As a web technology consultant, I am constantly on the prowl for simple tools that one can use to improve the way we work with information. Some tools are quiet simple (and free) to use. A recent one I found was iColorFolder is free to download and use.

iColorFolder brings you an extra set of folder images that allows you quickly colorize some of the desktop mess you may have. If you have more than 10 folder items on your desktop or in your My Documents folder, they can all start to look the same. You end up straining your eyes looking at each label until you find that important folder your looking for.

This little tool helps you distinguish them by quickly letting you select a color with use of a right-click of your mouse.

The first thing it does is replace your standard windows folder with one of their base folders. As with most software in general, that comes with a quirk. The first time you do this, your desktop icons are likely to get moved around. But this affect should go away (once you reorganize your desktop like you had before) and that’s about the worst of it.

You can select several folder skins, so you can make you base folders look different from your standard system if you care to “individualize” your desktop, or you stick to your XP or Vista style folders, they provide both.

Note: Make sure to check off “Use generic folder icon defined in the skin”. Not sure why this isn’t checked off as the default but it should be unless you plan on create a custom set of folders icons yourself. I suspect we all have better things to do with our time, don’t we?

After this initial setup, the rest is cake. When you create a new folder, that you prefer to colorize to distinguish it from the rest, just right-click and select Color Label. You’ll get get pull down menu of your available color options. You even get some extra folder images (click on Custom) that you can use to define folder that contain videos, pictures and other miscellaneous ones.

Now you’ll be able to identify and find important directories quickly and with less strain on your eyes. You’ll be glad to be using this little application.

BTW, you can download extra skins from their site as well. I found the base set of skins was sufficient enough for me. buy brahmi

BustAName.com

When starting a business, coming up with a name for you business, to me, is probably one of the tougher things one has to do. It seems easy, it should take a lot of thought, some trial and error and some research. It use to be you could simply come up with name, check to see if it was trademarked, and if wasn’t previously held by someone else, all you had to do is write it into your articles of incorporation and “tad-da”, you’re in business with a brand new shiny name.

Now-a-days, you can not brainstorm a name of a new business without taking into account whether or not there was a suitable and available domain name for it. I would venture to say that you’re more likely to find someone squatting on a good domain name, than you are finding it already as a registered as trademark by a competitor in your industry.

The reason is thanks to cybersquatters, these guys are out to make bunk by registering all the common domain names that anyone could want, sitting on them until they find someone to resell them to you at a marked up price. It’s a bit like scalping tickets for a popular concert. These folks have no intention to do anything domain name, other than selling it to you at a premium.

So, thanks to these guys, many times finding a domain name and thus a name for your new company, is a little more about compromise. Someone may very well have your first pick of a domain name, but by playing around a little with some variations, you can find a great alternative domain name without having to dole out hard cash or go to battle with a cybersquatter over it.

Fortunately, there’s a easy tool to help you come up with variations. Bustaname.com is simple ajax based site allows you enter various keywords or phrases and it displays which combinations are available.

Three Simple Steps

1) First add keywords and synonyms that relate to your business name that you’re hoping find a good domain for, then click add.

2) This is where they appear and you can get further suggested words by placing your mouse over the blue arrow.

You can remove any them simply by clicking on the red icon.

3) Anything that appears under Available Domains is yours for the taking, if you want them. They even connect directly to popular domain name registrars (yes, inexpensive ones!).

TIP: Exclude some variations with the use of Groups

If you play around with it, you’ll realize that you may want to try various combinations of some keywords and at the same time excluding others. For example, try combinations with the words “frames” and “framing”, but do not want available domains showing both such as framesframingart.com, all you need is click on Add Group and drag both those keywords into the group.

Good domains are easy to say and easy to spell. Just remember, you’ll be saying it a lot so make it easy on yourself.

Start with Bustaname.com to help you find a good one for you. Good luck!

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

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.

Longtime ‘Spam King’ Charged With Fraud – washingtonpost.com colchicines

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.