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Google

What’s in Your Toolbox?

by Daria Steigman on April 28, 2010

Business Productivity Toolbox

[Note: This post originally appeared on IABC's Communication World blog.]

I was checking my e-mail, tweeting with friends, and reading through a backlog of blog posts last Friday while soaring across the United States at 35,000 feet. It was a great way to feel connected after a week of airplanes, hotels, and day-long meetings. But then I came back, and my Internet service provider had a major outage—leaving me offline and disconnected for several hours on Monday.

Surprisingly, it wasn’t the tweets or my e-mail that I missed. It was Google. And Dictionary.com. I was working on a report for a client, and I’m so used to being able to fact check, decipher acronyms, and check for precise word usage that the productivity snag was making me really cranky, really fast.

That got me thinking about the tools I take for granted that help me as a multitasking communications pro, business owner, and blogger.

Here are seven programs and tools that help me to be productive every day:

  1. Google has become my backup business hub. Plus I can sync my Droid so that I can access Gmail, my contacts, and my calendar on the go.
  2. Google Reader is indispensible. Without a good aggregator, it would be impossible to keep up with 10-15 blogs, let alone the 100+ I read regularly.
  3. Ever since I loaded that first beta version of Google Chrome, I’ve been hooked by the speed and simplicity of the browser. I’m particularly fond of the bookmark sync feature since I typically use two computers (one desktop, one netbook).
  4. TweetDeck is my Twitter desktop client of choice. The Groups feature is invaluable; I also run Facebook and LinkedIn feeds. I typically monitor the notifications window at the bottom of my screen, and pop in periodically to chat during the day.
  5. Evernote enables me to capture random ideas for blog posts and other notes and access them wherever and whenever I want.
  6. Post-it Notes, Sticky Notes, and 1 dry erase board. I’m big on both to-do lists and capturing ideas and potential innovations. I use my dry erase board as a visual reminder of projects and deadlines and as a place to aggregate blog post ideas for Communication World, Workshifting, and this blog. I use the Sticky Notes program (which sits on my desktop) for nagging items. Post-it Notes is for one-off items, from checking on the status of an invoice to a phone call I need to return.
  7. My Droid, with its crisp big screen and Android operating system, is rapidly becoming an invaluable business tool. Plus it has amazing turn-by-turn GPS navigation.

What’s in your toolbox?

Photo by Ali Edwards (Flickr).

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Cool Google Web Tools Help You Visualize the Data

by Daria Steigman on February 17, 2010

When was the last time you clicked on the “Show Options” button at the top of the Google search results page? If you haven’t looked lately, take a peak. There are some good Web tools available to help you visualize the data.

My two favorites:

  • Timeline gives you a timeline of the data pertaining to your search term. A search for the term snowpocalyse pulled up a 1922 reference—along with a lot of current articles from around the world.
  • Wonder wheel puts your search term at the hub of a clickable wheel. A search for Pepsi, for example, includes spokes on Pepsi coupons, Pepsi employment, the history of Pepsi, and even Coca Cola. Click on any one, and you get a whole new wheel.

Have fun exploring.

Photo by takomabibelot (Flickr).

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Why Google’s New China Strategy is Smart Business

by Daria Steigman on January 14, 2010

Google’s announcement that it would stop censoring search results in China is huge news–and smart strategy.

In exploring the background, the Financial Times reported:

Google argued internally that while censoring was an unpalatable compromise, it would at least make it possible to open up more of the Web to Chinese Internet users. But the decision was unpopular with many members of Google’s rank and file and never sat comfortably in particular with co-founder Sergey Brin, whose own family’s hardships in the former Soviet Union had heightened his sensitivity to human rights issues.

While causing internal angst–and leading to frequent debates about whether or not to pull out–the Chinese compromise has not helped Google to gain the sort of position inside China that it enjoys in many markets around the world.

Google’s decision might get the company kicked out of the Chinese market. But it seems likely that Google is poised to reap huge reputational gains globally from taking a principled stand. Given a choice to do business with Google or Yahoo (whose actions in handing over e-mails to the Chinese government helped put a leading Chinese dissident in prison for 10 years), for example, which one would you choose?

Update: Umair Haque has a terrific post about Google, China, and the fact that “an ethical edge just might be the ultimate cause of advantage… It’s a radical new definition of ‘advantage’ that blows past the stale, tired idea of competitive advantage.”

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What the Spiders Know

by Daria Steigman on April 27, 2009

I had the pleasure of speaking about social media to two PR classes at the University of Maryland last week. They’re smart students, and they’re just starting to explore social media. Almost all of them had Facebook pages, a few were on LinkedIn, a couple on MySpace, and a smattering had started to explore the Twitterverse.

I started our conversation by asking them one simple question: When was the last time you Googled your name?

It caught their attention (and apparently what they discovered really startled at least a couple of them). Plus it proved a good entry point for a discussion about why companies and individuals need to be monitoring their online reputations and engaging with their stakeholders.

If you haven’t Googled your name lately, go ahead. Then come back and tell me what the Web spiders have learned about you.

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Susan Lucci, Susan Faludi, and SEO

by Daria Steigman on February 2, 2009

What do a feminist author and a soap opera star have in common?

You can do a lot of free association when you’re on cold meds. I was talking to a friend of mine the other day about something related to advertising. That got me thinking about a book I once read for a class by a feminist author who premised, in part, that women’s choices were unduly influenced by Hollywood and Madison Avenue. So women who “nested” were doing so because they watched 30 Something, and if we wore sexy lingerie it was because we’d seen a Christian Lacroix or Calvin Klein ad. Yeah, right. I eventually threw the book across the room and never got to the end.

Apropos of that conversation the other day, I wondered: whatever happened to Susan Faludi? So I did a Google search. But I spelled her name wrong and Google asked: Do you mean Susan Lucci? I still got that when I added in the book title. Eventually I went to Amazon, plugged in the book title, and figured it out.

I know very little about search engine optimization, which is why I try to learn from Lee Odden, Matt McGee, and other SEO pros. But I know that if your name can be mistaken for any variation of a soap opera star, you’ve got work to do on your online rankings. (Meanwhile, the irony that a feminist who posited a backlash against women was mistaken for a soap opera star wasn’t lost on me.)

How’s your online ranking? Have you ever been mistaken online for someone else? If so, what did you do to correct your online profile?

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