Garbage in / Garbage out is also very true.  When you enter data into your CRM database, take the extra time to do it completely and accurately, correcting errors as you go.  Using the Google Forms I’ve written about here, you can do an easy import of the information into these databases.  However, if the site visitor has entered errors (likely), then correct them before or after the import.  I like to do it in the Google Spreadsheet before the export to .csv.

The plugin is WP-Invoice, and it’s great.  I installed it and set it up in just 10 minutes on the road.  I mean literally on the road, sitting in the right seat of the car working on my cellular broadband connection.  Setup was a breeze, and I did a sample invoice to check it out.  It emailed the invoice link to me, and I pulled it up, with a button to pay via PayPal.  It even handles recurring payments.

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When you sign up for an Intrante, or online office space, you get several features that are common to most all of them:

• Sharing of tasks
• Share calendars, appointments, meetings
• Document sharing for reading or for editing and updating
• Announcements section, like an online bulletin board
• Depending on Intranet vendor, other sharable features

Keep in mind, this is all online, so there is no software to install on your computer, and no network software to keep updated so all can have access.  You can set up varying levels of permission to users, letting them see or edit only what you want them to.  This gives you the ability to actually maintain files online that are specifically designated only for management, employee groups, or individuals.

In the next post about Intranets, I’ll introduce you to the one I highly recommend, as it also gives you the ability to create custom databases that can accomplish great things for your business.

If you’re into feed readers, then you probably rely on yours to bring you a great deal of the day’s news, whether business or personal.  If you do research on the Internet for any reason, as I do for writing, then your feed reader is likely a very busy place.  I use the Google Reader, but there are a great many great free readers out there.

Also, if you’re really using your news reader, or aggregator, you are always looking for new feed sources, or for new ways to serve them up.  One issue I have is a new interest in something, but all I have is some keywords or a key phrase.  Another is if I want to monitor a page that doesn’t have a feed.  Both of those are free and easy to handle if you know which tools to use.

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Google Alerts – For those cases where I have an interest in a topic, and I want to know when new information comes out on it, I use Google Alerts.  You can have them delivered to your email, but I prefer they come to my reader.  Just enter your keywords or phrases, and Google scours the web for the material.

Page2RSS – When I come across a site that doesn’t have an RSS feed, first I say some less-than-flattering things about it, then I go to Page2RSS.  It’s free, and I enter the URL of the page I want to monitor.  From then on, when that page is changed in some way, I get an alert in my reader.

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"The Photo" search

There’s one WordPress plugin that can benefit just about any blogger. How many times have you wanted an image, a legal-to-use image at least, and didn’t have it? I run into this situation all the time, and the plugin that usually yields a relevant photo is PhotoDropper.

Once installed, a click of the button will bring up images from Flickr that match the search phrase or word you enter. The image here is one I was given in a search on “the photo.” The credit information comes with it, including the Creative Commons license, which should remain in the post. I don’t leave it at the bottom of the photo though, moving it to the bottom of the post, as you see here.

Speaking of the CC license, you tell the plugin if you’re a commercial blog or not, in other words, for business. If so, it is supposed to pull only those images properly licensed for commercial use. If you are a personal blogger, you’ll get a larger selection, as the CC license is broader.

If you click on the credit link below, you go to the Flickr page for the image. There is a link on that page to the CC license. You’ll see that it allows this use, and doesn’t restrict it from a commercial blog.

photo credit: Michael MASSACRE (Ran out of Bandwidth)

Well, FontPicker is a great tool just for this purpose.  With more than 200 fonts in large boxes, you can type your text into one box and all of them display it.  It’s a fast way to compare fonts.  If there are just a dozen that you usually use, you can only show those, making it even faster to compare.

I can write all about it here, but the easiest way to show you the utility of this site is in a short video below.

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http://phototropic.co.uk/swiftlet

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3102

[podcast]http://functionaltech.com/wp-content/podcasts/002-emailwebpage.mp3[/podcast]

Let’s use an example email address of    YourName@gmail.com.   Now, if you want to do something special with certain emails, you can add an extension to the first part of the address with a “+.”  Now it might look like this:  YourName+special@gmail.com.  The word “special” can be anything, even a person’s last name or other unique word you want to use.  Gmail will deliver the email because the first part before the “+” is a valid address.

Now, all you have to do is to create labels or filters to do whatever you want automatically with emails sent to this special address.  Here are some ideas about how you might use this feature:

• Use a transaction number or ID after the +, giving this address to participants in a transaction.  You can then automatically capture all transaction related email in one place.
• Use this feature to create a request email from your website or elsewhere that responds with a Gmail canned response.  You can deliver special reports this way.
• I use it for research, creating labels that match the words after the +.  Thus, any site I find that would be a good tech topic, I send with a “+tech.”  It gets filed away automatically to my tech research label.
• Use for ordering things, or for sites where you might want to be rid of them later, as you can do auto-delete when you no longer want email from them.

I’m sure that you can think of lots more to do with this feature, as it’s quite handy.

EmailThis is a Firefox addon that does a great job. It even has settings to email into Google and Yahoo Apps. It installs in the right-click menu, and it just takes a second to send myself or someone else a link to a web page.