A Feature for a Teacher

We have a teacher who is using LiveBinders in her class with her lesson plans and websites projected up on the screen. She asked that we create a way to show a binder without all the information around the binder that might distract her 5th grade students. So we added a ‘full screen’ mode to LiveBinders. From the shelf, click on Options > Show Full Screen and the binder will open up without toolbars or binder information.

This feature is also useful for PR people using LiveBinders who want to present the media coverage to clients.

Go here to try it out.

Comments Added to LiveBinders

We have now added a comments feature to LiveBinders so that you can comment on binders in the same way that you would comment on a blog. You just press the comment button at the bottom of the binder. You must be logged in to leave comments.

LiveBinders Saves Time in the School Computer Lab

Ms. Kellogg also had another a great suggestion for using LiveBinders in the computer lab.

Step 1. Create a LiveBinder with the pre-approved sites for the school, something like this one:

Websites for Kids

Step 2. Drag this binder to the desktop of every computer in the computer lab.

The students then click on the binder to get to the websites. Anytime you add to or change the binder, the changes are automatically on everyone’s desktop!

You could even make separate binders for upper grades and lower grades if desired.

Thank you Ms. Kellogg for sharing your insights with us.

Sharing Private Binders

We just added a new way to easily share private binders.  If you want to keep your binder private, but still share it with several people, you can.  You just enter a pass key in the binder properties.  Then when you email the url to someone let them know the pass key.  They will be prompted for the pass key when they click on the url.  Once they type in the pass key, they will be able to view your binder.  They do not have to be a LiveBinders member to view your binder.  Please see our FAQ for more information on how to share private binders.

Thank you for all your input and please let us know what else we can do to make it easier for you to use and share binders.

Sending Links to Customers Never Looked So Good

Thanks to some excellent feedback, we have a new release that includes several improvements to LiveBinders.

As you know, LiveBinders is like a 3-ring binder for the web – allowing you to capture a variety of web links into a tabbed format which we call LiveBinders.  Instead of bookmarking links – you can add them directly into livebinders.  Your LiveBinder icons can be embedded on your web pages or sent as links in email.  It’s a great way to share multiple links for yourself or with other people.

Here are some of the highlights in this release:

Upload Your PDF files to LiveBinders

Many of our users have been creatinglivebinders for customer documentation.  With our new upload feature you can upload your own PDFs and include them in a livebinder along with your website links.

Better Looking Binders

We’ve given the livebinders a more polished look.  At the top now is the LiveBinder logo and the username/ login line.  Underneath that is the contents of the binder including the name of the binder, the author’s name, date created, and the number of views for the binder.  If you are the author of the binder,  you will also be able to see the ‘edit menu’ button to the right which allows you to make changes to your binder’s contents and properties.

Bookmark While You Browse

Although many of you can still create a blank binder from scratch, new users will be asked to install in their browser the ‘LiveBinder It’ bookmark tool.  This allows them to create binders while they browse. It is a quicker and easier way to create binders on the fly.  You can find out more about the bookmark tool here: http://livebinders.com/create/bookmark?type=bookmark

LiveBinders was created to help people make their searches more useful.  Before Livebinders there was no easy way to combine multiple links into a document format that you can easily access online.  If you’ve found LiveBinders to be useful for you, let us know.  We have more improvements on the way.

Thank you for using LiveBinders!

Trouble at Ma.gnolia – Just how good are your back-ups?

I don’t know how many people were keeping their bookmarks at Ma.gnolia, but my husband was one of them.  Their recent data loss is a shining example to us all on the importance of off-site back-ups.  Why is it so hard to set up a comprehensive back-up system? In some part it is like earthquake preparedness here in northern California – most of us just don’t want to think about it!

We have a pretty good back-up system at LiveBinders.  But this situation with Ma.gnolia has the team reviewing our processes and making sure that something like this cannot happen to us.  Here are some of the blog posts on the subject:

Ma.gnolia Data Loss

Twitter for business uses

Twitter has been in the paper recently with talks about trying to find ways in which to monetize their popularity. (Doesn’t it seem like a common theme with many of our venture funded startups this quarter?)

In addition to advertising, one avenue they are looking at is to see how useful the twitter application can be for business.   How does a tool used for announcing your whereabouts and general attention grabbing convert to a serious business application?   Well there are some fans that have come up with initial suggestions that have been compiled here in this LiveBinder.

To view just click on the link below and go through each of the tabs in the binder.

Enjoy!

Business Uses for Twitter

Product Positioning Resources

I’ve spent over 20 years in marketing. I’ve positioned so many products in the market that I’ve lost count. I’ve gathered the best resources on the web and written some of my own, but I have to admit that my best lessons in positioning are from my 9-year-old son. Here is a recent conversation:

Sandor: ‘Mom, I need a 50 cent chore.’

Me: (I’m thinking great! I have this plant that was in my pond in its plastic pot, but it grew well beyond its pot so that it was twice the size of the pot.) ‘Okay, Sandor, see that plant that I pulled out of the pond? All those roots need to be cut off so that we can get that plastic pot out of there and put the rest in the compost.’ (I’m thinking this will keep him busy for at least an hour.)

Sandor: (Thinks for 20 seconds) ‘Okay!’

Me: (Very suspicious about him signing up for this much work) ‘Are you sure?’

Sandor: ‘Yep!’ (I leave the room)

Sandor: ‘Alex! I get to perform surgery on a plant – would you like to try it first?’

Needless to say Alex did most of the work and Sandor got the 50 cents.

Okay, so in 20 seconds, he analyzed his target market (Alex) and found a message (surgery) that would appeal to her, then he added sense of urgency (try if first), threw in emotion (great enthusiasm in his voice) and was able to monetize (50 cents) the transaction.

If you can’t do this as quickly as Sandor, you may want to use some of the resources that I have discovered on the web. Click on the binder below to view the sites:

Product Positioning

Sales Tips

I’ve come across Jeffrey Gitomer through his books – the first being ‘The Little Red Book of Sales.’ It is literally a little red hard cover book with huge print and funny cartoons inside. It is a little different from your average motivational sales book. I’ve seen his yellow book, black book and green book on various sales topics.  Jeffrey Gitomer is also lecturer and motivational speaker. What I like is his ‘go get ‘em – never give up attitude.’   He also publishes free articles on various sales tips, which he calls ‘Sales Caffeine’ and it is a nice way to start the work week.

I’ve combined about 10 issues in this LiveBinder. To View just click on the livebinder link below and click on the tabs in the binder to view the articles.

Gitomer Sales Caffeine #360-369

Online marketing tips

I found a cool site with some marketing tips from Michael Wong from Godefy.com.  His blogs help you efficiently use online resources to attract the most visitors to your website.  Check out the blogs posts he has put together on such topics as:  ways to optimize javascript, controversial SEOs, how to optimize on Ask Jeeves, Yahoo Directory Rankings, Selecting best categories, justify SEO budgets, finding link exchange sites, key word strategies, Yahoo sponsor listings and realistic top rankings.

This livebinder has 10 of his articles and I plan on putting together another volume of his writings so I can easily get access to them.  Feel free to use.  Just click on the link below to launch the livebinder, then click on the tabs to view the different blog posts.

Mike Wong’s Marketing Tools Vol 1

http://www.livebinders.com/play/play?id=1492

A Livebinder filled with Marketing Resources

Looking for some marketing ideas to engage and motivate your customers? This Livebinder was put together for business technology marketers and media planners. It is a collection of marketing information with tools, and resources that will help you design and implement campaigns that will engage your marketing audience.

Just click on the binder icon below to launch the livebinder. Then click on the tabs at the top of the page to view the different web pages.

Marketing sources

A New Way Start Your Research

What is the first thing that you do when you start researching a potential purchase or new project? I do a Google Search. Google always gives me a pretty good start to my research. Well, what if you could put those first eight sites that Google finds in a LiveBinder to get started? Well, now you can.

Our new Google search feature pops those first eight results into tabs in a binder. Then you can just delete the tabs that you don’t want and add more tabs as you browse.

At LiveBinders we are always trying to figure out ways to make it easier for you to organize information and share it with others. Creating a binder with a Google search is just another way to help you pull together the information you need into one convenient location.

Try it out and see what you think.

What is really fun is building a quick binder for someone else. Next time someone asks you for information on something, build them a quick binder with Google search and send it to them. They will think you spent a great deal of time pulling the information together just for them!

I had a friend ask me, “just what is cloud computing”. I sent him this binder and he was very impressed, he thought I’d spent a lot of time researching it. But in reality, it took me three minutes to build the binder. For laughs I had to add Larry Ellison’s take on cloud computing in the last tab:

Cloud Computing

Getting Organized this Year

The new year is fast approaching and with it comes a bunch of new resolutions that you hope to keep going for the rest of the year if not for the rest of your life. One of my top priorities is to take control of my life – and that means getting organized, at work, home and in other areas of my personal life.

This binder has a few motivating links that should inspire you to get organized this year. Included are other websites which give useful tips on how to get organized in specific areas of your life.

If you’ve ever thought about how you can organize the clutter of digital documents and online web links that you collect everyday, consider trying out LiveBinders. It’s a free online application that lets you organize the information you collect online by combining them in one place. You can organize your documents in binders and build a collection of binder resources to easily grab at your fingertips.

To view, click on the link below. To browse through the different websites, just click on the tabs at the top.

Getting Organized

Create Your Own Media Kit

Are you trying to market your company’s product, but don’t have the budget to hire a marketing media firm to handle your advertising? Or would you like to learn some marketing tips on how to create your own media kit? Take a look at the following LiveBinder filled with different websites that help you create your own media and press kits.

To view the different websites just click on the link below. Once the binder is open click on the tabs at the top of the binder to go through the different web sites.

 

Start your own Media Kit