Happy Holidays! I am going to start by admitting that I need to be to a Christmas party in 40 minutes and I have to pick up a cheesecake on the way so this is going to be quick.
I have a client who needs a calendar on their web site. They may want to let lots of people add events to this calendar; they may want to deputize a select few to add events. They want to do this inexpensively. They don’t want to give up all control. They expect to have a lot of events added.
I’ve been looking all afternoon for a solution – until I ran into my old friend Google. They have a new-ish calendar application (http://www.google.com/calendar). So I created a quick calendar to test on my site (http://www.treacyinfo.com/calendar.htm). I haven’t spent a ton of time on it – but for less than 10 minutes of work, it’s not bad. As you can see you can browse through my events. If I gave you permission you could add an event from the backend (a Google page). I’m not sure yet if I could give free reign for strangers to add events – I don’t think so.
It looks a lot like Outlook, which is good since most people know Outlook. It is very easy to set up and browse. A very nice added attraction is that if you add a street address to as an event detail then users can easily link to direction and more info to the event on Google maps. That might be the seller for my client.
Last summer I looked high and low for an affordable tool to easily and attractively post PowerPoint slides online. Well, this week I finally found a tool I liked PointCast (www.poinecast.com). (Cost was $100.)
I used it recently to upload a presentation on email newsletters:
http://www.treacyinfo.com/EmailMarketing/start.html
It was very easy to use. Once I downloaded the software, an additional button was added to PowerPoint to “publish” the presentation the same way I would save it. And once that was done I was able to upload the files to my web server.
You can set the slideshow to advance automatically. I set mine to advance as someone clicks through the slides. Apparently you can add audio with PointCast too. I haven’t had time to test it yet – but I’m hoping to get the chance soon.
On a completely different note – David in St Paul sent me a fun shopping site last week that I wanted to share: www.AliShops.com. It features reviews of Twin City shops.
Everyone is busy these days, super busy. So I thought I’d send a few notes on different web sites that I use to save myself time near the holidays.
Google for Coupons www.google.com
Know you’re going to buy something specific, such as an American Doll? You can do a search on [American Girl coupon] to find a number of web sites that compile coupons for various vendors. I can’t speak for all of them – but I’ve found and used coupons.
The Food Network http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/entertaining/
The “easy” recipes on the Food Network are even easy by my standards and their search (found on the left) is pretty good. The link above goes to their party planning page. Their kids section and planning section are good – although not necessarily helpful if your party is in 2 hours.
Gift.com http://www.gifts.com/
If you can describe your recipient, they have a matching category that will give you plenty of gift ideas.
Mom’s Minivan http://www.momsminivan.com
Thankfully our biggest travel over the holidays will be to a mid-tier, Twin Cities suburb – but that’s not to say that we won’t be printing off some of these games for the cars or learning about how to prevent car sickness.
Here’s a very quick Byte today:
Without giving away any big secrets I was online buying a couple of AmericanGirls Dolls, which aren’t inexpensive. When it came time to check out theyasked for a priority code. Rather than ignore it as usual I decided to lookfor a priority code online – and I found one at Flamingo World(http://www.flamingoworld.com). They linkto a number of coupon codes and online bargains. I haven’t tested all of thecoupons but the 10% off for American Girl Dolls worked.
Did you know that Microsoft has a public labs page just as Google does? That was news to me until Rick in Minneapolis sent me the link: http://www.microsoft.com/events/vlabs/default.mspx
It’s a great place to see what Microsoft is working on. I’ll admit that a number of the projects were too techie for me – although there is a section for business executive that I thought was more interesting.
They also have a searchable database of training opportunities (online and off) so if you wanted to learn more about their upcoming Operating System you could attend a Vista 101 workshop.
For the less techie folks in the crowd, Microsoft also a great site for clip art:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/clipart/default.aspx?lc=en-us
And a site of templates including holiday party invitations and other season treats:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/templates/FX100595491033.aspx?pid=CL100632981033
