When people feel this way, one of the opportunities that will evenutally knock on their doors is Multi Level Marketing (MLM). There are other names for it – network marketing, social marketing, direct distributing. Legally speaking, most of the legitimate companies that use this form of marketing are not pyramid schemes. At least not legally. However, they do strongly resemble pyramids in their structure.

Some people do make money with these opportunities. A few make really good money! However, often what you are told or shown isn’t the whole picture. The vast majority of people lose money in these businesses. If you’re meeting with someone about an opportunity like this, be forewarned with the information from these sites.

Pyramid Scheme Alert

PSA purports itself to be a non-profit, donation driven organization dedicated to revealing the truth about multi-level marketing and pyramid schemes. Founder Robert FitzPatrick has written a book on the topic and has been consulted as a professional by different media outlets in the U.S. and Canada.

Here you can find information on legal proceedings against MLM companies, news about them, and alerts as well. PSA does have an e-mail list that you can sign up for, to get regular information.

I find the site fairly well organized and easy to use. It appears to have the most in-depth information of the sites listed here.

MLM Survivor

This is a bit of a different site, in that it is a site within a site. What the heck does that mean? Well, MLMSurvivor has had a site since 1999 that featured information about Quixtar/Amway, Equinox/Trek Alliance and other MLM’s.You can get to it by clicking on the Original MLMSurvivor Site link.

The original site has hundreds of pages of personal stories, research, and an MLMSurvivorsClub with over 8,000 members on Yahoo! Groups.That site is somewhat wrapped inside a new blog that functions a bit more like a news site.

It appears to have been only recently resurrected, with just a few posts starting late last October. Looks like Amway is in the courts again.

The Pink Lighthouse

Just in case it seems like all these sites are about Amway, well, they aren’t. The Pink Lighthouse is a blog put together by a former Mary Kay Consultant. It sure seems that the pink isn’t all that you might think!

There are dozens of personal stories to be found here. Perhaps the most common thread between them all is that the products are great! However, the personalities that they had to work with (more like work for) was the biggest problem. Lots of inventory purchasing that seldom gets sold and tons of pressure to keep buying inventory just so the upline can make their monthly goals. Apparently Mary Kay isn’t an MLM, but rather a Dual Marketing system. I’m not sure what that means, but I do know you can put lipstick on a pig and it’s still a pig.

After you’ve read through these sites, I can see how you wouldn’t touch an MLM pyramid scheme with someone else’s ten foot pole. Yet still, the fact remains that there are people that make money with some of these business and there are even a few that have made millions. The question then remains, are you willing to do what it takes? Statistics only would say the odds are against you.

Have you had an MLM pyramid scheme experience, good or bad? Do you know of any other resources you’d recommend to people checking out MLM’s? You’d be doing us all a favour by sharing them in the comments.

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First off, a company could want multiple users on one Twitter account in order to share from different departments, etc. or to just split the time it would take to run a successful company Twitter account.  A ministry may want multiple users on one Twitter account, too, to help communicate with the world about what’s going on.  MAYBE a multi-writer blog would want each of the writers to contribute tweets so their Twitter stream remains active.  There could be MANY reasons for what I call a “muli-twit” Twitter account.

There are several issues that could arise from assigning multiple users on Twitter accounts.  A company or organization may have hesitations about relinquishing access to employees.  There should be some kind of control over an organization’s brand.  You’d probably want specific people or a specific department in control of PR or public relations.  It only makes sense that those same people (or that same department) should be in control of what goes out in a company Twitter stream.  So, how can we reconcile the need for a “multi-twit” Twitter account and the PR nightmare it could impose?  Check out TweetFunnel (free while in beta)!

I like how TweetFunnel works.  In fact it reminds me of how a multi-author blog operates.  Basically TweetFunnel allows you to have three levels of twits: an Administrator, a publisher, and a contributor. The administrator creates the account and has the abilities to create users and review and publish tweets. The publisher can review and, you guessed it, publish tweets.  And then there’s the contributor who only had the ability to write and submit tweets to the administrator or publisher for approval.

A publisher or Administrator has several options to choose from when a tweet is submitted by a contributor: approve and post, approve and schedule the tweet to be posted at a later time, hold until later posting or scheduling, or outright reject the tweet.

Let’s take this opportunity to see how this tool works!  First, hit the “try out our free beta” button from this page.

Then, fill in the form.

You’re then offered the opportunity to sign into your newly created account.

The obvious next step is to add a Twitter account.  You are offered two options — to use Twitter’s authentication method (recommended) or enter your Twitter account user name and password.

Once you add the Twitter account, you are now ready to get things set up.  You’ll want to do things like activate the scheduler (it’ll ask for your timezone so timed tweeting will work right) and add bit.ly or bud.url URL shortner accounts (so you can track clicks on links tweeted).

Once that’s done, you can go ahead and hit the settings tab at the top right-hand corner of the site.  Here you can make changes to your profile, manager users and their roles, and manage Twitter accounts including their credentials and scheduler settings.  If your profile and Twitter account is already setup, hit the link to edit users and roles.

From here you can either invite a new user or add a new user.  When you add a new user, just fill in the fields, choose the role, and choose the Twitter account the user will tweet on.

Once your user is set up, the screen will look like this when they log in.

For the sake of demonstration, I went ahead and added a contributor to my account so I can demonstrate how tweeting and moderating tweets works.  When a contributor tweets, here’s what they’ll see.

As an administrator (or publisher if I had one set up), I’d head to Review Queue button to find the tweet awaiting moderation.  You are then given the option to post immediately, post later, or to reject the tweet altogether.

As of right now, it seems as if you can designate a specific time for the tweet to be published.  You can set at which increments future tweets are published.  I’m hoping they’ll eventually allow administrators and publishers to edit tweet times, perhaps the order of future tweets, and if there’s a typo it would be nice to be able to go and fix it before it’s published (it seems once scheduled, there’s no editing possible).

Other than those issues, TweetFunnel could be an amiable competitor so some of the other web-based twitter applications such as HootSuite or PeopleBrowsr.  Remember, they ARE still in beta so I’m sure there’s still some work for them to do and I’m sure they’d appreciate your feedback!

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Many companies spend a fortune for a complete niche industry analysis. I should know – I used to conduct the research and write up niche industry reports for a company that sold those reports to big businesses. Today, I’d like to share some inside secrets with MakeUseOf readers and reveal the naked truth – you don’t need memberships to special databases or statistics firms to uncover those industry niches, all you need to know is where to look for the information yourself and you can create your own free industry analysis.

Always Start With Your Government

The truth is, almost every government in every nation devotes a great deal of effort and resources to measuring the just about every aspect of society – from how many pounds of potatoes your country produces to the number of people born with specific diseases. Regardless of the industry you’re looking into, the odds are pretty good that there’s a government agency that produced a report on the topic. For example, when I was digging into Real Estate markets, I discovered a report on Mortgage Loans produced by the special “Office of Thrift Supervision” within the U.S. Department of the Treasury. Seriously, there’s such an office. The mortgage loan data they provided (for free, I might add) was exactly what I needed.

The best place to start when you’re creating your free industry analysis is at an online government office listing directory such as my favorite, USA.gov for the U.S. or Direct.gov for the UK. The individual agencies that you’ll find offer their own library chock-full of statistics, charts and detailed demographics that you’ll be hard-pressed to find anywhere else. For an international listing of government agencies around the world, the FDA (of all places) offers a fairly comprehensive list.

Schools and University Studies and Research

It’s almost comical that companies spend so much money for a private corporation to produce a niche analysis on an industry when there’s so much free information available on the Internet. Aside from government agencies, Universities and Colleges from around the world constantly conduct studies and collect data and then publish the results online for free. These are typically published in the form of “white papers.” One of the best way to find these studies is by using Google Scholar, a white paper search engine that will turn up those results for you.

The quality of data that you will find from these results and from the various University research projects are amazing. For example, while researching the real estate market, I uncovered a detailed Harvard study on rental housing.

If you’re looking for data, graphs and charts that uncover industry trends, social demographics and reveal the sort of niche opportunities for your business – you’ve got it all right here. Don’t only search for the larger schools, if you’re interested in your local market, make sure to check on any local studies your local community college or University might have completed – you may be very surprised what you find.

The Pew Research Center

In almost every niche analysis report I’ve ever written, I usually always come back to the Pew Research Center for research. The motto of this organization is, “Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World.” This is no exaggeration, Pew publishes some of the most obscure and eye opening social trends of any research organization I’ve seen.

It’s from Pew that I learned that middle-age women make up the largest demographic of users for online games, or that more teen girls use social networks than boys do. If you want to uncover any niche opportunities for a potential business, this site should be at the top of your bookmarks.

Using Google Trends to Reveal Global Demographics

Now, this article wouldn’t be complete if I didn’t mention the single tool that I’ve used above all others to uncover unique niche opportunities. It goes without saying that the Internet has become an important gauge of public sentiment, and of course since Google Trends reveals “the big picture” for particular keyword searches, then it makes sense that you should be able to use Google Trends to identify industry trends. In a simple example, if you’re thinking of investing in rental properties and becoming a landlord, it stands to reason that you would want the trend of people searching for “apartments for rent” to be rising.

Well, look at that. Google trends reveals that while interest in apartments held pretty steady (aside from the annual fluctuations) from 2004 through 2008, there’s been a sudden upswing in public interest in apartments in 2009 – interesting! With Google trends, you can dig even deeper than this. By copying each annual graph and overlaying them together (using your favorite image editing software), you can also reveal seasonal patterns. In this case doing so would reveal what part of the year more people usually hunt for apartments.

As you can see here, most people are looking for apartments during midsummer, and then that interest tanks as the school year approaches, recovering only at the end of the year. While this particular trend isn’t very shocking, you would be very surprised to see some of the fascinating seasonal trends that Google Trends sometimes reveals within certain industries.

So, whether you’re just curious about the current market for your small business idea, or you’re thinking about opening an enterprise on a much larger scale, just remember that the tools and resources are available on the web so that you can identify those awesome niche opportunities yourself.

Have you ever started your own business? What online tools and resources did you use to research your market? Share your insight in the comments section below.

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Basically you get a map with a pull down menu of locations to locate local businesses by addresses that are near you. They come pre-populated with popular stuff but as you will see below you can add custom stuff as well. They also have a free iPhone app but I do not have a iPhone to test it out on. So we will be covering the web application today.

When we first arrive at MashSpots you will see a map like this with your location data pre-filled out like below. It also picks what you are looking for in the first field. You are represented by a little green and blue icon in the middle of the map.

You will see that you can move your icon to tell the application where you are. This will list places closest to you first. So go ahead and drag that little dude around and place him where he should be. You can also just click on your location or modify the location in the top bar.

I dragged my little dude from the middle of Linden Blvd to Sheepshead Bay, as that is where I am. I left the default groceries in the what? field and this is what it returned to locate grocery related businesses by addresses that are near me. A list of 4 spots close by and their respective information. You can click on a red dot for more information.

Let’s look at the pre-configured categories. You will see they are Pizza, Coffee, Bar (yeah!), Restaurant, Hotel, Parking, Groceries, Apartment Building, Banks, Shopping and Hospitals (hope you don’t need them!)

But you can type in something as well. We tried it with Starbucks and it worked swimmingly. Below you will see the prefilled options as they appear on the site.

Locations where you can locate businesses by addresses near you include San Francisco, New York City (woot!), Chicago, London, Berlin, Madrid, Paris, Rome, Amsterdam, Sydney, Tokyo, Mumbai and Shanghai. Even if your city is not listed just type it in like I did for Brooklyn below.

You can make the search results show 8 results instead of 4, using the drop down menu on the left under the search results.  Below you can see I changed it to 8.

These 8 pizza places are shown on the map in relation to where I am.

Oh look my favorite Pizza place is on there! I love some Benny’s Gourmet in my neighborhood. They are a little expensive and kosher but if you can deal with no meat with your cheese it is awesome. I click on the appropriate red dot and see its information listed. I think I will order from them tonight. This is making me hungry!

Next up I typed Starbucks into the What? field and saw where my closest coffee fix is:

That is some walk so I will probably just get coffee at a corner store!

How do you locate places in a new area? Do you have another website you like? Have you used MashSpots’ iPhone app? We would love to hear about it in the comments!

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It is a cool new “Relationship Manager” that recently launched publicly in beta. Gist is not for casual users, rather, it’s a one-of-its-kind service for professional users that bridges key gaps between other popular services. For personal use, you should checkout Life.IO.

What is Gist?

Gist aims to help you control information overload by focusing on people and companies that are important to you. First, Gist gets information from your inbox and social networking accounts to build a database of your network. It then monitors the web for information about the people and companies in your network. Using the concept of “importance”, it then provides customizable views of people and companies, showing you news, blog posts, tweets, etc. for each of them. Your Dashboard becomes a “intelligent reader” thus giving you insight into critical updates that are important to you.

Get Started By Connecting Accounts

Gist allows you to connect a variety of sources using built-in business networking techniques to build your network database. At present, you can integrate your email from Outlook, Gmail or any service that supports IMAP. Your professional contacts can come from LinkedIn, Salesforce, or any CSV file. Note that Gist doesn’t connect with LinkedIn at present, hence you need to export and import your LinkedIn contacts.

Social networking contacts can be imported from Facebook and Twitter. Gist also offers an Outlook plug-in so that you can use it from within Outlook. To use Gist effectively, you will need to personalize it as described later in this article, but first let’s look at the powerful views Gist offers.

Dashboard View

The Dashboard is your top-level view to get all the news about your network. It is a RSS news feed reader, Twitter client, and Calendar rolled into one, with optional widgets showing shared links and attachments received in your email inbox.

You can customize the Dashboard to show Recent News, or news from people you’ve recently contacted or added. Information displayed can be filtered by date, content source, importance and tags. You can search to quickly find people, companies, attachments, or shared links.

You can also share any information item from your Dashboard to Facebook or Twitter. In this way, Gist goes beyond an “intelligent reader” to being a “intelligent networking” tool.

People and Companies View

The People and Companies tabs organize your contacts according to importance. It shows your email history and stats, the last time you were in contact, number of contacts from a company, and so on, for each person and company in your network.

You can search to find and manage contacts, or add new contacts manually. You can sort the view using any of the column headers, and use tags to filter the view. For each person or company, you can edit their names, add tags, and adjust their importance. You can merge duplicates, and use multi-select to perform bulk operations. Finally, you can instruct Gist whether to Watch a person or contact for news updates.

Profile View

Gist Profile pages are a central place to find out everything about the people and companies in your network. Gist scans your email accounts, calendars, contact databases such as LinkedIn, and social networks like Facebook and Twitter, to create unified profiles for each person or company. Gist is continuously searching for new information about your contacts even when you’re not using it.

The What’s New section pulls blog posts, tweets, and news from thousands of sources with sharing and filtering tools. You can flag items, mark them as read, share items via email, Facebook, or Twitter, or dismiss them as not relevant. The right-hand side shows searchable widgets such as aggregated conversations, shared links and attachments. Shared Contacts shows related people with links to their profiles. There is even a Google Search widget pre-populated with search results that can be customized with your own search term.

Profile information can be manually edited and updated. If the Gist profile doesn’t have it already, you can add a relevant image, website, phone number, address, and tags. The best way to organize your contacts is to use tags. Finally, a cool Dossier feature provides a printable version of a profile that you can use before meeting or communicating with a person.

Optimize To Get The Most Out Of Gist

After initially building your Gist contacts network, I recommend that you spend some time tweaking it for your needs. I found this necessary because:

• Gist may not recognize that the person from your LinkedIn network and your friend on Facebook are the same person. In these cases, you will need to Merge them.
• Similarly, Gist may not correctly associate Twitter handles with the contacts from your email inbox.
• Gmail has a rather unconventional approach of adding every email address you send email to, as a contact. To my dismay, this doesn’t work well with Gist, which imports all Gmail contacts. I ended up deleting tons of frivolous help@…, support@…, and info@… kind of “contacts”.
• You may not have had much interaction with influential people who are actually important to you. It appears that Gist’s ranking uses frequency of communication as a benchmark to assess importance, because of which you may need to manually adjust their importance.
• If your Facebook friends are primarily personal friends who work at companies that don’t really matter to you, you will need to either delete or lower their importance in Gist.
• Also, profiles may need to be edited to add individual websites, blog feeds and news sources so that you get relevant information.

Are you excited about Gist using as an intelligent networking tool? Did you like the post? Tell us in the comments!

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To make matters worse, it’s a recession out there so work is getting thinner on the ground. Not many of us can afford to, or want to hire, an accountant to take care of the books. I struggled with ledgers and taxes until I discovered a piece of free accountancy software that does it all for me – TAS.

TAS Basic, to be more precise. This is aimed at self-employed people, small businesses and start-ups. It’s incredibly easy to use. And when I say ‘easy’ I mean animated instructions, pictures and tutorials that will still result in professional-looking accounts ready to be filed away.

Firstly, download TAS Books basic for free here.

When you have completed the download and the software is installed correctly, start the program for the first time. Initially, you’ll be asked for information such as your various current and savings accounts etc. (Don’t worry, the actual account numbers are not required so there is no security risk). Once you have set up these accounts and entered in the current balances you can begin using this free accounting software.

The home screen consists of basic financial information and the toolbar which runs across the top. Say for example, you just sent out an invoice to a customer. Click ‘Customer‘ in the toolbar and ‘add’ the customer. Then, select ‘Customers‘ from the toolbar again and enter in the invoice. TAS will record them as a creditor.

When they have paid the invoice, simply click on ‘Bank’ and select ‘Moneys in’ and enter in the invoice number. The amount is then added to the bank and taken away from the creditors account. Simple. Your current financial information is recorded on the homescreen as seen below.

This basic process of entering in information is also applied to suppliers where you owe them money. It works right across the board by using basic reference numbers to keep track of invoices, bills, payments and interest rates.

VAT (and its equivalent in other countries) which many self-employed people and businesses are required to keep track of is also accommodated for. This can be set up very easily by entering in the percentage rates after clicking ‘VAT’ in the toolbar. From then on in, any purchases and sales made will have their VAT recorded so you can claim it back from the tax authorities and also pay your own VAT bill accurately.

What I liked most about this free accounting software was how all this simplicity of entering in basic numbers into easily identifiable forms with pictures and explanations, is transformed into good accounts that wouldn’t look out of place on the desk of an accountant. From the screenshot, you can see that by simply selecting which kind of account you want to see such as ‘Profit and Loss’ or ‘Trial Balance’, TAS will take all the information on its database and creates your accounts in seconds which can then be printed out.

For me, this software has saved me time, money and has significantly brought down the amount of errors I make during the year doing accounts (which as anyone who is self-employed will tell you happen a lot). There is nothing more frustrating that sifting through a year’s worth of paperwork to find one misplaced digit or decimal point!

One other thing I feel I have to add is that the TAS team are the best I have encountered. A few days after I downloaded their software I was relaxing when I got a call. I answered and a friendly woman introduced herself as being from the TAS team. She wasn’t calling to ask me to upgrade – rather she wanted to know how I was doing. A smile erupted on my face and I was really taken aback by this. Never, in my lifetime, has customer service called me to ask if everything was going okay and if I needed assistance with anything at all.

If you need software for free, to do high-quality accounts for you and your business then look no further than TAS.

The only piece of advice I feel compelled to give is to breathe deeply in the beginning and take it slow. When creating customers or suppliers for TAS, do so with care as you’ll have to use them in the future. The first couple of days using the software should be done so slowly – but after that you’ll surely haven gotten to grips with it and be easily creating great accounts for yourself. And if you do mess up, you can always use the ‘Restore’ function under the ‘File’ menu.

What free accounting software do YOU use and why do you prefer it?

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There are many online tycoon games which will grab your attention and give you immense pleasure and satisfaction while playing them. All these games have business structures as their main theme. The storylines of these games are similar to the way real businesses are run. You need to buy things, make investments and sell your stuff.

If you are in a mood to play free online tycoon games, then you should consider these 10 best ones:

Youda Marina

In this game you play the role of the business owner which controls a bay. It all starts with choosing a terrain on which you wish to start your business. Then you are given all the powers of a harbor master. Your primary task is to develop a harbor which can do great business as well as make it an awesome tourist spot. You can build hotels, restaurants, take your tourists to fishing, and construct yachts.

To play this game, you need to be good with time management and should have the zeal to be a great harbor master. All you need to do is make a perfect and popular harbor.

Fish Tycoon Game

This game is very popular among the kids. You play a role of a fish breeder. Its whole layout is so colorful and this is the main reason why kids are highly attracted to it.

As a beginner, you start with a few adult and a few baby fishes. Then you breed them, feed them and sell them. You have an option to come up with new breeds. You can buy a few vitamin chemicals and interesting fish breeding supplies from the market.

Oiligarchy Game

This game takes you back to the time when World War II was over. You play the role of a CEO of an oil company of that time. The game is simply amazing when it comes to the tasks that the gamer needs to perform.

You start with some barren lands, where you need to search for oil wells. Once you find a few, you can drill to take out the oil which can be stored or sold. You are required to meet the yearly goals and if you fail to do so, then the shareholders will fire you. You also need to bribe politicians in the White House and clear some of the oil ordinances that would benefit your business.

Indecision 2008: Money

This is the ultimate free online tycoon game. You play the role of overlord in this game. You have to start with a piece of land with an oil well. You can build homes, oil refineries, hospitals, airports, shopping malls, apartments, movie theatres, parks, theme parks, and many more establishments.

The theme is simple, you need to earn money by building all the establishments. In between you will charged with some taxes, or your city might fall prey to natural disaster causing massive destruction to your properties.

Grand Prix Tycoon

Have you ever felt like placing yourself into the shoes of a F1 franchise owner? Then this is the best way to live your dream.

The best thing about this game is its detail.  It starts with choosing a franchise and a driver for it. Then you can upgrade each and every part of your vehicle. Your choice exists even in the selection of grid girls. This doesn’t end here; you can also have a close watch on your engineers and pit crew. If you want to keep yourself busy with a tycoon game, then this is the stand out option especially if you are a racing freak.

Youda Camper

Youda has always been into the tycoon games. Youda Camper is one of their best products. Like most of the other Youda games, this one is also based on entertaining tourists and earning money.

In this game, you are in charge of a camp site. You start with a barren terrain and some cash. You have to set up different types of tents to accommodate people. Then you also have to build good restaurants and bars, where people could chill out. You also need to take good care of the road system.

Your job does not end with this, as you also need to advertise your camp site. You have to make an attractive camp site where tourists would come in their summer break, which would fetch you a lot of money. It is a comprehensive tycoon game and while playing, you can unlock a number of interesting items.

Coffee Tycoon

Coffee shops are undoubtedly the best place to hang around. But what does it take to run a coffee shop? This game gives you a chance to build your own coffee empire.

In this game, you start as the owner of a coffee shop. You have a number of milestones to achieve along your journey to expand your business. You have to expand your menu in order to attract more customers. You can increase your income by establishing more coffee shops, advertising your services and by standardizing your brand by installing the latest coffee shop equipments.

You can build your own corporate houses to coffee plants. It also allows you to enter the stock market, where you can keep an eye on your market growth. This is an amazing game to play while enjoying your coffee.

Cinema Tycoon

Movie theaters are one the best places to have a fun time. But running a movie theater is equally difficult. What would you do if were given a chance to run a theatre? Jot down your plans; if you are looking forward to play this game.

Your career starts with an objective to make $1 million in one year. You can run the season’s biggest hits on your screen to earn more. You have to invest some money to improve the standards of your theatre by buying the latest equipment, comfortable seats and setting a nominal ticket price. Try this game and see if you can become a cinema mogul.

Now Boarding

Maintaining an airline company and taking it to new heights is not an easy job. You have to keep your customers happy, as they form the fundamental part of your airline empire. You need to make sure that flights are on time. You have to add all the latest technologies to your airport. You also need to maintain the quality in terms of the facilities provided by your airlines. Buy more airplanes, send them to more places and earn more money.

Imperium

This game will make you feel like the king of a budding empire. You have to build an empire with workers and an army. You have to construct farms, carpenters and markets. You have to generate income by exporting the logs, food and iron. At the same time, you need to build a huge army in order to capture the nearby kingdoms. This is authentic tycoon cum strategy game, where your planning comes into play.

These are some of the best online tycoon games that I have come across and I am sure that you would love playing them. Playing these online tycoon games can be a great stress buster and the best part is that you do not even need any management degree to play them.

Do you know of any other tycoon game which we have forgotten?  Let us know in the comments.

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The Preparation
Let’s start with the concept of the design: it should be simple enough with as little color variation as possible (more color means higher cost, and my friend’s on a tight budget), but he wants the design to be cool and a bit “Web 2.0-ish”.

Problem is, I have no idea what is the parameter of “Web 2.0-ish” design. I don’t even know what size a namecard should be. So, I turn to my best friend Google for a help. I found 2 articles that helped: Web 2.0 how-to design style guide and What size should I put. That should be enough to start. If you want to get some more ideas for business card design, check out Cool Business Card Design part 1, part 2 and part 3; and Web 2.0 Logo List.

The Process

First, I opened new document from DrawIt Lite and set the work area to 1062×615 pixels with 50% grey as the background color. I wanted to set the background to a neutral color so that I can add lighter or darker colors for the other elements. You can set the background to be transparent if you want.

The next thing to do is to add some words. So, I clicked the “Insert” button from the top left-hand corner and chose “Text”. Now you’re ready to start. I double-clicked the work area and started writing the company’s name. You can adjust any elements of the text (font type, color, size) in the “Special Attributes” area at the top right of the window.You may also adjust the parameters of the text box (position, size, angle) in the “Attributes” area down in the left-hand corner of the window.You can also drag and position the text box to the location you prefer.

Then, I added another text box for the name and another for the logo. I tried to keep everything simple by using only text and didn’t use any other elements like images, shapes or vectors. But that doesn’t mean you can’t. Each element is be added as an individual layer and can be edited (and deleted if needed) individually.

The Result

Finally after a few adjustments, here are the results. Maybe a little too simple for your taste, but hey, it’s only 30 minutes’ work of pro-bono work.

And to give my friend a few choices, I tried to redo the process using different color combinations.

Another vector drawing app that you could try is InkScape.

Enjoyed this article? Do you want to learn how to make a real Web 2.0 business card? Check out 5 Ways To Create Your Business Card 2.0 by David.

DrawIt Lite is Mac only.

Why don’t you try creating your own card and share your result using the comments below.

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Below you will find 7 Firefox Add-on’s that will help you jump-start your online business guiding it into the right direction.

Domain Lookup

One of the first things you have to take into account when starting an online business is finding the right domain name. This can sometimes become quite a difficult task, this where Domain Lookup steps into place. With this add-on if you’re searching the web and find a phrase or two that might make a great domain name if properly thought out, then you can search for generic domains that match those key words. This extension also checks for the validity of the specific domains by cross-checking the information with many of the webs top domain registrars.

Take a quick look at the Domain Look-up informative tutorial on how to search for domains here.

Firebux

Firebux lets you automatically and securely download transactions from your banks and credit cards. You can also automatically categorize them, create budgets for each and every category and receive real-time alerts on your mobile phone for free. In order to use Firebux, you need to have an account on Buxfer. Key features include: Automatically download transactions, track your expenses, track who owes you money, send money through Amazon Payments and more.

LinkedIn Companion

The thing about starting an online business is, well, you need recognition. Depending on what your business is focused on (web design, service of goods, IT solutions and more) than you can resort to LinkedIn Companion. This add-on allows you to open doors and opportunities for networking and the facilitation of finding projects through LinkedIn’s connection to over 25 million experienced professionals.

Gmail Manager

An important and vital part of your online business revolves around how connected you are with your prospect clients and future customers. The most widely used choice of contact on the web is the use of email. Countless amounts of businesses utilize Gmail as their sole provider for contacting needs, especially since you can easily register a customized Gmail account with your specific domain name through your web host.

Gmail Manager allows you to manage multiple Gmail accounts all at the same time in the same browser window. You’ll instantly receive updates on new messages and replies with the use of a handy drop-down menu embedded into your toolbar.

Find on Xing

Xing is a global networking site for professionals that houses over 7 million online professionals in over 200 countries. Xing is very much like LinkedIn, however with a more diversified goal in global outreach to businesses and individuals. The Firefox extension Find on Xing allows you to specifically highlight a professionals name and find a profile or review of them on the Xing database. This will allow you to network, create social stature, and expand the available opportunities you’re able to take part in with your online business.

MoneyQuake

Have you ever wanted to virtually keep track of  how much your exact earnings of advertisement services on your website are? Well with MoneyQuake you can pretty much do just that. This extension displays real time earning statistics from several of the most popular advertisement systems such as Google Adsense, Bidvertizer, SoftwareProfi, PeakClick and more. This will allow you to easily create and manage your websites budget on a daily basis.

Business.com

Business.com is one of the most sought out online resources that help you search for vital information to expand the presence of your online entrepreneurial ventures. This add-on will allow you to effortlessly search through this sites composite archive of hundreds of articles and thousands of resources that will help you establish your business, gain experience, and brainstorm with new found ideas.

Which one of these Firefox extensions were you able to find helpful? Please MakeUseOf the comment box below and share with us your valuable thoughts and insight.

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In addition to powering classifieds listings to several major newspapers, it recently welcomed Facebook Marketplace, AOL Classifieds as well as MySpace to their network. Why is Oodle the best player when it comes to online classifieds?

First of all, let’s talk about the interface. Craigslist has received a lot of criticism for its barebones 1990’s design but it has a major advantage that most didn’t perceive at first glance:

• An extremely simple interface means a low barrier to entry for new users.
• No graphics, animations; no distractions at all for the user. While not exactly pleasant for the eye, it means the user would get in and find what they were looking for fast.
• Minimal operating costs; transferring text has the lowest bandwidth requirements and it doesn’t use too many CPU resources either. You could literally run a million dollar business out of your closet. No need to hire coders to maintain the service, debug code; designers to create new promotional images/videos/layouts.

The idea behind Craigslist is genius, and so is the implementation – to a point. Create a balance between eye-candy, usability and costs and you’ve got a Craigslist killer: Oodle.

What’s special about Oodle?

• It mashes together ‘80,000 sources’ according to their website; which isn’t that far fetched considering they manage classifieds for a number of big players in the market.

Oodle covers listings from national and local marketplaces in 289 regions, 494 colleges in the United States, 120 cities and 84 universities in the UK, and 39 regions and 31 universities in Canada. – Oodle Blog

• It has an alert system that notifies the user once a product is available. Instead of searching every day, you sit back and receive the notification in your inbox.
• A large inventory – many sources means more products and a good angle for negotiating.
• Other classifieds sites use Oodle’s API to provide results – which means your posting will reach more than one single service. These sites are in the ‘hundreds’.
• Oodle generates more revenue by attracting advertisers and having a paid inclusion program. Submission to the site is still free – but if you want more exposure you can pay for it.
• International reach – just recently opened for Ireland and India.

Oodle is definitely a better implementation of the online classifieds idea – and while it is not as revolutionary as Craiglist was when it first appeared – it does the job better and that’s always what matters for the end-user.

I’ve asked Kirsten Bollen, from Public Relations at Oodle, a couple of questions:

Q: What makes Oodle, in your opinion, better than Craiglist? What feature would you say differentiates you from the other services?

A: Oodle operates the largest network of classifieds services in the U.S., so buyers can easily find the best deals with access to more than 40 million listings aggregated from more than 80,000 different sites. Oodle also offers a compelling platform for sellers to promote their listings by leveraging the reach of Oodle’s extensive network of more than 250 partner sites, including AOL, Comcast and MySpace, among many others.

Q:How would you see the service evolve in the future?

A: Oodle recently launched Facebook’s new Marketplace, where we introduced a new feature – Sell For a Cause – which allows you to donate the proceeds from items you sell to over a million participating charities including UNICEF, the Sierra Club and local organizations like the Boys and Girls Club of San Francisco.

I’d like to hear what you think about Craigslist and Oodle. If you haven’t tried it yet, go to Oodle.com.

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Personal

ShoutEm

ShoutEm is a new service that allows you to host your own microblogging service. It focuses on customization, giving you lots of control over your community’s look and behavior. You can change the theme, enable Pownce-like multimedia “shouts”, and even add your own advertisements.

ShoutEm is free, but also offers a premium plan that unlocks the more advanced features like a custom domain, file sharing, and more customization options.  Instead of paying a flat monthly fee for bundled-features, though, you pay on a per-feature basis.

Twingr

Like ShoutEm, Twingr allows you to create and manage your own microblogging community. It’s in a public alpha, but I wasn’t able to sign up and try it out as the allotted number of communities had already been created.

After watching the demo video, though, it appears that Twingr is less feature-rich and lacks many more powerful customization options. It doesn’t appear that you can upload photos, and there doesn’t seem to be a premium subscription of any kind available. Then again, Twingr is in alpha, so all these features may come eventually.

Business

Present.ly

Present.ly is a microblogging platform for small businesses and organizations that lets employees post updates about what they are working on, share files, and more. One nice feature of Present.ly is that it allows you to create groups, a useful tool for collaborating on projects. It also has some neat features that make asking and answering questions of fellow employees a breeze.

Present.ly offers a free plan with limited features for up to 5 users. After that, plans range from $14 to $99 a month.

SocialCast

Last but certainly not least, SocialCast is the most attractive and exciting service of the two. Packed with great features, SocialCast takes business communication beyond microblogging and includes a full range of social networking features. These include lifestreaming, microblogging, social-networking profiles, and even Yahoo Answers style pages for asking questions and getting answers.

SocialCast offers a free plan for up to 5 users. It’s $5 per user, per month after that. If you run a non-profit or very large company, SocialCast offers discounts and custom pricing options as well.

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OfficeZilla is a free project management and collaboration site. It comes with a comprehensive suite of tools and resources that allow you to manage your projects and tasks more efficiently. It is ideal for personal projects or group projects that involve several co-partners. There is no limit to the number of users that you can add, so even if your project involves hundreds or thousands of people, OfficeZilla will still be able to support it.

When you first create an account on the OfficeZilla sign up page, you are automatically assigned the administrator role for your account. Once you are logged in, you can start to invite your colleagues/co-partners into your group (via a custom sign up form) so that they can have access and update to the project resources.

Within OfficeZilla, there is a comprehensive suite of tools and resources that are available for your use. You can find features such as a calendar, chat rooms, contacts, content library, a directory, POP3 email account, files, forums, knowledge base, private messages, project manager, resources, to do List and many more.

Some of the features that I find it useful include the content library, knowledge base, project manager and resources. The content library is where you upload your content such as articles, presentation slides, multimedia files etc and share them with your co-partner.

The knowledge base allows you to create a database of the commonly asked questions and answers, or the history and progress of the current project so that any new co-partners that have just joined the group can learn about the progress and then start work immediately.

The project manager is where you can create and assign tasks for the project. This will give you a good overview of the progress of the project and see who is doing the job and who is not.

When you come across a useful site/article on the Web, you can also make it available by updating the Resources page.

Under the ‘My Account’ page, there is a section that allows you to subscribe to RSS feeds for the various components in OfficeZilla. You subscribe to the feed that you want to keep a tab on so you won’t be left out of any update by your co-partner.

Conclusion

OfficeZilla comes with a comprehensive suite of office tools and resources that allows you to manage your work/project efficiently. With a price of free and the ability to add unlimited number of users, there is really nothing to complain about.

One thing that I feel is lacking is the availability of an office suite (word processing, spreadsheet, etc). If they ever include an office suite inside OfficeZilla, it will surely give them an edge over Google Docs or Zoho Office.

What do you think?    Do you use OfficeZilla yourself?   What has been your experience with it?

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The problem with that is when you are through with the page you have to close or minimze the browser and go back to your presentation. Wouldn’t it be great if there was a way to open a browser right in the slide and you didn’t have to leave your presentation?

As it turns out there is! LiveWeb will do just that and it comes in varieties that will work with every version of PowerPoint from PowerPoint 97 up to and including PowerPoint 2007. Oh and by the way, it’s also free! (It does require however that PowerPoint be on the presenting machine. The free PowerPoint viewer will not work).

You need to download and unzip a small file which contains a ‘ppa’ file (PowerPoint addin). Follow the easy to do directions and the addin is installed. One gotcha, though. Make sure that you disable macro security first or it won’t install. To do that, open PowerPoint, go to “Tools”, then “Options” and click on “Macro Security”. Then select “medium” or “Low”. Then finish the installation and you are good to go.

The way you use it is simple. Just start building your PowerPoint as you normally would do. When you get to where you want a web page, go to “Insert” and select “Web Page” from the drop down menu. An easy to follow wizard will take you through the process or you can do it manually. You can also decide whether you want the slide to be dynamic or static. In other words, each time you run the presentataion the addin can go and get the current web site or it can use the same static page.

When you are finished a new slide appears that you can modify or not. You may want to add a slide title, navigation buttons or other things that you might normally do. When you run the presentation and get to the slide you set up, a browser opens up right in the slide that displays the web site.

Here is how our favorite blog appears in a PowerPoint slide:

This has really helped my PowerPoint presentations move along quicker and I sure couldn’t complain about the price!

I am always on the lookout for cool PowerPoint freebies, so let me know what you have discovered…

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OpenID is a great idea. One place to login! Imagine not having to remember your username and password for the multitude of sites that you need to login to. Once you have signed up with an OpenID provider, like one of the ones below, you will then just need to enter your OpenID URL into a supporting site’s login page; and if you have not already authenticated with your OpenID provider you will be asked to login, and if you already are authenticated you will be logged into the site.

OpenID also assists with transferring information like Name, Location, Profile Icons and so on to the site. This helps in that you don’t need to retype this information as much as you used to for each individual site you signed up on.

The main drawback to OpenID is that if your username and password are stolen or phished, then all of your registered sites then become targets. While some OpenID providers try to alleviate this (by using image verification or two-factor authentication), the majority do not.

The following is a list of suggested OpenID Providers, along with a quick summary and the pros and cons of each:

MyOpenID

MyOpenID is run by a company named JanRain, who was an early adopter and promoter of OpenID services. A leader in the industry but also a small company. Look for them to be acquired in the future.

Pros: A widely used provider. Allows you to set up a customized OpenID URL, such as openid.yourdomain.com. Major supporter of the OpenID Standard.
Cons: The company is not “big”, so they have an unproven track record.

Google Accounts

Think you don’t have an OpenID? Google recently joined the multitude of OpenID providers out there by offering OpenIDs to all Google Accounts. So, if you have a Gmail address, you already have an OpenID! Visit their account page, sign in and get your OpenID URL for signing up with OpenID compatible sites.

Pros: Many people already have Google Account access, Google is a stable company with a track record of security.
Cons: Google knows all.

ClaimID

ClaimID is an OpenID provider which has more than just OpenID. You can “claim” URLs that are yours, and save them to a profile page. Afterwards, you can use your ClaimID URL (which also serves as your OpenID URL) to log into OpenID sites. ClaimID differs from other providers in that they give you a “profile” page that you can send other people to. You can also import images from Flickr, links from Del.icio.us, and more.

Pros: One of the more consumer-friendly OpenID providers, a profile page is included.
Cons: The site seems to be still in the beta stages. An unproven track record.

Verisign Labs PIP

Verisign Labs Personal Identity Provider is the OpenID service from the well-known security firm. Their service is ‘plain’, which is a good thing in my opinion. Also, unique to Verisign PIP is the availability of using two-factor authentication with your openID login, further securing access to your websites. For more information on setting this up, see my post on integrating two-factor authentication. They also provide a free Firefox addon which will automatically fill in your OpenID url on websites; and gives a visual representation if your OpenID login is currently valid.

Pros: Only two-factor provider I found, well known security company. Free OpenID Firefox addon.
Cons: OpenID URL is hard to remember.

For a full listing of OpenID providers see: http://wiki.openid.net/OpenIDServers

In summary, you use OpenID to consolidate your logins. Currently, the main drawback is that not many sites accept OpenID as a valid login. Some major ones, Blogger, Wordpress, and more [see full list here] are coming online. Look to see a slow adoption at first, then a ‘tipping’ point where many sites will follow. From indications I’ve seen, it will not be long before we see major OpenID adoption among blogs, news sites, and more. On the tail end, and after the technology is proven, we may see banks and other “high security” sites accept OpenID.

Dave is an IT Manager by day and technology consultant by night. He is interested in all things internet but is specifically interested in system administration, network security, history, and backpacking. He lives near Philadelphia with his family. See his blog @ www.systembash.com.

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(1) Docstoc – Extremely useful community-powered service for sharing all kinds of business document templates. If you need a professional document, Docstoc is the first place to check out. Whether it’s a legal document, a business form or whatever is out there. Docstoc was launched just recently but already counts over 65.000 user-submitted documents, covering legal, business, financial, technology, and education areas.

For all Docstoc features and video demo check out Docstoc profile here.

(2) Gazhoo – Unlike Docstoc, Gazhoo is a marketplace for legal, financial and business documents, case studies and research papers. Mainly it’s a place to buy and sell professional documents. However, with the exception of few scarce document types (i.e. market research papers) most of the listed documents are free. So, it’s a pretty good resource as well.

(3) Scribd – Scribd has the biggest document collection, but it’s not focused on professional documents alone. It’s more like a virtual document library, where anyone can freely upload and share any kind of text documents (jokes, facts, stories, legal, presentations, etc.). Although, there is a good deal of useless stuff, it still has lots of legal forms and document templates. Read more: Scribd – Online Document Sharing.

Are you aware of any other similar websites? Share them in comments

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‘To Post’ or ‘Not To Post’ ? That’s the question that keeps bothering me if the website I am about to review can be useful but not very ethical. And that’s the case with Jigsaw, as much as I may find its service unethical its growth and popularity seem to indicate that it works quite well for many people. So, here it goes
Jigsaw is a place where you can get access to not so easy to obtain business contacts. It has over 3 million business contact records within 300,000 companies with several thousands of contacts added on a daily basis. You simply search for a contact you need anf if it exists in jigsaw’s database you get contact’s name, title, email and phone number. To the question ‘Who Uses Jigsaw?’ company states following

A: Sales people, recruiters, marketers, researchers, job seekers, small business owners, and anyone else who needs high quality low cost corporate contact information. Members use Jigsaw to look for direct contact information from a particular organization. With these reliable contacts members are able to close more deals. See our success stories.

How does it work:

Each contact will cost you 5 jigsaw points. There are several ways you can get points. You can either buy them at $0.20 for 1 point (1 contact=5 points=$1) or get 10 points eachtime you submit new or correct exisitng contact. To try jigsaw out without paying anything you can sign up with free trial account which is valid for 14 days and comes with 50 points (equivalent to 10 contacts). After trial period is over you can switch either to PAY or PLAY account. See difference between these two in the image below

• Jigsaw.com -Frequently Asked Questions
• Jigsaw.com -How it works
• Some good criticism from Michael Arrington(techcrunch.com) criticize here
• and you may be interested to go through their privacy policy here
• check if you are in Jigsaw’s database from here
• Countries you can get contacts from: United States, Australia, Canada, India, Ireland, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa and United Kingdom

Some other popular websites offering similar service are InfoUSA and Hoovers

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While doing my undergraduate studies, sometimes I had to spend hours on creating simple survey forms, hence I know how time consuming and irritating the process can be. Wufoo can help you build good quality online forms, surveys, invitations and etc. It does not end here, service also does a great job at processing and managing forms. You can check out different form examples and have tour though account user interface here and here, respectively. Wufoo provides good all-in-one feature set, letting person not only to create forms but also easily manage and analyze data obtained from it. It is even possible to create complete customer management system.

There are many people who can benefit from this tool considerably. I think it may be especially useful for teachers, students or people involved in a job that requires to carry out regular customer surveys and monitore custumer behaviour. From the wide variety of subscription models available, I assume that the demand for this service exists in many corporate sectors as well. Below I have included excerpt from the Wufoo’s website

Basically, the possibilities are endless, but here’s a short list of things to give you an idea of Wufoo’s versatility:

• Contact Form
• Mailing List
• Survey
• Job Application
• Workshop Registration
• Event Calendar
• Account Management
• Customer Management
• Bug Tracker
• Invitations / RSVP
• Online Orders
• Wedding Planner
• Address Book
• Home Finances
• Classifieds
• Personal Journal
• Quizzes / Tests
• Media Collection

For sign-up you need only email. Service has 5 different pricing options(check here) including free option. Free service option is limited to 3 forms/month, 3 reports/month and 100 entries. This amount should be enough for non-business use. If you need more then that you will need to subscribe to one of the premium accounts priced between $9 to $199/month,depending on the number of forums required.

Another couple of web based companies that offer similar onlne tools are Form Assembly and WyaCracker. If you know any other similar services let me know.

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