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ALERTS and RSS
These ideas are offered 'as is', without obligation and without liability to A|D|S or the individuals or companies who have made this available to you. You use the tools offered entirely at your own risk. You are advised to read the technical advice and to speak to your ISP.
Keeping up to date with information and developements is critical to your knowledge and credibily both with the public and with suppliers.
You can subscribe to a variety of web sites but these are a 'push' in other words, they push the information to you that they want you to get...and you get just the same information as everyone else.
The systems suggested here allow you to define and specify what information you want to 'pull' ..........from as many or as few sources as you wish similtaneously and effortlessly.
To benefit from the first of these free services, you will first need to have a Google account Click here to sign up for a google account.
1) Free Website
A new tool to enable business to establish web sites has been launched by Getting British Business Online (GBBO). This is a joint initiative by Google, Enterprise UK, BT, e-skills UK and many other partners to help small business create their first website.
The service offers:
A free .co.uk address
Free updating and customisation
Access to new customers
Traffic monitoring
Website-enhancing Gadgets
This will soon offer payment options through paypal. It can be accessed at www.gbbo.co.uk
Comment: at www.telegraph.co.uk
2) Google Alerts can be used to notify you of news stories on any subject and from a variety of sources. This is a free service, and directs e mail notifications to your own e mail account.
As a server side application (external control), you can set:
Any number of notifications in place.
Use any words or combinations of words as you wish e.g. Revenue and Customs, Police, Security or Procurement etc.
Turn the notifations on or off at any time.
Thus when you start up your Outlook, the alerts will be sent to you as a link only. Since they do not have attachments they are not stopped by firewalls and are very small files.
If you are using microsoft 'Outlook', you can manage alerts so that they do not cause your 'Inbox' to overflow.
To do this choose the 'Rules Wizard'.....rules are a way of filtering your messages and sorting them to go to different outlook mail folders either for reading or for storage. The wizard is versitile and you can choose from almost an infinite variety of options, ranging from where the message was received, who it came from, what it says and where it is to go. To access the rules wizard, go to microsoft outlook, select TOOLS then RULES WIZARD.
In this situation I first created a new folder called 'Alerts' and chose that any message would be scanned on receipt, those with ' Google Alert' in the subject line should be moved to a new folder I created called 'alerts'.
As an aside it can be useful to have another folder for spam. If for example you get e mails offering you viagra and you do not want it, set that into a rule and send them to the 'spam' folder.
Choose your words carefully as you may get some unexpected results. To get google alerts click here.
3) An alternative to the e mail alerts system is to use RSS news feeds. RSS means 'Really simple syndication'. To receive RSS feeds you need a 'Reader' this is a piece of software which handles the data (in a similar way that Outlook handles e mails). RSS readers are being increasingly integrated into browsers and newer versions of software. Unlike an e mail they just come to you as a link.....clicking on the link takes you directly to the article. Thus you can receive hundreds of notifications and only access those that are of specific and interest you.
A notification is generated by the sender......think of an RSS feed like a piece of string...you tie as many pieces of string to as many sources as you like that support RSS. Sources are varied and growing e.g. BBC web site or Daily Telegraph or e bay. They simply send you the SPECIFIC LINKS and the interest items you choose and those ONLY. This is a client side application (you control it).
Other advantages of RSS feeds are that because they just contain a link, virus infections are not possible (no attachments etc) and the 'data packet' is very small in size.
The good news is that if you have Explorer version 7.0 or higher an RSS reader is built into it. To learn how to use it, go to HELP (on your browser menu) ..............Contents and Index.....and type in RSS feeds.
There are many alternative readers....some are free. One of the best, though not free, is Feedemon.
4) An alternative, more recent but very similar feed is Atom.
5) With 'Windows Live Alerts' you can manange your own account and have messages sent to MSN, your mobile or e mail. click here Advanced users can integrate further using the SOAP protocol. click here
6) Text alerts (SMS or Short Message Service) to a mobile phone are usually a subscriber service with a variety of costs which may be made to the sender or the recipient in a number of guises. Remember that single text messages may take up to 24 hours to be delivered and are limited to 160 characters. Message may be split due to their size and they will not necessarily be concatenated (received in the correct sequence). A text service from the Guardian newspaper is available by clicking here.
7) Picture alerts (MMS or Multimedia Messaging Service) to a more modern mobile phone are usually a subscriber service with a variety of costs which may be made to the sender or the recipient in a number of guises. Unlike SMS these have much more capacity and can be used for data, such as text, short tunes, pictures, photos or brief video sequences. Further information is available here.
EMS or Enhanced Message Service we shall leave for the present, but if you are desperate to know about it click here!
Google AdSense is a free program that enables website publishers of all sizes to display relevant Google ads and earn. For information click here.
Translation Tool: Live Translations of seperate text or enitre web sites can be achieved at no cost. It will not translate written text contained within images. Click here to view.
8) More news sources:
News Vine: Updated continuously by citizens like you, Newsvine is an instant reflection of what the world is talking about at any given moment.
Stumbled Upon: Connect with friends and share your discoveries, meet people that have similar interests, and check out what other people are discovering.
Delicious: A social bookmarking site.
Dig: News and opinions from across the world.
Blogsmark: This is a collaborative link management project based on sharing and key-word tagging. Build on a blog basis, BlogMarks is an open and free technology.
Feedmelinks: Stores your bookmarks online so you can get to them anywhere. Import your favorites and share your links with friends.
Furl: With Furl, you can: Find Web sites that others have Furled. Save a copy of any web page with one click. Share anything you've Furled -- or keep it private. Furl also lets you store and organize all of your bookmarks.
Reddit: News
Simpy: Simpy is a social bookmarking service that lets you save, tag, search and share your bookmarks, notes, groups and more.
Spurl: Spurl.net is a free on-line bookmarking service and search engine. It allows you to store and quickly access again all the interesting pages you find on the web from any Internet connected computer.
Technorati: News
The Register: News on IT and software vulnerabilities, patches and gossip
Yahoo: Of course!
9) Financial checkers are available to assist you to receive payment in the right way and to the right place.
Extended Industry Sorting Code Directory: Click Here
A sort code checker: Click Here
An IBAN Checker: Click Here
Universal Currency Converter Click Here
CHAPS Payment Click Here
10) Check out the media
It can be useful to know something about a journalist who may seek to write an article on member companies of products.
An online database of journalists, the stories they have written and who for, can be found by clicking here
11) Bloggs.
A blog is an online diary which can be used to gain an audience interested in your activities. There are many such sites, but again Google comes to the rescue with www.blogger.com and the associated help site.
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