What makes me think of Google base all of a sudden? Well today a SEO company called me up which is by no means rare and was typically pretty painful. They claimed to specialise in Google base however and this caught my attention. Surely it is pretty simple stuff to just list your products – especially now in the age of data feeds.

I am going to give base some time this week and see if it is worth the effort, and whether there is any real expertise required. I struggle to believe anyone can specialise in Google base however I may be surprised!

Tubemogul is a great video tool. You only have to upload your video once, and it automatically distributes it to every other major video site out there. On top of this is collects great stats.

I have been working a lot with Flickr recently, and it is slow work. It would be great if i could simultaneously upload to picasa as well using the same tool. A Tubemogul equivalent would be very handy.

In terms of blogs, Wordpress has it covered. I love Wordpress and it never ceases to amaze me how powerful it is. Managing multiple blogs can be a hassle but Dreamhost are a fantastic host and have an option to auto update all your wordpress installs in one go. This beats the hell out of manual updates.

Twitter and other forms of status updates, like Facebook are harder to manage. Twhirl is the best I have found so far for managing multiple twitter accounts, but it has no Facebook integration. This is an area which can and will see a lot of improvement in the near future. Integration with blogs is already happening and the results are pretty good.

Newsletter management and autoresponders are mostly done by Aweber for me. It is just a solid tool with great usability, functionality, support and pricing. I cant really fault it. If I were to be picky I guess they could make templating easier and synchronisation with blogs a bit simpler – however it is by no means complicated.

A marketing mega tool is what I am after. Any ideas anyone?

This season started off as usual with the back to basics task whereby the teams have to do some really simple task in order to make the most money. It is always very similar and in previous seasons has involved selling coffee, flowers, lemonade and that sort of thing.

As (almost) always – it is boys vs girls to start with. All the usual ridiculous characters are there battling to see who will be the alpha male on one side and queen bee on the other. Both teams managed to pick passable names relatively quickly for a change too. This part is pretty painful watching so we can skip over it.

The task was cleaning. It didnt matter what they cleaned – they just had to clean stuff and whoever made the most profit won. The obvious choice here is cleaning cars. Interestingly the guys team did some shoe cleaning for a bit which seemed to be going well – they made £60 an hour between three of them which by far tops what they were making with cars. However they only did the one hour then went on to clean cars.

The car cleaning from both teams was pretty ridiculous. It is by no means difficult, or complicated in any way to clean a car. Yet somehow both teams struggled – even with simple concepts like closing car doors before pressure washing. To cut a long story short, the teams spent £100-£200 on cleaning materials and turned over £250-£300. We are looking at roughly £100-£150 profit per team of 7 or 8 people. This means essentially each team member generated only £20 profit in a day. How are these the greatest up and coming business minds of the country? Kids make more money selling lemonade outside their house.

Focusing on the most successful parts of the business is a solid approach. Drop anything which is not performing so well and put your man power where it is most productive and generating the most return. The obvious problem here is that eggs in basket situation. You have increased exposure to reduced demand on one product line.

Taking on more products is a more pro active and adventurous approach. If the new products complement your existing business then you are leveraging your existing customer base and generating more revenue from the same number of customers. There is amazing potential to have a great return on investment if you do not have to do the initial legwork finding customers. If your new product is in a totally new industry you run the risk of having to do all the hard work and investing now with no reward for the first few months. This is dangerous territory in hard times when cash flow is tight. We all know though – fortunes are made during recessions, and it is a great time to boost your market share whilst your competitors are too scared to act. Be too bold however and you wont last.

Instead of starting a new blog I plan on using this one. I love the name – Technogumption. I will still talk about techy things and internet marketing is still something I am very interested in. The biggest change will be that the blog is now more personal.

Lets see how it goes.

For those looking to take their organisation to the next level I suggest checking out Remember the Milk. This was recommended to me by Maki of DoshDosh. It is essentially a to do list which integrates with a whole host of other technologies such as Google Calendar, Mail, Twitter, various instant messaging services and even your phone!

Why are we obsessed with productivity?

I guess we all feel it is the answer to our woes. It has become almost cool to do everything last minute. At college when there were deadlines, how many of the cool kids did any work before the last minute? I know I never did anything until the pressure was on big time. Unless you look totally stressed at work, you are not working hard enough. Some of us thrive when under pressure, others break down.

Clearly it is a topic a great number of people are interested in. Look how popular blogs such as LifeHacker and Zen Habits which deal with this sort of topic area are. Thousands of people read them every day looking for tips and tricks on organising their lives, prioritising, saving time, and reducing stress. Self help books fly off the shelves. The evidence is plentiful.

Tired and stressed should not be the norm

It has become part of popular culture to be tired and stressed. Whenever you ask anyone how they are you will almost always get the answer that they are tired, stressed, busy, overworked and underpaid. I myself have been guilty of this but I do not want to be any longer. I have been following Gary Vaynerchuk on Twitter, and watched a few of his shows. I like wine, but I am not a total wino by any stretch of the imagination. Wine Library TV for me is not about the wine. I just love this guys energy and enthusiasm. Every day on Twitter he is happy, energetic and offers nothing but encouragement and good vibes to everyone, then in his videos he is just the same.

It is a bit late for new years resolutions, but I challenge everyone to be more enthusiastic, offer more encouragement, be more positive and break the mould. Lets make getting up early and having a productive day cool. It will not be easy to start, but remember the harder you work the luckier you get. If you need more encouragement, go find some videos of Gary. His enthusiasm is contagious.

I opted for Ubuntu. It seemed to have a decent level of user friendliness, plenty of documentation, and an active community should I need any help. Without further thought, I ordered a new hard drive, popped it in the machine, and installed Ubuntu 7.10 – Gutsy Gibbon.

Installation was not without hiccups, but then it never is. My major mistake was to not have my computer connected to the internet during installation. When Ubuntu installs it automatically connects to the internet to download the latest versions of everything. Without these it did not work, and without it working I could not connect to the internet to get it working. Quite a dilemma. I figured it out with the help of my house mates’ PC and some quick Google searches. The Ubuntu community is very helpful.

My only other problem was configuring my two sound cards. I like this set up so I can have speakers running through one and then headphones and microphone through another for Skype. Again, some tinkering and all done.

First impressions
Ubuntu is very pretty. It is quite intuitive to use. You have to accept that it will take time to become used to a Linux environment, and will at times test your patience. Things are just in different places and have slightly different names. We are working against over 10 years of using Windows, so things will take time. I do not beleive I would have had any more or less problems than if I was moving onto a Mac.

The add and remove applications system is very simple. There are no end of pieces of software available to do all kinds of things. Remember the internet is mostly powered off linux so there are tonnes of applications and names we have heard of before such as Apache and MySql.

I used Firefox and OpenOffice on Windows too, so very little has changed there. I started off using Thunderbird on Ubuntu, which I used on Windows and it all transferred no problem. Now I am using Google Mail which is webmail based and do not feel the need for a stand alone application.

I will reveal more details as the test goes on.

In my eyes it is a wasted opportunity. A new launch should be a big deal. It should be exciting and very positive. In this case, the opportunity for a lot of great brand building has been wasted. The damage done will take years to repair. The sheer amount of media attention revolving around this launch makes it hard to go unnoticed when a problem arises. This begs the question, how can something so central to the operation of one of the world’s largest airports go so wrong?

Software failures happen. Technical difficulties hit at the least convenient time, every time. The reality is that things are always going to go wrong that is why we prepare for events, we test our software or equipment and we create contingency plans for when things go wrong. Let me explain these parts.

Preparation

We have all heard phrases such as “prior preparation prevents poor performance” aka “the 5 P’s” or “failing to plan is planning to fail”. Planning and preparation come hand in hand. For the sake of the argument lets say they are they same thing. This involves deciding exactly what you want to happen, what you will do to make it happen, how you will do it, and doing anything that needs doing beforehand. We all know about this stuff. The problems arise when planning is insufficient and lacking in detail. Lack of information, lack of experience, and poor timing often get in the way of preparation. For these very reasons it is advisable to do this long in advance.

Testing

In a world dominated by IT and dependent on so many variables, testing is ever so important. Make sure everything is not only in place, but that is is also working perfectly. If you are launching new software, test is thoroughly. If you are using a new machine of some sort, test it. New product/website/whatever, test it!

I had a nightmare situation once whereby I had produced some T shirts, and I put them on sale immediately wanting to get stuff out of the door and everything going forward. I sold a few the first day and posted them off. Two days later I washed my own and the print ran. I phoned the printer and they realised they hadforgotten to run them through the dryer hot enough to fix the prints. No surprise I started getting emails regarding prints running. I had to recall everything and deal with customers. Luckily the printer accepted the mistake and resolved it in a matter of days. No big problem except I was wasting money paying for postage twice and refunding people for the charge of returning their garments. A simple test delaying the launch 24 hours would have prevented the whole situation. Lesson learnt!

Contingency Planning

No matter how much we plan, prepare, test etc, things will go wrong. It is a part of life. Contingency planning is a true sign of being serious about your business. A contingency plan covers what you will do and how you will do it should the worst happen. It is where you detail how you will troubleshoot. This prior preparation can seriously minimise your losses when something happens. All major businesses have contingency plans, but very few small and medium sizes businesses do, and it is the smaller businesses who suffer the most!

As we work online, we are more used to preparation and testing. Do you test everything thoroughly? Any lessons learnt? Have you planned for the worst? Do you have a contingency plan?

It is full integrated with your Google account, so you do not need another password or anything like that. By default it sets up a personal calendar for you. Planning your own day and making notes of appointment times, travel plans etc is great. This is nothing new to calendars. The true potential for this lies in the ability to create a number of different calendars and share them.

Keep organised

You can create a different calendar for each project you are involved in. This calendar can be shared with everyone involved in the project. You can even give other people the access level to invite more people, edit events etc. Already this is useful. By having a system like this, any conflicting schedules should stand out instantly!

Keeping different calendars for different projects prevents you from getting too involved with any one project. It allows you to step back and see how much time something is taking up. The world revolves around compromise, and this tool should help you decide where you can compromise.

Shared Calendars

On a more personal note, having your own schedule planned in, and shared amongst your friends makes arranging a get together so much easier. You can instantly see who is in town. Another great use could be to create a calendar with all your family’s birthdays entered. Share this amongst your family and I am sure they would appreciate it. Do the same again for your friends.

Public Calendars

There are loads of different public calendars you might want to add. I am terrible for knowing when public holidays, mother’s day and that type of thing are. So I added a UK public holidays calendar. Now I should be able to keep on top of things. Other popular calendars involve film releases, TV show releases, musicians and bands gig schedules, politicians public appearances (This has to be hot right now following the presidential candidates) and many many more.

There you have it – another great productivity tool that I highly recommend. Give it a shot and let me know what you think. For those who use outlook, I believe it synchronises really well with outlook, but I have not experimented. Let me know if your a Google Calendars fan, and any tips or tricks you have. If you prefer something else, let me know what!