When websites first made their way into the marketplace and businesses started creating their own, they served more as an online brochure of sorts – a digital display of static pages and information. This was great when websites were first hitting the streets – who wouldn’t want a place to display information to the world about their business?  Unfortunately, most SMB accounting firm websites that I have come across have not evolved much since then. Brochures can be attractive, but I usually throw them away – I don’t convert them into business. What about you?

When your website is static and not pushing out new content on a consistent basis, Google does not pay attention to it or crawl it as much (or as often as you [should] want it to). There are several ways that you can turn your website into an asset, rather than a liability.

Blogging is a great way to get started on the path of turning your website/online presence into an asset. It will also help in generating traffic and help you “get found” on Google. Here are some business blogging ideas:

• tax tips and advice
• case studies
• talk about your niche market
• common payroll mistakes you find businesses making
• remember: content is key
• add or convert your newsletters into blog posts so they can be searched and referenced online

You can think of blogging like this:

The benefit of publishing a blog post is crystal clear and measurable: Each time you publish a blog post, you’re purchasing an annuity./via Hubspot

Your website will also be an asset for you if you are able to convert traffic into a lead. The leads will come to you, and, if you give them something valuable in return, they will be likely to trade you for their information. Some ways to convert traffic are by offering:

• Whitepapers
• A type of free consultation
• Research/studies
• eBooks
• Trials and samples
• Contests

One tool that I find helpful is Hubspot’s Website Grader. The tool can help you determine how well your website is doing at getting traffic. It will also point out any SEO (Search Engine Optimization) issues, and how popular (or unpopular) it is in Social Media. I highly recommend heading over there to get your website graded.

Some other articles that I have enjoyed reading are:
Why Your Business Blog Is an Annuity
Inbound Marketing: The Next Phase of Marketing on the Web
Free Advertising on Google

Home Entertainment

Roku HD Media Player

The Roku Player, as it is called by Netflix, first started out as a device you could connect to your TV and stream movies from Netflix over the internet to your TV. This by itself is a pretty great reason to buy – if you have a Netflix subscription. However, recently, this litle device got that much better, when it released additional “channels” for the device – including Pandora (my new favorite), Flickr, Facebook, and a few others. So, with a one-time purchase of this device – starting at $79, you can be streaming music or movies straight to your TV over your home wireless internet connection. There are 3 models of this device – a basic SD model, the original HD model, and a new HD XR model which touts the strongest wireless range of them all. I actually already have the HD model, but I could not help but add it to the list in case you aren’t familiar with it yet.

Apple TV with 160GB Hard Drive

Now, if I didn’t have a Roku Player already, I would probably have to swing for an Apple TV. Over the last few months, these little guys have dropped in price to $229 making it the only model available – previously there was a 40GB model. This device also connects to your TV (most likely via HDMI if you have a newer HD television). It can play TV shows and movies from iTunes, as well as stream your iTunes music from other computers in your house. However, you can also take this one step furter and load an open source platform on it, called Boxee, which will unlock the doors to play Hulu, Netflix, Pandora, Flickr, and an MLB channel on the device (all similar to the Roku, with the exception of Hulu – one of my favorites).

Memories

+
Nikon D40 Digital SLR + Eye-Fi 2GB Wi-Fi SD Card

I love to take photos. Sometimes of the great food my wife and I eat, sometimes of the awesome Texas sunsets, and sometimes of other random things. It is great to have a solid camera to look back and remember those moments. I have this entry level Nikon Digital SLR on my list because it has been around for a while and the price point is great. Even though it has been around for a while, the fact that they haven’t taken it off the market speaks something about it, in my opinion. And to partner along with a new (or old) digital camera, don’t forget about the Eye-Fi wireless SD card. This card looks just like any other SD card, although with this one, you can configure wireless hotspots, and have your photos automatically uploaded to one of the 25 compatible photo sites (ie. Flickr, Facebook, Picasa, Snapfish, Smugmug, Shutterfly, etc). In short, it makes your camera a wireless device!

Flip MinoHD Camcorder, 60 Minutes

If I had kids, I would definitely have one of these already. Alas, no kids yet, so it can stay on the list for a bit. This pocket video camera packs a lot of punch for its size. It is the epitome of convenient and quality. The model pictured records 60 minutes worth of HD quality footage. Then, there is a flip out USB connection that is used to upload the videos to the computer or online video sharing sites.

Hobbies

Kindle Wireless Reading Device

Have you heard of the Kindle? It is all over Amazon. It is a wireless reading device, which you can download books to straight from Amazon, or download magazine or newspaper subscriptions, or with the built-in PDF reader, display your own PDF documents on-the-go. If you haven’t seen these in person, it is a must. The display is quite amazing, with its paper-like appearance. Another great feature of this reading buddy is 3G wireless coverage at home or abroad– no monthly fees or contracts required for this either. If you are packing 5 books into your carry-on when you travel, you might want to check out the Kindle.

Garmin Forerunner 305 GPS with Heart Rate Monitor

Are you active? Well there is also a gadget for you. I recently bought my wife the Garmin Forerunner 305 GPS watch, and now I want one too. Garmin is one of the top GPS product makers, and they haven’t fallen short with this watch – just look at the reviews on Amazon. The watch can be used for running, cycling, cross-country skiing, among other activities. It will track your pace, heart rate, and display your activity on a map when you are done. Another cool feature: let’s say you want to do a run and pace between 6.5 and 7.0 mph, well you can set that up on the watch and it will beep at you if you drop below or start to go faster than your desired speed. Once you have one, you will never want to leave home without it.

Productivity

Evernote Pro Subscription

Tripit Pro subscription

I use both of these services a lot. Evernote more on a daily basis, and Tripit only when I travel. First, Evernote claims that it will “remember everything” for you. It is a mega-notetaking tool that syncs notes into one account – whether you take notes on your iPhone, desktop client (Mac or PC), or even on their web interface. The free plan allows for 40mb of uploads per month, which I have never surpassed. With the Pro plan though, you get more upload space, better collaboration and sharing abilities, and the ability to upload more file types (office docs, video) versus just PDFs with the Free plan. Another cool feature of Evernote, is that it will recognize text within images that you save to it – receipts, business cards, nametags from conferences. Just think, maybe it really is possible to “remember everything”.

As for Tripit, this is another awesome service for the road warrior (in some of us). Basically, the service will manage all itineraries and travel plans for you in one account. The cool thing though, is that all you have to do is forward all of your confirmation emails to plans@tripit.com, and they will automatically create the trip, or add details to the trip if it’s already created. They have partnerships with nearly all of the big travel sites, airlines, hotels, car rentals, etc, so it is a rare occasion that they will not identify your confirmation emails. In addition to the service, they have an iPhone app which is very helpful when on the road. They recently added airport maps to the app, and you can track flight statuses from within it. One of the Pro features that could really come in handy, is the ability to share trips, like with a spouse, so that they could be in the “inner circle” and keep track of all flight and travel plans from one place, especially if your plans change a lot. The Pro plan has some other features like tracking rewards accounts, finding alternate flights, and mobile alerts on flight delays or changes. I would at least recommend checking out the service and signing up for the free account. It is well worth it!

If you happen to receive or gift any of these toys for Christmas – or if you already own some – I would love to hear what you think of them. You can email me at mlynton at xcentric.com or post a reply below.

Take a look at Socialcast – “a simple, secure collaboration tool that helps employees communicate in real-time”.  Some of the features this tool brings to the table are microblogging, real-time conversation tracking, custom tags, private and public groups, link sharing, file sharing, and search-ability.

Reduce email and provide search-ability:

Think about all those group emails that get sent out and take up space in your inbox. Socialcast can allow your group or company to reduce those mass emails by putting group conversations and collaboration in one place. Another great feature of social networking are tags. You could start a conversation about an upcoming conference and tag it with “#conference”, which will make your conversation easier to find in the future by looking at the “tag cloud” (which is kind of like an index).

Basically, if you are familiar with Twitter and Facebook, that is what Socialcast is, but exclusively for your business.

Microblogging:

Talk about something you are working on, share a tip that might help others, or ask a question to get some feedback. You can also “@mention” other coworkers, in a Twitter-like fashion, so that your message will show up on their page to alert them that something has been posted relating to them.

Platforms:

Socialcast can be used via the web site, a desktop application for PC or Mac, as well as a newly released native iPhone application.

desktop application

iPhone application

Conversations:

You can subscribe to specific people in your company and watch what they have to say. Or you can watch the whole company stream at any point in time. You can also “flag” conversations, even if you don’t have anything to say, so that you can keep track of what is being said about that particular topic.

Groups:

Private or public groups can be created to collaborate in more of a streamlined manner for conversations that don’t need to include the entire company.

These are just a few of the features and benefits that Socialcast brings to the table. They offer a free version of their platform, as well as a paid version which offers a few more features. The adoption of a tool like this could seem hard to incorporate to a company that has relied on email for so long. However, there is a Socialcast Cookbook which contains best practices and simple tips for growing a community, which may help put your firm on its way to being savvy in the area of social networking. They also offer a NASA case study which tells of NASA’s use of the tool.

For a first-hand look at the service, visit the Socialcast Demo here.

• RAID – make sure that your servers have a RAID configuration on both the OS and Data partitions. For example, if you have a File & Print server, you would want to have your OS partition in a RAID configuration, as well as your Data partition in a RAID configuration.
• Redundant power supply – this one is fairly self explanatory. Redundant power supplies are a fairly standard option on new servers these days. However, if your server is a couple of years old and does not have redundant power, it would be something worth looking into.
• Dual gigabit NICs – gigabit NICs are usually a given on a server, however dual NICs are not always as common. Xcentric always implements dual NICs on servers. You can run these in a failover mode or as load-balancing.
• Gigabit switches – you want to have at least all of your core network servers connected to a gigabit switch to reduce any bottlenecks.
• Server warranty – it is always in your best interest to have enterprise-grade production servers that are covered with some sort of next business day service & support contract. You may have lasted the previous 3 years without one, but that is a big risk to keep taking.
• Server room- Computer equipment may look tough on the exterior; however, it is very sensitive to the environment that they operate in. The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) recommends a temperature range of 20–25 °C (68–75 °F) and a humidity range of 40–55% with a maximum dew point of 17°C as optimal for data center conditions, according to their “Thermal Guidelines for Data Processing Environments”.
• Power  source- A single server can draw up to 300 Watts of power, which means special planning must be made to supply uninterrupted (backed up) power. Datacenters and server rooms should not share power circuits with other high-power consumers such as copiers, refrigerators or air conditioners. Some battery backup units also require special outlets to be installed from dedicated power circuits.
• Server hardware- Only Tier One hardware should be used for the production environment. Your entire firm has its lifeline routed throughout this hardware and our best practice is to use either Dell, HP, IBM, or severs of this caliber.
• Server patches and updates- Operating systems are full of security flaws and bugs that need to be patched on a regular basis. If these critical updates are not installed, the system can be vulnerable to attacks and data can be compromised.
• Remote access card (optional) – Dell has a card called a “DRAC” (Dell Remote Access Card), and HP has something similar. These are virtually like another NIC, however,  they allow you to gain access to the server, even if it is turned off or inaccessible via  the network. This is a very valuable tool.

If you have any questions regarding infrastructure best practices, feel free to contact us at 678.297.0066 or support@xcentric.com.

A little background: our previous home mortgage was with Wells Fargo and we were pretty happy with them. So I just figured, what the heck, I’ll give them a call again. I locked in a decent rate on August 2nd. Just under the 60 day mark before closing. Things were good. The rate was a little higher from what I had seen a couple months before, but I just rolled with it.

Fast forward to last Friday. In talking with my Realtor, it was looking like our house was not going to be ready in time for the original closing day. It was going to be pushed back about a week or so. Not horrible, but still delayed. This brought to mind my 60 day period for the locked-in rate. If closing got pushed back more than a couple of days, my rate could expire.

Now, I haven’t really heard from Wells Fargo since I first locked in my rate. Yes, I received some documents in the mail to sign, and I have emailed with some questions, but it usually takes a couple days to get an answer. Nobody has reached out to me through the process. So when my Realtor emailed them to ask about extending the lock-in period, and she didn’t get any response, that pretty much did it for me. I had to follow up, and one of them replied, saying that there would be a fee to extend the period.

This gave me a way out – since I was not happy with the service and I felt like they could have waived the fee if they *really* wanted to. It was still not too late to go with a different lender. Yesterday I knew that I needed to make some calls. I did a couple google searches, felt a little overwhelmed,then it hit me… YELP!

My friend Roy has recently opened my eyes (again) to the power and usefulness of Yelp. I have been reviewing and bookmarking all sorts of restaurants. But, this time I wasn’t looking for a new coffeeshop, or a great taqueria. Yesterday I needed a lender. The first one on my Yelp results was a lender with (3) 5-star reviews. Granted, I know only 3 reviews is not that many, but all 3 of them were fairly substantial. So, I called them up. I gave the receptionist my short-story and then she asked “how did you hear about us?”. I said “I actually found you guys on Yelp”. For a second I was thinking to myself “she is gonna think I am a nut”. But no, she responded as if it happens all them time. And, she then passed me on to the Loan Officer who is mentioned on Yelp as being awesome. Long story short, I locked in an even lower rate than before, and I am getting great, local service.

Is your accounting firm on Yelp? Did you know that they have free tools and allow for businesses to claim a page and create a business account? Check it out at http://biz.yelp.com/

If you are interested in reading more about Yelp and the business side, you might want to read 9 Myths about Yelp or these getting started suggestions from their blog.

The change means that, for example, a spreadsheet shared with a Google Group will be accessible immediately to anyone joining that group, or rendered inaccessible to those leaving the group.

via Google links Apps to Groups for quicker sharing | Webware – CNET.

Google Voice gives you one number for all your phones, voicemail as easy as email, and lots of cool calling features like voicemail transcripts, call screening and blocking, conference calling and more.

When you sign up for the service, you are given the option to select a phone number – even search for number patterns, or words in the phone number. For example, if your name is “Adam”, and you live in Austin, TX, Google Voice might tell you that the phone number 512-850-2326 is available.

Web

The web interface of the service integrates tightly with your Google account.  Any contacts that you have setup in Google, will also show up in Google Voice.  Running with the one number mentality that Google Voice is trying to get users to adopt, it hopes to become your hub for all things phone-related; text messaging (SMS as they call it), voicemail, custom greetings based on caller. You can give somebody one number, and you can decide where the call should get forwarded to, on a group level or per-contact.

Another great feature of the web interface, is that you can send free text messages from your computer.  When the recipient replies to your SMS, the transcript gets added to your Google Voice history so you can go back and look at conversations later also. The same goes for voicemail, as it becomes a hub for keeping track of all voicemail messages, treating them more like email. You can also forward voicemail messages to someone just as if it were an email.

Mobile

So, the list really goes on about what features this exciting new service can offer you. Let’s look at the mobile side of this briefly.

There is a new mobile apps overview page that gives some options for Android and Blackberry users which look very interesting. I am an iPhone user, so I will share my experience there.  There is a mobile web version which can be used in the browser to use all the same functionality as you would from your computer – send SMS, make calls, check history, etc. Here is what it looks like:

Last week, as I was looking into the possibility of using Google Voice more, I found an iPhone application called GV Mobile. There is a free version and a paid version($2.99 in the App Store). With the Free version, you can make calls on your iPhone, that would then actually show as coming from your Google Voice number.  Although with the Full version, you are given the full feature set that you get online, all in a pretty little app to send and receive SMS, check voicemail, make calls, etc.

This is a powerful service that places Google in the middle of the consumer and the 2010 web. Currently the service is open by invitation only, but you can request an invite here. A couple of Xcentric employees recently received their invites – which for a while they thought would never come.  If you have any questions about Google Voice, or want to share any of your experience, leave a comment, or find me on Twitter.

For example, if the Xcentric.com domain was registered with GoDaddy, there would be an option for us to sign up for Twitter and it would look to see if “Xcentric” was available. In this case it is, but we already have it registered.

This won’t be the most ideal way to sign up for Twitter, but it is another avenue that puts their name in the faces of people and businesses that may not have signed up otherwise.

Follow us on Twitter at @Xcentric.