7 Reasons Why Atlanta Needs Google Fiber

A few weeks ago, Google, the world's largest search engine, said 24 cities, including nine Atlanta cities, were under consideration for Google Fiber, the super-fast internet service. Cities being considered include Atlanta, Avondale Estates, Brookhaven, College Park, Decatur, East Point, Hapeville, Sandy Springs and Smyrna.

Southern Web, an Atlanta-based web design and development firm, is excited about the possibility of Google Fiber coming to Atlanta. That's why we've put together this infographic, which explains all of the positives that Google Fiber could bring to Atlanta and our surrounding cities.

Increased home values, enhanced access for local schools and libraries, customer savings and some of the quickest consumer Internet connection speeds currently available in the country are just a few of the benefits we could see.

The infographic was a group venture between graphic artist Ron Griffel, content strategist Ryan Watkins and Southern Web’s Director of Internet Marketing Cullie Burris.

Ryan Watkins is a content strategist with Southern Web Group, LLC., an Atlanta-based web development, design and marketing firm. In his spare time, Ryan enjoys blogging, staying up-to-date with the latest social media trends and outdoor adventuring.

Read more

3 Weeks Warning to Business Owners by Google to Save Their Listing

Google has taken many steps to stop link spam and it not only crushes link networks but a large number of businesses are also hurt. It includes many networks who offer link exchange services to the clients but now the situation is changed to great level. Now it would be the wastage of money to buy links before realizing the right condition. On the other hand there are certain businessmen stating that they have got emails from Google asking them to make legitimate progress and save the listing by avoiding illegal means.

It is reported that these mails are legitimate and are coming from Google. The subject line of these emails is “Action Required: You have three week to save your Google Places Listing”.

Jade Wang explained from Google that they are making changes in Google places for Google Maps and Business. So on the basis of these changes, Google is asking business owners to submit reliable information about them. So they are asked to review and confirm their information in Google places accounts. Her further added;

Don’t worry if you have received this email. You should login and review your business information, change it or update it if necessary and then press submit. It is required to perform this step to save your listing and to stay in Google Map on or before February 21, 2014. Otherwise you have to undergo the process of PIN verification and Google Places. There might be certain reasons of it and some might be;

• · It is possible that Google is testing a new variable which is looking to add in the algorithm with the name of “response time” and wants to see that how quick business owners respond it.
• · Google does not believe on its algorithm, actually it is said that Google wants to weed out bogus businesses so it needs help.
• · It can be a test to know that how many SEOs are still following the updates and wanted to remove those who are no more active from its SERPs.
• · Google is trying to refine its list by removing irrelevant listings and keep only those who pick the phone when you call them.
• · It is not an effort only to provide the right results and information to the users but the quickest one in performing it. There are people who take too much time on their queries so they can get quick results in less time with the help of these updates.

 

 

Author Bio:
Asjad Afzal
CEO
YourSeoCompany Australia
http://www.yourseocompany.com.au/
support@yourseocompany.com.au

Read more

Are You Textually Active? What Your Texting Means

Some form of texting has been around for the last twenty years. However, it has become much more widespread in the past five to ten years. In fact, users sent an amazing 14 billion texts each month back in 2000; however, that number became over 10 times more by 2010 with a surprising 188 billion texts per month. Obviously, texting has caught on as one of the best ways to keep in touch with family and friends.

However, there are some trade-offs to this awesome phenomenon. Sadly, people are unable to communicate true emotions via text messages. Body language and tone of voice are two major pieces of communication that cannot be conveyed via a simple SMS message. Some people are even worried that relationships can suffer when only text messaging or a majority of text messaging is used for communication.

On the other hand, there are definite benefits to SMS. Many people feel more comfortable conveying awkward messages or difficult information via text messaging than in person or over the phone. With almost 70% of those studied believing that they would have a difficult time staying in contact with others without text messaging, this once-unfamiliar technology has become widespread and much beloved.

This infographic was produced by Scratch Wireless.

Read more

Sharing Knowledge within Your Business

The knowledge that your company has internally is incredibly useful if applied and shared among your staff. With this knowledge you can improve your sales and employee satisfaction and reach a wider customer base. But the key is sharing the knowledge sources you have. You do not want to make the mistake of withholding knowledge in your business, or limiting knowledge to only a handful of people. If only three people have knowledge on a certain topics and one quits, and another retires, then you are left with only one. You want to establish efficient ways to share your knowledge within your company.

Knowledge Sharing
You might already conduct staff meetings as a place to share knowledge but you should not limit yourself. Try holding brainstorming sessions where your employees are free to share ways they think the company could improve. Hold an innovative workshop where employees can share ideas about how to improve practice. You should also create a knowledge bank where information is held and steps for administering tasks are held. This can be placed on a private company network where staff can post new suggestions or ideas regularly.

Knowledge Management
Technology, when used to share knowledge within a company, must be carefully managed and channeled. You might want to designate the role of knowledge manager and assign it to a senior manager. You can also offer incentives for employees that post new suggestions in order to encourage knowledge sharing. And of course, never underestimate the importance of training in order to share knowledge within your company.

Creating a Knowledge Strategy
Of course your company will want to get the most from the knowledge you have. And to do this you need to create a strategy for discovering and sharing your knowledge. You should write out the guidelines that can be applied throughout your company. In order for your company to enjoy an effective strategy, your senior managers must commit to the strategy and must familiarize themselves with the benefits associated with it. You can talk to them about how to use the knowledgebase software and how to collect it, and then appoint one manager to be the knowledge manager for your company. When you are creating your knowledge strategy you need to consider the current level of effectiveness your company has with using knowledge. You also need to analyze the internal processes you have for collecting and sharing knowledge. Ask yourself if you currently have successful ways of generating ideas and if your staff is aware of what is going on. Make sure that you integrate this knowledge strategy into your business strategy, because it is a continuing process that should be central to your business goals. It is important that you identify how valuable your knowledge is to your company. Try and figure out what your company can gain financially from your knowledge. You might be able to develop a new product or license intellectual property or even gain a bigger market share. Whatever you decide be sure that it fits within your business plan.

Gaining and Managing Knowledge
There are many ways in which your company can gain and manage new knowledge. Information technology is one of the biggest tools you have at your disposal in this regard. Some systems are time consuming and others are complex but there are sure to be a few that fit within your business and can improve your business without being too time consuming. You might consider a database or a data warehouse. Your company might prefer to use data mining techniques or use reporting and querying tools. Whatever you decide make sure that it fits within your company’s business plan and goals.


Author Bio:
David Miller is an educational researcher, involved in the fields of teaching and online learning. He is associated with prestigious universities and many leading educational research organizations. As an ed-tech veteran, his area of research also includes new technologies for online training such as Online Survey Software. Currently David is experimenting with flipped classroom models and ProProfs.

Read more

5 Finance Apps to Make Your Life Easier

Planning finances isn’t the easiest thing in the world to do.  When we sit down and look at our incomings and outgoings, it is easy to get in the mind-set that everything is fixed and we simply have to accept our situation. 

However, when we take a closer look at things, we can often find that there are opportunities to save money.  What most people don’t invest in is the truth that a lot of small savings fast add up into a serious sum of money.  If sitting down and going through your finances doesn’t appeal to you, or you aren’t the best at keeping track of your spending, then you can always decide to use finance apps instead.  This infographic brings together the best five iOS premium apps related to financial management, all of which can help you plan, save, and hand you back control of your financial affairs.

Jenny loves the financial world and is currently looking for Dealmarket private equity funding opportunities.  She was a big user of finance apps when she was at University to help her plan spending.

Read more

Preparing For Cyber Monday - Infographic

The increasing ease and popularity of online shopping has given way to the rise of a new shopping holiday, aptly named Cyber Monday. Cyber Monday is the Black Friday for e-commerce; online stores offer huge discounts on a wide variety of products for one day only. In fact, it has become so big that $1.465 billion was spent Cyber Monday alone in 2012. (Source: Doba.com)

This insightful infographic dives into the facts and figures surrounding commerce trends during Cyber Monday as well the holiday season in general, including what people preferred to buy, and how business prepare to handle the large influx of shoppers. For example, according to figures presented a majority of online shoppers (31.4%) took to their computers on Cyber Monday to buy clothing. As a business owner, this infographic offers invaluable information on attracting more customers for the shopping season, like including free shipping and investing in Google product listing ads.

The author created this infographic to inform readers on how to prepare their business for Cyber Monday.

Read more

The Evolution of Music and Video Content Consumption

Question: How many ways are there to consume music today?
Answer: More than you can guess. The way we consume content, including music, has undergone a few changes in the past decade or so. As recently as the years between 2000 and 2005, we connected to the Internet at a speed of about 56 kbps. Today, Internet connection speeds average about 2.6 mbps. What seemed like the greatest thing since sliced bread in 2000 would seem so frustratingly slow that today’s users would be utterly appalled by the length of time it took to load a single web page. Thanks to the speed at which we can connect to the world at large, we’re consuming a great deal of content in new ways.

Desktop PCs, while still used in business and office settings, as well as many homes, are often a last resort to mobile users. We prefer to connect on the go, without being chained to a desk, using devices such as smartphones and tablets. We’re consuming the majority of our content today digitally. Whether it’s music, video, news or even books—we turn to the World Wide Web first. Take a look at the infographic below for more details on how content consumption has evolved over the past 10 to 15 years.

TorchBrowser is a free and unique software that offers you powerful browsing together with built-in media downloading and sharing features.

Read more

Asia On Track to Be Biggest Cloud Consumer

According to recent studies on cloud data usage conducted by Cisco, North Americans are currently the biggest consumers of cloud data, transmitting around 261 Exabytes of data per year. The Asia Pacific region is the next biggest consumer, transmitting 216 Exabytes of data in 2011. An Exabyte is one billion gigabytes. If that sounds like a lot of data, that’s because it is – but it’s a tiny amount compared to how much analysts believe will be used by 2016.

Cloud usage is growing more rapidly in Asia than it is in North America, so by 2016 the Asia Pacific region will be the biggest consumer of cloud data, handling 1.5 Zettabytes of data per year. That’s one and a half billion terabytes worth of data. North America will be handling 1.1 Zettabytes, with Western Europe not far behind, and also hitting the one Zettabyte barrier.

Cloud computing is a huge industry, and as this infographic shows it’s only going to get bigger as more and more industries start heading online. Software as a Service is already a ubiquitous idea, with email, messaging and even accounting products heading “always online”. Don’t miss out on the cloud revolution.

Produced by CWCS

Read more

5 Best Data Backup Programs For You And/Or Your Business

Why Should I Back My Data Up?
It is safe to say that computers are one of the most important technical advancements to date. We use them for almost everything imaginable, storing large amounts of data in the form of pictures, videos, music, documents, and executables. Many would attest to the argument that their lives are contained within these intangible bytes of information. Now think about losing all that information; every memory, work file, memoir, and life's work lost. Hard to imagine right? Like life itself coming to an end. This is why data backup software exists. These programs ensure the safety of your files using various methods and tools including scheduled backups and system restore, which allows you to recover all data after a major malfunction without the hassle of reformatting the entire computer.

This article will describe the top 5 data backup programs that will help you keep your data safe.

NovaBACKUP Professional ($49.95)
NovaBACKUP is a top of the line data backup program that uses an automatic back up process to continuously keep all your valuable files safe. In addition, NovaBACKUP can handle more complex processes like creating a full disk image of your hard drive, a more complete backup solution. This program sports a user-friendly interface with advanced options for more tech-savvy users and provides a free online storage service.

NTI Backup Now ($29.99)
NTI Backup Now takes the backup and restoration process and simplifies it into 3 steps. This program is geared towards those who are not very tech-savvy, with a simple UI and process walk-throughs. Because of this, it lacks some advanced features. Like other solutions, NTI Backup Now provides scheduled backups as well as a choice between full or incremental backups.

DT Utilities PC Backup Pro ($49.99)
PC Backup Pro is one of the most reliable and cost-effective data protection solutions. The software has a simple interface suitable for all user levels. It is capable of backing up and recovering data to/from a variety of storage devices including CD/DVDs, online storage, tape and disk drives. The program also provides step-by-step instructions on how to perform backup and restoration procedures, disk-imaging recovery, and scheduled backups.

Macrium Reflect Professional 5 ($58.99)
Macrium Reflect provides a variety of advanced backup tools like scripting abilities, Macirum ReDeploy (restoring your data to a new computer), and image verification. This software also provides the basic tools like incremental and automatic backup. When using these options, Macrium uses a unique drag and drop UI that makes it attractive and easy to use.

Genie Backup Manager 9 Home ($49.95)
Genie Backup Manager uses three different backup types: full, incremental, and mirror. Like the other programs mentioned, it supports scheduled backups but is capable of backing up your data even when you are not logged in. A truly unique feature. This program can also keep your data safe from hackers through military level encryption methods.

Though computers are machines built to support you, they are unreliable at times. These data backup programs were created to ease your mind and provide security for your life's data.

Reference: www.novastor.com, www.nticorp.com, www.dtransfer.com, www.macrium.com, www.genie9.com 

+Katrina uses her technical knowledge to help people. At Rack Solutions. her passion for technology and wealth of knowledge have helped many people find the right solution in their unique situation.

Read more