Posts tagged Choosing
Choosing the Right Keyboard For Your iPad
Dec 29th
My colleague Dan Dern (who has written for us from time to time) has done an excellent two-part extensive review of iPad keyboards for TabletPC Review. If you haven’t yet purchased a keyboard for your iPad and are in the market, it is an excellent resource. In the first part of his review he covers the numerous issues that are involved in using a keyboard: whether it should double as a cover, what kinds of apps you will be using to type with, do you plan on switching back to the on-screen keyboard, and where do you plan on using it, and so forth.
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The keyboards he reviews includes the standard Apple Bluetooth keyboard, iLUV Portfolio Case with keyboard, and in the second part of the review the Kensington KeyFolio Pro, ZAGGfolio case, ThinkGeek keyboard case, and three from Logitech: the fold-up keyboard, their tablet keyboard and the ZAGG keyboard case.
Overall, Dern has a tough time recommending any particular model. But his favorite is the ZAGGfolio case because it works both on your knees and in your lap and doubles as a protective case without adding a lot of bulk.
He was able to boost his typing speed from roughly 30 words per minute typing on the glass on-screen keys to a more respectable 70 or 80 words per minute, which is closer to his own typing speed on a regular computer keyboard. This case retails for $100 and props up the iPad at an angle as part of its design.
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MarketingSherpa and Slingshot SEO Present Free Webinar on Choosing the Right … – Broadcast Newsroom
Dec 8th
MarketingSherpa and Slingshot SEO Present Free Webinar on Choosing the Right … – MarketWatch (press release)
Dec 8th
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MarketingSherpa and Slingshot SEO Present Free Webinar on Choosing the Right …
MarketWatch (press release) INDIANAPOLIS, IN, Dec 08, 2011 (MARKETWIRE via COMTEX) — Two of the most respected brands in online marketing, MarketingSherpa and Slingshot SEO, are hosting a free webinar to help marketers make sense of the increasingly confusing world of Search … |
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Think Like Your Target Audience When Choosing Keywords – Resource Nation (blog)
Nov 21st
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Think Like Your Target Audience When Choosing Keywords
Resource Nation (blog) by Guest Author on November 21, 2011 · 0 comments Keywords are arguably the single most important component of any SEO campaign. The keywords you select determine what search queries your site will rank for, which in turn dictates who will find your … SE Nuke X Amazing New SEO Automation Software, Free SENuke 14 Day Trial for a … |
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Five Tips to Choosing the Right Keywords – Business Insider
Sep 23rd
 The Atlantic Wire |
Five Tips to Choosing the Right Keywords
Business Insider But, to use online marketing effectively, you need to be sure you are using the right SEO (search engine optimization) techniques like keywords. The keywords are vital words that describe your product or business and that people are likely to type into … How Does An Article Get to the Top of Google News? Fostering authority, keyword strategy top priorities for Google News A Tip Sheet for Winning Top Billing on Google News |
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5 Options for Choosing a Country, Region, or Language Selector
Aug 31st
As a multinational company or a company that’s just launching internationally, choosing your country selector will be a critical decision for both usability and SEO.
Usability: If it isn’t easy to locate, use, or otherwise just unc…
View full post on Search Engine Watch – Latest
Choosing the Right Social Media Management Tools
Aug 16th
A study last month by the Info-Tech Research Group found little difference by organization size in how businesses use social media, and also provided lots of practical information on how enterprises should make use of social media management tools. The report looked at the tools from a variety of vendors, including Radian6, Sprout Social, Syncapse, Socialware, Cymfony, Visible Technologies and Lithium.
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These services, which for the most part are cloud-based, give businesses the tools they need to run social media campaigns in a timely and cost-effective manner. Their functionality broadly falls into three categories: account & campaign management, in-band response, and social monitoring/analytics. “An organization’s social media strategy must constantly evolve to meet the changing needs of target stakeholders and consumers. New social media services and the rise of mobile and location-based services necessitate that managers constantly fine-tune their social presence,” according to the report.
The report cites the opportunity and real costs of not using any tool to keep track of social media marketing and customer responses. Specifically, at one mid-sized consumer products company, the $6000 tool saved $42,000 in a year by centralizing account controls to reduce the time to update social media postings, keeping track of customer inquiries via social networks and designing the right keywords to be used for a new product marketing campaign. That’s a pretty good return on the cost of the tool.
The tools are recommended in the following situations, according to the company’s report:
- Your organization already has a large social footprint: you manage multiple feeds and pages on three or more social media services.
- Your organization’s primary activity is B2C marketing; your target consumers are social media savvy.
- The volume of marketing, sales and service inquiries received over social channels has seen a sharp increase in the last 12 months.
- Your firm or industry is the topic of widespread discussion in the social cloud.
You can download the slide deck (they call it a storyboard) from the link above, and if interested become a paying member to receive addition services from the firm. Certainly, if you are thinking about investing in one of the tools covered, or switching to another service, it might make sense to look at their research.
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10 Red Flags to Help Avoid Choosing a Bad SEO Service – Part Two – BlogHer (blog)
Jul 22nd
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10 Red Flags to Help Avoid Choosing a Bad SEO Service – Part Two
BlogHer (blog) SEO conjures up the worst fears and the most apprehension for those looking at it as a necessary evil. Companies know they need it but aren't confident in its results. Many have spent thousand of dollars without much return and are reluctant to spend … Is IT in Your In-House SEO Circle? Content must be right "density" for SEO |
View full post on SEO – Google News
Choosing the Right Local/Cloud Hybrid Backup For SMBs
Jul 15th
Every good company does backups. (But not all — see Are Your Files Backed Up? March 31 is World Backup Day.) This is where online backup comes in handy.
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Online backup to an off-site service has a lot to recommend it. You don’t have to buy, provision or manage hardware. You only pay for the capacity you use. And if something happens to your computer or premises, you can still get to your data (assuming the online backup hasn’t been impacted by the event).
Daniel P. Dern is an independent technology writer. He can be reached at dern@pair.com and his technology blog is TryingTechnology.com.
On the other hand, local backups can save files faster, and let you retrieve large amounts of data faster.
So many companies are doing, or contemplating doing, both types of backups. This makes sense; each provides recovery for different types of events. Plus, even if you prefer local backups, your industry’s regulations may require off-site, online backups.
But many companies, especially SMBs, and enterprise remote and branch offices, don’t have the IT time or resources to manage two separate backup solutions. So many are turning to, or looking at, the new “hybrid” local-and-online backup services.
“There are companies looking to replace onsite backup and move to the cloud, and others looking to double up,” says Greg Schulz, founder and senior analyst of the StorageIO Group. “And some are looking to improve on what they’ve been doing.”
A hybrid backup solution offers simplicity and makes sense — if, cautions Schulz, “that provider can do it all without compromising any of the functions. For example, how well do the local and online components work with each other? They may have different tools that still have to be integrated.”
There’s already no shortage of local backup offerings, which range from software-only you-add-storage to appliances — and online backup services. Many of the online services are MSPs or VARs who in turn are using somebody else’s online storage, e.g., Microsoft, Amazon, or another cloud vendor. Now many of local backup vendors are adding online backup, and vice versa.
How to chose? In addition to checking for the features you want in each piece based on your backup objectives, e.g., CDP (Continuous Data Protection) versus scheduled backups, versioning, retention of files deleted from the primary storage; can open files be saved; agented versus agentless, you need to determine how the local and online components work together. For example, if the local backup fails, will the online portion continue working? Can online backup uploads be scheduled separately to off-prime shifts only?
“What you pick depends on your needs,” says Laura Dubois, Research Vice President, Storage, IDC. “First, it has to be easy to use, because most SMBs have little IT on staff, or even outsource it all. Decide what you want from your backups, e.g., do you want ‘application consistent recovery’ or ‘crash consistent recovery’?” For a small office with just a few PCs and a few GB of data, says Dubois, “You don’t really need to do hybrid, pure online is fine. When you get to larger databases, more servers on site, and multiple terabytes of data, you want a hybrid solution.”
“Be careful,” StorageIO’s Schulz cautions, “For example: whose cloud are they using?”
Sample Hybrid Providers
Companies now offering local/online backup include vendors of hard drives, NAS/SAN appliances, and backup software, along with established online backup providers, along with the bazillions of MSPs, VARs and others reselling these systems and services.
Here’s a quick sampling of hybrid offerings suitable for SMBs (and possibly also for consumers, SOHO, and/or SME RO/BO and enterprises):
- Asigra has partnered with Intel to offer Intel Hybrid Cloud backup as part of Intel’s AppUp Small Business Service, allowing small companies to rent rather than buy the local appliance portion.
- CA’s new ARCserve D2D On Demand (scheduled for availability in the second half of 2011), will be providing online backup via the Microsoft Azure Cloud. “You install the software on Windows desktops and servers, and first select a local storage target, as the local image will provide fast bare metal recovery, granular application or file level recovery,” says Steve Fairbanks, Vice President of Product Management for the CA Technologies Data Management business. “You then configure critical files and folders to be protected in the Azure Cloud to guard against complete site disaster or theft.”
- KineticD, thanks to its recent acquisition of Robobak, now also supports local backup. (Disclosure: I’ve been using KineticD for my online backups for several years now. They comp’d my account — small potatoes — but I wouldn’t be using them if they didn’t have the feature mix I wanted and I wasn’t happy with the service. And I don’t think I’ll be able to use their local solution.)
- EMC’s Mozy MozyHome and MozyPro online backup services now also include the 2xProtect (pronounced “double-protect”) free feature, which does backup to a local drive (which you have to buy, of course).
- Netgear’s ReadyNAS systems include the ReadyNAS Vault online backup option, which, via a partnership with Elephant Drive, save to Amazon’s S3 cloud.
- Seagate i365 uses agents, so if there’s a problem with the local backup device, backups can go directly to the cloud, and then be resynched downwards when the local device is available again. Also, notes George Hoenig, vice president of products and services, Seagate i365, “We make sure that the data center we backup to is in a different ‘geographic risk zone’ from where you are.”
Again, this is only a selective short list of providers. For example, Barracuda and Symantec also offer hybrid local/online backup solutions. Feel free to share your own recommendations in our comments.
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