Sports News – All At Your Fingertips

Even if you are not a sports fanatic, you’ll want to keep up-to-date on what is going on in the sports world – if just to make small talk at your next meeting.

I found this binder to be really useful – there are at least 7 major news websites in one place, (Fox, ESPN, etc), which can save you the time it takes to scroll through your favorite bookmarks lists or to type-in all of the website addresses.

Enjoy!

Sports Extravaganza

You call this marketing?

I’ve been in marketing in the software business for longer than I like to admit. I used to believe that software marketing was a particularly difficult task because the technology changes so quickly and there wasn’t a lot of institutional experience to be shared. But that was before the Internet. Software marketers today have no excuse for being lousy at their jobs. Yet, there seems to be a whole lot of incompetence out there. Let me share my recent story…

We recently decided to look for a new web analytics package. Like most people who research a purchase these days, I went to the web and did a Google search and started browsing websites.

I was astonished at the number of sites offering web analytics that wouldn’t even let me see a data sheet without registering on their site! Oh my, what year do they think this is?

For all you marketers out there, we are now in the 2000s, and products are, and should be, easy to find on the web. I found several web analytics packages with data sheets and on-line demos that are completely accessible. By having access to this information, I could make an intelligent decision about which products I wanted to analyze further in my process of evaluation. In my early stages, I’m not about to register on 10 different sites just to see a data sheet. Just what are these companies hiding? Surely with Google Analytics breathing down their necks these companies should be reaching out to prospects – not driving them away!

BTW, I should mention how well LiveBinders works for this task of researching products. I just bookmarked the products that I wanted to review and made several notes alongside each site. I even included the products that I’m not interested in so that I don’t waste time looking at them again.

I would love to hear anyone’s opinions of ClickTracks Pro, VisiStat, or other web analytics recommendations – especially for a social networking site.

Here is the binder that I have started for this research:

Analyzing Web Analytics

Winners of 2008 Academy Awards

Many of you may have missed the show last night (Sunday), but here are the results, some red carpet clips, and also video clips of the acceptance speeches from the 4 best actors – Not a bad way to ease into another work week!Enjoy!

Winners of Academy Award Nominations

Parent or Work – Do you really have to choose?

I was one of the lucky ones – when my kids were young, my husband was a full-time parent. But now that I am working on a start-up, he is working full-time and I am the one juggling work and the kids’ schedules. The good news is that there are starting to be more options for working parents. But I want to be on the forefront of that movement.

I have this dream, as LiveBinders grows, of harnessing that workforce that is in need of a more flexible schedule. I know these parents from school – they are accomplished and well educated and I know they would be great contributors.

But I struggle with the reality of how to put such a structure into place. For example, how do you keep someone motivated who must work from home with kids screaming in the background? I search blogs and forums looking for the answers. I would love some insights. Who has had experience with this who would be willing to share?

As I struggle with how to build a business this way, I have found some really interesting sites for parents looking for ways to balance their work and home life:

Working Parent

Softball time – already?

Spring is just around the corner and that means softball season. I missed it last year! I’m so glad that my daughter signed up for it this year. I can hardly wait for

• the mad scrambles in the afternoon to find cleats and glove
• the fierce digging through email to find directions to this week’s game
• the impossible task of trying to commit to memory the snack schedule

But this year is going to be just a little easier. I’m putting everything in a binder like I did for my soccer team in the fall. I drag the binder to my desktop where it is handy and I will send it to the rest of the parents so that they too can have all the information in just one place:

Belmont Bombers

But I admit it, I love to watch them play. In “under 10″ the girl’s are just starting to get serious about the game and I love to watch their intensity. Now if some of the parents would get a little less serious, we would all have a lot more fun. I’ve included some great sites in the binder like the positive coaching site and another site that I found with “tips for parents.”

I hope it is a great season!

It is a vast wasteland out there…

My dad used to say that about TV (and with the writer’s strike, it couldn’t be more true!) A talented writer in his own right, he unfortunately didn’t live long enough to see the Internet take off. But, if he had lived to see it, he would have been both delighted by the access to information and appalled by the abysmal writing on so many of the websites out there.

It is a lot of work to present information clearly, concisely, and then to make it compelling on top of that. I just saw this delightful quote from Seth Godin:

“Nobody learns everything all at once. The story has to begin with something compelling enough that you want to learn more about the story. The mistake marketers make is that they tell all the story at once, take it or leave it. People need to realize they have to ensure a unfolding dialogue.” – Seth Godin from this article:http://www.wordtracker.com/academy/figuring-out-the-words-the-seth-godin-interview

Isn’t this the perfect thought when you think about writing for a website? Writing for a website is an art that not enough of us have mastered!

So, the LiveBinder below is my contribution to cleaning up the mess. If you write for a website, please promise me you will read at least one of these articles. I promise you that I will continue to reread them until the words on my websites are polished and sparkle like little gems!

Writing for the Web

When I sent this LiveBinder to my dear friend Kaye McKinzie (who is a fabulous writer), she wrote back:”Wow..This is amazing!! What I learned in 20 minutes gives me an entire skill set. Remarkable!”

Updated our FAQ page and other hidden gems

Bookmark to a binder

Updated our FAQ page to include some of the new features and videos that we’ve added to the website. Among those is the ability to build a livebinder while you browse the web – using our ‘LiveBinder it’ bookmarklet. Essentially, you create a link on the tool bar of your browser – like this one below:

Then when you are browsing the web and see something you want to add to an existing binder or to a new binder, you can click on that link. It will then trigger the log-in page (if you’re not logged in already) and then add it to your binder. It’s much quicker this way and allows you to create binders on the fly.

Video how tos

The other things that were added was a couple of videos that show you how to install the LiveBinder bookmarklet on IE 6 and 7, Firefox 1.5 and up, and Safari 3.0.4 – Firefox and Safari are really easy to install -just drag it up to the tool bar and that’s it. IE requires a right-mouse click, but is not that much harder.

‘My Content’ or ‘My Binder Content’

Almost forgot about another feature you might not realize exists. LiveBinders keeps track of all of the links you have inserted into your binders. If you want to re-use them in another binder you just have to call up the ‘My Content’ search in the editor.

To do that open your binder in the editor, then go to the tool bar and open ‘insert’>>’my binder content’ or ‘my content.’ The default has you searching for ‘ALL’ (case sensitive until we fix bug…) or you can search for a file by description or file name. FYI, when you select ‘ALL’ it will sort the latest links at the top.

New LiveBinders Release

We just put up a new LiveBinders release. Here are some of the fun things we have added:

1. New ‘LiveBinder It’ – we are trying to make it as easy as possible to add to binders while you browse. If you are already using ‘LiveBinder It’, please delete that button and add a new one from this page: http://www.livebinders.com/welcome/bookmarklet
   If your not using ‘LiveBinder It’ yet, why not? We would love to know.
2. New search options – You can now search for binders that are exclusively yours. You can also search by author if you find an author that you like. Search is available the top of every LiveBinders shelf page: http://www.livebinders.com/
3. Embed in Details – Ever wonder how we put those binders in our blog? From the home page, click on the ‘options’ button under the binder. Then click on ‘details’. There is now an html link as well as the embed code so that the binder can be embedded in blogs and on web pages.

As always, we love to hear what you think of LiveBinders, so email us at feedback@livebinders.com or write to us here.

SEO – An Endless Process of Education

I think I’m pretty good at search engine optimization. I manage several sites and all of them rank on the first page of Google (mostly in the first slot) for the key words that I care about.But I’m always shocked by what I don’t know. I will often read an article on SiteProNews or WebProNews and think, “Wow, I didn’t know that!” I collect all these articles. Mainly so that I can refer to them occasionally, but also so that I can share them with others I know who, like me, are always eager to learn something new.This LiveBinder has my collection. You can copy this binder for yourself and add to it or just drag this version to your desktop and wait for me to add more things to it.

SEO

The Wrong Dog?

The humane societies are full of pit bulls and pit bull crosses available for adoption. So when we went looking for a dog, I thought it was important to consider these often looked-over animals. I’ve had a wide variety of dogs over the years, but the best one by far was a corgi/rottweiler cross from the humane society. So when we saw Toah, a corgi/pit bull cross we thought we would give him a home.

This was a mistake. Don”t get me wrong – Toah is a good dog – well trained, loves the kids, loves a good car ride, behaves well on his walks, and he doesn’t chew or dig. But he was not socialized young, is afraid of strangers, and is naturally an aggressive dog.

When you have an aggressive dog, training is imperative. You must be extremely disciplined and keep your dog in line constantly. As a result, it is a lot of work for someone who is lazy like me.

I believe this is where pit bulls get a bad name. You can be lazy with a tiny dog and let it yap and even nip and people will just think it is obnoxious. But you can’t be lazy with an animal that has been bred to do harm.

I was lucky enough to have a good friend who is a dog trainer who trained me to train Toah. There are also some great dog training resources on the web that I keep in this binder. You can make a copy of this binder for yourself and add to it or delete the ones you don’t like.

Dog Training