July 22, 2008
OpenOffice.org is by far the one considered the closest match to Microsoft Office when working on a Linux environment. It is the world’s most widely distributed open-source multi-platform and multi-lingual productivity suite. This project was founded by Sun Microsystems which continues to make significant contributions as a community member.
Running equally well in other platforms such as Windows, Solaris and Mac OS X, it is offered in more than 100 languages, most of which are professionally supported. It was specifically released to the market with the aim of reducing the dominant market share of Microsoft Office through a free, open and high quality alternative. Although informally referred to as OpenOffice, the project had to adapt OpenOffice.org as its formal name since the trademark for OpenOffice is held by another party.
June 23, 2008
I find internet marketing to be one of the most fascinating subjects and I can always discover new things I never thought of. I once had a friend of mine from Israel point out a terrific anecdote which if taken to heart can be much more than an anecdote and make you quite a lot of money. He focused his point on the ever small conversion rates most websites tend to suffer from. At the time he was working for an online diamond retailer which had a 0.1% conversion rate. This is quite small even compared to the low 2% average. But it was his way of looking at it that really got me. Basically 0.1% means you are selling to just 1 out of 1,000 people visiting your site. One purchase, 999 lost sales. Each of the 999 may have a different reason for not purchasing but if you can focus on just one reason that gets one out of 1,000 people to not buy from your site and improve it – you doubled your sales.
Another interesting point about how to deal with the grossly low conversion rates recently appeared in Danny Demichele’s internet marketing consulting blog. If you are not familiar with Danny Demichele, you are probably not a big SEM player as he is a name that has been in the biz for over a decade and has been providing Internet Marketing Consultant Services since day one. In his blog, Danny discusses the point of focusing on a lead rather than a sale (actual transaction). As it turns out, by gathering information for a lead you can tap up to four times more visitors who would otherwise abandon the sale. You can read more of Danny’s posts and learn about his services as an Internet Marketing Consultant at dannydemichele.com.
June 19, 2008
For users who find themselves addicted to AIM, Kopete can be an interesting option especially when working on a different environment such as Linux. With a name that traces itself to the Chilean word – Copete, which refers to an alcoholic drink, Kopete proves itself a worthy alternative as a multi-protocol, free software instant messaging client. It was specifically designed to integrate with the KDE desktop environment although it can run in numerous environments.
Kopete supports all commonly used Instant Messaging protocols while providing templates for developers from which to base their new plug-ins. It also features tools to enhance instant messaging like message encryption, archiving and many others.
June 18, 2008
When working with Linux and other Unixes, Pidgin allows users to use all their Instant Messaging (IM) accounts at once. Like the others licensed under the GNU General Public License, Pidgin is free software which can be used, modified and distributed along with the modified source code. It can be used to talk with friends who are using AIM, ICQ, Jabber/XMPP, MSN Messenger, Yahoo!, Bonjour, Gadu-Gadu, IRC, Novell, GroupWise Messenger, QQ, Lotus Sametime, SILC, SIMPLE, MySpace IM and Zephyr. As users are able to log in to multiple accounts on different IM networks simultaneously, it is quite possible to be chatting with friends on AIM, talking to a friend on Yahoo! Messenger and sitting in an IRC Channel conveniently at the same time.
Pidgin also supports many features of different networks like file transfer, away messages and typing notification.
