Test your trivia and geography knowledge with Google SmartyPins

Are you good at tying together your trivia and geography skills? You have 1,000 miles -- spend them well.SmartyPins by Google.Google

If you're into trivia, and you know where most places are on the map, then Google's new SmartyPins game is sure to entertain you. The geo-trivia mashup game runs on the Google Maps platform and allows players to spend 1,000 miles trying to mark the correct location to answer each question.

Head to this link to access the game.

Categories in SmartyPins.Google

Before you click Start to begin a new game, you can decide if you want random questions, or if you want to get asked information about a specific category. We all have our specialties, right? Your choices will be Featured Topics (which has a submenu), Arts & Culture, Science & Geography, Sports & Games, Entertainment, and History & Current Events.

Answering a question in SmartyPins.Screenshot by Nicole Cozma/CNET

The first question will automatically load on the left-hand side of the screen, and to answer you have to drag the map pin to the correct location. Luckily, the map will start somewhere near the area you need to go, keeping you from moving across the entire globe. You'll probably have to zoom in to find some of the smaller cities and places, too. Once drop the pin, the name of the place it's on will display, and provide a button for your to Submit your answer. (You can still move the pin after you drop it.)

Bonus miles are awarded for answering a question within 15 seconds. If you need a hint, you can forfeit the bonus miles to see one right away.

A wrong answer on SmartyPins.Screenshot by Nicole Cozma/CNET

As you progress through the game, Google will award you with pins. So far, there's bronze, silver, gold, and diamond. Each time you pin the wrong location, SmartyPins will tally the total miles between the place you selected and the correct location, then deduct them from your total. Once you run out of miles, you lose.

Google will let you share your score with friends on Google+, Facebook, and Twitter, while also encouraging them to give the game a try.

While this game is not an entirely new concept, it's still something fun to do if you want to brush up on your geography and trivia.

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Share a hard drive with everyone on your Wi-Fi network

Take advantage of your router's USB port with a little trick that lets you share a hard drive with anyone on your Wi-Fi network.

Cloud storage is expensive, but it's not the only way to share a bunch of files across many devices. Instead, you can use an external hard drive and your router to create networked storage accessible to anyone on your Wi-Fi network.

When it's set up, any files stored on that drive can be accessed by all devices on your network -- even phones and tablets. Here's how to set it up on Windows.

Step 1: Choose your drive

The drive you share can be as small as thumb drive, or as large as a 3TB external hard drive. Check your router's manual to find out if there are any storage limitations, since some routers have a storage cap.

Once you've chosen your drive, plug it in.

Step 2: Enable USB drive sharing

On any computer connected to your Wi-Fi network, launch a browser, and navigate to your router's IP address. You can find this on the back of the router, in the device manual, or by searching for it online. In most cases, it looks like 192.168.X.X.

When the page loads, you'll be asked to log in with your username and password. If you changed it, you should know it. If you didn't, it's probably still admin (username), and admin (password).

Those who fall into the latter category, please change your password as soon as you can, and before proceeding to the next step.

Every router's interface is different, but if yours has a USB port, you'll find a link entitled something likeFile Sharing under the Administrator settings. In this window, enable the file sharing server (also called SAMBA). Apply the settings, and exit.

Screenshot/Sharon Profis

Step 3: Access the drive

You're now ready to read and write to your attached hard drive. Open a file explorer window, and navigate to the Network folder in the left sidebar. Then, clear out the path at the top of the explorer window, and enter \\[your IP address]. So, for example, it might look like: \\192.168.1.1

Screenshot/Sharon Profis

With that, your drive will appear. Open it to access its contents, just like any other folder. If you're asked to log in, simply use your router's login credentials (the same one used to log into the Web interface.)

If you plan on leaving your hard drive attached, so that you can easily access it from any Explorer window. To do that, right-click the drive and select "Map network drive..." Give it a name, and the folder will appear in the sidebar.

Screenshot/Sharon Profis

To access the drive on other computers on the network, repeat step 3.

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'Warbiking' highlights the need for better wireless security

A high-tech bike ride around Sydney shows off how little thought many companies and individuals give to wireless security.

Don't let the lycra fool you: James Lyne isn't your traditional cyclist.

Unlike the majority of MAMILs (middle aged men in lycra) on Sydney's roads, he's not cycling to and from work, or for medically-advised health reasons. He's actually the global head of security research for Sophos, and this bike ride is all about research.

Lyne has a high-tech rig installed on his bike that sniffs out Wi-Fi networks and lets him see just what their security is like. He calls it warbiking -- named after the old-school wardriving in the early days of wireless networks -- and last week we took a ride with him around Sydney.

Sydney is just the latest stop on Lyne's World of Warbiking tour -- he's been through Hanoi, London, San Francisco and more. While in town, Lyne's ride scanned a total of 34,476 networks with some depressing results.

A staggering 28 percent of the networks had either no security encryption at all or used WEP -- a security algorithm that's been regarded as broken since 2001. A further 28 percent used WPA rather than the preferred WPA2.

Amazingly, these results were actually better than many of the other cities that Lyne has been to.

The flipside of the Warbiking tour is when Lyne actually offers an unsecured network to see who connects and see what's sort of activities they're willing to perform on an open network. In Sydney, people connecting to the unknown network were happy to connect to not only social media sites but even netbanking.

According to Lyne: "This willingness to connect to any wireless network that professes to offer free Wi-Fi, without ensuring you have some kind of security measures in place, is like shouting your personal or company information out of the nearest window and being surprised when someone abuses it."

In the video above, Lyne explains warbiking in greater detail as well as offering some great advice about wireless security, not only for Sydneysiders but anyone around the world.

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PC market won't stink as much this year, says Gartner

Worldside shipments of PCs will still drop in 2014 but not as badly as they did last year. And ultramobiles will provide a bit of a boost.

The PC market will stage a small revival this year, according to Gartner.

Peering into its crystal ball, the research firm said Monday that global PC shipments will decline by only 2.9 percent in 2014. That may not sound like a huge cause for celebration. But the outlook is better than last year's drop of 9.5 percent. Gartner's PC figures include desktops, notebooks, and premium "ultramobile" devices.

The PC market has been on a downward spiral for the past few years as more consumers have opted for smartphones and tablets over traditional desktops and laptops. Many people have also been hanging onto their PCs longer rather than refreshing them every couple of years. And the lackluster appeal of Windows 8 failed to give consumers much of a reason to rush out and buy a new computer. So why will 2014 be kinder and gentler to the PC industry? Thank the business community.

"Business upgrades from Windows XP and the general business replacement cycle will lessen the downward trend, especially in Western Europe," Gartner research director Ranjit Atwal said in a statement. "This year, we anticipate nearly 60 million professional PC replacements in mature markets."

Gartner

Shipments of traditional desktops and laptops will drop from 296.1 million last year to 276.2 million this year and to 261.6 million next year. But ultramobiles will grab more customers, according to Gartner, with shipments rising from 21.5 million in 2013 to 32.2 million in 2014 and 55 million in 2015. An ultramobile, or ultrabook, is defined as a thin, compact, lightweight laptop designed to be used on the go. Apple's MacBook Air is one example.

Tablet shipments, meanwhile, will rise by 24 percent to reach 256 million units. Mobile phone shipments are projected to hit 1.9 billion units this year, up 3.1 percent from 2013. Smartphones will continue to eat up more of the market, as Gartner expects them to account for 66 percent of all global mobile phone shipments this year, rising to 88 percent by 2018.

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Microsoft, Canon shake on patent licensing agreement

The two companies will share intellectual property on a "broad range of products and services," including those for certain digital imaging and mobile consumer products.

Here's a novel idea: Instead of suing for patent infringement, why not just share the intellectual property?

This is exactly what Microsoft and Canon have decided to do. The two companies announced Wednesday that they've signed a patent cross-licensing agreement, which gives them the right to use the intellectual property on some of each other's products.

"This collaborative approach with Canon allows us to deliver inventive technologies that benefit consumers around the world," Microsoft IP Licensing general manager Nick Psyhogeos said in astatement. "Microsoft believes cooperative licensing is an effective way to accelerate innovation while reducing patent disputes."

Patent cross-licensing agreements are nothing new. In fact, a lot of tech companies over the years have made such deals with their colleagues and even their competitors. For example, earlier this year Samsung entered into three separate patent cross-licensing agreements with Google, Cisco Systems, and Ericsson.Microsoft and Canon did not disclose the terms of the deal or say exactly what types of patents they'll be sharing. But, they did say the agreement "covers a broad range of products and services" and applied to their "growing patent portfolios." The companies said that certain digital imaging and mobile consumer products have been included in the agreement.

As for Microsoft, since it launched its IP licensing program in 2003, it has entered into more than 1,100 licensing agreements with various companies.

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Facebook snaps up LiveRail in push for better video ads

Facebook

The video aspect of Facebook's online and mobile ad schemes looks poised for a boost with the acquisition of LiveRail, a monetization platform for online video.

LiveRail offers services aimed toward marketers and video ad networks with the intent of helping premium publishers sell digital video inventory in a smarter way. Some of these services include real-time biddable private and public video ad exchanges as well as a one-stop dashboard for managing and optimizing ad networks.

Headquartered in San Francisco with offices in New York, London, and Romania, LiveRail has grown to deliver more than 7 billion impressions through its platform each month since launching in 2007.

A Facebook spokeswoman declined to disclose the financial terms of the deal.Current customers of LiveRail's website and app services include Major League Baseball (MLB.com), ABC, A&E Networks, Gannett, and Dailymotion.

Facebook's purchase marks the latest in a growing trend of advertising related acquisitions throughout the social media. Twitter in particular last year bought MoPub, an advertising technology firm that attempts to connect advertisers with app developers; it has since purchased other firms, including TapCommerce earlier this week. Pinterest, meanwhile, has been beefing up its advertising efforts in recent months.

For Facebook, video ads offer an opportunity to pull in more revenue as it attempts to expand past its recent successes with mobile devices. Currently, Facebook's ads are mostly made up of images and text.

Brian Boland, vice president of ads product marketing and atlas at Facebook, described the merger in a blog post on Wednesday as a "partnership" with mutual goals of presenting video ads that are more relevant and engaging.

"We believe that LiveRail's excellent product -- known in the industry as a video supply-side platform or SSP -- and Facebook's expertise with relevancy, delivery and measurement will help us make video advertising much better for everyone," he wrote.

LiveRail co-founder and CEO Mark Trefgarne followed up in a separate statement that the deal offers his team of more than 170 employees worldwide "the opportunity to redefine the ad tech landscape and set a new standard in technology for publishers."

"When we started talking to the team at Facebook about how we could work together, it quickly became clear that we shared a vision for the future of digital advertising. They believed, as we do, that publishers deserve a new generation of audience-aware advertising technology," he said. "We realized that by joining forces we'd be able to draw upon our respective strengths to move even faster towards our shared vision of creating the advertising platform of the future."

CNET's Ian Sherr contributed to this report.

Update, 12:25 p.m. PT: Adds context and Facebook's response to request for comment on price.

This story originally appeared as "Facebook buying online video ad platform LiveRail" on ZDNet.

CNET

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Lenovo: IBM, Motorola deals to close by 2015

Chinese tech giant's CEO says regulatory review is "progressing" over the purchase of IBM's low-end server unit and Google's Motorola Mobility unit.

Lenovo expects the acquisition of both IBM's low-end server business and Google's Motorola Mobility unit to be wrapped up by year's end.

Yang Yuanqing, CEO of the China-based tech giant, said Wednesday that both deals are undergoing regulatory review in China and the United States, but are "progressing," according toReuters.

At Lenovo's annual meeting in Hong Kong, the chief executive said, "We hope to complete the two deals by year-end. The US government...and US Army are...our clients. There has been no issue and we will keep this tradition."

Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported that Lenovo's plans to purchase IBM's server business were potentially facing delays due to security worries. US security officials and members of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States were scrutinizing whether Lenovo's bid to buy IBM's servers -- which support Pentagon systems -- could eventually prove to be a chink in the armor of national security if Lenovo maintained them. Sources said that "Chinese spies" may be able to use this link to compromise the Pentagon.

While Yang refused to comment on the report, the executive rejected the idea that Lenovo products were a threat to security. "If you look at our history, with domestic and overseas clients, there have never been any issues regarding security," he said.

This is not the first time Lenovo has fought off security-based scrutiny. When Lenovo purchased IBM's PC business in 2005, Lenovo PCs sent to the military were found to host "connections to China" that were unauthorized. This, in turn, led to a number of US governmental bodies declining to use the firm's technology. The $2.3 billion sale of IBM's x86 server business was announced in January, and the sale of Google's handset business was also revealed in the same month, valued at $2.9 billion.

CNET

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Microsoft flips switch on new webmail encryption

Microsoft has pulled back the curtain on its implementation of tougher encryption standardsfor Web-based email and some cloud services, the company announced Tuesday.

In the works for more than six months, Microsoft has now activated Transport Layer Security encryption (TLS) for its webmail services at Outlook.com, Hotmail.com, Live.com, and MSN.com. This means it will be significantly harder for email originating from and being sent to a Microsoft account to be spied on, as long as the connecting email service also uses TLS.

Matt Thomlinson, vice president of Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing division, said that this work is part of a "comprehensive engineering effort to strengthen encryption."

"This effort also helps us reinforce that governments use appropriate legal processes, not technical brute force, if they want access to that data," he said.

Although Thomlinson didn't specify the origins of this work, Microsoft's heightened encryption efforts follow an October 2013 report that the NSA had been spying on Internet giants in a program called Muscular. The report was based on documents leaked by one-time National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.

Microsoft's move also comes just a few weeks after a well-publicized Google webmail report that painted Redmond in less than flattering colors. Google scored Microsoft, along with Comcast and Apple, as webmail providers with inadequate levels of encryption to protect their users' email.

Comcast and Microsoft representatives told CNET at the time of Google's report that their companies were in the process of implementing TLS for their webmail services. Apple did not return a request for comment.

Microsoft also has activated Perfect Forward Secrecy encryption (PFS) for its cloud storage service OneDrive. The OneDrive website, OneDrive mobile apps, and OneDrive syncing tools will now all use the tougher PFS encryption standard, which protects user confidentiality even when an third-party is eavesdropping on the network.

Finally, Microsoft has opened a "transparency center" at its headquarters in Redmond, Wash., where governments can review Microsoft source code for "key products" to confirm that no hidden backdoors have been added to the software. Microsoft has not revealed which of its products will be available for review.

CNET

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'Reading Rainbow' brings in $5M, eclipses Kickstarter record for most backers

The "Reading Rainbow" Kickstarter campaign attracted the most backers in the crowdfunding site's history.

Riding a massive wave of nostalgia, actor LeVar Burton's Reading Rainbow campaign ended on Wednesday, with the distinction of being the most widely-backed campaign in the crowdfunding site Kickstarter's 5-year history.

The campaign attracted more than 105,000 backers. It is also Kickstarter's fifth most successful campaign ever, raising more than $5.4 million, five times the original goal of $1 million.

The project sought to bring "Reading Rainbow," a popular children's PBS series that championed reading and ran from 1983 to 2006, to the Web and into classrooms around the world. Burton, who hosted the show throughout its entire run, bought the name and rights to the series after it ended and, in 2012, launched a free interactive "Reading Rainbow" tablet app.

RRKidz, Burton's media company, did not return a request for comment.In order to reach a wider audience of children, the campaign called for the app to be available on the Web. As the "Reading Rainbow" campaign raised money, it promised integrations on more screens: game consoles like Xbox and PlayStation, set-top boxes and streaming devices like Apple TV and Roku, and mobile devices running Apple's iOS and Google's Android operating systems. The "Reading Rainbow" program also will be available in some 7,500 classrooms for free.

To spur last-minute pledges, Seth McFarlane, creator of the cartoon "Family Guy," last week said he would match up to $1 million in pledges over the $4 million mark.

Kickstarter is the platform responsible for funding tech startups like smartwatch maker Pebble and Oculus, the virtual reality headset maker now owned by Facebook. It also has become a destination for high-profile media projects, like funding for actor-director Zach Braff's flick "Wish I was Here," or the"Veronica Mars" movie. The latter held the previous record for most backers, with 91,585 people donating. Kickstarter was not available for comment.

The "Reading Rainbow" campaign went viral after getting media attention in May, and achieved its original goal in less than one day. Backers received special prizes based on how much they donated, including a private dinner with Burton, or a picture with Burton while the backer wears his iconic Geordi La Forge visor, a throwback to Burton's role on "Star Trek: The Next Generation."

"It's unbelievable," said a teary-eyed Burton, on the first day of the campaign, after donations crossed the $1 million threshold. Then he paused. "It's actually very believable."

CNET

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Share a hard drive with everyone on your Wi-Fi network

Take advantage of your router's USB port with a little trick that lets you share a hard drive with anyone on your Wi-Fi network.

Cloud storage is expensive, but it's not the only way to share a bunch of files across many devices. Instead, you can use an external hard drive and your router to create networked storage accessible to anyone on your Wi-Fi network.

When it's set up, any files stored on that drive can be accessed by all devices on your network -- even phones and tablets. Here's how to set it up on Windows.

Step 1: Choose your drive

The drive you share can be as small as thumb drive, or as large as a 3TB external hard drive. Check your router's manual to find out if there are any storage limitations, since some routers have a storage cap.

Once you've chosen your drive, plug it in.

Step 2: Enable USB drive sharing

On any computer connected to your Wi-Fi network, launch a browser, and navigate to your router's IP address. You can find this on the back of the router, in the device manual, or by searching for it online. In most cases, it looks like 192.168.X.X.

When the page loads, you'll be asked to log in with your username and password. If you changed it, you should know it. If you didn't, it's probably still admin (username), and admin (password).

Those who fall into the latter category, please change your password as soon as humanly possible, and before proceeding to the next step.

Every router's interface is different, but if yours has a USB port, you'll find a link entitled something likeFile Sharing under the Administrator settings. In this window, enable the file sharing server (also called SAMBA). Apply the settings, and exit.

Step 3: Access the drive

You're now ready to read and write to your attached hard drive. Open a file explorer window, and navigate to the Network folder in the left sidebar. Then, clear out the path at the top of the explorer window, and enter \\[your IP address]]. So, for example, it might look like: \\192.168.1.1

With that, your drive will appear. Open it to access its contents, just like any other folder. If you're asked to log in, simply use your router's login credentials (the same one used to log into the Web interface.)

If you plan on leaving your hard drive attached, so that you can easily access it from any Explorer window. To do that, right-click the drive and select "Map network drive..." Give it a name, and the folder will appear in the sidebar.

To access the drive on other computers on the network, repeat step 3.

Source: CNET

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Quick Tips To Avoid Plagiarism Content

When it comes to seeking information regarding any subject, internet is the first place we look up to.

Unfortunately, a few websites today aren’t learner-friendly. Content creators in an aim to develop something beautiful and easily accessible, they tend to forget the learner’s goal. And they end up stealing others intellectual properties, which is why surfers often come across similar texts posted on different sites without any citation done.

However, this may or may not be intentional. As Google is very strict about the content quality and keeps on making newer algorithm updates, it is important to check your content thoroughly before it is live. Read on to know the ways to avoid the chances of plagiarism.

Quick Tips To Avoid Plagiarism Content

Here are three quick tips which can help you in avoidinig plagiarism content and improving your reputation in eye of Google.

Paraphrase it appropriately

SEO writers are quick to learn the art of doing detailed internet research, in order to compose an article on any topic. And in an intention to save time, they often end up adopting some questionable habits, which automatically hinders the search engine optimization efforts. This is why Google’s algorithms are used to find out duplicate content. If two texts have consecutive 4 words common, the document that has been posted first will appear at first.

Though, composing unique content is appreciated, if you are running short of ideas you can paraphrase it from some other texts. However, remember to choose completely separate set of words while paraphrasing. It is recommended to make a fresh start rather than jumbling the words.

Avoid Repeating Structure

Duplicating words is not only considered as an act of plagiarism, but also duplicating structure is illegal in a lot of cases. Whether it is due to impending deadline or lack of ideas, writers often get tempted to borrow ideas. Hence, making use of an article to create a new one is plagiarism. While writing SEO article originality is essential, in order to maintain the site’s reputation.

Fortunately, there are a few online sources, which enable the writers to get their works check for plagiarism before posting it. These sites, other than displaying the percentage of the duplicate text, they provide links to the documents, thereby highlighting the words that were copied. Therefore, it is suggested to pass your article through such plagiarism tool in order to avoid any duplicity.

Even after restrictions self-plagiarism do happen. And one of the main reasons behind this is writers composing articles on same topic almost regularly. Unknowingly, often words or sentences are repeated. Thus, using a plagiarism tool may help to avoid such mistakes.

Highlight Original Ideas

Be original while creating your content.

Not only will this lessen the probability of plagiarism, but also will draw more traffic towards the post. Learners or surfers would take interest in your blog post, if they find something new has been offered. This way it will boost the ranking in the popular search engine as well. And in order to bring forth new ideas, you would need to do a great deal of research. Therefore, avoid taking resource from a particular link.

Prepared using the http://plagiarism-detect.org/

Read more: http://allbloggingtips.com/2014/05/20/to-dos-for-avoiding-plagiarism/#ixzz34nUL4miN

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The Crucial Difference Between Building a Blog and Building a Business

Are you building a blog or building a business?

Do you think of yourself — and perhaps describe yourself — as a “blogger”?

Or are you a freelancer, entrepreneur, consultant, ebook author, or similar?

When I got started in blogging, I was really excited by the idea of building a blog that made money. But I didn’t initially see myself as someone who was in business.

As a result, it took me months to start making any money. It wasn’t until I accidentally fell into freelancing (the first blog I guest posted for invited me to become a paid writer) that I began to think in a more business-like way.

So what’s the difference?

If you’re building a blog and you want to make money, then you’re focusing on the wrong thing.

If you’re building a business, you might not be making money yet, but at least you’re moving in the right direction.

Here’s something important to remember: your blog itself is not your business. Your blog is a marketing tool for your business.

What Numbers Are You Focusing On?

When I started blogging, I obsessed about a lot of different numbers, like:

• How many subscribers I had
• How much traffic I was getting
• How many Twitter followers I had

… and so on.

These days, I often don’t remember to check my stats — because I’m focused on the business metric that really matters: how much money am I making?

That might sound a bit cold and profit-focused to you. If your main motivation for blogging is to have an audience for your ideas, then you may not care about making money (though you might want to run a few ads or take donations to cover your hosting costs). That’s fine.

But if you want your blog to be something more than a hobby — potentially a full-time living — then you really need to think beyond your blog itself.

That means figuring out how exactly you’re going to make money. What does your business provide — what service or product do you offer?

That could be:

• You sell ebooks (or print books, or ecourses) on a particular topic, and you blog about the same topic — though in less detail.
• You sell coaching or consulting and your blog is aimed at your clients, covering the sorts of topics they want to know about.
• You run in-person workshops or classes, and your blog covers similar topics, with a focus on your geographical area.
• You offer a particular service, like freelance writing or design, and your blog is aimed at your clients.

Of course, many bloggers use a combination of these, and that can be a great way to use your blog to maximum effect. For instance, you might offer a particular service but also sell a “do-it-yourself” ebook.

Note: Some large blogs run lots of ads and make money that way. This requires a big audience, though, and it’s not a business strategy that I’d recommend to new bloggers: there are much easier ways to build a successful business.

Many successful entrepreneurs in the blogging world started out just like you. They may well have launched a blog without much of a plan in mind, or without a clear idea of how they’d make it profitable.

But somewhere along the way, they all, without exception, turned their blog into a genuine business. And you can do the same.

Your Next Steps

If your current business plan looks something like “grow my blog and monetize it”, figure out exactly what you’re going to do (starting right now) to bring in money.

What service can you offer, or what product could you sell? How could you get started by offering that service or product for free, so you can get some testimonials?

Tell us about your business ideas, or about your thoughts on blogs vs businesses, in the comments below.

Quick reminder: If you’re yet to start your blog, don’t forget that our courseGet Blogging is open for new members until Friday 13th June.

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How to Integrate Email Marketing with Social Media?

With the advent of social media, it might be easy to think that email marketing has become outdated or even redundant but statistics gleaned from a 2011 StrongMail survey suggests otherwise.

In fact, according to their data, over 68% of business leaders affirmed that they would be looking to integrate social media into their email marketing strategies and not the other way around.

In addition, the respondents also indicated that they would be increasing investment in this area. This directly counteracts Mark Zuckerberg’s claim that email marketing would be replaced by integrated social media messaging services.

Is Social Media Time Proof?

Despite the astronomical rise of social media, email still tends to be the preferred method of communication between professionals and in a B2B environment.

To think about this preference in a more personal light, one needs only to think about how many times we check our email each week, or even each day. The majority of office based professionals will have their inbox close at hand, constantly, throughout the day.

The use of social media networks, on the other hand, is still mostly discouraged in a professional environment.

This does, however, clearly demonstrate the difference between what is considered appropriate, or not, with regards to different kinds of communication. Despite email being the communication method of choice for office based professionals in a workplace environment, the popularity of social media suggests that, outside this environment, social networking is the preferred option.

Integration to Accumulate

It seems that, in order for a business to maximize its communicative reach, best practice must be to implement an integration of social media and email marketing. Indeed, social media and email have a lot to offer one another, and they share many similar features. Both are the type of direct response which is used to relay information and encourage interaction, and both work best when they are targeted according to relevancy.

Both social media and email also have shortcomings, which may be negated by the other. For example, social media messages have a short shelf life, but email can be used to remind customers about a social media message, after the event.

Integrate Your Social Media and Email Marketing

There are many ways in which you could integrate your social media and email marketing efforts, including:

• Advertising and promoting email sign up across your social media accounts.
• Including social media one-click buttons in your emails.
• Providing an incentive for users to sign up for your emails, such as giveaways and promotions.

All of these methods have proven to be effective ways of integrating social media and email marketing; and, as has been the case with social media and email marketing themselves, they work best when implemented together as part of a comprehensive digital marketing strategy.

Read more at http://www.bloggingtips.com/2014/06/10/integrate-email-marketing-social-media/#0B94drbosQUyWxB0.99

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6 Productivity Tips for Getting Things Done Fast

Do you find it hard sometimes to focus on your important tasks? Do you start too many tasks and projects but never finish any? And you’re not achieving the results you’re looking for as a result?

If you answer yes to any of the questions, it’s probably because you’re not managing your time very effectively. The following tips will help you manage your time and get things done fast and efficiently.

1. Become clear of what you want to achieve

Firstly, you work at a project or task to achieve something. But if you’re not clear or don’t know exactly what you want to achieve, it will be difficult for you to know the steps you need to take to achieve your goals and you can’t stay motivated.

So determine what your short term and long term goals are and set deadlines for them. For example, what do you want to get or achieve in a year, or five years from now? What about in a week, a month, or 6 months? And what do you need to do to achieve both your long term and short term goals and when?

First get the general, big picture of the steps you need to take in the long term. Then list down specifically what tasks you need to undertake now.

2. Find an accountability partner

One of the greatest things about being self-employed is the freedom of not having to report to a boss or do what you choose to do.  However, that can also be a bad thing if you don’t know how to keep yourself accountable.

The truth is, it’s not always easy to keep yourself accountable or set your goals, create action plans, and check your progress, all on your own.

What you can do instead is agree with someone else to become accountability partners of each other. You’ll share with them about your goals, and plan of actions and they’ll continually check your progress, remind you of your action plans, and from time to time give you a friendly kick in the butt. You’ll also reciprocate and do the same to them so you both can stay on track and focused on achieving your goals.

3. Tackle your important tasks first

Sometimes, your to-do list can have a lot of items and if you start your day with tasks that are not important or urgent, you might reach the end of the day without accomplishing anything of significance.

To avoid this happening, determine what your important tasks are and do them first. Even if you haven’t done everything on your to do list by the end of the day, you’ll still accomplish a lot. Remember, the 80/20 rule always applies.

4. Arrange your files and folders in an organized manner

We sometimes can waste several minutes in the middle of a task browsing through folders just to find a single file.

Not being able to find what you want when you want it, will not only waste your time but also destruct you from focusing on what you’re working at.

Take some time and organize your folders in a way that you can to find files fast and easily. For example, if you were working on a number of websites, you could create different folders for each website with names such as “Site1″, “Site2″ etc…

If, then you wanted to start an article marketing campaign to promote your site number 1, for example, you would create a new folder named “Articles” under the “Site1″ folder and store your newly written articles in that folder.

Come up with a file management system that works best for you as soon as you can. By doing so you can save time and stay focused.

5. Get a private working place

Another good part about running an online business is that you can work from anywhere or any place. You can work in a coffee shop or in your bedroom in your pajamas as long as you have a computer an internet access.

But if you really want to take your business to the next level, you need to consider getting some private space that is free from destruction so that you can work uninterruptedly. This way, your productivity level will rise and you can achieve more.

6. Block social media websites

How many times have you ever found yourself chatting, watching videos, checking emails or instant messaging on social media websites in the middle of a task? You can get sidetracked easily and find yourself spending more time than necessary on those sites.

If you can’t stop or limit yourself, you can use tools like “Anti-Social” to block out social media websites on your computer.

There you have it, six tips for becoming more productive. All in all, if you set clear goals, become accountable, and avoid destructions, you can achieve what you want in your online marketing endeavors.

Do you have any other tips for getting things done even faster?

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6 Ways to Speed Up Your Site

The load time of websites is one of the most important factors affecting its usability; most Internet users will just skip a site altogether if it fails to load within a couple of seconds. Below you will find the summary of the “Speed Up Your Site” series. Those are simple yet effective ways to make sure that your website is running fast. You can click on each point to read the article with comments from the readers.

1. Optimize Images: always use the “Save for the web” feature included on image editing software. Images represent the heavier load on virtually any website so make sure you are optimizing them. Alternatively you can also turn to an online image optimizer.
2. Image Formats: apart from optimizing images it is important that you choose the right format. JPEG format is suitable for photographs or true-color images. The GIF format should be used with flat-color images like logos or buttons. PNG works very similar to GIF but it supports more colors.
3. Optimize Your CSS: most websites are designed with CSS nowadays. Make sure to aggregate and clean your CSS. CleanCSS is an online tool that will merge similar selectors, remove useless properties and remove the whitespace from your code.
4. Use a Slash on Your Links: when a user opens a link on the form “http://www.domain.com/about” the server will need to figure what kind of file or page is contained on that address. If you include a slash (/) at the end of the link the server will already know that this is a directory page, reducing the load time of the site.
5. Use the Height and Width Tags: many people forget to add the Height and Width tags on image codes. Those tags will make sure that the browser knows the size of the image before loading it. The result is that it will reserve a spot for the images while loading the rest of the page, speeding up the whole process.
6. Reduce the HTTP Requests: when opening a web page every object (images, scripts and the line) will require a round trip to the server. This latency can add several seconds to the load time of your site. Make sure to reduce the number of objects and to combine CSS files and scripts together.a

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