Get Active. Get Social. Get Business!

Ask me anything, Forms, and Surveys with Formspring

Blogging or life streaming made easy with Posterous or  Tumblr.

Customer Feedback with Get Satisfaction.

Digg and contribute worthy information.

Everybody wants the Gist : contact aggregation.

Facebook : Need I say more…

Geo socialization is all the buzz with Foursquare.

Have you considered a Facebook Like Button for your website? You should.

Is your comment system up to par? Let’s Disqus.

Justin.tv is another easy to use live video streaming platform (see UStream Below).

Killer Analytic tool Konagent is your ticket if you are trying to cash in on Facebook.

LinkedIn: the business equivalent to Facebook.

Mo emails, mo problems, in my town or yo town, Flowtown turns those emails into social gold.

No need to play phone tag for a meeting – socialize your availability with Tungle.

Optimize your website with Google Analytics.

Plancast let’s your friends know your plans and upcoming events you plan to attend.

Quora: Ask Questions, Get Answers.

Reddit is another great social news aggregation service.

StumbleUpon is a social bookmarking service.

Twitter Start Tweeting. It is easy, and focus on quality not quantity.

UStream makes Live Video made easy.

Vimeo is Video creation & sharing made easy and an addition or alternative to YouTube (below).

WordPress is a very flexible blogging tool & content management system (CMS).

Xylophagous (Wood Eating) cannot be very Delicious: Another Social Bookmarking site (Cheesy I know but can you do better with X?)

Youtube Having a YouTube video channel for your business is a wise move.

Zoom, Snap, and socialize your Photo’s with Flickr.

@JaretManuel

The following may not be an appropriate way to apply for your next mega corporate gig but being creative, different and fun should garner you way more attention then a plain “Jane” resume the employer has seen a million times before. This off the wall style should help your pursuit of standing out, getting an interview, and ultimately – landing a job with a cool creative shop or a sweet gig in the startup scene.  This is a recent application I sent over to Espresso – an amazing growing boutique creative agency here in Toronto (with an office in Boston). They pretty much state resumes alone are a waste of time, and they beg for someone who is interesting and funny in order to fit into their culture.  So here goes…. The result? Time will tell but it was the most fun I had applying for a job by far.

Terry Fox pushed himself to run just one more light pole. He never physically finished his goal of running across Canada, however millions are running around the world in 40+ countries supporting a cause because of him. He could never of dreamed this kind of outcome or legacy for himself. Not bad for a guy wanting to run just one more light pole and set out to raise $1 million for cancer research. To date, $450 million has been raised in his name worldwide, along with being bestowed the companion of the order of Canada, along with 32 streets and several schools named after him, and many other honours.

If that is not heroic then I am not certain what is.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjgTlCTluPA

How Terry Fox Changed the Canada

Terry Fox Wikipedia

These Lyrics are quite fitting for my hero:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVKDQgT_b-Y

May your legacy live on Terry.

@JaretManuel

Serious regulatory and preventative measures must be taken into consideration for all stakeholders involved or affected in the Newfoundland Offshore Oil Development in any present or future drilling & exploration practices. Newfoundland has a vast amount of offshore oil, however we must not forget the wonderful resources that binds her cultural identity, and our environmental responsibility not only to the people that call this beautiful island home, but the world at large.

So you say you have no mentors, nobody that you can lean on for sound “been there, done that” startup advice or tech information?  Humbug I say, so quit your non-sense talk, tune into twitter, and you’ll be surprised who will help you if you only reach out.  The following are people I listen to, engage with, sometimes ask for advice, debate with, and ball bust for fun.

Either way, there is an abundance of experience & knowledge at your finger tips, and I am only happy to share with you some of the people I follow & look up to on Twitter.  Almost all of the following are fairly to very active in the Twitterverse, making their TweetGreed very low which is awesome. I have a domain set aside called TwitHead.com.  TwitGreed may be a good idea to measure.  Bi-Directional tweets in proportion of followers/following, etc.  Just a random thought.

@albertsupdates Made first cool million at 16, sold a couple companies since, and now a Garbage collector @Kontagent in San Francisco. Had the pleasure of meeting here in Toronto. Awesome & very humble guy, hence his garbage title.

@wbrettwilson Very successful businessman turned investor, and a part of the infamous Dragon’s Den on CBC here in Canada. Very humble & often responsive in the twitter community.

@dharmesh Awesome & humble presenter, and super smart. Founder at Hubspot.com (I think this is his 9th company he has been a part of) and creator of OnStartups.com, and author of Inbound Marketing. Great guy and constantly giving back.

@ericries lean startup movement. Very informative tweets. There is more I should be saying so feel free to chime in.

@danmartell Hails from New Brunswick, transplanted to San Francisco after selling a successful startup, and now founder of ever popular Flowtown.com. Always seen mixing it up in TwitVille.

@davemcclure Founder of StartupVisa.com Movement, Geeks on a Plane founder (I think), large & in charge in the valley, ball buster, swears like a sailor, and just managed to get in front of Hillory Clinton for the Startupvisa movement.  Love his no holds barred, say it how it is style.

@zappos Tony Hsieh “Shay”: CEO of online shoe retailer Zappos. $1 Billion anybody? Sure, my name is Amazon and I want to buy you. Sold. Screw gambling, book a trip to Vegas to get a tour of Zappos.  They are all about it. Very impressive story.  Wait a minute, Tony sold another company to Microsoft for in excess of $200 cool ones, yeah you got it, pimp daddy millions. But you would never know it from Tony.

@FredWilson A “Reputable” VC Holding down NYC, like Jay Z being Breeze E on 5th Avenue. I could easily go on and free style you some what you know about my writes? (De La Soul if you got lost during my flow). Fred is very respected in a not so always the case Venture Capital community.

@JasonFried 37Signals Founder, Author of Getting Real and latest book ReWork. Hater of poor design and over complicating things.

@dhh David Heinemeier (@37signals co-founder) & founded Ruby on Rails.

@AustinHill Akoha.org, Investor in Bumptop & StandoutJobs.com. Straight out of Montreal & often in destinations unknown.

@Pkedrosky Always has an interesting perspective on the economy, the valley, startups, VC, and he is Anti-Facebook (to the best of my knowledge).

@pegobry 10 Things you Should know around 6AM on Silicon Alley Insider. Informative.

@balsamiq Founder Awesome Web Mockup Tool Balsamiq.com. Great Guy from what I hear.

@HnShah Founder of Kiss Metrics.

@bsaren Citysquares.com Founder. Funny Guy.

@Zeldman Web Design Guru, Author, Founder at Happy Cog, and publisher of  A List Apart.

@MattMireles SpeakerText.com CEO. Interesting information. A straight shooter from what I have seen so far.

@MattCutts He quit Facebook, so by default I am impressed, and he is a Google dude, so no doubt he is super smart.

@MarkRuddock multiple successful startups under his belt. Viigo.com was the latest to be gobbled up (by RIM).

@DrewHouston Founder of amazing service that I tell all my friends/family DropBox.com.  Offers solid advice for startups also.

@kn0thing Alexis Ohanian Co-Founder of Reddit (successful Y Combinator Grad), Breadpig.  Great speaker, funny, and an awesome contributor to this world. AlexisOhanian.com

@yegg Gabriel Weinberg is Founder of @DuckDuckGo, the alternate to Google Search, and he has a very informative blog. In fact, I see a February Video up of Alexis (just above) there right now.  How ironic.

@EnglishPaulM Huge fan, never met. PaulEnglish.com, huge success.  Btw..  He is not a heavy user on Twitter but dig up what you can.  Seems like an amazing guy.

@CDixon Chris Dixon absolutely Rocks. I paired down my toolbar and I absolutely had to add ChrisDixon.org back in.  Amazing resource & informative content.

Who am I missing? Who is on your list?

I am sure you could add to this list of people you look up to, respect, and reach out to for mentoring, startup advice, guidance, and tech information, etc.  By all means, the floor is yours.

@JaretManuel

My Bad for the Hanger typo (should have been Hangar) on Hacker News & Reddit.

One of the coolest videos I have ever watched.  Give it a full watch, and tell me what you think.  Thanks for sharing Dan.

I recently had a little debate with some friends back east, and I basically said some of their web work was crap because they were using a Dreamweaver Template tool and I thought that approach would be a mistake for helping another friend with their business.  Harsh I know. We bust each others balls a lot, and it was written in an SMS text so some things may have been taken to heart, and I apologize for being a ball buster and the way I approached it. My bad but get over it. My other friends are starting their new SUV Limousine service in St. John’s, Newfoundland, I think to be named Elite Limousine, and they are getting this friend to help them and I am sure it will rock.

If one was going to design this limousine site from a template angle I would highly consider wordpress because it is agile, lean, and extremely cost effective to the point that someone like myself, who is not technically inclined, could produce something of a professional design, and fast with a boat load of tools to boot. Don’t believe me? A friend of mine manages two high traffic sites that runs off of WordPress: Screenrant and Notebooks. The website could be designed in numerous ways such as HTML, PHP, HTML5 (this will be the new de facto way, bar none. It’s Kick Ass), or the template approach, etc.  If you want to see some great design then I highly suggest TheFWA and I would recommend something more extensive beyond WordPress for a business, but if you need something fast and cost effective, then it will more then do the trick. If you don’t know people to design a site for you, then you code look into Top Coder and host a contest but take more time in this area as it is easy to get plenty of crap in return.

How to get a Website up in 1 day:

1. Register your domain name.  There are many but Godaddy is solid (just ignore all the bells & whistles they try and sell you. Get the domain, and that’s it). $10-15 /year.
2. Run your domain off of Google Apps (up to 50 Users free). For example, steve@BrownieBus.com . If you use this and you use Firefox, then WiseStamp is a great Email Signature tool.
3. Help Pointing Godaddy to Google for Email.
4. Get hosting for your site.  There are a plethora of hosting sites like Dreamhost, Godaddy, & I prefer IX Host . $60ish per year.
5. Design your site using a template, a web designer (this may take more then a day), or you can download WordPress for your domain. You will need a WordPress.com (the previous link is wordpress.org to download the file to put on your host account) Account for some API keys, etc as well.
6. You’ll want a WordPress Theme.  There are many and the link is a suggestion only for free templates. For a Limo Site, I would keep it Photo rich. If you know PHP really well then you can design your own.
7. If you go with WordPress, then you want to have Smartphones accounted for with the WordPress Mobile Pack.
8. WordPress SEO Pack is a must as well.  Once your wordpress is installed you can search plugins and download them internally. Research core plugins for pertinent to your site, but try and avoid getting caught up in Plugin overkill.
9. How are you going to manage your information regarding your customers/leads? CRM or Customer Relationship Management is something you should strongly think about. 37signals and Zoho are cost effective, and Salesforce (Group Edition is $25/user/month) is more expensive but far and away the leader. Plus, Salesforce now has WordPress to Lead Integration. If you choose a web design other then WordPress, and you go with Salesforce, you can use their Web to Lead function built in their Group Edition.  Even in a limo business, you should keep data of people & businesses inquiring, and ultimately using your service.  These people are a great recurring and referral revenue source, so stay in touch with them, and thank them for using your service, and you can send them links to the cool video you are about to make.
10. How are you going to handle your accounting and invoicing to businesses, etc?  Look no further then Freshbooks. They have 1 million+ users and make your invoicing task easy. I am not certain the cost, but it is cheap.
11. Are you going to accept online payments?  This will take more then a day to setup but in Canada I would advise Moneris.
12. Get a Twitter account and post a twitter icon on your site.  See my Hockey Site PuckDrop.ca. Twitter is not hard. You simply need to know Hash tags that people search on like: #limo #stjohns #GeorgeStreet #HavingATime #DonnieDumphy, better yet, create one and run with it… like #PuckDrop . Once you have a Hash Tag of your own, get people tweeting and taking pics with that hash tag, and you can linkup to CrowdReel or spread the word about it. Use it, get your friends following you, and chatting it up.
13. With Google Apps (See 2.) it comes with a pretty solid calendar that you can share with your team privately, and I would integrate it with Tungle, and link your Tungle URL on your website so that your Calendar (Free/Busy Slots Only) can be shown public. Tungle is free.
14. Get a Vimeo (It’s like Youtube but better for posting videos) account. Here is a super simple video to show you how to embed Vimeo in WordPress.
15. Do you have a professional phone service?  Grasshopper or Ringcentral.ca is the way to go.
16. Facebook for websites (a little more advanced but give your nerdy friend something nice and they will hook you up). This basically makes your site a fan page all unto itself. And of course, promote your site on Twitter and Facebook.

Now you are up and running.  How do you market your site?  Well, there are many ways and you can start by putting Vimeo to good use and make a funny video that your friends talk about and share.  Drive around St. John’s, Signal Hill, the Lighthouse, Cape Spear, and make something funny. The JK Wedding Dance is almost at 5omil views so anything is possible and that didn’t cost them much if anything to make. Be funny, creative, and really think around social media that your friends will find funny and want to talk about, and share on Facebook, etc.  Traditional ads are expensive, and hard to track… on that note I almost forgot. You should also utilize Google Analytics. This is more important for broader geographical marketing and more in depth traffic analysis, however you have the link in case you need it.

When you are in Newfoundland & you need a good photographer: Photos by Tom.

If you have ideas then by all means feel free to comment.

It is beyond me how the press gives her the attention they do.  She made a big deal and canceled a speaking engagement at the University of Ottawa (Canada), because her one bodyguard said it was unsafe.  More importantly, she made it an opportune time to respond back to a letter that was written to her from that very same university to tone down her language for various reasons, and the press somehow made this news.  I am willing to bet there was probably 20 or 30 people that were not close to fighting, and it was probably no where near unsafe for someone that is not important like her.

This is about all the attention I can muster up to spend on the matter, however she gives the many true balanced (not coo coo) conservatives a bad name. Maybe she was at least offered some good wacky backy (Weed) while she was here in Canada & she could lighten up with a few puffs.  She has no problem being scantly dressed & it is unfortunate the marching drums allow her useless echo to beat as awful as it does.  She reminds me of Heather Mills.  What can I say to get heard for the sake of being heard.  Disgusting.  Ann, don’t use our water to bleach your pearly white hair as it may brainwash you & have you saying something that makes sense & isn’t arrogant or racist.