Episode 14: Let your Android do the walking – Useful Droid & Smartphone Apps

Michelle Mangen, Yoda to the virtual assistant world, recently did a blog post on her page about useful Droid apps in celebration of her new Smartphone.  She has given me permission to share her post on my blog.  Isn’t that nice of her?  So, if you have Droid, please enjoy the following tips and tricks for your Smartphone.  If you don’t have Droid, you can probably find similar versions for your iPhone.

Useful and Fun Apps for Droid X 

Barcode Scanner – Takes a picture of product barcodes and gives you product and pricing information.

Juice Defender – Enhances battery life.

Advanced Task Killer – If you’ve had your Droid for more than five minutes you’ve probably either been tipped off by someone else or have read about Advanced Task Killer. Install it, you will be glad you did.

pdaNet – Allows your Droid to act as a “modem” for your laptop.

Astro File Manager  – Keeps everything in neat and tidy folders.  Others have suggested EverNote and SpringPad as well.

Places Directory – Neatly delivers up a list of businesses to you based on the category you select from the home screen

Gesture Search – a Google product and hands down, this is the one app I have found myself using most often, especially when it comes to finding someone in my 400+ phone contacts. Open this handy-dandy app and start writing on your screen and it will begin filtering, with every letter you write, the results. Settings can be changed to have it also find music, apps, etc.

CardioTrainer is a pretty darn cool app that will track your distance (via GPS) for workouts (in my case riding bike). It will also speak to you (I found the voice a little creepy so I turned it off after my first workout). Allows you to chose and play your desired music playlist for your workout.

Calorie Counter ~ I haven’t really gotten into this one yet as I just had it “Bumped” to me on Saturday as a practice “bump”. At this point all I’ve done is record my weight in there but it seems to have a lot of options.

I hate to cook, I really hate to cook but have been on a quest to do better ever since my son was diagnosed with liver disease and they say that a low-fat and low-sugar diet is essential so I found Healthy Recipes, Recipes BigOven and Epicurious (hopefully they will make cooking easier for me especially since Epicurious has a category called “I can barely cook”)

Google Goggles – scan pretty much anything and it will return a list of web listings (fun, not sure how practical it is though)

FetchIt Phone Finder- this will come in handy someday as I often put my phone on vibrate and later cannot locate it. Text yourself and it will start playing your ringtone until you locate your phone

Droid Light – helpful to make sure there are no alligators on the porch before I go out for a cigarette (I’m sure it has many other practical applications as well)

Sleep and Relax – has 16 or so “peaceful” sounds that you can mix and match to create your own customized night time sleeping music.

Craigslist Notifier – if you are big on watching for deals being posted on Craigslist this app will allow you to program a feed and almost instantly be notified when an item is posted matching your desired search phrase. In my case, I’m not much of a Craigslist watcher, but am currently on the look-out for a good, cheap patio set so I have found it quite practical.

Must Have Social Apps for the Droid X

Word of caution for those of you that have massive numbers of Twitter and Facebook stalkers. If you go with the default Twitter and Facebook clients you will find that all of your contacts there will flow through to your phone. Myself and @VAinParadise never could figure out how to remove the Twitter ones even after she unlinked her account.  (She also did a factory reset). 

• Seesmic – I chose Seesmic based on what I read over at Extreme John’s post on 3 Best Twitter Apps for Droid. Bonus for me: the keyboard has the smiley face emoticon on it.
• Foursquare – Venice, FL is somewhat lacking on the “social side” of things so even though I don’t go “out” all that often I’m racking up Mayorships and have added a number of venues. A few larger establishments are taking advantage of location based marketing and I hope to get more of them on board here once I get involved with businesses in the community. In addition to Foursquare I’m also trying to do more with Yelp! but may ditch that altogether in favor of Foursquare.
• Bump – not truly social but definitely cool to be able to quickly and easy share apps with other Droid users or to share my contact data. (Note: When I found their URL I noticed that they also allow for “bumping” to receive Paypal payments)
• Facebook for Android – this one will not bring all your contacts into your phone (It may offer it as an option, however, I didn’t want them all on my phone)

For even more useful business applications for iPhone, Blackberry and Droid, check out http://www.businessreviewusa.com/business-features/technology/top-5-business-apps-iphone-blackberry-and-droid

You can find Michelle Mangen and her complete blog post at www.thevirtualasst.com

Do you have a utility belt tool tip or crisis?  Call VLA – Super V.A.   Help is just a click away!

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A LOT!

Life must go on however. There are still things I must do.

Pushing through the pain is one of them.

Yes, I’ve been to see someone. Nothing is broken.

Yes, it’ll heal with time.

Most things do.

But I had to make the conscious decision to get back up, get back on the bull, and go out into the world every day.

I get to choose whether I get up or not.

And so do you.

Yep, some days are easier than others to choose to get up.

And yet still, it’s worth it. It’s worth getting up each day, because of  the new possibilities, of the new hope that the next day might be the best day.

Because if you don’t look back, usually the very next day IS the very best day, of the rest of your life.

I hope you’ll choose to get back on the bull.

Today.

Tomorrow.

Every day.

Even when it hurts a little.

PS: If you can’t see the video, click here. It’s only 1:14.

And no, this is NOT how I hurt my back

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Episode 13:  Photo editing can be a picnic

Photos can be a real asset to your business.  You might need pictures for marketing materials, your website or to spice up your resume.  The more interesting and real the photos are, the more intrigued and engaged the viewer becomes with the media.

But the challenge isn’t taking the photos, it’s doing all the adjustments to get them looking good. Photos often need a tweak or two. Maybe some cropping or sharpening of the exposure may be necessary. You may want to add some text or apply some special effects to make something more dramatic.  It isn’t always that easy to do and often requires complex photo editing software.

With Picnik, a free, user friendly photo editing site, you can make touch ups, add fonts, and add awesome effects yourself with little stress.  You have the ability to upload photos from your hard drive or through Facebook, Flickr, Picasa, Web Albums, MySpace, Webs, Webshots, and Photobucket.

Some everyday business tasks you can use Picnik for include:

• Create a slide show
• Create business cards
• Illustrate short stories
• Create a postcard
• Create marketing materials
• Add photos to your website, blog or resume
• Create greeting cards
• Make logos
• Use as a graphics editor
• Making clip art

There is also a Premium version available for a fee which offers all of the great tools that the regular version uses while unlocking more features and allowing you to use more advanced editing tools like “Levels” and “Curves”.

Sometimes, editing photos is “no picnic”.  If you don’t have time to edit the photos yourself, consider the help of a virtual assistant. 

Do you have a utility belt tool tip or crisis?  Call VLA – Super V.A.   Help is just a click away!

Sources:

http://technorati.com

http://www.picnik.com

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Seems like a good reason to use social media for people, but what about for companies? If we know that companies that instill trust create a bond with customers, and social media can build trust, and trust equals love, then companies would be well suited to use social media to create love for their customers AND for their employees.

Some great examples of companies who “get” this include Zappos, JetBlue, and Southwest Airlines. I linked to their Twitter pages, so you can see how they use social media. You can find them other places too, but you should get a good feel for their style and how you might use social media in your company…or how you might try to convince your boss to let you tweet on company time.

Does your company get social media? If not, maybe you should share the article with your human resources department as an a way to increase employee engagement, because most people work harder when they feel love at work.

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I left the comfort of my day job as of June 1st. Before that, I’d thought I’d write every day about how I was leaving my day job gracefully to go full-time into professional speaking, consulting, coaching and writing.

But I didn’t.

I didn’t execute anything. I did leave my day job as planned but I didn’t write.

I didn’t write at all.

In fact looking back, since I wrote about my last 100 days, I pretty much quit writing altogether. Everywhere.

I stopped executing.

And I stopped seeing results. Big time.

Twitter alone is not the way to success in business. Neither is Facebook…or LinkedIn…or any one thing.

It’s about doing what you do, execution on your plan, every day. For me, that means at least 2 original useful posts a week. Plus a newsletter every week. Plus some time on Twitter. And LinkedIn and Facebook.

And executing for my other business ventures too, which I’ll share with you soon.

If you’re still with me, thanks for your loyalty and attention. And if you left and are thinking of coming back, please do. There’s a lot more energy and insight where this post came from.

Execution matters a lot…And I plan to do a lot of that in the coming months. Stay tuned!

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What would you include if you were doing this presentation? Would you remove anything? Any questions I can answer for you?

If you’d like me to deliver a presentation like this to your organization, please contact me today.

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Episode 12: Let’s Be Brief

There’s too much information out there and too little time in the day to read it all.  That’s the premise behind SmartBrief, a media company offering free, e-mail based news summaries and other content for industry professionals to save you time and keep you smart.

The editors hand-pick the most relevant and important news from all over, summarize it, link to the original sources and deliver it providing you with “must-read” news in 25 key industries. 

They have developed a suite of best practices newsletters to keep busy professionals smart about their jobs including: 

• SmartBrief for CFOs
• SmartBrief on Entrepreneurs
• SmartBrief on ExecTech
• SmartBrief on Leadership
• SmartBrief on Social Media
• SmartBrief on Sustainability
• SmartBrief on Workforce
• SmartBrief on Your Career

You can view samples of industry-specific and best practices e-newsletters before you sign-up. They’re free and open to everyone.  Once you receive your daily e-newsletters you can post or share them your followers or friends on social media sites like LinkedIn and Twitter.  Now, that’s smart!

http://www.smartbrief.com/index.jsp

Do you have a utility belt tool tip or crisis?  Call VLA – Super V.A.   Help is just a click away!

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 Episode 11: Mind Mapping – Your Map to Success

While a treasure map is a map that marks the location of buried treasure, a valuable secret or a hidden locale, a mind map is a map that will lead you to treasured success!

Mind maps are by definition, a graphical method of taking notes.  A mind map is often created around a single word or text, placed in the center, to which associated ideas, words and concepts are added.

Mind maps have many applications in personal, family, educational, and business situations, including note taking, brainstorming (ideas are inserted into the map radially around the center node, without prioritization, hierarchy or sequential arrangements, and grouping and organizing is done in later stages), summarizing, revising, and general clarifying of thoughts.

Mind maps can be used for: 

• problem solving
• collaboration
• project planning
• memorizing
• team building
• visual outlining

Mindmaps can be drawn by hand as “rough notes” and/or produced on the computer.  Once you distill the information and organize it you can communicate it by exporting the information to Word, PowerPoint, Excel or Outlook to convey the completed thoughts and ideas.

I am currently using Xmind (a free, easy to use basic open-source program) to map out my idea for an interactive adventure & entertainment mall.

Discover a new world with mind mapping.

Check out http://mindmappingsoftwareblog.com for more information on mind mapping and mind mapping software options.

Do you have a utility belt tool tip or crisis?  Call VLA – Super V.A.   Help is just a click away!

 Source: http://en.wikipedia.org

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Episode 10: How to Find a Virtual Assistant

Finding a virtual assistant can seem like a time-consuming, frustrating task.  If you do a general search on the Internet, many options come up as far as virtual assistants with many different niches to choose from:

• Virtual Executive Assistant
• Virtual Marketing Assistant
• Virtual Web Manager
• Affiliate Manager
• Virtual Blog Writer
• Freelance Copywriter
• Virtual PR Specialist

 Start thinking about what your needs are.  What administrative tasks consume your time most?  Match those needs to a Virtual Assistant’s services.  Check out their website, Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn pages.  Call or email them to get a feel for their personality and work style.

I have many great VA’s that I friend, follow or like on my pages so feel free to make connections from my sites as well.  Here are some credible links to virtual assistant sites for you to check out for more information.

 http://www.virtualassistants.com/

http://www.virtualassistant.org/

http://www.ivaa.org/

http://www.virtualassistantnetworking.com/

Do you have a utility belt tool tip or crisis?  Call VLA – Super V.A.   Help is just a click away!

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The Hollywood producer lighting up a fat Cuban cigar in a nonsmoking restaurant. The Fortune 100 CEO stealing from the employee pension cookie jar. The homophobic televangelist who gets caught in a gay affair. Yes, we all know grossly entitled behavior when we see it: people making up their own rules as they go along, waving away consequences with a contemptuous sniff that seems to say, “only the little people pay taxes.”

These, my friends, are the Powerdrunks. And in the grips of power, you just might become a one, too.

Why does it happen? And under what circumstances would your own inner Powerdrunk awaken? The answer lies in a combination of the brain’s hardwiring, and our natural tendency to become utterly irrational under certain circumstances.

Power is one form of “fascination”— an instinctive and irresistible form of attraction. Neurologically, fascination lives in the limbic area of the brain. It’s a primal response, more instinctive than intellectual. In a state of fascination, we simply fail to behave logically. We buy sports cars we can’t afford, we procrastinate on deadlines, we cheat on diets (and taxes and spouses).

Power is one of the behavioral triggers I describe in my book, FASCINATE. There are exactly seven motivations behind all human behavior, including vice, lust, and mystique. Every trigger creates a different response, and brings out a different side of our personality. The power trigger explains why perfectly nice people can suddenly become, well, self-righteous bastards.

Executives Behaving Badly

Power is an intoxicating potion, interfering with our usual ability to think rationally. Social psychologist Deborah Gruenfeld studies the effect that power has upon powerful people. As people experience power, says Gruenfeld, they become disinhibited: less likely to control themselves and their behavior, less concerned with what others think of them, and more likely to flout cultural constraints and consequences. “When people experience power, they stop trying to control themselves; they forget that there are social consequences.”

Power lowers inhibitions, making it easier for faulty decision-making to overcome good judgment. Things that might seem entirely unthinkable under other circumstances suddenly don’t seem so far-fetched. In this semi-delusional state, people become far more likely to indulge in reckless behavior. (Say, for example… lying in press conferences about fathering a child with a campaign employee… or doing bong hits in public despite having recently won a 14^th Olympic gold medal. Hypothetically, of course.)

The Economist describes that in the throes of power, people feel “at some intuitive level that they are entitled to take what they want. This sense of entitlement is crucial to understanding why people misbehave in high office.” In high office, and in the corner office.

Yet this mega-megalomania isn’t just for billionaire CEOs and Wall Street insider traders. From a county judge who abuses his privileges, to a winning high school coach who encourages steroid use, an increase in power bestows a false sense of invulnerability. Served the right situational cocktail, you too could become a pompous prima donna.

So how about it? Shall we explore your own inner Powerdrunk?

The F Score personality test

Power is one of the seven triggers in your personality. To find out the role of these triggers in your own life, I developed the F Score test. Based on in-depth marketing research of over a thousand Americans conducted specifically on the topic of fascination, this personality test reveals which two main triggers you naturally apply when persuading others.

If power is your primary trigger, then you’re the alpha dog: an authority of the group, and in control of your actions. You prefer to actively lead situations, rather than sitting back and passively watching from the back row. You’ll follow other people’s rules, if needed, but you prefer to define your own set of rules on your own terms.

Yet, be warned. Your strong opinions and bold action often spark reactions from others, and not always positively. You expect others to obey, and tend to use deadlines and demands of the alarm trigger, which can be intimidating and off-putting.

Power, like all natural strengths, can rather quickly devolve into weakness. How to avoid falling prey to the Powerdrunk phenomenon? Minimize the vice trigger, to avoid the perception of being erratic. Increase your prestige trigger, for respect and gravitas. And finally make sure that you’re also using the trust trigger, to help others feel that you’re dependable, with consistent performance and expectations. Otherwise, you could be facing a power hangover.

About the author: Sally Hogshead is a speaker, brand innovation expert, and the author of FASCINATE: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation. (Her own primary trigger? Power, of course.)

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