I particularly like this video which has some great headline statistics and facts:

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The presentation promotes the Socialnomincs book by Eric Qualman – Socialnomics: How Social Media Transforms the Way We Live and Do Business

I have put the slides on Slideshare and have embedded below:

Also some quick guides that I mentioned:

Twitter Quick Tips Guide

Social Media Tips

Follow these simple steps to get a CSV file that you can open in a spreadsheet or text editor

1. Select your contacts list from the Linkedin Menu (once you have logged in of course):

2. Scroll Down the screen to the bottom right and click the link called ‘Export Connections’:

3. A list of file formats are available but the Outlook format should be fine to get the information out into a reasonable file that you can keep or import to many other systems.

The slides are available below:

To help you plan your 9 minutes a day LinkedIn has summarised all the activities which you can drag and drop on to the on screen calendar.

These calendar events can then be downloaded into an .ics file which can then be imported into most popular calendar programs. I have done a quick tutorial video on how to import this file into Google Calendar:

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There are also a few fun videos linked to some of the activities like this one:

[youtube-http://youtu.be/tylHcct6b-U]

As well as this Twitter embeds are made even easier. Copy in the tweet url and WordPress formats as a visible formatted tweet:

https://twitter.com/philoakley/status/212975420352630786

So if you already have WordPress then get upgrading and if your not using WordPress…why not?

Here is a recent video produced by a company from the SPEED programme Stone’s Throw Media from a recent SPEED WM event held at Villa Park.

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But Stone’s throw are in good company with other great film companies that have also been on the SPEED programme including:

Humanoid Productions

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And of course not forgetting Stafford’s very own Lilac Films

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I think Podio really could have something for everyone:

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Although Google+ may become a great collaborative tool Google already have many great services that can be used for collaboration for teams and businesses. I have listed below the seven I think can be the most useful:

1 – Google Sites

Google’s website builder allows people without any knowledge of HTML or web design to create relatively simple sites quickly and easily. While currently it is not that popular for building your main business website it is a very useful tool to create sites for events, projects or a one-off requirement. You can have a custom domain URL such as mycompany.com or use the standard free URL’s such as https://sites.google.com/site/eduonair. For collaboration a Google site can have many users who can either view or edit content. Importantly the viewing of the site can be restricted to a small or large group which is very helpful if you are working a project either internally or involving external people. One of the best things about Google sites is that you can easily include other Google services within the site for example if you are using Google Groups, Google Calendar or any Google docs, all mentioned below, they can all be shown on the site giving you a central area for all project related information and services.

Link to Google Sites – https://sites.google.com/

2 – Google Groups

Google’s group discussion software will allow you to create your own discussion or forum group where users can post comments or questions which other users can read, discuss, answer or comment on in a threaded conversation. A threaded conversation means that you will see all comments and updates on one discussion going down the page. One of the benefits of groups is that it can keep group discussions out of email and kept in a designated place making it easy to be very active in one discussion while being able to effectively ignore topics that do not interest you. But if you do like to be updated by email on discussions you can choose to receive email on group discussions either by an email for each post or a summary digest. The email options will allow a user to do all discussion by email without ever having to visit the group web page. Groups can be public or for collaboration can be private to only the members you invite. A Google Group could be used for many purposes including a specific event, project, subject or just for a group or team who need a space for online discussion. If you have used a Linkedin Group and then you could think of a Google Group as private (or public) Linkedin group. A Google group can also be shown on your own a Google site.

Google Groups Home Page

Link to Google Groups – https://groups.google.com/

3 – Google Docs

Google’s online office suite allows you to create and upload documents. The main two programs that many of us would use would be the word processor and spreadsheet. While neither the Google spreadsheet or word processor can compete on advanced functionality with the products of their Microsoft equivalents the Google products are great for collaboration and sharing. Documents are hosted online and can be shared, for viewing or editing, with a group of the document owners choice. You can collaborate on documents in realtime actually seeing other users type letter by letter and can have a chat window so editors can leave messages for each other. As well as a spreadsheet and word processor there is a presentation program similar to Powerpoint, a drawing program and math calculation. The last application worth a mention is an online form builder which can be used for creating web questionnaires which could be used for internal teams right through to being made available to all web users.

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Link to Google Docs – https://docs.google.com/

4 – Google Calendars

A big part of team collaboration can be time management. Tracking where people were in the past, are at this present time and where they will be in the future can help manage projects. Time is the knowledge workers greatest asset and it’s not just for meetings and milestones that teams need to work on calendars together. Google Calendar is an online calendaring system that will allow you to share a calendar with a single person, a team or even the world. As with many of the apps we have already mentioned sharing can be set to read only or edit. There is also an option to show time as busy without detailing any information which is useful if you are not looking to share all of your calendar information. Being able to view all of a teams calendars is very useful but you can also create project or team specific calendars which can detail any time sensitive information such as deliverables or schedules.

Google Calendars can be shared publicly or privately

Link to Google Calendar – https://www.google.com/calendar

5 – Google+

This is Google’s answer to Facebook and social networking like Twitter but also it is so much more. In many ways Google+ could be the platform that glues all of the items in this list together making the project ‘joined up’. Google+ for businesses could be seen as an Enterprise Collaboration tool allowing you to communicate and collaborate with other team members quickly and easily. Two great features of Google + are Hangouts (mentioned below) and Circles. Circles allow you to easily add contacts to groups. So if you had a team for a specific project then you can add all of those people to a named circle so you could share information with just them. If you have more than one project team you could set a circle for each one and if there is someone who is a member of more than one group then they can be a member of more than one circle.

Google+ can be used for team collaboration

Link to Google+ – http://www.google.com/+/business/

6 – Hangouts

Google Hangouts is a new product which is part of Google+ their social site to rival Facebook. Essentially Google Hangouts is a video VOIP conversation (a bit like Skype) which can include a large or small group of people. As well as being an excellent way for disparate teams to meet and discuss their projects it is also adding even more collaborative tools such as sharing and working on a Google Doc (see above) directly in the hangout and also screen sharing allowing you to show your computer screen to a group of people on a hangout or for you to see someone else’s.

Google Hangouts can be used for Business Collaboration

Link to Google Hangouts – http://www.google.com/tools/dlpage/res/talkvideo/hangouts/

7- Blogger

Blogger has been part of Google for many years. This blogging software allows anyone to quickly post information on to the web whether a web diary or a detailed information website. Blogger is a great tool for teams who want to post information on to a central site that could be seen by the group. Because commenting on a blog post is standard functionality within Blogger it can also be used for discussion on the posts that are uploaded. As with many of the systems mentioned above you could share a blog publicly or keep ir private just to team members.

Google Blogger for Collaboration

Link to Google Blogger – www.blogger.com

Note: To use any of these services you will need to have signed up to a Google Account whether this is a via your own email, a Gmail account or a Google Apps account.

If you are looking to get tools to help with your collaboration then Google has quite a bit to offer whether with just one of these solutions or by using a few of them for an integrated way

Google also of course provides email but it is my view that as useful as email can be that the tools above are better used for collaboration.

The podcast is available on iTunes (and other podcatchers) but all of the latest interviews are also available embedded on the individual post on UKNetcasts:

StaffsMA interview with Nicola Green at Cyberzia
StaffsMA interview with John Capper
StaffsMA interview with Caroline Law
StaffsMA interview with Damian Brittleton Revive Creative

Every month a group of volunteers offer advice and support to local charities, community groups and clubs in Staffordshire . The next Stoke Stone and Stafford Social Media Surgery will be in Stafford at the Titanic Sun Inn on Monday 9th January at 7pm.

If you know any groups who you think would benefit please point them in the direction of the sign up form. If you can lend a hand or would just like to come along and talk social media also please register.

All details including sign up is on the SSSSMS page of Social Media Surgeries.

Tip 1 of 10 – Don’t use Standard Suppliers Product Descriptions

If you use product descriptions that you have been given by your supplier Google can see this as duplicate content and the web pages can be ignored in preference of the suppliers own sites or other competition. Putting a bit extra effort into good quality and original descriptions can make all the difference to being found online and therefore to sales. Create keyword rich links from within the product descriptions of one product linking to another. Make links descriptive don’t use the words ‘more’ or ‘click here’ on link text.

I have removed most of the social sharing buttons from this site and will start to add Google+ options to see the functionality and track.

As an aside as looking at the Google+ options I came across the the Google+ profile button that you can add to your site. Grab your Google+ profile URL and pick your size and you can get the code to produce a button like:

Small



Standard



Medium



Tall

Packt Open Source has this week announced a series of discounts on its selection of best selling Open
Source books. Readers will be offered exclusive discounts off the cover price of selected print books and
eBooks for a limited period only.

So far in 2011, Packt Open Source announced in March that its donations to Open Source projects has
surpassed the $300,000 mark, while in April insight into various projects was offered during the ‘Believe
in Open Source’ campaign and July’s series of discounts continue this trend of Packt showing its
commitment to the Open Source community.

The Packt Open Source books included in this exclusive discount offer include well known books such
as JBoss AS 5 Performance Tuning, PHP jQuery Cookbook, Drupal 7 Module Development and Blender
Lighting and Rendering, amongst others.

“This special discount showcases a host of Packt Open Source topics and allows readers to purchase
some of our most well renowned books at an exclusive price” said Packt Open Source Marketing
Executive Julian Copes. “

To ensure you do not miss this fantastic offer, visit the special discount page now, where you can view
the extensive list of books included in the offer and access an array of related articles that were written
by the authors.

The exclusive discounts are available from 4th July 2011. To find out more, please visit the Packt website.

Before upgrading you may want to use the WordPress Requirements Plugin as 3.2 changes the minimum requirements for both PHP and MySQL. WordPress 3.2 will require PHP 5.2.4 and MySQL 5.0

It’s also worth noting that support for some older browsers has also been dropped. If using any modern analytics package you should easily be able to see the browser versions you visitors are using to see how much of an effect this may have for your site. In Google Analytics From the Visitors menu select Browsers and then you can click on each browser listed to see the version number visitors are using like this:

Google Analytics Browser Versions Report

In WordPress 3.2 the browser’s no longer supported include Internet Explorer 6 which is still used widely around the world. To encourage people to keep their browser up to date WordPress also have their Browse Happy campaign:

WordPress Browse Happy Campaign

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AN4_N5N52U

• Home Page
• Contact Us Page
• Policy Pages (Privacy etc)
• Category Pages
• Landing Pages

In common with many good CMS, especially open source examples, Magento has a theme that controls the look and feel of the site. Some themes can come by default, which can often be tweaked, themes can be purchased for companies (known as commercial themes) and of course you can design your own. This can often be where the fun/problems start. CMS theming is not designed to too difficult but some CMS themes are easier than others. Nearly all modern theme styles (colours, fonts etc) are controlled by CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and a good knowledge of HTML and CSS will certainly help you get started with theming. Magento is written in PHP and uses XML but very little knowledge is required in these areas to get to good results from theme designing although clearly knowledge of these is not going to be of any harm.

Even with a reasonable knowledge of CSS and HTML, Magento is known to be quite hard to theme and I think there is demand for a good book fully explaining end to end Magento theme designing so it’s great to see Packt Publishing releasing a dedicated book on theme designs for the latest version of Magento 1.4 by Richard Carter (author of many other good books on open source CMS’s).

I recently reviewed Packt Publishings’s Magento Development Cookbook where I wrote about a ‘cookbook’ style allowing you to dip in and out and I think it’s worth saying that in reading this Magento Themes Design Book, in my opinion, you will get the most benefit from starting at the beginning of the book and working your way through. There are are a few reason for this but mainly because Richard uses a particular way to create/edit themes and actually uses a live example most of the way through the book which he builds on as the book progresses. That said I am sure that someone with good Magento experience and CSS knowledge coud dip in and out and get a lot from the book.

Below I have summarised each chapter quickly and put my conclusion at the bottom:

Chapter 1: Introduction to Magento
The book starts with a good introduction to Magento including some examples of well known sites using Magento and explaining some differences between Magento 1.3 to 1.4. The introduction also includes a good install guide for anyone who is starting from scratch and installing Magento including how to get the all important file permissions correct.

Chapter 2: Exploring Magento themes
Themeing Magento can be challenging and I think it’s crucial that anyone wanting to theme Magento understands the basic concepts and terminology. Properly understanding the, often unique, key parts of Magento themes including the Skins, Layouts, Templates and Locales makes it so much easier even when you are only making simple tweaks. This is a well explained chapter and an introduction to some of the best practices in Magento theming that will be especially important when going through any required upgrades. Not following best practice can make the upgrade process more difficult as your theme can be deleted by being overwritten if you have changed the core Magento theme files.

Chapter 3: Magento Theme Basics
Even an ecommerce store that is planning on using the default theme still needs to change certain items on the site. This chapter covers essential items including changing the store logo and favicon (both of which use the Magento logo by default if not changed).

Chapter 4: Magento Theme Layouts
Chapter four starts at page 99 which shows how much information there is introducing Magento and looking at the basics which in my opinion is essential to anyone who ones to get the most from this book and from Magento theming. In this chapter we start to get into the meat of Magento theme design. Introducing Magento’s XML layout files and Block Names and their paths which can often confuse many people (including me). The chapter has some great details on using Path Hints to help understand how layouts are controlled which can be very important when trying to debug a design or just wanting to understand why a page or area looks the way it does.

Chapter 5: Non-Default Magento Themes
In this chapter Richard introduces the concepts of designing your own theme from scratch, which I think is what a lot of users want to do. The thing I like about this book the most is that Richard uses a practical example and starts to build up a new theme that we can then follow throughout the rest of the book. The example uses the best practice method for creating a new theme and as you might expect the chapter contains quite a bit of CSS (which can be downloaded from the Packt Publishing site if you buy the book).

Chapter 6: More Magento Theming
Much has been done to make the example theme individual already in the preceding chapter but one of the great things about Magento is just how much you can customise it. This chapter looks at ways you can use fonts which you would not normally think of using but can now thanks to integrating @font-face. In addition how you can change a stores navigation, login page and product views all things that will make your site original and hopefully stand out from the competition.

Chapter 7: Customizing Advanced Magento Layout
Despite the title of this chapter there are some great ideas explained in relatively simple steps and a lot are items that all Magento store owners should consider including getting better error message pages especially the horribly unhelpful ’404 messages’ that can be presented to your customers. Having error messages that are a bit more user friendly which should hopefully reduce your lost customers and improve your bounce rate. As covered earlier in the book Blocks can be used very effectively to add style and content in this chapter we see show we can add additional Blocks if required.

Chapter 8: Magento Templates
As should be expected of a fully functional ecommerce platform Magento has a full suite of transactional emails which can be automatically sent to a customer when orders are placed, products are delivered and account management tasks are performed (changing account password etc). But the real power of these templates is tailoring them with your own stores individual messages ensuring a communication experience with your customer. An area often neglected by many stores.

Chapter 9: Social Media and Magento
Having an open source and customisable platform like Magento means that you should be able to move quickly with the times. The current popularity of Social Media and Networking platforms in many areas of ecommerce is undeniable. Facebook and Twitter are the current favourites of ‘Social Shopping’ and in this chapter Richard shows how we can add the all important Social Media buttons (follow us on Twitter etc) and how widgets can be integrated into your store. Also how to include the now popular Facebook ‘Like’ button to your site and product pages so your items can be automatically posted to peoples Facebook profiles.

Chapter 10: Magento Print Style
As much as the web can be good for the environment, in saving paper, it is sometimes understandable that some customers will want to print off product pages for reference or sharing and having a nicely formatted and presented print format could help in getting that final sale. In the final chapter Richard explains how print stye sheets and in particular how theme specific print style sheets can achieve this.

Conclusion
I have read many books about Magento and in my opinion Packt Publishings are some of the best. Although there are some good general and cookbook style Magento books around I think Magento Theming is an area that requires a dedicated book and I would say that if you are serious about your ecommerce store and getting the most from Magento I think Magento Theme Design 1.4 by Richard Carter is well worth a read – cover to cover.

It is also important to note that many of the books currently available for Magento are based on version 1.3 that this book is currently as up to date as you can get (as far as I am aware all of the book is relevant to the recently released version 1.5) being based on 1.4, this is especially important as there has been some significant changes in the area of themes in version 1.4 from 1.3.

There is no doubt that Magento theme designing can be daunting and the more knowledge you have of HTML, CSS, XML and possibly of other CMS themes the less steep the learning curve well be. There is also certainly a big incentive to change the default theme as to me it is very ugly. The results you can get from just some of the techniques in this book can be make a huge difference to the look of you Magento store.

Overall I enjoyed the style of the book and particularly found the build up of Richard’s example site useful. A great feature of the book is that you can download the code used in the books which includes css files, xml files and even the images used in the examples.

Although not directly related to the book itself it is nice to see Packt Publishing supporting the ePub format as well as PDF. Also I think it’s worth mentioning how good it is that we have such strong writers on open source technologies in The United Kingdom (especially the North of the country), the author Richard Carter from Peacock Carter in the North East of the UK is clearly an expert in his field and it would appear from real hands on experience and not just theory.

If you have no CSS skills at all probably best to start with a good CSS book. Overall a great book for anyone looking to improve their Magento theming skills.

If you would like the chance to win this book there is a competition to win the Magento Themes Design 1.4 ebook on this blog which will end on Sunday 3rd April 2011

Full Disclosure
I received a free PDF book from Packt Publishing for the review and also a free pdf for a competition being run on this blog but as I already have a online subscription (which I pay for myself) I could have read the book for free so there is actually no real economic value in this for me. If I appear a Packt Publishing fanboy that is probably because I am but due to that fact that they release some fantastic books of which I would include this one. For even fuller disclosure, although I have access to affiliate links for both Packt Publishing and Amazon I have not included any of these on this post and no links on this post generate income for me. That is not to say that there are not other parts of my website or posts that do include affiliate links but where there are they will usually state it. I am not adverse to contributions to hosting costs etc.