t tried blogging with it, but I am told it does a pretty good job as well. I will have to try that sometime soon.

Right now Jott.com is free, in beta, I suspect it will have some nominal fee associated with it when it’s ready for primetime.

*Note: Make sure you have an adequate plan for SMS. Overage charges are very expansive so keep an eye on your phone bill and make sure you have enough service cover your typical usage.

Here’s a few E-Commerce facts found collected by SMBTN Network (smbtn.com).

3/4 of online shoppers say they would not return to a website that took longer than 4 seconds to load.
Akamai, 11/2006

Online retailers are acquiring new customers at a 15% annual rate versus 2% for traditional brick and mortar retail outlets.
Deloitte & Touche USA, 11/2006

Consumers are 50% more likely to be influenced by blogs and e-mails than TV or radio advertising.
EPM Communications, 04/2006

93% of consumers say they are unlikely to purchase from or even return to a website after encountering annoying pop-up ads; 89% are annoyed when they need to install extra software; 83% are annoyed when registration pages block access to online content.
Hostway, 07/2005

79% of small businesses shop online regularly.
Jupiter Research, 07/2006

16% of consumers say they would contact a vendor through e-mail. 68% of consumers say they would use the phone number listed on a website to contact a vendor.
Nielsen/Net Ratings, 09/2006

54% of consumers referred a friend to a vendor found online.
Nielsen/Net Ratings, 11/2006

93% of those who have a net worth of $10 million or more have purchased a luxury product on the internet in the past year.
The Luxury Institute, 07/2006

We have been working recently with the folks at Project On Government Oversight (POGO) on their new and improved Federal Contractor Misconduct Database. This database site is a resource that tracks the top 50 federal contractors and their, errhm, bad habits.

Their goal was to provide a centralized database listing of instances of misconduct, and vital to that was making sure the system easily provided all their cited publicly available sources.

POGO was founded in 1981 and they are an independent nonprofit that investigates and exposes corruption and other misconduct in order to achieve a more accountable federal government.

We provided consulting and development services for their new database site. They needed something they could easily update and keep track of large body of links and information on a daily basis.

The database itself is a customized CMS system, completely CSS driven with built RSS feeds to facilitate syndication and tracking. In other words, pretty nice tool. Future articles we will discuss some of the underlining technologies, why they should matter to your business or organization and how you can benefit from these relatively news technologies.

PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor

PHP is one of the web’s most popular programming languages and it’s one I am most comfortable with in general. It was created at a time when the available conventional programming languages like C or Java were too powerful (low level) or too bulky and unwieldy. Somewhere in between the jack-of-all trades Perl and the so-simple-our-sales-guy can code it Cold Fusion, PHP was incarnated.

It was the first web developer programming language written by developers for developers and it continues to be a force of nature, even in the face hundreds of new languages that have since been created.

Well, PHP4 (version) has recently been officially declared dead, to focus energies on the vastly improved PHP5 and make room for the soon to arrive state-of-the-art PHP6. Thanks to killer innovations like WordPress (consequently, what we use for WCDC), PHP is here to stay and the latest innovations can only continue to solidify as the leading scripting language for the web.

Younger Workers Demanding Web 2.0 Tech On The Job — Enterprise 2.0 — InformationWeek

Moore then put up some IDC research numbers showing that 45% of companies have workers blogging, 43% use RSS feeds, and 35% of companies have employees using wikis.

That’s a significant numbers using RSS and and wikis such as Microsoft’s Sharepoint that we offer at IGT. It’s quiet astounding to see the rate of adoption of these technologies, particularly RSS feeds. Google, Microsoft, Apple have brough RSS into the mainstream fold. My Outlook 2007, which comes included with IGT’s email service, allows you to subscribe to RSS feeds of your favorite weblogs and websites.

Its an option located between your Outbox and your Sent Items. Look for the orange RSS logo. From here you can some of the blogs I subscribe to. Any ones in bold means there are new published entries for me to read.

This also synches with my Moto Q, through our new wireless synching service. What’s so great about RSS is that I do not have to remember to go visit some of the weblogs to see if there’s anything new, this system keeps track and notifies of new enteries.

Most of the time I don’t even go to the website to view the entry, I can read it right in my Outlook (or PDA).

Once you click on article it, unbolds it to marking it as having read it. Just like an email message only it’s syndicated feed and the best part, you don’t have to subscribe by giving email address. You just need to come a webpage that has the RSS logo on it.

This URL (page) has an RSS feed attached to it. To subscribe to our weblog, it’s really simple.

All you need to do is copy the URL, right click on “RSS Feeds” folder your Outlook 2007.

Copy and Paste and your done! You’re a new subscriber.

Its that easy and that’s why RSS is fast become mainstream and why every business must get into the business of publishing news.

Longtime ‘Spam King’ Charged With Fraud - washingtonpost.com

Today’s article in the post featured the high profile arrest of spammer Robert A. Soloway. This is good sign that legislatively some are trying to criminalize spam.

A couple of facts are needed to put this in context:

1) His arrest is in no way going to stop spam, it’s a drop in a bucket, oh size of Lake Michigan

2) We don’t sweat spam.

We recently launched a hosted email Outlook/Exchange solution that brings the glorious benefit of seriously curbing spam, so your Inbox doesn’t flood with messages.

Have a personal email address for over 8 years, so trust that I get a lot of spam. Approximately 300+ spam messages a day. Ever since switching over to our new email system, I have seen perhaps one or two sneak into my inbox, the rest junked into a folder to be trashed a couple of weeks later. This is one of the several nice benefits of this hosted Outlook/Exchange service (i.e. my Blackberry, which wirelessly synches to with my Outlook/Exchange hasn’t downloaded one spam message).

Here’s a screenshot of my Junk folder where all my spam gets thrown in with no problem.