Tools for the busy professional 
A few months ago I was working on a Saturday morning and trying to find technologies that would make my live easier. It dawned on me that I need technology to keep up with technology. The world is changing so quickly and new things are popping up all over the place. I know I feel like my days should change to 48 hours instead of 24 just so I can get everything done. I have found some tools that have slightly countered this phenomenon and I would like to share them.
Now I find that I often have time available to me when I’m traveling between clients or even have some time to kill between meetings. These are the times that I need my digital life to be available to me. Now my example is specific to my situation and as such will be based on the iPhone but this is applicable to most phone brands in some form or way. I have my entire life synced on my phone. I can send emails, look up business and personal contacts and even access my important documents. My contacts are also synced automatically with my Mac and visa-versa. This has enabled me to do business using my phone when I have time.
There are a few tools that you could use to sync your life. If you are an Apple user Apple have a service that integrates into everything called MobileMe this offers you syncing of your emails, contacts and offers you storage space online that you can access from your phone or other computers. There is however a free option. Google offers you functionality to sync your emails and contacts in a similar way to MobileMe the only difference is that it’s free. To have online storage you could make use of Dropbox, which integrates with all platforms, and you can even access it with only a browser. This means that you’re never far away from your important documents.
Other than that my whole life is stored on my phone. I use my phone to store my to-dos, which keeps my life organized. I also have the option to sync this with my Mac or computer, which means I don’t need to always access my phone to see what I have to-do today.
My last but one of the most important tools I use is an rss feed reader. Now these have been around for a long time but I have found that many people still don’t use them. I need to stay up to date in my job and this means reading hundreds of articles every week. I have certain key industry sites that I need to keep track of and checking these everyday would take up quite a fair amount of my time. RSS feed readers have made it possible for me to login to one program where I have subscribed to each site’s feed and then see the new content instantly. I have even synced this with my phone so I can read them on my phone when I have a bit of extra time. This has meant that I really get to use my time more effectively.
As you can see I’m a big evangelist of syncing your digital life so it is always available to you but also so it is always backed up. If you have any interesting tools, which I didn’t mention, please post it below. And use those feed readers to subscribe to our feed, so you can stay up to date with the rest of the tools we will be posting this week.
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New Google’s new SERP interface
Since yesterday you might have noticed the change of Google’s search results page. They have changed the look and feel making it easier to find exactly what you are looking for and with additional tools to help enhance your search experience on Google.
What’s new?
They have added left-hand navigation navigation to the page, this gives you quick access to relevant options and tools. Google will pick up that some content are more important than others, so with a click you can change the type of information you want, you wil easily be able to switch between news, images or video’s if you want to. The more relevant information will be shown first but you can always click on the more button to view other results.
You can customize your results and generate different views. you can view you examples on a timeline or restrict your results to the last 24 hours.
Other than the left-hand side changes they have updated the look and feel in terms of the colours and the logo. The new design streamlines the look, feel and functionality of Google making it easier to find what you are looking for.
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Google Adwords policy adjustment for display URLs
The display URL is the URL displayed on your ad to identify your site to users. Google adjusted their display URL policy for sites that sit on shared or hosted domains (such as blogspot.com) to make this more clear.
As from this week, all ads leading to sites on hosted domains will need to have display URLs that accurately reflect their destinations.
Let’s say I wanted to create an ad linking to this blog: http://adwords.blogspot.com. In the past, blogspot.com would have been an acceptable display URL. Because there are so many independent blogs hosted on http://blogspot.com however, we now require the display URL to reflect the specific blog reached upon clicking the ad– in this case: adwords.blogspot.com.
Incorrect:
Destination URL: http://adwords.blogspot.com
Display URL: blogspot.com
Correct:
Destination URL: http://adwords.blogspot.com
Display URL: adwords.blogspot.com