Here’s just a few of the things you can do with BatchBook deals:

1. Keep track of your sales opportunities including any communications or tasks that need to be completed.
2. Record possible partnership opportunities including the things that help you target in on the best opportunities.
3. Keep track of your advertisers, their ad rates, their ad specifications, their tracking URLS and graphics used.
4. Share deal information with outside contractors by giving them limited access to just those deals and contacts you specify.
5. Build reports of outstanding deals by sales reps, deal amount, contract terms, product involved or anything else that will help you land the deal.
6. Keep reports of communications happening or not happening with your outstanding leads.
7. Subscribe to a feed of all comments being added to your assigned deals to track internal updates on the deals.
8. Search through past leads and deals to find the right person to make the right introduction to land this new deal
9. And so much more

You can see our new deals feature in action on the BatchBook for Sales screencast or visit our Deals FAQs for more detailed information.

Please let us know how you are using the new deals feature or what you’d like to see added!

Want to learn more about BatchBook for Sales? Register for our free webinar, Thursday November 5th at 2 pm EST.

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We’ve worked hard over the past year and a half to bring the personal side of small business relationships into BatchBook. SuperTags allow you to build a richer profile of your customers, social media integration allows you to engage with them in a more personal and accessible way, and our Small Business Web partnerships provide a single source of information for all of the other systems you are using to run your business.

Now, we’ve combined this with the deals and leads tracking tools of enterprise sales management products so you can better understand how to turn these personal relationships into new customers. Share conversations across your team, track important action items and capture all signals your customers are sending out – whether a complimentary Tweet or a frustrated blog post.

At BatchBlue, we believe that open, on-going communication with your contacts is really the lifeblood of your business. With BatchBook for Sales, the sales pipeline just got a little more personal. Because you should never have to force a sale.

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But I learned something new about this struggle last night. I learned the importance of our community in helping us pull this off.

We run a weekly Twitter chat every Tuesday night from 8:00-10:00 PM where we invite small business owners to come chat about everything from social media strategies to recycling efforts. For the past nine months I have logged in each Tuesday as the @sbbuzz bee and moderated an amazing group of motivated business owners as we work together to support each other and learn from each other and collectively build better businesses. But last night I got distracted during #sbbuzz chat. I put a sick child to bed and then spent the evening on the WebMD, CDC, and MyAsthmaCentral sites researching the latest recommendations for my at-risk son. And I missed the chat.

But this story has a happy ending. The #sbbuzz chat happened without me. A group of core members, lead by the brilliant and resourceful @scoblitz decided to spontaneously run the chat themselves. They knew the format and rules of the chat and were able to have a great and helpful discussion without me.

Yes, being able to do it all is important. But sometimes you can’t. And so it is equally important to have a community that cares, that understands the goal behind the chat (or product, or project, or business) and feels empowered to take the reigns when necessary. This is what will help us as individuals, as a company, and as a small business community to succeed.

I am a humbled and grateful bee. Thank you to the inspiring #sbbuzz community for carrying on without me.

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Michelle recently wrote an article about some of the networking events that the BatchBlue communications team is attending. We then hosted an #sbbuzz Twitter chat discussing with our fellow small business owners how to make the most of those events (thanks for the tips, buzzers!). So I thought I would share some insights and stories from a few of these events as they happen.

I recently flew down to Washington, DC to attend Network Solution’s Grow Smart Business conference. I heard about this event from my very good Twitter friend Shashi Bellamkonda (@shashib), the Social Media Swami at Network Solutions. I knew anything that he is involved in would be worthwhile, but honestly I had not predicted just how productive this travel would be.

I flew down the night before the one day conference and visited my old co-workers at Matrix Group International. While at their offices I learned that Matrix CEO, and my former business partner Joanna Pineda (@jmpineda) was one of the speakers at the Grow Smart Conference (such a small small business world). I also learned from Joanna and from Twitter that the socially over-achieving @shashib and the nice folks at WASP Barcode were hosting a happy hour that night about 2 blocks from my hotel. Don’t have to ask me twice!

At the happy hour I was delighted to see more great friends Brent Leary from CRM Essentials (@brentleary) and Anita Campbell (@smallbiztrends) from Small Biz Trends. I first met Brent a few years ago at the Inbound Marketing Summit (I sat in the front row and devoured his then prescient talk on Social CRM). We’ve kept in touch through Twitter, occasional conference sitings and surprise radio interviews down south. And Brent introduced me to Anita this past winter at the Small Business Technology conference in NYC. I had always loved Anita’s site SmallBizTrends.com and could tell immediately why it is such a valuable resource. Anita personifies the resourcefulness and integrity you find in every article on her site.

I also got a chance to meet iPhone application developer Barg Upender from Mobomo.com and test his latest iPhone game, a combination pinwheel and target shooting challenge inspired by his son. I held the high score for about 3 seconds until the very tall and much more skilled Eric Olsen from TransFS.com and Tech cocktail took control. Very excited to work with both of these folks on some BatchBookiness fun in the future.

And yes, in case you are wondering, I did make it to the conference. I’ve been to more than a few events now and prefer this formatting – one large room with a succession of speakers and some vendor booths, information tables, and munchies on the periphery. It was easy to sneak in and listen to the juicier parts of the programming and then check in with a few of the vendors in between.

I helped chip in at a Network Solutions “Experts Booth” for part of the day and had to leave early to catch a plane back to Boston. But I did catch a few of the great speakers including headliner Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired Magazine and author of The Long Tail and Free. Since the tabby stripes down at the end of his metaphorical tail refer to the global niche markets small businesses are so successfully serving, I was understandably captivated.

The rest of the sessions were captured in live webcasts – a generous move by Network Solutions and treat for the small business world. They are worth a listen. Unfortunately I missed my pals Joanna and Ramon Ray from SmallBizTechnology.com in the final session on small business social media. I was able to listen in later, though and follow some of commentary on Twitter. What better way to learn the power of small business social media?

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Global climate change is obviously a big, big issue. So what can we as small businesses do about it? As part of Blog Action Day 2009, BatchBlue turned to our resident experts in all things small business (our customers and our contact network, of course!) to find out what they are doing not only to bring in the green, but also to be green in their business practices.

During Tuesday’s small business Twitter chat #SBBUZZ, we discussed how there are many small steps you can take to help green up your business (and thus help do the big work of saving the planet!)

We were fortunate to be joined on #SBBUZZ last night by green expert, author and professional organizer Candita Clayton, who helped guide the discussion about what small business can do to save energy, reduce waste and fight climate change. Here are some simple, easy-to-implement tips that came out of our discussion:

Recycle: Make it easy to recycle paper, glass and plastic. Set up separate bins where they will be seen and used. If your business doesn’t have a program in place, start one! It’s worth it to be the squeaky wheel on this issue since it’s so important. And many communities have programs in place where you can drop off unwanted computers, printers etc. Keeping these hazardous items out of the landfill will go a long way in helping to halt pollution and resultant climate change.

Reuse: Before you toss something in the trash, see if it has a potential secondary purpose. Tricia Mumby from Mabel’s Labels says “We have found a very unique way of disposing of some of our paper waste: donate to daycares and schools! Some of our cardboard, paper and plastic waste is very much appreciated for craft time!” Mumby adds that one of their goals is to generate as little trash as possible, so they make sure to provide their breakrooms with adequate dishes, cups, tea-towels and containers that are re-usable.

There’s also the great site Freecycle.org, which allows your trash to become someone else’s…well, you know!

Power down: Several folks suggested unplugging computer equipment and related electronics when not in use. I chimed in with an idea I heard a while ago: plug all your electronics into a Clapper, then “Clap Off!” when you are done working for the day. So much fun, you’ll never forget to do it! (Clappers can be purchased via Amazon.com)

Promote green computing: Nancy Cobado from Brain Trust Technologies suggests trying electronic document management, online meetings and collaboration. “Print less, consume less power and travel less,” says Cobado,”It’s amazing what you can save!”

Go paperless: Another popular suggestion was to try for a paperless office. There are many small business web apps out there that will help you manage tasks like invoicing, payroll and contact management (ahem!) without killing a single tree. Check out our friends on the Small Business Web for inspiration.

From a practical standpoint, Fernando Labastida of KPIOnline.com suggests the following: “Small businesses can use Business Intelligence tools to track the purchases of line items such as copy paper, notebook paper, tissue, set disposable reduction goals for these items, and track them on a monthly basis. The pure act of measuring something spurs creative ideas for improving the metrics of something that needs improving.” He adds, “If your goal is to reduce copy paper consumption by 20%, you now have a way of actually measuring the consumption of your copy paper.”

Telecommute: At BatchBlue, we’re huge fans of working from home (or the local coffee shop, or waiting for the kids’ soccer practice, on a train etc.) Mobile technologies and laptops have freed us to work where we choose to work rather than being arbitrarily tethered to a desk. There’s even a name for this brave new way of working: Workshifting. This site is full of advice for those either currently workshifting or seeking to start. And on our site, BatchBlue president Pamela O’Hara has written a blue paper about how you can set up and manage your own virtual office.

Obviously…the difference of the impact on gas consumption and related climate change between commuting two hours and walking to your dining room table? Huge.

Small business, big change
BatchBook customer Daniel Mark Wheaton summarizes his company’s efforts nicely “At Canuka Web Solutions, we’re a pretty small company, but we try to take little steps to be as green as possible. All of our invoices are e-mailed, or printed on recycled paper. Our promotional material is also printed on recycled paper and placed in folders made from 100% recycled material. And by using technology to share ideas and teleconference, we cut our costs as well as minimizing our impact on the environment by reducing unnecessary travel.”

Leave a comment, save a fish
We know you’ve got even more great ideas, so please feel free to share them in the comments below. Or just say hello! BatchBlue will donate $2 for every commenter on this post to the Blue Ocean Institute. Because a healthy climate means healthy oceans and vice versa, and because we love the work they are doing to save the world’s oceans and coastlines. As an added bonus, one lucky winner will be randomly selected to win their very own Clapper!

Thanks for joining us in thinking about how small business can help combat climate change. Please try some (or all!) of these tips and let’s join the fight against climate change one small business at a time.

UPDATE: Well, we didn’t get as many comments as we hoped, but we’re still making a donation in the name of small business to The Blue Ocean Institute. And the lucky winner of the Clapper will be contacted within the next couple of days. Thanks everyone! –MRR

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Through the BatchBook forums and email support, we’ve received a lot of great recommendations for feature enhancements. Among those requests was the ability to style the web form in a way that will fit your web site’s look and feel a bit better. As Sean pointed out on the thread, that’s actually doable right now with a bit of html wizardry. So, let’s do it!

Step 1: Create your form & grab the raw HTML

For this example, I’m going to replace the embedded contact form on my own website with the raw web form code. The first thing we need is a web form to grab the raw code from. Here’s what a simple BatchBook contact form looks like:

Now, choose “View Source” from your browser’s menu bar (likely under the “VIew” menu). What you want to grab is the code inside the <form> tags.

Here’s what the source looks like:

Step 2: Tweak it so it’ll actually work

This part is Sean’s tip. See that first line where it says:

<form action="/lists/import_hashes" method="post" id="publicForm">

Just take that “action” bit and use the entire URL for your account. In my case, it’d be:

<form action="https://adarowski.batchbook.com/lists/import_hashes" method="post" id="publicForm">

Step 3: Paste it onto your page

Now just paste the HTML with the altered action on your page. In my case, it renders like this:

Don’t be confused by the <h1> elements. I actually use those in the design. I’m crazy like that.

You’ll also notice that the headers of the form are gone. That was another request—the ability to remove the headers and just embed the form. Of course, if you want headers you can just put them in your HTML really easy. You’ll also see that the font of the form uses the base font I’ve set for my site in the CSS. Ah, CSS. That brings us to…

Step 4: Style it with CSS

Oh boy. It’s hard to give an entire CSS tutorial in one step of a blog post. Let’s start with a few things you’ll want to know about the form structure.

• The form is built with definition lists.
• There are (up to) three defintion lists in your form. One contains the basic info like name, title, and company. The second contains contact information. And the third contains the SuperTag (custom) info included in your list.
• For each field, the label is the <dt> (definition term) and the field, text area, bullets or checkboxes are contained in the <dd> (definition… definition—yeah, I never really got the “dd”).
• The submit button is contained in a paragraph with the class “submit”.

So, with some quick styling, here’s what I did:

Here’s what I used for CSS:

form#publicForm dl { margin: 0; }
form#publicForm dt { display: inline-block; width: 20%; vertical-align: top; margin-bottom: 20px; }
form#publicForm dd { display: inline-block; width: 75%; margin: 0; }
form#publicForm input[type=text],
form#publicForm textarea { width: 80%; }
form#publicForm textarea { height: 100px; }
form#publicForm p.submit { margin-left: 20%; }

What’s it for? Okay, here we go line-by-line:

1. We’re killing the default margins on the definition lists.
2. On the dt, we’re giving it inline-block display with a width of 20%. Inline-block allows you to apply styles that are reserved for block level elements (like width) on inline elements. Saves you a lot of complex floating sometimes. The vertical alignment is so the “Your message” will align with the top of the text field instead of the bottom. Finally, there’s a margin at the bottom of the field names just for some space.
3. Same thing on the dd, but we’re also killing the default margin-left that dds get.
4. We’re giving text fields and text areas a width of 80% so it fills the space nicely. What that “[type=text]” part does is makes sure you don’t do something silly like put a width of 80% on a radio button (which is also an input, but with the type=radio). That can look silly.
5. I gave the textarea a bit more height so there’s more room to type before scrolling.
6. Finally, I’m giving the submit button a margin so it lines up with the fields.

Not bad, huh? That was pretty easy. There are many online sources to help you learn about CSS. I talk about how I got started with CSS and share some of my favorite tricks in a blog post called My Favorite CSS Techniques.

Enjoy! So, style up your web forms and let us know how they look!

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After nearly two and a half years, this week was my last at BatchBlue. This is a decision that I couldn’t have imagined making just a few weeks ago. My awesome co-workers have been incredibly understanding and supportive…and I think a big reason is that the decision really has nothing to do with BatchBlue at all.

Next week, I’ll be joining a company called PatientsLikeMe. PatientsLikeMe is a unique company that provides online communities for patients with life-altering diseases. What started as a small community of patients suffering from ALS (Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s Disease) has evolved into a site that hosts over a dozen communities for diseases ranging from mood disorders to Parkinson’s Disease.

While my role is not specific to any particular communities, I recently found myself in need of a community that isn’t there yet. The opportunity to make this happen is what brings me to PatientsLikeMe. I’m going to be doing HTML and CSS, but I also have much greater and very specific goals I’ve set out to accomplish in my new position.

This change, of course, is going to be a shock to my system. BatchBlue is part of every aspect of my life—both work (doing what I love) and personal (having the flexibility to be with my family whenever I need to). With BatchBlue, along with the occasional weekend customer service and 2 AM bug fixes came the ability to hang out with the kids during the day and even spend 11 days in the hospital when my youngest was sick. Things like that I’ll never forget.

It’s not just the BatchBlue staff that I’ll miss collaborating with every day. One of the big reasons I joined BatchBlue was the allure of working on a product with actual users. I came from a research and development think tank, and too often we had little to no access to end users. That all changed with BatchBlue. I’ve built relationships with BatchBook users—folks like Scott and Stewart—that I know will last even though I’m moving on.

If there’s one thing I took away from last week’s WebInno event it’s that BatchBlue is onto something big. It can be easy to forget that when you’re in as deep as we all are. But it was exciting to see so many attendees have that “ah ha” moment when I showed them SuperTags—specifically, the Social Media SuperTag—and the idea behind The Small Business Web. While I’m extremely proud of the work I’ve done at BatchBlue, I’m also excited to see how another designer’s perspective can guide BatchBook into 2010.

As BatchBook continues on the leading edge of the social CRM landscape, rest assured that I’ll be cheering from the sidelines.

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We’re taking our show on the road to a number of places as attendees, presenters or both and wanted to let you know in case you’re going to be there, too. We’d love to meet you in person!

To help you (and quite frankly, us) keep track of our whereabouts, we’ve put together a new Events & Presentations page. Have a look, there’s some good stuff coming up.

One of the things we’re most excited about is presenting at WebInno23 next Tuesday night. Over 900 folks have RSVPed to this event at last count. We’re doing something that we hope will entertain and impress Boston’s techie glitterati. We’ll post the glorious? inglorious? results as soon as we can after the event. And, if you’re an #SBBUZZ fan, the Queen Bee herself will be talking contact management on the same day at the Network Solutions GrowSmartBusiness conference.

We love meeting our customers and hearing their stories (especially our president, Pam. Seriously, it’s crazy how much she loves it! Like, jumping on a couch on Oprah crazy!) So please, if you see us out and about, say hello, sit and have a drink with us and tell us about what you do. That’s the best part of any event.

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The Flash Video runs 12:26 and is 68.8MB. (Download iPod compatible version, 20.2MB)

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Our On-Boarding program gives me the opportunity to talk with customers, listen to their needs and do a fair amount of problem-solving. I’ve been helping customers for over two years now and I find there are a few tips that I’m always giving out to those who are just getting started with BatchBook. I thought I’d share them here to make it easier for other new customers to start using BatchBook.

1) Download the Import Template. Importing is probably the first step you will take when setting up your new BatchBook account. We provide a BatchBook Import Template to help make this process as easy as possible. You’ll find the Import Template in the right-hand column of your Contacts tab page within BatchBook. Simply download the template to your desktop, fill it in and import away.

If you need to import data that does not fit under our template headers, you can do that, too. First, create custom fields (or as we call them, SuperTags) for your specific information. Once your SuperTags are created, download the template. You’ll now see columns for your SuperTag data. View a screencast. (Note that if you have created a multiple choice field type for your SuperTag, the data you are importing has to be an exact match or you will get an error. See more detailed template instructions here.)

2) Take a tour of our SuperTag Library. BatchBook is all about customization, but where do you start when thinking about creating your own, unique SuperTags? Answer: the SuperTag library on the Tags & SuperTags tab! We’ve also compiled some industry specific examples for you (Marketing, Real Estate, Design, Social Media) Give them a look; perhaps you can use them or maybe they will inspire you to create some of your own. You can edit or delete your tags or SuperTags at any time on your Tags & SuperTags tab.

3) Think about the reports you will want to create from your contacts. Another tip I like to give people is to think about the reports they will want to generate and to create their SuperTags based on that. It’s easy to create a quick report based on the data in your SuperTags. Want to know how many customer’s in the month of August took their summer vacations by car? No problem; done!

4) Use our support resources. We make it our mission to provide you with a high level of customer support and have included a great deal of helpful information on our website. Be sure to check out our screencasts and FAQs.

We also provide free bi-weekly webinars on getting started with BatchBook. Something I always tell folks is to be sure to check out our Forums. We have an active, super-smart community of BatchBook users who are always happy to help out, give tips, or talk about how they are using BatchBook. I learn a lot by reading the Forum posts; I’m sure you’ll find them helpful as well.

5) Learn more about our integration partners. BatchBook integrates with other applications in an effort to make your life easier. Take the time to learn more about any of our partners to take your BatchBook up a notch.

For more tips on organizing your data, our president Pamela O’Hara has written a helpful Blue Paper called Managing Your Contacts: The Business of Personal Relationships. Feel free to download it, share with your team and send us your feedback.

While most back-to-school talk these days revolves around first day jitters and uncomfortable new school shoes, I’m hoping that my back-to-BatchBook tips make the idea of contact management less scary and will even help you get an “A” in organization!

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The webinar description:

Join Stephanie Sweeney and Adam Darowski of BatchBlue Software as they demonstrate how to use BatchBook’s integration partners to achieve contact management bliss! You’ll see how easy it is to send emails to your customers, keep track of outstanding client invoices, import business card and other contact data, even monitor support questions all from the comfort of your BatchBook account.

With our integration partners, we’ve made it easier to manage your contacts, your way.

Stephanie and I will cover BatchBook’s integration with Google Contacts, MailChimp, FreshBooks, Shoeboxed — and a sneak peek at the newest addition to our small business arsenal — Zendesk! We hope to see you there!
Register Now!
(it’s free)

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It’s an endless summer for our contest winner & surfer girl Julia Weatherby. Photo by Gordon McGregor.

Our Endless Summer Contest was our most popular contest ever! Thanks to all who entered — we had a lot of really cute, inspired entries for what people would do with our new custom web form feature, learned a lot about what summer beverages people most enjoy, and have hard evidence that when it comes to ice cream, it’s best to not restrict oneself to a budget.

Like summer itself, the contest has to end, but this news more sweet than bitter because we’ve randomly selected our winner! Lucky Julia Weatherby, a photographer from one of our fave cities, Austin, Texas will soon be riding an IndoBoard in the comfort and safety of her own home. Julia tells us that she’s an active member of her local Surfrider Foundation chapter, so she’s super stoked about winning the IndoBoard!  Who knew in a land-locked city that there was such an active surf scene? Julia is also both a MOO card customer and now a BatchBook customer, so her free business cards and free year of BatchBook will really come in handy.

Julia’s entry contained a link to her favorite movie of the summer, which she says inspires her as she trains for her fifth (!!!!!) triathlon. Go Julia – we definitely appreciate the clip’s sentiment…it IS all about performance!

She also had a cute quote about how she would use our brand spankin’ new form to use for her business. Here’s what she had to say:

I’d hold a really fun contest with cool prizes like these! Moo? Surfing? Batchbook? Sounds like a great combination! Found out about you via @overheardatmoo. I will definitely be trying out your services. This feature sounds like an easy way to generate a form with a nice interface into my customer database.

Well, we’re delighted that Julia did indeed become a BatchBook customer. We couldn’t be happier to have her and wish her a winter of big, imaginary indoor waves.

What does the data say?
Since we collected all sorts of summer-related data from the contest submissions, we felt it was in the best interest of science to release this vitally important data! Here’s what our stats-obsessed designer Adam culled from the responses:

(To make beautiful charts like Adam’s from your web form data, simply export your web form list data to a CSV file, then create charts or graphs using MS Excel or Numbers for the Mac — see the FAQ.)

Oh, you Trekkies! Up! finished a strong, but distant, second.

Y’all dug out some novels, huh? How… novel!

It’s really all about the heat. And though most of you weren’t campers, we hope you were still happy campers!

Other favorite responses included:

• Obscene
• bigger than my lunch budget
• budget? for ice cream? jajajaja!
• CLASSIFIED
• Cut due to ice pop addiction.
• Not as much as the beer fund, but right up there
• In this time of budgetary cutbacks, I’m pleased to announce that the icecream line item survived all cuts

In a tight match all around, lemonade takes the prize.

Ah, Blackberrys and iPhones…

Last but not least, we asked for the “Most-played song on your iPod”. Since the entries varied greatly, Adam provided ten random tracks from the list. A summer mix tape, if you will!

1. Boom Boom Pow! – Black Eyed Peas
2. Viva La Vida – Coldplay
3. Pump It Up – Elvis Costello
4. Mykonos – Fleet Foxes
5. Don’t Stop Believing – Journey
6. My Life Would Suck Without You – Kelly Clarkson
7. (I’m no) Superman – Lazlo Bane
8. I’m Good, I’m Gone – Lykke Li
9. Beat It – Michael Jackson
10. Tonight We Fly – The Divine Comedy

Congratulations again to Julia! And to everyone else, we hope you had a great summer filled with music, tasty beverages, ice cream and lots and lots of fun memories!

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Here are just a few of the great things you can do with the new forms:

1. Add a Contact form to your web site with the click of a button. Simply create a new web form, name it and publish it on your own web site. Anyone who fills in the form can be saved directly in your BatchBook account for a follow-ups by your staff or sales team.
2. Survey your prospects by adding custom SuperTag fields to your contact form. Learn up front what products they are interested in, what budget they are working with, what their purchase deadline is, or anything else that is important to you when starting a new relationship with an interested customer.
3. Survey your customers by creating a custom form with SuperTags and e-mailing a group of customers to determine what new features they would like developed, what their satisfaction level is with your service team or anything else that will help you keep up a good relationship with your customers.
4. Manage newsletter Sign-ups in 3 easy steps. First create a web form asking users if they would like to receive your newsletter. Second create a report of anyone who responds “YES”. And third send the list off to MailChimp for distribution to your new best friends!
5. Collect social media information from your customers, prospective customers, business partners and favorite pets by including fields from the Social Media SuperTag on your web form. BatchBook will automatically pull feeds of their blogs, tweets or photos instantly giving you a richer insight into their world. What better way to get to know someone?
6. Combine all of the above to reach out to your entire network, ask them a few questions and connect with them in social media spaces all at once.

Please let us know what you think and how you are using the new forms. To show off the new web forms we are hosting a Summertime Vacation contest with some HOT, HOT prizes! Enter to win a surfboard for land lovers, some hot new Moo cards or a free BatchBook account.

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While doing some testing, I was pretty happy to get that SMS notification right there. Why? Because it came from BatchBook (in a roundabout way).

A while back, a customer wrote in looking for SMS notifications for his BatchBook To-Dos. This is something we originally planned to do, but never really got to it. Finally, I figured there must be a service out there that would take an iCalendar feed and push it to SMS. Turns out, the winner was a service we rely on quite heavily around here — Google Calendar.

Step 1: Get your BatchBook To-Dos into Google Calendar

To get your BatchBook To-Dos into Google Calendar, you need to click the “subscribe” button under your To-Do List to grab the iCalendar feed. Here’s what it looks like:

After copying the feed, paste it into Google Calendar by choosing “Add by URL”. You’re now subscribed to your To-Dos!

Step 2: Set Up Notifications via Your Mobile Phone

You can then open the notifications page for the new calendar (see image). Once there, the first thing you want to do is select “Set up your mobile phone to receive notifications”. Here, you’ll enter your mobile phone number and Google will send you a confirmation code (via SMS) to enter into Google Calendar. Once that is done, you are all set to receive SMS notifications for any Google Calendar.

On that same page — in the “Event Reminders” section — you can choose how you want to be notified (in this case, “SMS”) and how soon before each event (1 day, 1 hour, etc.).

And there you have it. You’ll now get your BatchBook To-Dos delivered via SMS!

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I recently spent a few weeks vacationing with my husband, 3 kids and a rotating stream of relatives and friends at our family retreat on a tiny island north of Portland, Maine. Each day wondering if we should sail, climb the rocks, play on the beach, boogie board, collect starfish, hunt crabs, fish, play tennis, eat mussels, clams or lobsters, or all of the above. At BatchBlue we put a high premium on family time. We talk a bit about mandatory vacations in our Virtual Office Blue Paper, but a customer wrote in recently with the comment, “it is great that you know how to disengaged, but do you find it hard to re-engage?” It’s hard to benefit from the personal time if you are worried about the mounting workload, so I thought I would share a few of my tips on quickly catching up on the waiting backlog.

Here are a few of the things I did to quickly get back up to BatchBlue speed::

1. Read staff meeting agendas – ok, alright, I did this one while on vacation. Not to prove I work harder than anyone else, but just because leaving your business for a few weeks is like leaving your kids for a few weeks. You can’t not check in once in a while. So on staff meeting days I would check our company wiki and read through the notes that the team had taken during the meeting. Great way to peek in without being noticed.
2. Search of the daily staff updates – at BatchBlue each staff person sends around a daily report on what they are working on. I set up a filter in Gmail to collect these in a folder while I was gone, so it was pretty easy to quickly read through them chronologically and get a sense of what progress was made while I was out.
3. Click back through the history of my Twitter feed on the BatchBook dashboard to get a sense of what the Twitterverse was saying about BatchBlue, SBBuzz, or me.
4. I already have a “BatchBlue” folder in my Google Reader where I subscribe to a number of company related RSS feeds. So all in one place I get a quick glimpse of the following:
   • BatchBlue Blog posts written by the staff while I was gone.
   • BatchBook comments or notes added to contact records in BatchBook. For the most part these were silly remarks by staff about each other, but there is something comforting about catching up on some of the inside company jokes, as well.
   • BatchBlue communications including all e-mails, phone calls, Twitter messages or other communications sent out or received by BatchBlue staff. I admit I would flip back into BatchBook reading most of these – such a great way to remind myself who some of the e-mails recipients are (thank you social media SuperTag!).
   • Forum posts showed me all of the BatchBook questions and suggestions our customers posted in our online forums as well as the BatchBlue responses. I always learn something new in there.
   • Hubspot Feeds are the nice messages our friends at Hubspot send telling us about anyone in the wonderful world of the Web talking about us. A little self-indulgent, but in a good way.
5. And lastly there is the 200 pound gorilla: the Inbox! I learned my best trick from the Magic Fairy of Organization, Miss ChelPixie. I use the GMail Labs “Superstar” feature to do a once through of all of my outstanding e-mails and either delete them or color code them. I prioritize time sensitive messages, staff questions and customer requests. I group admin issues (mostly bills – ugh!) and personal ones. The first pass was read only – I had to get them organized first. And I did not let myself go to sleep that night until all messages were coded and all priority mail had gotten a response.

So I was able to start the week not only relaxed and refreshed, but with a comfortable sense of what I had missed and a manageable workload ahead of me. What better way to jump back on this speeding train!

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Way back in early 2008 (has it really been that long?), Michelle and I collaborated on what was then the second of our BatchBlue Blue Papers. Blue Papers, if you’re not familiar, are like white papers. Only… you know… blue. The paper was called Social Media for Small Business. It served as a primer for small business owners wondering how (or even if) they should get their businesses involved in social media.

Since 18 months is an eternity in the social media world, we decided it was time for an update. Some of the highlights:

• We expanded the Twitter section. This was necessary since in the last version we talked about how we were still skeptical of Twitter’s business applications. How the times have changed! The updates include discussion of tweet chats (like SBBUZZ!) and hashtags.
• In the social networking space, Facebook was brought to the forefront and MySpace was downplayed. When this was originally written, Facebook applications were all the rage. Remember those?
• We added StumbleUpon, a site that was totally left out of the first version.

Of course, a bunch of other minor changes were made. Please take a look at the new version of Social Media for Small Business. If you prefer your reading on paper instead of pixels, it has a nice print style sheet as well!

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It was quite a jungle at the world headquarters of MailChimp.com. There is apparently a pretty spunky monkey living there because there were mini stuffed offspring swinging through the entire office. I finally got a chance to meet the head chimp Ben Chestnut, who despite the fact that we’ve integrated our products, co-founded the Small Business Web, sponsored joint promotions, blogged, tweeted and just gotten downright social, I had never actually met or even talked to him person. While it was a treat to finally meet Ben and much of the MailChimp.com gang in person, the thing that really made it worth the trip was the in-person, real life witness of their passion for MailChimp, for small business, for e-mail campaigns and for monkeys. This are  the things that let you know you’re doing business with good people.

The other part of my visit was an unexpected camera-in-the-face live interview by that prankster Brent Leary of Social CRM (and Barack 2.0) fame. I know from following Brent on Twitter that he regularly DJs a retro hip-pop stream over the interwebs. So I had thought I was going to be sitting in on a WKRP moment, watching Venus FlyLeary rocking the airways. Boy was I surprised to spend the time talking about BatchBook, social CRM, #sbbuzz and cheese grits instead. It was the first I’ve ever had a giant microphone in my face and you know what? It was great fun.

If you can, it’s important to get out from behind the computer screen of and spend a little time meeting folks in your “social network” in the real world – you’ll learn new things about them and probably have a lot fun.

Thanks to Ben and Brent for being excellent hosts – our time together was definitely a highlight of my trip.

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While everybody in the company is at least a little involved in everything we develop at BatchBlue, BatchBlue.com is more or less the brainchild of Michelle and me. We’re constantly making updates, looking for ways to refine our message, grow our reach, etc.

But for this customer (and anyone else), what I want to do is make a list of what I would look for in an agency if (gasp!) BatchBlue were to outsource the development of BatchBlue.com.

Make sure they work with web standards.

It wasn’t long ago that just about every web developer (myself included) was building websites with tables and embedded styles. Now designing with web standards using HTML (or XHTML), CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), and Javascript) is the way to go. The thing is, to many small business owners, you really can’t tell the difference between a web site built with these up-to-date standards and one built on the legacy “table and font tag” approach just by looking at it.

So, what’s the big deal then?

A web site built the old way just might do the trick for you. Unless, of course, you want to do anything with it. Like change your logo. Or change your colors. Or add page with some special offers. Or optimize the site for mobile devices. Or have another developer work on it. At this point, a site built the old way can be terrible to work with.

You can see where I’m going here. If you want a quick website thrown together that you plan to completely replace in the future (when the budget is bigger or whatever), then maybe your nephew’s FrontPage skills will be just fine. But if you want a web site that will grow with you over time, get someone who knows about HTML, CSS, lean code, and “bulletproof” web design (designing with future modifications in mind).

You should see how different BatchBlue.com is compared with a couple years ago. Because it is built with clean code and CSS, every change is really just a tweak. No full redesign has ever been needed. The same could be said about BatchBook… but I would never show you what BatchBook looked like two years ago!

Make sure they provide samples of their work.

Beware of agencies that only show a “client list” with no portfolio. It sure is easy to put a big name like Microsoft or Apple on your “client list”. But if you’re going to do that, you need to explain what you did for these companies.

When I was in college, Apple was on my “client list”. How? I was a campus representive for Apple. So, I pretty much made flyers for my school’s campus store (and some other campus stores). Big difference from designing Apple.com, but technically Apple did pay me.

Any web agency should have an online portfolio that shows screenshots of their work. I also look for descriptions of what they worked on and how they built it. I’m also curious about when the work was done, so I can look for improvement over time.

Lastly, I look for either a link to the live site or a link to a page of code to look at. Doing a “View Source” on these pages may not mean much to you, so see if you can find someone you know that “gets” web development enough to at least say the company seems to know what they’re doing. Hey, shoot me a quick email and I can tell you in a couple minutes.

Make sure they’re responsive.

Let’s face it… there are high maintenance clients and low maintenance clients. If you’re a high maintenance one, let the agency know up front. If the prospect of getting your money doesn’t motivate them to answer your questions as timely and in as much detail as you’d like, nothing probably will.

Now, if your agency is high maintenance, you might perceive this as a bad thing. But trust me, it’s not. The more questions an agency asks up front, the more likely they will:

• Give you a more accurate quote.
• Give you something you actually like.
• Give you something your customers will find useful.

My friend Marc Amos just wrote a great post about his experiences as a high-quality agency trying to compete with agencies that provide lower, inaccurate quotes and mis-deliver because they don’t request information about the clients. Definitely worth a read if you’re looking for an agency.

Look for a blog or other writing.

Having a blog is not a requirement to build a web site. But when a web developer has a blog, it can tell you a lot. It can tell you that the agency keeps up with the latest technological trends and how they impact client work. It can give you some insight into the development process, such as how certain decisions were made. It can tell you the agency is really passionate about what they do.

You can also try to get an idea of how it might be to work with the agency. After all, you do need to spend quite a bit of time communicating with these people. If you’re a pretty low-key person and the agency projects an elitist persona in their writing, it just might not be a good match.

Remember that it’s your web site.

This can be a delicate one, coming from a designer. The goal of your company’s web site is to be a useful resource to your customers (and prospective customers). That should be the #1 goal both you and the designer have all along.

But the fact is, it’s your website and you need to be comfortable that it appropriately reflects your brand. The agency also has a lot of experience to draw from regarding what makes a successful web site. Sometimes heads will butt. Here’s my advice: Get any differences on the design of the site early.

The agency will likely be looking for sign-off on the design before they build it. Don’t sign off on it if you’re not happy. This might make the agency a bit cranky, but the truth is they should be happy that you’re taking the time to nail down these problems now instead of complaining about them later. You’re saving them a ton of work and headache later.

There’s a growing trend among agencies to shake the old “provide the client with two or three design options” model and just show one. I agree with that. Only pay for what you’re going to use. But if you don’t like that design option, that’s when you can talk about modifications or perhaps a different approach (which will likely add to the cost, but could mean your happiness with the site).

It can be tough for a non-designer to figure out what specifically they don’t like about a design. But try to be as specific as possible. Look for areas like:

• Font choice

  Serif fonts can have a more traditional and classic feel. Sans serif fonts have always traditionally been a more “modern” font choice while also being more readable on the web. However, with increased resolution and anti-aliasing in most browsers, the readability point is no longer a big deal. But if you have a playful site geared towards kids and the agency set it in Georgia (the font, not the state!), that might be why it doesn’t sit well with you.

• Color

  Color can be tricky. If you’re looking at the design and you’re thinking “There’s just not enough color”, two things might be at play. It could mean, perhaps, that there just simply isn’t enough color. Adding a photo or graphic, coloring some menus, or another similar tweak may do the trick. Or, it might be as simple as changing the colors that are already there to be a bit richer. A client of mine recently asked if we could try a particular blue instead of the one I was using. She was right. The links and headers now jumped off the page unlike they did before. It worked.

• White space

  You may think, “I’m paying for this website… I’m gonna use all the space I possibly can to convey my message.” That’s not the right approach, though. Many of your users are finding your site for the first time. If you overwhelm them, they will have no idea where to start. Let them ease into your website. Provide simple and effective messaging that will entice them to click for more.You may also be familiar with the concept of “the fold”. It’s an old print term that made it’s way into web design. Only on the web, “the fold” means “before scrolling”. Many clients used to designing for print want to cram everything they can above “the fold”. This is flawed in many ways on the web, though. First of all, no two devices are the same. A 13″ MacBook has a much different “fold” than a 24″ Dell widescreen HD monitor. You need to design for both users. So yes, things like a signup button, conversion forms and links to learn more should probably appear before the scroll bar does. But don’t try to get every bit of press or product info or whatever up at the top of the page. This is the web. People get the scrollbar now.

Perhaps the best way to tell if you’re going to be happy with the design an agency produces is by sticking with an agency with a portfolio you really like. In fact, if you see specific examples that you like, let them know. Not only will they appreciate that you like their work, it will also save them a lot of guesswork.

I hope this helps you in your quest to find a design agency! Have any more tips you came up with along the way? Let me know!

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Adam & Cheap Trick: A match made in CS heaven
If you’ve ever spent any time in the BatchBlue Forums, you’ve probably experienced the magic that is Adam Darowski. Adam is our User Experience designer known for his passion for good design, our customers and music. So the fact that he crafted an email to someone who was considering BatchBook that included a link to a Cheap Trick song came as no surprise to any of us. But the (potential) customer was so impressed, he wrote up a blog post about it, which was tweeted all around the socialsphere. And the best thing is that we have a new customer who appreciates our sense of humor.

Bedazzled by BatchBook brilliance
Robert Mattar wrote up a nice piece over at Posterous about his experience searching for a CRM that would work well for small businesses. His conclusion? He calls BatchBook “one of the most versatile and affordable applications” out there and even calls us “brilliant” in the post’s title. Thanks, Robert, we’re so glad BatchBook is working out for you since we think small businesses are where it’s at!

We love lists
People love lists and so do we, especially when we are on them! So here goes:

1. Our friend (and frequent @sbbuzz participant) Bradford Shimp posted this cool list of 9 Businesses to Follow and Get to Know on Twitter. He has fabulous things to say about BatchBlue, our @sbbuzz weekly chat session, and our own Queen Bee, Pamela!
2. One of our favorite small business marketing gurus, John Jantsch from Duct Tape Marketing, mentioned us as a way to keep track of your customers’ social media activities.
3. And last but never least, social media pirate Chris Brogan reveals what’s in his software booty chest (including BatchBook) in his recent post entitled A Quick and Inconclusive List of Software I Like.

It’s a fine time for wine: Cruvee/VinTank Case study
We’re also really excited to have our first full-blown case study posted on the site. Meet Cruvee/VinTank: VinTank, which solutions for selling and marketing wine in the digital age. One of VinTank’s portfolio companies, Cruvee, provides business intelligence and performance management services for the wine industry. Our case study delves into the specifics of how they are using BatchBook.

We’re looking forward to adding more case studies in the upcoming weeks. Drop us a line if you’re using BatchBook to help manage and grow your business and would like to be featured on our homepage – we’d love to share your story.

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BatchBook has had an API for some time now, but these updates really make it ready for prime time.  While this news only directly affects programmers, we’ll all benefit from the resulting integrations between BatchBook and other awesome tools. A recent post on ProgrammableWeb extolled the business case for APIs, and we’ve been supporting the same ideas via the Small Business Web.

As usual, this update to BatchBook wouldn’t have been as good without the involvement of some of our awesome users.  Several folks in the Developers Forum have been giving great feedback and helping other developers get started with the API.  I’d like to especially recognize Andrew Flusche and guedalia, who have been contributing sample PHP code for other users to use freely.  Thanks again, guys!

We’re really excited to see what great things you all will build with the BatchBook API.  I hope to see you in the Developers Forum if you have any questions or just want to show off what you’re working on.

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And we love to give props where props are due. So, yet again, that was a recommendation that came from the forums. In this case, forum user Barbara Ballard asked:

Inspired by the Marketing dashboard widget … I created “Barbara’s list”. It’s all current clients, alumni, leads, projects assigned to me. It’s who I should be thinking about this week, who I should pay attention to. … Now I want it on my dashboard.

We had been talking about doing a saved search widget. But when Barbara recommended putting Lists on the Dashboard, an bell went off in my head. First of all, Lists are already part of BatchBook. This would put something on the Dashboard that just about everybody is already using in their account. Nothing new to learn. Instant gratification. Secondly, a saved search is best handled as a list anyway. That way it will always update, always be accessible, always be exportable, etc.

It was the perfect solution.

Thank you, Barbara, for your excellent recommendation!

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The month of June has been a welcome return to the “flurry of updates” release schedule. Over at the BatchBook forums, Keri posts detailed notes about product releases. Today, I wanted to tell you about the “Greatest Hits” from these updates.

Batch Updating of SuperTags

Ever want to update the SuperTag field on dozens of contacts at once? Use the checkboxes on the Browse Contacts page to select a whole bunch of contacts (tip: filter by tag first!) and choose the “edit SuperTag field” batch action. With a couple quick clicks, you can update hundreds of contacts at a time!

Google Contacts 1-way Sync

Sean posted an update on the forums about Google Contacts sync becoming a one-way sync.

More Ways to Filter and Search

We known your contact list can grow quite large. Ours sure has! That’s why we’ve added a whole bunch of new ways to filter and search your contacts. Many of these were very popular requests on the forums.

• New Browse Contacts filter: Not contacted in past month: Will filter your contacts to show only those you have logged a communication with in the past month.
• New Browse Contacts filter: Not contacted: Will filter your contacts to show only those you have never logged a communication with.
• Advanced Search: Contact Type: In addition to “Individuals” and “Companies”, we now have an option for “Individuals & Companies”. Why? Because we also have one just for “Communications”!
• Advanced Search: Record Created: Search for records by date they were created. You can search for an exact date or for records created before or after a certain date. (Tip: Use multiple search criteria to search before a certain date and after another date to get a specific window of time).
• Advanced Search: Record Last Updated: Search for records based on the last time they were updated.
• Advanced Search: Record Last Communicated With: Search for contacts based on the last time you logged a communication with them (including an option for “never”.

Twitter and Google Search Widgets for all!

The live-updating Twitter Search and Google Search Dashboard widgets are now available for free accounts as well. Monitor your personal brand, your company brand, your competitors or your industry at large right on your BatchBook Dashboard!

New Dashboard widget: Lists View

This brand new widget gives you a dropdown menu of all Lists in your BatchBook account. Pick a list and see the contacts. There’s also one-click access to the List Report.

LinkedIn now part of Social Media SuperTag

As reported last week, LinkedIn profiles are now officially part of the Social Media SuperTag.

Default Tags & SuperTags

Last but not least, this is another popular one from the forums. Affectionately code-named “sticky tags” by forumgoers, you can now choose a tag or tags to be automatically applied to all contacts (or all individuals or all companies).

We hope you’ve enjoyed the recent updates. We promise more will come soon!

Want to see the complete list of updates?

• June 18 (1)
• June 18 (2)
• June 26

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Last night, BatchBlue Onboarding Specialist Stephanie Sweeney and I made the drive up to Boston to attend the Rock Stars of Social CRM event, hosted by Radian6 and Chris Brogan. They had a lot of fun with the Rock Star theme, complete with colored stage lights, concert tees and even a full-blown Rock Band set-up for audience members to rock out with after the panel.

The panelists included were Frank Eliason (Comcast), Paul Greenberg (Author of CRM at the Speed of Light), Michael Thomas (National President, CRM Association), and our favorite CRM go-to guy, Brent Leary (Co-author of Barack 2.0 and Co-founder of CRM Essentials).

Because we consider BatchBook to be a social CRM (slide via Brent Leary), I was curious to hear what the folks at the cutting edge had to say. I was especially impressed with Frank Eliason’s inclusion on the panel, since he represents a company that is actually out there doing all this stuff. While I always appreciate the bird’s eye view from consultants and experts, I have to agree with Doug Haslam of Shift Communications‘ assertion that he’s getting a bit impatient with social media.

After the panel, Doug and I had a brief conversation where I wondered if, when email entered the picture ten years or so ago, there were endless conferences and seminars and articles written about how email (a communication tool in the same way that social media is a communication tool) was going to fundamentally change the business world.

Admittedly, email did change the way companies interacted with their customers – I was in the customer service department at Amazon.com in 1997 and I witnessed it happening first-hand. Customers found it insane that we didn’t take phone orders; that Amazon was an Internet only company. At the time, we were too busy answering customer emails to talk about email as a tool.

That experience definitely influenced BatchBlue’s commitment to providing excellent service. One thing BatchBlue does using social media is host a weekly Twitter chat called SBBUZZ, where small business owners can talk about the issues (largely focused on social media and other technologies) that are most important to them. What’s nice about this event is that a real community of folks has developed there. Each week, there’s an opportunity for folks to share what’s working, what’s not, what kind of issues people are having, even just to swap funny stories about what happened over the course of the past week as they deal with running and growing their businesses.

If Social CRM is all about the customer, I guess what I’m missing at these big, “rock star” events is more of a presence from other small business owners who are in the trenches, actually using these tools to build their customer relationships every day. There are plenty of Rock Stars out there, talking to each other on SBBUZZ and similar social media places. And my favorite Rock Star, Stephanie, was sitting right next to me. She in every way embodies customer service and building customer relationships done right. I’d wear her concert tee any day.

Image: Chris Penn a.k.a. Financial Aid Podcast via flickr

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Out of the box, the Social Media SuperTag allows you to enter a contacts usernames on Twitter, Flickr, or Delicious and we’ll show the last three tweets, photos, or bookmarks. You can also enter a Blog feed and see excerpts of the last three posts. This will actually work for any RSS feed. In the screencast below, I add a Slideshare presentations, Last.fm recent tracks, and BatchBook forum feeds to a contact record.

We think this is a great way to see what’s on the mind of your most valuable contacts right before you pick up the phone or start that email. Watch below to see the Social Media SuperTag in action!

The Flash Video runs 5:18 and is 34.9MB. (Download iPod compatible version, 17.5MB)

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I also had a birthday right around that time, so the oh-so-thoughtful Sean figured that made it a perfect time to upgrade my laptop. So, I went from the older white MacBook to the shiny new aluminum one. While I love the new computer, it is with some hesitance I let the white one go. The thing has been essentially an extension of my body for the last couple of years. And let’s just say, it’s been well loved:

This was the first laptop I ever stickered up. Each sticker has a story and now is as good a time as any to share them.

1. Belle: Before we had our lovely Providence office, we were a completely virtual company. Living rooms became conference rooms. One day, I got up from sitting on the floor at Pam’s house. I had a Belle sticker stuck to my butt. Pam has three kids, so this isn’t very surprising. The laptop was already well-stickered at this point, so on it went.
2. BatchBook: Well, that’s us silly!
3. Twitter: When Saul Colt sent me an autographed FreshBooks sticker (see #8), he also tossed in an extra Twitter sticker. While there may not be many things I like more than Twitter, Saul Colt is one of them.
4. WordPress: I’m a big WordPress fan, and Matt Mullenweg gave this sticker to me at SXSW 2007 after I said something nice to him. I saved the sticker until I finally had something worthy to stick it to.
5. HubSpot: As the developer of a marketing website, I love HubSpot. So many things that were previously trial and error have become well oiled machines (SEO keyword selection, inbound link monitoring, etc.). HubSpot even interviewed Michelle and I for a case study (and released a portion of the interview for their inbound marketing blog). The fact that I just linked to them with their favorite SEO keyword shows you what I learned from HubSpot!)
6. SimpleBits: Similar to the WordPress sticker, I had this one for a while (since 2006) before applying it to something. SimpleBits is the design shop run by Dan Cederholm in Salem, MA. I got the sticker (and my trademark SimpleBits shirt that I always seem to be photographed in) at a Carson Systems workshop with Dan. Dan’s books and his blog heavily inspired the approach I take to design. And he’s a swell guy to boot.
7. Creative Commons: Michelle gave this one to me, and Creative Commons is a wonderful thing. Personally, I often pretend it’s a CC Chapman sticker.
8. FreshBooks: As mentioned in #3, this was given to me Saul Colt (that’s his autograph!). At the time, he was the Head of Magic for FreshBooks. Now he holds the same title for Zoocasa.com.
9. iStockPhoto: Like HubSpot, iStockPhoto just makes my life so much easier. Specifically, I’ve written before about how Kemie (an iStockPhoto contributor) is essentially an honorary member of the BatchBook design team. I got this sticker from the nice iStock team at SXSW in 2008.
10. bata: When Stephanie went to Japan, she had a little sticker set to help her learn the language. One of her favorite words in Japanese was bata (butter). It kind of became an inside joke and the sticker found it’s way on my laptop.
11. Firefox: Along with the WordPress sticker, I got this one at SXSW in 2007 and saved it. While I use Safari for browsing, Firefox simply can’t be beat as a development browser.
12. Kidoinfo: Kidoinfo is a Rhode Island-based site for parents run by our friend Anisa. Anisa has built an amazing resource for local parents. It’s so handy to quickly find something to do on a rainy day!
13. Barcamp Austin III: Michelle and I made it for the very end of Barcamp during SXSW in 2008. Barcamp is an “unconference” (meaning it is essentially a “user-generated” conference put on by the attendees themsevles). We missed out on the sessions, but we did get to hang out for the incredible live karaoke band Karaoke Apocalypse. That was the night my respect for Chris Brogan and Laura Fitton shot throught he roof.
14. DEMOfall07: The very last one is the very first sticker to grace the MacBook. When we launched our public beta at DEMOfall07 in San Diego, this laptop was the demo unit. It’s just a simple inkjet label with the company name, station number, and date & time we presented (which actually changed, so it’s not totally accurate). But it might be my favorite of all the stickers.

I’ve been using Macs exclusively since my dad got us an Apple IIGS in 1986. I’ve had quite a few Macs over the years. This white MacBook was definitely my favorite since my beloved PowerBook G3 Pismo. It was powerful. It was dependable.

And it had stickers.

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