Although Android and iPhone use base is expanding at exponential rate, we cannot ignore considerably large number of BlackBerry users across the world. This smartphone has successfully penetrated the business professionals' community and is used widely across the globe. No smartphone is good enough without supporting applications, and BlackBerry is no different. Whether it's a productivity utility or a social media application, almost every smartphone user relies on these small applications to turbo charge their phones. Here's a list of best BlackBerry applications that are extremely useful for daily use.
BlackBerry Messenger - This is a must-have application for every BlackBerry owner. Apart from regular text chat, you can share pictures and videos with your contacts. Animated avatars and customizable chat bubbles makes the whole chat experience memorable.
Advanced RAM Optimizer Pro - Nowadays smartphone users regularly run multiple applications at one time. This eats up precious memory and may result in slow performance. Through this memory optimization app, you can free your unused memory very easily and can speed up your BlackBerry experience. It can be done either manually or the application can be scheduled to run at regular intervals.
World Clock Free - This application is a must-have for frequent travelers. World clock support large number of cities (over 1500) from across the globe. It automatically detects the time-zone configuration in your BlackBerry and displays city times accordingly. Its smart auto-complete search facility lets you find cities from its database very easily. You can also use large clock display for better readability.
Advanced Call Manager - This is an all-in-one solution for managing your incoming and outgoing calls. You can create different lists of contacts and can assign custom functions (busy tone, recorded message, call rejection) either to the entire list or to individual phone numbers. You can also create different profiles with custom functions for different time periods in a given day.
Pattern Lock Free - Apart from regular keypad locking system in BlackBerry, users often look for a more secure locking system that prevents unauthorized access to the phone. This useful application lets you lock your phone through making pattern on screen by sliding fingers. To unlock, you have to remake the pattern by sliding fingers on the screen.
Network Traffic Control - This application is ideal for heavy internet users. If you have a limited data plan, this application can save your internet bill effectively. Apart from regularly monitoring your radio, GPRS and Wi-Fi traffic, this handy application also alerts you if the usage crosses your specified limit.
WordPress for BlackBerry - If you own a self-hosted WordPress blog, this application can be a life-saver for you. You can post and edit your posts directly from your BlackBerry, while you're on the go. Make sure your web server runs WordPress version 2.9.2 or higher. You can also upload and embed multimedia elements in your blog posts through this application.
Dropbox - This is yet another useful application for freelancers and bloggers. Dropbox is one of the most popular file hosting service. Now you can directly manage your Dropbox account from your BlackBerry. You can upload, browse and download your files and folders through this awesome application.
MaraTick - This is a powerful to-do list and task manager. Its intuitive and excellent interface lets you create multiple to-do lists very easily. Integrated calendar and dictionary makes the list creation task - a cakewalk. You can also create list templates and can also create copies of your lists with a touch of a button.
Advanced Device Locks - If you store sensitive data on your smartphone, then you must install this application on your BlackBerry. This powerful application lets you password-protect almost any application on the phone. This way you can protect files, folders, messages, contact lists, messenger apps, social media apps and much more. Simply select the object you want to protect and assign a password when prompted by the application.
Friday, January 27, 2012
10 Best BlackBerry Applications For Everyday Use
Thursday, January 26, 2012
How To Use Two-Way Secure Login For Your Web Apps
An average web surfer holds dozens of accounts on various online web services that includes email and social media websites. Although the authentication system for these popular services is secure enough, but you're not guaranteed of immunity from hackers looking to crack weak passwords. There's no silver bullet for 100% secure login procedure, but still we can make it harder for hackers to infiltrate you service logins. Let's see an excellent application that uses dual-login method to protect your accounts login session on various web applications.
AlterEgo is a powerful yet simple-to-implement dual authentication service that hardens the security of your logins on web applications. This methodology is based on a simple principle of supplementing the native login procedure with one more pass code generated on a random basis at the time of login. Unless user doesn't enter this temporary pass code, access to the service is not permitted even if the primary service password is correct.
Any web service supporting AlterEgo dual-authentication like MailChimp (as shown in the image above) can offer users a powerful dual-authentication option. This service is completely free with no limitations or restrictions. Once you've connected your web service with AlterEgo's dual-authentication, users are prompted for entering the temporary pass code as soon as they've entered the primary password associated with that web service. This temporary password can be generated instantly in two ways. You can either generate it within your AlterEgo account dashboard or you can use your smartphone.
Fortunately, AlterEgo provides two free pass code generating mobile applications for iPhone and Android users. This enables all mobile users to generate pass codes while on the go. Integrating this authentication system with new web applications is very easy. AlterEgo provides an open API based on JSON system that can be easily connected with almost any web application without much coding.
Once you start using this service, a hacker's work becomes more difficult. He not only has to crack your primary service password, but also have to steal your mobile to fetch the random pass code. This makes the probability of your account being hacked very low.
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
5 Ways To Make Your Website User Friendly
Website optimization is an ongoing process and includes better browsing experience for the visitors. Apart from optimization for speed, visual elements also need to be improved to increase the engagement. This can be done by making necessary changes in key elements of the web page. Here's are some of the simple optimization methods that can make your website a better place for the visitors.
Breadcrumbs - If your website has deep navigational structure, you must implement breadcrumbs to facilitate easy navigation. It's not only considered good for SEO, but also provide easy visual indication of browsing path to the visitor.
Related content - Whether it's a static website or a dynamic weblog, you must provide a way to display related content on the web page. You can either include it either just below the main content or can display it in the sidebar.
Contact page - Often webmasters ignore this page or do not make it correctly. Contact page plays a big role in making connection with visitors. It should be prominently highlighted on every web page and you must provide more than one way (email, submission form) to contact you.
Author pages - Whatever content is posted on the website, it must be supplemented with a link to the author page. This not only makes a strong connection with the reader, but also gives the impression that it is not run by a bot.
Illustrations - If you're not using pictures with your content, your repelling large number of users. Wherever possible, use informative illustrations to spice up your content. This greatly enhances browsing experience and makes visitors more engaging during their visit session.
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
8 Free And Powerful Help Desk Software
Whether you're running a small business or a large enterprise, customer service is one of the primary business processes that are vital for the existence of the company. Depending on the type of business, custom help desk systems are implemented by businesses. If you have a geographically dispersed customer base and want to implement a robust online help desk system in a limited budget, you must use one of the software presented here. They are used by large number of users across the world and include lots of features to run your help desk system efficiently. 
Hesk Help Desk: It is a web-based help desk system powered by PHP and back end database. Hesk provides a free version that includes ticket support system with different levels of priority. Customers can submit tickets along with attachments through Hesk. They can even rate support staff responses. Email notifications from both ends work seamlessly for speedy solution of the issue.
SpiceWorks Help Desk: This is an excellent technical help desk system for IT professionals and similar companies. Users can submit tickets via web interface or directly through their email. Multiple users can maintain this help desk system easily through dedicated control panels. Powerful internal search in this system lets support staff mine relevant customer tickets easily. It is ideal for businesses selling computer products or companies offering IT-based services.
NeuQs Help Desk: This is a powerful suite for customer service and related tasks. NeuQs uses .NET Framework and Microsoft Silverlight to power the entire system. It has automated priority-based ticket system for reporting incidents and issues. With comprehensive audit trail and event logs, administrators are assured that no ticket is left unanswered or is resolved slowly. This help desk system is also ideal for IT-based processes.
Revelation Help Desk: The free version of this help desk system supports up to 5 support staff with a single installation. There's no time limit or restriction on the free edition and you can run a small to medium-sized customer support system with minimum budget. It is a web-based system with different levels of user accounts and powerful ticket management module. An integrated email notification system ensures things are done as fast as possible.
iKode HelpDesk X: It is one of my favorite help desk system. This system has an awesome auto-responder module that is completely configurable as per your requirements. An integrated rating system ensures your support staff is always on their toes. It also incorporates detailed reporting system to keep track of every aspect of the entire system. iKode also has a powerful and flexible email notification system.
SysAid IT Help Desk: This help desk system is ideal for businesses looking to implement customer-based service request system. Users can submit their requests through online web interface and can track their request's progress. Automated escalation matrix ensures that support ticket is transferred to senior staff in case it is not resolved in time. You can also create multiple custom reports to analyze the performance of the entire system.
Service Desk Plus: It is more than a help desk system and is ideal for medium-sized businesses to implement help desk, asset management and purchase management systems. It is completely web-based and includes tickets for incident reporting. The free edition supports up to 25 desks which is enough to power a medium sized support system. It also includes custom reporting module for customers' data as well as for analyzing support staff performance.
Web Help Desk: This is a robust web-based incident tracking system and is ideal for technical support business processes. It can run both on Windows and Linux systems and supports wide range of popular database management systems for back end database. Its powerful two-way email notification system and priority-based ticket system makes it one of the best free help desk systems.
Monday, January 23, 2012
7 Ways To Get More Followers For Your Facebook Page
Business and freelancers across the world use Facebook pages to get more customers and leads. Making a Facebook page is not that tough, but leveraging this medium in a right way is not that easy. If your Facebook business page is growing at a snail pace, there's something wrong with your social media strategy. However, with some simple tricks you can revive your dying page and can attract thousands of followers. Let's see how to get most out of our Facebook page.
Use custom tab for non fans - While designing your Facebook page, make sure all the non-fans are presented with a custom tab with a strong call-to-action for liking the page. This significantly increases the probability of acquiring more fans for your page.
Use custom welcome tab for new fans - As soon as a few fan clicks the like button, you must divert him to a custom welcome tab with strong call-to-actions related to newsletter or feed subscription. You may also provide links to different promotional content within the welcome tab.
Ask questions - If you want to get more engagement from your fans, regularly ask interesting questions on your page. Make sure you do not overdo it. Keep a balance between general content and selected questionnaire.
Offer freebies - Who doesn't love free stuff? And that's a potent weapon used by several companies to keep their Facebook page fans glued to their page stream. Depending on your budget, offer small freebies to your fans at least once a month.
Hold contests - This is a sure shot way to get tons of comments and likes for your Facebook page. You can cleverly integrate these contests with freebies and invite your page fans to leave a comment to participate in the contest.
Highlight and promote most active fans - You must encourage the most engaging fans by tagging them frequently in your updates. If they own a blog, you can also share their content on your page's wall. This not only keeps the most active fans charged up, but also encourages others to be part of the community.
Use multimedia content - Record promotional and informative videos to share with your Facebook page fans. Sometimes, these videos go viral and attract large number of fans in a short period of time. The key here is experimenting with all the available resources.
Friday, January 20, 2012
8 Important Google Analytics Settings For Your Website
Google Analytics (GA) is my favorite web analytics tool to track my blog's performance. It is the most popular online traffic analysis system used by millions of publishers. Generally, an average GA user is satisfied with the general reports present on the default dashboard. These reports give general overview of traffic behavior at the macro level. How about configuring some advanced options that give you deeper insights about your incoming traffic? If you're not comfortable in utilizing custom options available in GA, there's an excellent online tool to help you for the same.
Google Analytics Configuration Tool is a free online service that helps you set up 8 extremely important Google analytics configurations for your website. You don't need to be an analytics ninja to configure these advanced options. Simple dialogue based tutorials makes the configuration process extremely easy even for a layman. So let's get started and see how to make most out of our GA account.
Tracking multiple sub-domains and a domain - If you want to track several sub-domains for a single primary domain and that too in a single GA user profile, you can do it easily by following this wizard. Simply provide the GA account number, primary domain name and select the type of tracking code (asynchronous or synchronous) you've implemented on your web site. Once you've supplied all the information, you instantly get the customized GA code that needs to be pasted just before the </head> tag of your each sub-domain.
Tracking multiple domains and a sub-domain - Cross-domain tracking with several sub-domains requires a bit of configuration, especially if you're going to track links across these domains. Fortunately, this excellent wizard gives you the required custom GA code after providing GA account number, each primary domain name, and all the sub-domain names. You must tag each cross-domain links you want to track with a custom GA code by using the 'onClick' tag.
Site search configuration - If you've implemented a site-wide search bar for visitors, you must activate internal site search tracking in your GA account. It's extremely easy and can be implemented within few minutes after following this excellent tutorial. Simply provide the query parameter in the 'Site Search Settings' and the search tracking starts immediately. This helps in understanding what majority of visitors are looking for on your website.
Configuring 404 page tracking - Often visitors' from different external sources land on a non-existent page of your website. In such cases, a default or a customized 404 page is served to the visitor. You must track these 404 page landings to know about broken links pointing to your website. Through this wizard you can get a custom 404 tracking GA code after providing your GA account number. Paste this custom code just before the </head> tag of your 404 page.
Configuring event tracking - An event is an action taken by visitor on your website. This can be contact form submission, newsletter subscription or product purchase check-out. Tracking these important actions is vital for analyzing and optimizing your existing systems. Through this wizard, you can implement custom event tracking on your website. It generates the custom GA code and also guides you to configure the associated goals to get a complete event tracking report.
Tracking Facebook page traffic - If you're using a custom tab with an iFrame on your Facebook page, you must implement this GA tracking option for better visualization of traffic coming to your page. Simply provide your GA account number and you'll get the custom code that needs to be pasted just before the </head> tag of your iFRame's web page hosted on your web server. Although Facebook insights provides you with analytics data about your Facebook page, but implementing this tracking mechanism gives you much more valuable data that is vital for effectively analyzing traffic patterns on your Facebook page.
Tracking goal completions - Tracking goals till the last step is vital for measuring the conversion rates. Generally, a typical goal completion ends with a 'Thank You' or a check out 'Confirmation Page'. Through this excellent step-by-step tutorial you can easily set up goal completion tracking. Simply specify the URL of the final confirmation page during the configuration. This report is extremely useful for calculating return on investment at the macro level.
URL tagging for campaign tracking - If you're running several campaigns on your website, then you must tag each URL with Google analytics url builder. Each URL built with this tool contains up to 5 different parameters that helps in segregating the incoming traffic on the basis of different vital criteria. This tutorial makes the URL building process very easy through helpful instructions explaining the meaning of each parameter. You can also use this option to tag your website's vital links on external pages like social media profiles. This greatly helps in understanding about the traffic coming through these links.
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Why Dedicated Documentation Management System Is Essential For Your Business
Business documents forms the core of day-to-day operations for any company. They are literally the lifeline of business operations without which any organization will cripple easily. Generally, there is no central repository of business documents generated in different departments. Manual document management not only makes the entire process cumbersome, but also introduces delay in business processes. You can use a free and open source document management system like OpenKM to power your organization's document management system. Let's see the advantages of deploying a dedicated document management system and how it adds value to the entire business process.
Knowledge-base management - Business documents generated in different departments across the organization are the primary source of vital data that helps in formulating critical business decisions. With a specialized document management system, you can easily create a central repository of business documents that acts as a powerful knowledge-base for the entire organization.
This greatly helps in data-mining and information retrieval in a timely manner. With OpenKM, you can create a powerful central document repository with advanced search functions. You can even search within a large document through a tag cloud or through a search box.
Secure distribution & access - With a centralized document management system like OpenKM, you can not only keep the entire document library secure, but can also ensure rule-based secure access to individuals. You can also enable document-level collaboration with version history.
This is very useful feature for marketing and IT departments. OpenKM comes with powerful plugins that lets you share the documents through 3rd party document editing software. On one hand employees find it comfortable to work on a document through their favorite document editing program, and on the other hand, secure access ensures no information is leaked to unauthorized individuals. Document locking and read-only sharing is two of the major features that ensure micro-level access control for each employee.
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Why Optimized Images Are Important For Web Publishers
Images are an integral part of web content. Millions of websites publish tons of content everyday. Almost every publisher use inline images within content as part of the web content strategy. Why is it so important to include images in your blog posts and articles? What are its positive and negative implications on a website’s performance? Let’s see why images are extremely vital for getting more traffic for your website or blog.
We'll first discuss about the term - 'Web-optimized images'. Just using the images alone doesn't yield the results as per your expectations. You must optimize them before embedding in the blog post. Generally, images are optimized for reduced file size and better search engine optimization. You can use various image compression tools that are freely available on internet to compress the photos. These compression utilities reduce the image file size retaining much of the quality. This significantly helps in saving the precious bandwidth of your web server. Second optimization process involves proper attribute inclusion so that they are properly indexed by the image search engines. Simply provide a meaningful description of the image in 'alt' attribute of the 'img' tag. This helps search engines in understanding the content of the image. Once you start applying these two optimization techniques for each image, you can experience following positive effects on your web site.
Makes content attractive - Picture says a thousand words. It is applicable on web content as well. Blog posts and articles spiced up with photos naturally make the content more attractive and readable. Sometimes, good illustrations make an average piece of content above the ordinary. While using images in your blog posts make sure you do not stuff too many images. This may backfire and may repeal the visitors.
Brings additional traffic from image search - As I discussed above, proper image tagging helps image search engines better understand the content of the image. This helps in including your images in relevant image search queries bringing additional traffic to your web site.
Illustrations make content more understandable - How-To tutorials and list posts are the best candidates for including images within the content. If you're including helpful images in such posts, readers grasp the topic much easier. Nowadays infographics posts are getting quite popular which are entirely made up of single large illustration. Sometimes these posts easily get viral on social media platforms and attract huge traffic.
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
PivotX : A Powerful Open-Source Blogging CMS
If you're talking about blogging CMS, WordPress is the first option that may come in your mind. There are several good alternatives that offer quite robust and feature-packed blogging engine. One of them is PivotX, which is an open-source, free and powerful blog content management system. It has an active developer community that regularly updates its core adding new features with each subsequent release. Let's see some of the features which makes it one of the contenders for good blogging CMS.
Dual database storage option - Generally, popular blogging CMS use MySQL for storing the data. PivotX is quite different and can use either MySQL or flat files for the data storage. During installation you can opt for one of the data storage mechanism.
Multi-site & multi-language support - You can easily create unlimited number of blogs from a single PivotX installation. Each blog can have different themes, extensions, language and system settings. This truly makes it a powerful multi-site blogging platform.
Large collection of themes & plugins - Like other popular blogging CMS, PivotX also enjoys large number of themes and useful plugins to easily extend the functionality of the entire system. You can browse through various categories to find the required extension that deliver the results as per your requirements.
In-built spam protection - Unlike other blogging platforms that generally require a plugin to effectively combat spam, PivotX has been developed with a native anti-spam system. This not only makes your blog safe from spammers the moment you install it, but it also reduces the burden of one extra plugin.
Multi-user & access matrix support - With PivotX, multiple users can easily work on a single blog with different level of privileges. This ensures that each person is granted adequate rights to perform various tasks on the blog.
Powerful rich-text editor - This is the heart of any blogging CMS and is mostly used by an average user. Fortunately, PivotX has a user-friendly text editor that works in two modes, viz., HTML mode (for power users) and WYSIWYG mode. The latter mode is good for technically challenged that makes embedding multimedia elements (image, audio, video) very easy.
Monday, January 16, 2012
6 Ways To Polish Your Twitter Marketing Strategy
Businesses across the world are using Twitter to expand their online presence. They're using it for connecting with existing customers and prospects. Some companies also use it to provide customer service. Twitter is a powerful medium to generate leads through targeted followers acquisition and engagement. If you're planning to use Twitter for your business, you must formulate a concrete social media strategy to effectively leverage this popular platform. Here are some of the guidelines to turn your Twitter business account into a powerful customer acquisition tool.
Create a dedicated team - If you want to succeed in generating revenue from your social media efforts, you must hire a dedicated team to look after your Twitter and Facebook marketing efforts. This step becomes more critical if you're providing direct customer service via Twitter.
Decide hours and time-zones - Your social media team must do extensive research about the most active time and respective time-zones of the most lucrative business areas across the globe. This ensures you're not wasting your time and money during unproductive business hours.
Analyze amplification and sentiment - Create smart Twitter analytics reports that effectively digs out your reach (no of retweets, network involved) and the sentiment (negative or positive mentions) on a daily basis. You must also create instant alerts for certain alarming terms that are included in tweets mentioning your brand.
Use Twitter signatures - If more than one person is handling a Twitter business account, Twitter signatures (employee initials preceded by caret symbol) must be used at the end of each tweet. This ensures that your regular customers are well aware of the person with whom they're talking.
Use your brand's hashtags - From the very first day, start using all the relevant hashtags with your tweets and spread the word aggressively among your followers. This ensures your tweets are visible widely across the Twitter ecosystem.
Watch and engage - Your team must keep a watch on relevant keywords in public tweets and should initiate conversations with prospects talking about problems for which you have affordable and easy solutions. This is an excellent strategy to divert customers towards your sales funnel through Twitter.
