Simply Results: A Blog for Today's Business

Tame the Web Universe with FeedDemon 4

2011-11-20T17:57:00.001-05:00

It's a Really Big Web Universe

I evaluate a lot of Windows productivity tools, both as part of my company activities, as well as for everyday computing needs. I really enjoy seeing what people are up to, and especially finding a unique piece of software that meets a need nearly perfectly.

I also like to keep up with what is going on in the world. So recently I found myself on a mission to solve this problem: I found no single website that would provide me with access to the news and ideas I'm interested in, in a flexible and attractive format.

For some time, I had been using Google News for this purpose, but it's quite limited, and it's bare-bones interface was starting to bore me.

Nick to the Rescue

Then it dawned on me, that there was a class of software loosely named "news readers" or "news aggregators" that might be worth another look.

After digging around a bit more, I recalled Nick Bradbury, of TopStyle fame. Let's put it this way: When Nick sets out to create software, he gets it right.

I remembered that Nick had created a "news aggregator" Windows client. Without delay, I went straight to the download page for Nick's latest creation: FeedDemon. Within a few minutes I had downloaded the latest version 4.0.0.22, and setup a few test feeds.

Getting to Know FeedDemon

FeedDemon is the sort of software that may not necessarily "wow" you right away, until you start digging in and realizing the power that lies beneath its pretty interface.

FeedDemon has a pretty interface
that's just about perfect.

The power is this: It brings a tiny subset of the Web Universe of information to my desktop, on my terms. I choose the topics I'm interested in (by setting up a subscription for each), set the update frequency (mine is 5 minutes), and FeedDemon does the rest.

Behind the scenes, using the power of RSS, it collects the requested articles and information from all over the web and presents them to me in a sane and orderly format. I then simply read the articles I'm interested in -- right in FeedDemon's built-in browser. Or, send it to my "Read it Later" account (FeedDemon connects directly to the service) to read when I have a bit more time. There are also, as you might expect, many "sharing" options connected to social media services.

Looking for some great RSS feeds? Reuters has quite a comprehensive set on their website.

Delightfully Taming the Beast

FeedDemon is a delight to use and offers many customization options -- you can tweak the interface pretty much to your liking. FeedDemon also synchronizes feeds with Google Reader, so it's absolutely painless to keep your favorite feeds synchronized across computers or devices. You can even setup FeedDemon to return the results of Google Searches.

Because the web is so vast, it's easy to drown in its seemingly endless nature, aimlessly bouncing from site to site, and wasting a lot of time in the process. FeedDemon has brought back a remarkable sense of order -- and focus -- to my web activities, allowing me to regain control of my web surfing activities.

FeedDemon Ratings

Pros

Delightful interface
Easy setup
Reliable
Integration with Google Reader

Cons

Online help and tech support are rather limited
Internal Browser is relatively slow to load pages

Overall Rating: 8.5 out of 10

Information Results Helps Green Business Grow Sales

2011-10-22T12:43:00.005-04:00


Norman Zboray, Owner

Green With Envy Home Store has a distinct vision for the future: To provide eco-friendly products that create a healthy home and business environment ... while protecting the planet.

Information Results first started working with Norman Zboray of Green With Envy Home Store back in January of 2008. It's hard to believe it's been almost four years! First of all, I must say that working with Norman is delightful. Norman is a bright, hard-working, honest --- and just downright nice --- young entrepreneur.

Initial conversations with Norman centered around his new business, why he started it, what his goals were, and what he envisioned for a web site to support it. I made a point to spend the time necessary to understand his business -- to get a sense of the look and feel of a web site that would be a custom fit.

With a physical store in Hillsborough, New Jersey, Norman reports that the web site is bringing in considerable business, both with people placing purely online orders, as well as those who visit the website and then call in their order.

Green with Envy's sales have substantially grown due to our relationship with Information Results Corporation. They took the necessary time to listen to what we wanted to achieve with our company's website while offering great technical support and advice. - Norman Zboray, owner

Personally, I gain great satisfaction from hearing such positive reports. When our customers are successful, it's great to know that Information Results has played a significant role in that. What may not be obvious is the many systems we deploy to get the job done. These include our world class data center, 24x7 uptime monitoring, prompt technical support, and one-on-one training, to name a few.

Each Information Results customer receives intense personal attention. For example, we customized the shopping cart for Norman's site, to automatically calculate the number and size of boxes required to ship the product -- and the items that will go into each box. This feature, which relies on an advanced shipping calculator, gives the customer a precise shipping quote -- and no surprises at checkout!

Since 2005, Information Results Corporation has had the pleasure of working with many such small and mid-sized businesses. Our goal is to provide each business with IT services that not only work flawlessly, but are an essential part of their success.

Essential Desktop Tool: Stickies for Windows

2011-10-21T21:22:00.003-04:00

Zhorn Software released Stickies 7.1b on October 9th.

Stickies are sticky notes for your computer that you can pop up and use anytime!

This amazing little program is one of those true gems that costs nothing to download and use -- and yet is priceless in its utility. Sure, there are a lot of sticky note programs out there, but for Windows, well, it just doesn't get better than this.

Think for a minute of all those little (and not so little) bits of information you encounter during the day working on your computer. Now think of a way to capture all of them -- effortlessly.

That's Stickies!

Reasons to love Stickies:

Virtually bug-free.
Countless uses.
Capture both text and images.
Sits in the system tray ready for you to use.
Set alarms.
Attach to programs (very cool).
Search all your stickies.
Send stickies to your friend's desktop (also very cool).
Way better the others. Trust me on this.

My favorite feature? "New sticky from clipboard".

Download it, try it. You'll love it.

Use Web Tools to Track Sales and Service Requests

2010-12-07T08:07:00.011-05:00

Providing great sales and customer support is not that difficult. Half the battle, in fact, is getting organized.

In today's connected world, that means using some sort of online, web-based tool to capture, track, and communicate service requests, as well as sales inquiries. Think about it. Even the smallest mom-and-pop business fields many requests from prospective and current customers every week.

Using a web-based tool such as SmarterTrack from SmarterTools Inc. can be a very effective, low-overhead way to keep track of all those requests, big and small. In addition, you inspire confidence in your customers as you demonstrate your ability to follow up faithfully and reliably.

SmarterTrack is one of those absolutely brilliant tools that shines in nearly every area: user interface, feature set, value, integration and reliability. The development team has managed to steadily add new features without needlessly cluttering up its quite stunning, but common-sense page layout. An advanced tool such as SmarterTrack has the uncanny ability to add great value to your everyday work, without the burden of cumbersome or awkward navigation, or complicated procedures.

Information Results has deep experience with SmarterTrack. We can help you with procurement, setup, and even integration of SmarterTrack with a web site (or other business system) through its rich API. Contact us for a free consultation and we'll be glad to talk over the options that might work for you.

Take the first step today to providing sales and support that really works!

Project a Professional Image with VOIP

2010-11-26T10:34:00.006-05:00

Today's VOIP technology makes it easier than ever to project a very professional image to your customers, prospects, and business partners.

One stellar example is Phone.com, which offers affordable VoIP phone services for small business, home business or personal use. Although "affordable" can often equate with "low value", this is not one of those cases. On the contrary, there's lot to love in their Virtual Office.

Here are my top 5 reasons to love Phone.com.

A powerful Control Panel: Manage your extensions, numbers, menus, greetings, schedules, queues...it's all there in one place.
Extremely helpful 24x7 live customer support.
Customize everything to your exact specifications.
Active user forums that even the CEO frequents.
Great value for the price.

Organize your bookmarks, once and for all!

2010-10-23T20:30:00.195-04:00

If you're anything like me, your web surfing leads to a lot of bookmarking and saving of favorites. Personally, I like to save links to web sites and pages of interest, for ease in finding them later. Google and other search tools notwithstanding, there's nothing like having my own "stash" of links, named the way I want them, and easy to recall.

You may be able to identify with my recent dilemma, when I woke up one day and realized that all those valuable links were strewn about...and very disorganized. Think of all the places where quality URLs can be potentially stored.

as favorites in various browsers
on the desktop
inside documents
inside emails
etc...

This scattering of links across your machine makes it nearly impossible to locate the link you need -- at just the right time. But what if there were a tool that excelled at storing and organizing all your web site links -- and made them incredibly easy to retrieve?

Enter LinkStash. It's not the only Windows bookmark utility out there, to be sure, but it may be the best, at least for the Windows world. I think it's the best -- because it's one goal in life is to store, organize and retrieve links. It does so very elegantly and simply. It's also the best because it does not try to be anything but that -- an outstanding Windows bookmarks/favorites manager.

Consider the main window. It's simple, straightforward, and to the point. Sexy it's not. But hey, bookmarks aren't that sexy either. But don't let that plain interface fool you -- it gets the job done.

How about that toolbar. Now this is a real toolbar. Not like those foolish ribbons that Microsoft has come up with. A toolbar should be like a toolbox. It should contain buttons (handles) that make the tools easy to identify, grab, and use. The LinkStash toolbar is a thing of beauty. And it works. You may customize the toolbar, of course, as I have done.

My favorite feature of LinkStash, however, is the ability to "grab" URLs from any major browser. LinkStash will grab the URLs from all open browsers and display them in a simple dialog. You may then choose the links that you want to save to LinkStash, and the software will flawlessly save each one in succession to the LinkStash folder you desire.

Finally, the Bookmark Properties dialog is yet another marvel of fantastic user interface design. Inside this power-dialog, you may store:

comments
tags
passwords (these can be secured)
notes

... and even designate which browser to use to open the link. Everything you need, and nothing more.

I've not been able to cover everything here, but I will mention a few more of my favorites features of this wonderful tool:

Explorer-style interface
Lightning fast search
Extensive user customization

LinkStash has been developed over many years by John Williams, a developer out of the UK. And word has it that he is working on a new version, possibly to be released sometime in late 2010.

I hope I've been able to peak your interest in LinkStash, and that you too will find it to be the tool that allows you to finally organize all those links. More importantly, it will allow you to leverage the knowledge in all of those links, simply and effectively.

LinkStash is $24.95 per license, and volume discounts are available. Get your copy of LinkStash here, or try it free for 30 days.

Thanks for reading, and Happy Stashing!

Trickle-down Customer Service?

2010-07-11T14:16:00.002-04:00

I recently bought mud guards for my Kia, thinking this would be an easy way to enhance the appearance of the vehicle, as well as reduce mud splash on the finish - particularly in the wintertime. Finding a Kia dealer near a local bike trail I frequent, I placed my order -- and happily picked them up a week later.

The arrival

The guards were well packaged, and included installation instructions (a 1-page photocopied page) for the front guards, and another (different) page for the rear. (It's a pretty simple task, so instructions are not really required. Out of curiosity, though, I took a look at them.)

The installation

There were several gotchas which became apparent as I reviewed the instructions and compared them to the actual guards and the vehicle.

First the titles of the instructions were reversed. The instructions entitled "REAR MUD GUARD KIT" actually referred to the front guards, and vice-versa.
Then, the front guard instructions (um, the ones actually entitled "Rear Kit") refer to three screws already on the vehicle that need to be removed. Indeed there are three, however, the actual guard was missing the drilled hole for the middle screw. (Not to worry, handyman that I am, I quickly drilled the missing middle hole in each of the two front guards.)
If that wasn't bad enough, the photocopied instructions (above right) had been copied over and over so many times, that the 4 pictures that were supposed to show the details of the (albeit simple) process looked like a Rorschach test -- and were therefore completely useless.
To add insult to injury, there were extra holes on the guards which did not correspond to any existing hole on the actual vehicle's body. (I've not yet decided whether to drill them or not.)

The irony

One more image (left) completes the story for you. Remember those instructions that looked like a Rorschach test? Compare this with what the Kia internal staff get. On the outside of the box the guards came in is a label with information intended for the various Kia employees handling the guards and ultimately getting them to me -- the customer. This data is as clear as can be -- color coded, large fonts, with a wealth of unambiguous information about stock location, part number -- a whopping 19 pieces of data in total -- all about my lowly mud guards.

And what do I, the customer, get? A Rorschach test and parts that don't match the instruction nor the actual vehicle.

The lessons

As I chuckled over this comedy of errors, it occurred to me that the customer service operations of many corporations have devolved into what I call "trickle-down customer service." They make great pains to fine tune and automate their internal operations (made so much easier now with everything run by computer) with the mistaken notion that all this internal busywork will improve the external customer experience. The problem is that nobody thinks about (or cares about) the customer experience, and none of this high-tech wizardry benefits the customer in the least.

Let's face it. Trickle-down economics didn't work, and neither does trickle-down customer service. The only approach that works is to put the customer first, and look at the entire process from their perspective.

At Information Results, we ask ourselves every day "How does this feel to the customer?" Putting ourselves in their shoes helps us stay focused on their needs. We wouldn't have it any other way.

Making E-Commerce Simple

2010-05-26T19:21:00.001-04:00

I am very pleased to announce the launch of StephanieHessler.com, a place where people can find inspirational artwork designed to inspire their memories, fantasies or spirits.

One of the things I like about the business of web site design is that each project is so unique. As Stephanie Hessler noted on several occasions, there are so many details required to get any shopping website online!

From security certificates to DNS entries to payment gateways -- the list can make anyone's head spin. The good news? Here at Information Results, we take care of every last one of those little details. We've been there many times and know the best way to get everything pulled together.

One example of the value we bring to the businesses we serve.

While you may not see this from cruising Stephanie's web site, there are some interesting twists behind the scenes, all of which required extensive programming (about 2000 lines of C# code!) and testing.

Here are some examples:

Calculation of the weight of each package and number of packages required for the order.
Automated web service interface with UPS and USPS to get shipping quotes.
Automated order submission (every 15 minutes) to an external vendor (who actually produces the prints and ships the order.)

Just another day here at Information Results. At the end of the day, it simply works. And I truly hope that it's one less headache for Stephanie.