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Wednesday, August 17, 2016

The Best Tech Tools, Apps & Gear

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Physical Gear
Although this is a list of my digital toolbox, we start with some physical items. We do live in the real world after all! Here is a list of computers, smartphones, gadgets, coffee and other stuff.

Desktop Apps

Although as a Windows user, most of the following are available for Mac users too.

Productivity Apps

  • Brain.fm (usually into listening to music while we work as we find it too distracting, but brain.fm really works for me. You can choose different soundtracks for relaxed and focussed work)
  • SimplyNoise – If we working in a noisy coffee shop, then white or brown noise is great at blocking out all the noise and not as distracting as music.
  • RescueTime – tracks your productivity on your computer, browser and smartphone. Gives you a weekly report.

Mobile Apps

As Android user, but most of these apps are available for iOS or at least there are alternatives. Do let me know if you have found an alternative for iOS in the comments.

Social Media Management Tools

Social Media Management Tools try and help you with all aspects of managing social media accounts – not just publishing/scheduling, but help with engagement, reporting and analytics. we included TweetDeck in this list mainly because it allows to manage multiple Twitter accounts. use TweetChat occasionally to help with Twitter Chats.
Alternatives: SproutSocial & Jollor

Publishing & Scheduling

Although social media management tools should have a very robust publishing platform, we prefer to use separate apps in system for publishing and scheduling.

Follower Management & Community

Growing your audience and followers takes time and effort. we don’t believe in buying followers! we use the following tools to help me segment my followers or find new targeted people who are likely to engage with me.

Reporting & Analytics

How do you optimise your content or give some feedback or reports on how successfully you’ve been with your social media and content marketing? use these tools to help with that!

Alerts & Monitoring

Sometimes you want to be alerted when someone links to you or mentions you or there is a potential issue you need to deal with. Perhaps it is a new opportunity. use the following tools to help with this.

Marketing Software

Attracting new leads, helping with managing list and sending newsletters out, creating surveys, free videos and lead generation tools are all important in my marketing process.  use the following tools as part of this:

Automation

These are magic tools that automate a lot of potentially repetitive tasks. we don’t believe in automating engagement, but these tools can do some amazing things to turbo boost your productivity

Project Management

To help manage projects for our clients or with the booking process or with a mastermind group use the following tools.

Research, Content Marketing & Amplification

The world of social media, marketing and technology is very fast moving and it’s very difficult to keep up. Using tools to help to find and contain the latest articles is so useful. Also use tools to help with my blogging process, taking notes, doing research and to help with amplification of my blog posts.

SEO & Web Analytics

Google Analytics is an amazingly powerful tool. However there are other tools that can help you get the most out of understanding your analytics as well as with SEO. These are the tools.

Images & Design

Images and design have always been important, but with visual networks such as Pinterest and Instagram becoming ever more popular, good design is vital.

Security

Using strong passwords as well as managing them effectively and storing them securely is vital. we also use a Virtual Private Network service if we ever find having to use a public WiFi hotspot- so that my connection and data is secure.

Browser Extensions

Where would we be without browser extensions. The following are for Google Chrome, but most are also available for Firefox.
  • Awesome Screenshot – The best screenshot extension found. You can take a screenshot of the visible browser screen or the entire page. You can also take a shot of a selectable area and take a delayed screenshot. Once taken, you can add text, arrows and other callouts.
  • Grammarly – state of the art spelling and grammar checker.
  • Video Speed Controller (although you can speed up YouTube videos, you can’t normally speed up videos on Wistia, Vimeo and other videos. This extension allows you to speed up any HTML5 video so that you can get through more content)
  • Measureit – measure the dimension of certain elements on webpages.
  • ColorPick Eyedropper – get the hexcode of colours on the screen.
  • What Font – like a font on a web page? This extension shows you which font was used on elements on a web page.
  • uBlock Origin – great believer in supporting content providers. Unfortunately ads can get out of hand, and  seen some malicious ads try and infect my machine. uBlock Origin is an Ad Block on steroids and can speed up your browsing significantly.
  • The Great Suspender – I love the Chrome browser, but it can get very slow, especially if you have a lot of tabs open. This extension suspens tabs after a period of time. You can reload tabs easily and even add certain websites to a whitelist so they never get suspended.
  • Klout – Adds Klout scores to Twitter usernames.
  • gorgias – smart email templates for GMail. GMail does have canned responses, but gorgias allows you to organise into a library. It can paste in first names and other smart data and you can use keyboard shortcuts.
  • Web App Extensions: Buzzsumo, MightyText, Buffer, Edgar & LastPass

Podcasting & Video

love video and love podcasts. Whenever  creating video, in a group chat or being a guest on a podcast,  use some of the following websites.

Web Hosting

Small web agency, Select Performers, where we manage and host customers websites.

Security & Speed

WordPress Development & Management


WordPress plugins

Here are some of the main plugins use on  site as well as many of customer’s websites.

WordPress Themes

used and would recommend the following themes:

Backup & Cloud Storage

How often do you back up your data?

Hacks & Scripts

Currently Investigating

always on the look out for new tools and gear. Here are ones currently testing. don’t recommend them, but they look cool!

Original Post :http://iag.me/socialmedia/my-digital-toolbox/
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Best Website Analytics Tools

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Web analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of web data for purposes of understanding and optimizing web usage. However, Web analytics is not just a process for measuring web traffic but can be used as a tool for business and market research, and to assess and improve the effectiveness of a website. Web analytics applications can also help companies measure the results of traditional print or broadcast advertising campaigns. It helps one to estimate how traffic to a website changes after the launch of a new advertising campaign. Web analytics provides information about the number of visitors to a website and the number of page views. It helps gauge traffic and popularity trends which is useful for market research.

Here are some of the best FREE online analytic tools around. Are you taking full advantage of them? Many of these tools also offer a more robust paid service or subscription, but you’ll be amazed how much value you can get from the free offering alone. Also, you can consider the freeware to be a preview into the premium version, so you can try before you buy.

Probably the best-known analytic tool out there, Google Analytics provides invaluable insight into your website traffic. It helps you identify targeted keywords and determine which pages are receiving the most traffic and yielding the best conversion rates. Trace ecommerce transactions to PPC campaigns and keywords. You can even perform basic benchmarking and compare your site with others in your industry.



Google Webmaster Tools
This is a great tool for maximizing your site’s visibility on the search engines. See how Google crawls and indexes your site. Identify specific problems the spiders are having accessing your site. Find out which Google search queries drive traffic to your site, and see exactly how users arrive there. Tell Google about your pages with Sitemaps: which pages are the most important to you and how often they change. You can also specify you would like the URLs Google indexes to appear. You can connect your Webmaster Tools account directly to your Google Analytics account.



Alexa provides free traffic metrics, search analytics, demographics and a variety of other metrics about any site – not just your own site! So you can gain invaluable insights into your competitors and industry leaders.





This site enables you to legally spy on your online competitors by giving you insight into competitive keywords and AdWord campaigns.





Compete allows you to get a site profile for one site, or to compare up to 3 sites for free (5 if you sign up for a free MyCompete account) providing metrics on unique visitors, referring sites, destination sites and top search terms.




One of the newest free tools to hit the web, HubSpot’s Website Grader gives you a detailed look at numerous variables for an overall assessment of how well your site is working. It identifies some basic SEO problems and measures your popularity in social media.




Open Site Explorer (formerly SEOmozRank)

This free tool is a link popularity checker and backlink analysis tool. Run your site through it and see what you learn.



Bundled FREE with every Applied Innovations web hosting plan, Smarter Stats from Smarter Tools is a robust analytic tool you can access right from your control panel.







for Social Media, we have a few more to add:


Billed as the Standard for Influence, Klout allows you to measure the overall online influence of a given Twitter account.





Although it used to be completely free, Twitalyzer is now largely a paid service. You can still get some interesting, basic information for a given Twitter account, such as their Impact Score, others in their network and commonly used hashtags.



This free tool allows you to find out which Twitter updates made people follow or leave a given Twitter account (yours or someone else’s!)







This creates a psychological profile of any public Twitter account and compares it to others in its database. It only works if the account in question has tweeted enough to be measured.





A service which aggregates all the popular links on Twitter and organizes them into categories, making it easy to filter out the noise and find out what you’re interested in.
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Tuesday, August 16, 2016

What is internet of things (IoT) ?

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Definition - What does Internet of Things (IoT) mean?
The Internet of Things (IoT) is a computing concept that describes a future where everyday physical objects will be connected to the Internet and be able to identify themselves to other devices. The term is closely identified with RFID as the method of communication, although it also may include other sensor technologies, wireless technologies or QR codes.




The IoT is significant because an object that can represent itself digitally becomes something greater than the object by itself. No longer does the object relate just to you, but is now connected to surrounding objects and database data. When many objects act in unison, they are known as having "ambient intelligence."

The Future of IoT
As far as the reach of the Internet of Things, there are more than 12 billion devices that can currently connect to the Internet, and researchers at IDC estimate that by 2020 there will be 26 times more connected things than people.




According to Gartner, consumer applications will drive the number of connected things, while enterprise will account for most of the revenue. IoT adoption is growing, with manufacturing and utilities estimated to have the largest installed base of Things by 2020.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a system of interrelated computing devices, mechanical and digital machines, objects, animals or people that are provided with unique identifiers and the ability to transfer data over a network without requiring human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction.

The Internet of Things (IoT) refers to the ever-growing network of physical objects that feature an IP address for internet connectivity, and the communication that occurs between these objects and other Internet-enabled devices and systems.

IoT Extends Internet Connectivity
The Internet of Things extends internet connectivity beyond traditional devices like desktop and laptop computers, smartphones and tablets to a diverse range of devices and everyday things that utilize embedded technology to communicate and interact with the external environment, all via the Internet.





  
Some popular IoT examples
Your car, for example, w1ill soon be able to drive itself around town. No steering wheel or pedals required! This is possible because of improved sensor technology and artificial intelligence that is capable of surveying the surrounding area, receiving accurate positioning via GPS, and making decisions faster than the human mind. The result is safer transportation that frees you up to accomplish more in a time that would otherwise be spent behind the wheel.



It includes wearable devices like your wristwatch can connect wirelessly to your phone via Bluetooth, enabling it to sync data to and from the Cloud. The number of steps you take during the day, your heart beat, and even your sleep quality can be monitored and stored in the cloud so you can access that information from anywhere.

What IoT means to the consumer
Thanks to IoT technologies, your home would be smarter. Your blinds could open and close with the sun, your air conditioning system could track the location of people inside the home to maximize efficiency by targeting cooling where it is actually needed. Your refrigerator could let you know when food is about to expire and add items to your shopping list automatically. These solutions all fall under the IoT umbrella, and this is really just the beginning.





For many homeowners, IoT technologies are already in place and work invisibly. Smart meters that measure electricity usage in a home have all but replaced traditional mechanical meters that would be ready by a technician once per month. These smart meters make it possible for you to log in to your electric company’s website and see exactly how much electricity you used on a given day, or even a specific hour.

A new industrial revolution
In an industrial application, IoT technologies power heavy machinery and provide critical information about the state and goings on of a complex production environment. IoT sensors can track a machine’s efficiency and activity and make way for improved automation processes. Huge amounts of data can be sent to a single control room where someone can monitor and control an entire production floor from a single point.



Security is another big area where IoT technologies can be put to good use. Home security systems are already becoming widely available with integrated apps and cloud-based monitoring so you can lock your doors and arm security systems from your phone rather than having to do so from a keypad in the home. You can do things like give someone access to the house temporarily from anywhere in the world.

To put it simply: The Internet of Things may be a buzzword, but it’s the best simple term we can use to describe the modern Internet. It describes an environment where your laptop, phone, and even your car are able to communicate with one another in order to make your life easier.
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Ways to Secure Your Online Data and Information

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Computers house so much of our personal data that it's essential to set up protective measures in case of cyber attack or mechanical failure. These must-do steps dramatically increase the odds your computer (and your privacy) will remain safe from the latest online criminal activity and let you salvage your most important files if your computer becomes irretrievably infected.



While using the internet for online shopping or banking purpose the two main risk that gets associated, about are someone taking or misusing your personal data and security of online payments. As now a days it is getting very common the news about hackers stealing credit card numbers or bank account numbers and stealing someone’s identity is about as easy as learning how to drive.
So here some tips discussed that will help you to protect yourself and your online data from hackers and scammers.
Beware of free or open Wi-Fi connections.
Open Wi-Fi connections at cafes and hotels are advantage for travelers but it is actually a great opportunity for data and identity thieves. While you get connected with the Internet using unprotected Wi-Fi anyone it gets easy for anyone available on the same network to see your data. The process of spying on Wi-Fi users has been common now but the Firefox extension Firesheep makes it even easier. Firesheep gives you the ability to destroy someone’s electronic privacy if you have got the tech savvy to check sport stats online.
  • To avoid such situation start following these things:
  • Don’t open Wi-Fi networks altogether.
  • Try to avoid harmless activities like reading the news or anything that requires a login, such as email or banking.
  • Use email, but make sure to use SSL/TSL.
  • If you are a heavy Internet user then try to avoid getting connected to VPN (virtual private network) service because this can transmit from your computer, regardless of the privacy settings of the network you’re on, will be encrypted.
Protect your browser against malware.
There are list of ways that malware authors break your browser and violate your privacy like such scariest is the “drive-by download,” in which malicious code automatically gets installed whenever you visit a compromised website. However, a foolproof defense to these browser exploits like drive-by downloads does exist: sandboxing.
When a browser is sandboxed it can only access the few resources necessary to it. Any other software that tries itself to install such as a virus, will be blocked. The Chrome browser also sandboxes the Flash plugin, to provide extra protection.
For Windows users, the Sandboxes program allows to sandbox anything running on your system, and you need to sandbox both your browser and your Flash installation.
Watch how and what you share online.
To protect your privacy you can a lot by keeping your social networking profiles sealed. Make your Facebook profile to strictest privacy setting and share the details only with the people you know. Never post your confidential details like your address or phone number.
Similarly when you are commenting on someone’s blog or forum use this steps to make sure your digital privacy. Use a separate email account, never use your full name for commenting. For example if your name is Edward Paul you can use an email address like ebjunkmail@mailrpovdier.com with a user name like “EP.” This way if other website use poor security practices and it get hacked then your personal information won’t be revealed and you privacy will remain protected.
Opt out of third-party tracking cookies.
A lot of attention has been paid to third-party tracking cookies and how they can compromise your online privacy. There are two things that you can do right now to protect yourself from online trackers.
First, by setting your browser to cancel all third-party cookies which means only websites you visit will be able to collect data on you; it will minimize the chances of an unscrupulous tracker stealing your personal information via a malicious ad embedded on the websites you visit.
Second, install opt-out cookies, The FTC has mandate that online marketers make opt-out cookies available to protect your privacy. From the World Privacy Forum you can easily get the list of these cookies and where to get them; there are a few dozen you’ll need to install.
 Make use of your phone as computer
Your Smartphone attracts privacy snatchers as your device have access to your emails, address book and many other sensitive pieces of data where you rarely induce any privacy controls. If you are using an Android or BlackBerry phone you can add installing an app like Lookout Mobile Security to add phone-based privacy protection. You need to make sure that you couple the anti-malware measure with a phone password in case when your device is stolen or stolen. You always make a habit to read the fine print before installing any new apps. Like the computer’s antivirus your phone security software cannot protect you ignore security warnings or install an app. Make use of these privacy tips for protecting your online data. 
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