With New Tool, Visual.ly Wants To Replace PowerPoint With Infographics "Before PowerPoint, you had to go find a designer to create a custom presentation," says Stew Langille. "Even though everyone hates PowerPoint now, it was really helpful when it first came out." Now Langille’s startup, Visual.ly, is attempting to do for infographics what Microsoft did for presentations. "We hear a huge influx of people saying, 'How can I get someone to help me create an infographic or a dashboard or an interactive visualization?'" The startup, which has raised $2 million in VC funding to date, unveiled the self-service platform at SXSW today. Currently, Visual.ly offers a small range of what Langille calls "WordPress-like themes," and a short list of datasets. The service is free, though Visual.ly does offer premium accounts. The company is already working with The Economist to service its infographics; additionally, it envisions brands such as Louis Vuitton or Virgin will want to create sponsored themes for public consumption. Click here to try Visual.ly’s new tool.
Lindsey C. Holmes, Evernote Small Business Ambassador Shares Her Business and Marketing Tips We’ve heard from many of our small business users that Evernote is an invaluable tool for keeping track of ideas, projects, and to collaborate with teammates. Today, we’re excited to announce our newest Ambassador, who will be sharing her tips for using Evernote in a small business setting. To kick things off, we’re handing the mic over to Lindsey C. Bio Lindsey C. I use Evernote, Everywhere MacWindowsiPhoneiPadWeb I use Evernote for Running my Business I’ve been an Evernote user for three years and in that time, it has changed the way I think; a phenomenal feat for a free tool. Evernote is seamless. How I use Evernote for Marketing I’ve been using Evernote to capture and create for years, but recently, I’ve realized its huge potential for distribution. We create Shared Notebooks for all of our events. Every new company staff member is trained on how to optimally use Evernote; it’s invaluable to our business! Evernote for sentimental mementos, serial numbers and more I go to a lot of events.
Where Does The Time Go? — Experiment No. 6 | Raptitude.com You are young and life is long And there is time to kill today And then one day you find Ten years have got behind you No one told you when to run You missed the starting gun ~Pink Floyd, “Time” Something big is brewing. Life has been telegraphing this particular development for a while now, but last week I was smacked with a stroke of clarity about it, and now it is happening. I am undertaking a massive goal. It’s the biggest goal I’ve ever had. You may have noticed a conspicuous absence of posts about personal productivity here on Raptitude. When it comes to personal productivity, I blow. I am not lazy. In September I wrote about the problem that has been stifling me since childhood: self-sabotage. Where does the time go? I have my suspicions, but honestly I’m not entirely sure, and that’s what this experiment is all about. My work rate is probably in that range, and that’s pathetic, but it also means there is tremendous room for improvement. The method is simple. The Terms Purpose Method
Can Twitter Predict the Volume and Price of a Specific Stock? In a world where everyone’s opinion is publicly recorded, it should be theoretically possible to determine the most popular concept of the moment — be it a movie, a song, a feeling or even a stock. Certainly, we don’t have enough information at this point to record everyone’s fleeting thoughts, but Twitter is something that makes a good temporary approximation. And that’s what led University of California, Riverside professor Vagelis Hristidis to investigate whether Twitter sentiment could help predict the stock market. Hristidis and his team have set out to look at how Twitter activity is related to stock prices and traded volume. This is different than an experiment from March of 2011, where a group of researchers from Indiana University used the mood of the overall Twitter community to attempt to predict upcoming moves in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. They expected to find the number of trades was correlated with the number of tweets.
PayPal Here: Mobile Credit Card Reader Being the online leader in electronic payments, PayPal has just launched a new mobile payment system called PayPal Here. The triangle-shaped device plugs into your smartphone’s earphone jack and lets anyone accept credit cards. Designed by Yves Behar of fuseproject, the triangle front slides down to prevent the device from spinning around while swiping the card. The tiny credit card reader is simple to use and features encryption to prevent theft.
BlackbaudNow: Publish a Website and Accept Donations Online PayPal and Blackbaud have teamed up to provide a simple website to serve small and growing nonprofits. Point and click to create your site, with built-in donations. No hosting setup fee No monthly hosting fee You simply pay 4.95% + $0.30 / transaction Use your domain name or ours We were advised to get a web based donor management program, but they are all too big and complicated. Amy Pratt, The Greene School How Does it Work? Select Your Theme Choose from a library of website designs. 7 reasons the FTC could audit your privacy program Opinion August 21, 2012 03:08 PM ET Computerworld - The Federal Trade Commission's $22.5 million settlement with Google last month over its user-tracking practices woke up enterprise-risk managers around the country. What would it take, though, for the FTC to open up an investigation of your company? What did I find out? 1. The FTC has been saying for the past couple of years that it's wary of so-called online-behavioral advertising -- the amassing of large data dossiers on website visitors, usually through cookies, in order to deliver those visitors highly targeted ads. This is what happened in the Google case. The FTC has successfully prosecuted others on this same topic. The lesson in all of these cases is to manage your cookies transparently and consistently with users' previously expressed choices and browser settings. 2. The most likely reason the FTC will prosecute a company is substandard information security.
Get Paid for Sharing Ads on Your Social Networks The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here. Name: Wingsplay Quick Pitch: Earn money to share ads with your social network Genius Idea: Wingsplay gives average people incentive to share ads with their social networks to drive product or service engagement and increase buzz. Advertisers are sneaking into your Twitter and Facebook feeds — with help from your social media connections. Wingsplay, a startup that launched last month, pays its users to share video ads on their social networks. Even though you may not Like or follow advertisers, ads could trickle into your feeds via a friend who is trying to make a quick buck or just likes to watch funny ads. “The Web made it almost impossible to reach people with boring ads,” Lasry said. For example, Major League Soccer is promoting the April 14 Philadelphia v.
How to embrace remote meetings — Online Collaboration Consider this: managers spend between 30 to 80 percent of their time in meetings and more than 50 percent of them consider many meetings to be a “waste of time.” Ninety percent of managers attribute the failure of most meetings to a “lack of planning and organization,” and most managers have never been trained on how to host a productive meeting. When you add in the complexity of leveraging the Internet for hosting distributed meetings online, it is even more difficult to ensure a successful result. Without some amount of preparation and planning, remote team members can feel disconnected, disregarded and even unwelcome in meetings. At oDesk, our in-house full-time employees work from home at least one day a week, and we’re regularly collaborating with a team of about 250 remote contractors who act as a crucial extension of our internal team. We’ve found there are three steps to a successful online meeting: Organizer: Setting the stage Where will we hold the on-site meeting?
Facebook Offers: Why you could soon be buying from your favorite brands in your News Feed In the past 24 hours, coverage has spread across the Internet of the launch of a new feature by Facebook, one that allows businesses and brands to utilise an ‘Offers’ feature that delivers daily deals to a brand’s Page and a user’s News Feed. The new service is a twist on the traditional Daily Deals market, particularly because it allows Facebook users to remain in direct control over the offers they see. Instead of functioning as a dedicated website like Groupon, LivingSocial and AmazonOffers, Facebook has the ability to drop targeted deals into a user’s News Feed in line with status updates, photo posts, location checkins and other more social features. To some, it may be puzzling as to why it has been reported that Facebook launched Offers over the past couple of days. Offers are a free new way for businesses to share discounts and promotions directly from a Facebook Page. Ocado’s deal hit on March 20, offering the traditional baked Easter treat to people who had ‘Liked’ its page.
Sell Downloads Top Startup Businesses for 2012 | The Business Finance Store Top Startup Businesses for 2012 You want your startup to succeed, so do we. In the process of funding over 2,000 new businesses in 2011 alone, we frequently get asked for input from our clients on specific businesses or industries. While we are happy to give specific advice, here is some general information we’ve learned about some of the best startups to launch in 2012. A recent IBIS World research study reviewed the best industries for your next startup. They based their findings on 1) projected revenue growth 2) forecast enterprise growth over five years 3) 2011 profit margins 4) the low barrier to starting such a business 5) and the amount of capital required (our specialty). According to Brian Bueno, economic research analyst at IBIS World, the economy beginning to stabilize and other conditions such as job growth, credit conditions, and consumer spending will put “more money in the pockets of consumers and various opportunities for new businesses.” About the author.
How to Add Google AdSense to Your Tumblr Blog Would you like to make a bit of revenue from your blog? Here’s how you can make your content work for you by adding Google AdSense to your Tumblr blog. Blogging can be serious work, and with your easy-to-use Tumblr blog, you might be posting more than ever. You may be writing about your beautiful vacation, sharing the newest wallpaper you designed in Photoshop, or explaining how to get your dog to quit barking at frogs. Either way, your blog takes real time, and it might be nice to make a little money from it. Google AdSense has enabled bloggers around the world to get ad revenue from their content. Please note: This article is designed for users who don’t know how to edit HTML, and so may seem overly simplified if you’re already a code ninja. Signing up For AdSense Before you can add AdSense to your site, you’ll need to register for an AdSense account with Google. Fill out the form as usual, with information about your site as well as some personal contact information. Undoing Mistakes