Short URLs

Have you ever wondered where those short URL's on twitter and email come from? You know the ones I'm talking about. They look like http://bit.ly/h5dxLE or http://tiny.cc/99yso. You may also know that clicking on one of these takes you to a completely different web site, for example the links above both connected to http://www.smallcompanytech.com.

The shortened URL can be used in email, blogs, Facebook, Twitter, or anywhere you might use the regular URL. The only disadvantage is the URL doesn't usually indicate where you are going to end up. The two services I have used both offer a customization feature to allow you to customize the "hash" or the letters and numbers that follow the address of the company offering the service. I customized the URL's above to  http://tiny.cc/smcotech or http://bit.ly/smcotech.

The shortened version of my URL doesn't save much space but if you would like to share a link to a book you are reading and it looks like http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1416549005?ie=UTF8&tag=my0b5-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1416549005. Then http://tiny.cc/zuhbs or http://amzn.to/hitOqf look pretty good.

The two services I have found are tiny.cc and bit.ly. They both have similar features with a few notable differences. One can be seen in the shortened amazon links above. The bit.ly service has acquired several shortened domain names they use in place of the usual http://bit.ly/ in this case http://amzn.to tells a reader they are headed for an Amazon link. I also created http://linkd.in/edgart at bit.ly which links to my Linked In account.

There is another feature of bit.ly to consider if you use twitter. Several twitter clients support using a special  code generated by the bit.ly site when you setup your account. That way you don't have to give the software your username and password to have URLs included in your tweets automatically shortened and linked to your bit.ly account.

At the time this article was written bit.ly is experimenting with a Pro version of their service. This adds the ability for you to dedicate a domain or subdomain to your shortened links. I acquired the domain ewt.me for this purpose. Now I can "sign" my short URLs with my initials and a really short domain name. The Pro accounts are free while the product is in beta.

Both sites promise to keep your link stored indefinitely so you can give out the link without fear that it will be changed to a different site. Both sites offer statistic tracking so you can see how many people click on your links. This can be useful in your business if you are trying to measure the effectiveness of a social media campaign.

Google has a URL shortener at http://goo.gl. It is pretty basic now, so you might just keep an eye on it. The link to this site came out as http://goo.gl/4eKZi.

What is your favorite URL shortener?

Sync Bookmarks Across Multiple Computers

Many small business people find themselves working on multiple computers. I have three computers I use regularly and a couple others that I have accounts on. Through the years I have used various ways to try and keep those most valuable bookmarks synced between computers and now devices like my Android based mobile phone.

For Google Chrome users with a Google account the functionality is built into your browser. Google Chrome can even sync basic browser settings including extensions, apps, theme and browser preferences. This isn't a good solution if you share a log in with someone else since your bookmarks and settings will be combined.

This article in Google Chrome Help on Basic browser settings: Sync settings across multiple computers is a good place to start. Click on the Enable sync link to open the instructions.

The setting is found under Options or Preferences/Personal Stuff. Click on Setup Sync and enter your Google account information. You need to repeat this for each computer you use.

You can allow everything to sync or limit what is copied. There are some apps that I only use at home and I want to keep my autofill data for forms to be different in the office. Usually at home I enter my home phone number and address for forms and at the office it is my business information. The data seems to just add information so you won't loose data but you may make your browser less useful if it gets loaded with things you don't need.

You might also want to have fewer apps on your laptop or netbook to keep things running more quickly.

I usually keep different themes between home and work as a visual reminder when I remotely connect. That helps me remember I am in the browser on my work computer.

I recommend you start with just syncing bookmarks and then add other items as you have a need.

What utilities do you use to keep track of bookmarks across computers?

Video won't play on IE

I had one of my users bring me a laptop running MS Windows Vista. He complained that he couldn't install Adobe Flash. I tested the problem by going to http://www.youtube.com/. I found that flash wasn't working at least for video. After trying all the usual stuff. I got it going by opening a command window as administrator and running the command regsvr32 jscript.dll.

Everything seems to be working now.

Google Apps for Small Business

I have been using Gmail almost from the beginning. The lure of free email with POP and forwarding was too much to resist. It wasn't long and I forgot my yahoo account, bigfoot email alias and all the others.

Things got more interesting when Gmail became Google Apps with email, web sites, and simple office applications. Support for branding and a unique domain name make Google Apps a good choice for a small business.

Currently Google offers two levels of service for small business. The Standard Edition allows 50 accounts per organization, and includes Gmail(7GB/user), Google Calendar, Google Docs, and Google Sites. The 7GB limit is adequate for most users and since the email account supports clients like MS Outlook, or Thunderbird a user can archive email and attachments off the server. The cost for all these services is just the time it takes to setup the account and transfer your domains and email to the new server.

The second level of service is Premier Edition. This version allows for unlimited users, and bumps the email storage to 25GB. There are also improved interoperability with Microsoft Outlook and BlackBerry devices. If you are a larger organization you might also take advantage of Single Sign-On(SSO) and your own Google Video and Google Groups.

The Premier Edition also includes a 99.9% uptime guarantee SLA and 24/7 support. If you have tried to get support for your free account through the Google Groups then you know how much frustration you will save having a free account. The cost is $50/user/year. You can move an existing account to a new user , but any accounts you add after your initial setup will renew at your account anniversary. So you may pay $50 but only get 9 months.

For comparison an account with less features from GoDaddy would be over $120/user/year.

If you are already receiving email at a private domain, your current email domain can be transfered to Gmail and you won't have any down time. If you use a domain like <your-isp>.net, then you will need to acquire a private domain and notify contacts of your new address. The transition can take about 24 hours for the new address location to populate through the internet but with good planning you won't miss a message in the change.

I have personally transfered several companies with great success. The Premier Edition includes tools to make moving email from old accounts easier.

I will visit some of the services in more detail with future posts.

Use Remote Desktop to connect to a console session.

Often I need to connect to a server running Windows Server 2003 and want to connect to the console (administrator) or local screen instead of using one of the two terminal server sessions. This is done with a command line option for Windows XP, but in Windows Vista and Windows 7 you change the .rdp shortcut that stores the other options for the connection. Just open the file with a text editor and add:

administrative session:i:1

Stop the Windows Update Restart

I have been often frustrated when I sit down at my desk in the morning and find Windows has rebooted for an update. This seems to happen when I leave Windows for the night with a project open ready to continue work the next day.

I also notice this on my Mac where I run Windows under VMWare Fusion. I will be working on something and hear the Windows reboot sound and ponder on what work I just lost.

What was Microsoft thinking? There isn't even an option in the update manager to turn it off. I was lamenting this with some other Windows users when one of them said, "thats why we run Server 2008 on all our machines. It has an option to turn that off." I decided there must be a registry setting or some other way to turn it off.

A Google search led me to an article on Lifehacker to disable the restart nag. It gives a command line way to turn off the nag: sc stop wuauserv. So I opened a Command window with Start>Run>cmd>Enter. Entered the command and got a permissions error.

Missing my sudo command in Unix and my Mac I went googling again. This time to find out how to Run the Command Line as Administrator. I was led to an article on LiteBite. I'm running Windows 7 which is close enough to Vista that this method worked for me.

The resulting output seems to indicate I have squashed the restart bug(feature).

SERVICE_NAME: wuauserv

TYPE               : 20  WIN32_SHARE_PROCESS

STATE              : 3  STOP_PENDING

(NOT_STOPPABLE, NOT_PAUSABLE, IGNORES_SHUTDOWN)

WIN32_EXIT_CODE    : 0  (0x0)

SERVICE_EXIT_CODE  : 0  (0x0)

CHECKPOINT         : 0x1

WAIT_HINT          : 0x7530

Time will tell. Just remember to reboot periodically so that updates are applied.

New website helps employers connect with candidates.

A new LDS Church Employment Website activated on 29 October 2009 allows any small business to access a large database of possible candidates, and list jobs nationwide at no cost. The entry portal URL is: http://ldsjobs.org/.

The features for all users, include:

• The website reaches out to hundreds of employers several times a day and grabs new job postings.


• Employers can conduct candidate searches for registered job seekers using an advanced search-engine.


• The Stake Job Leads section allows ward members to provide informal networking leads that can be shared with other members within each stake.

Larger companies can arrange for a company job listing site to be downloaded daily and included in the job listings database.

Action Items for Users: All users of the database will need to register personally. This includes job seekers, and employers. Registration is free and easy for members and non-members of the LDS Church. This may be the only job listing site that doesn't fill your mailbox with ads once you register. Members of the LDS church may use their LDS Account. If you have already registered to access Stake and Ward Web Sites, you already have an LDS Account UserID and Password.

All users who need a new account should:

1. Go to http://ldsjobs.org/.


2. Click Create an Account.


3. Select to register as a Member or a Friend (both registrations have access to the same features, members are tracked by the church and notification is sent to their leaders of their employment needs.)


4. Member Registration will require your membership number (found on your temple recommend) and your birth date.


5. Wait for your registration to be approved (usually in 24 hours, this step is to protect the job seekers from unsolicited email.)