Technotip.org Android App + App Service

Going forward I’ll be more active with blogging and will concentrate on writing about business ideas, entrepreneurship and startups. Will also continue writing about tools to run business and online marketing and online sales.

Today we’re excited to announce the release of our android application. It has a clean look and feel and has minimalist and straightforward options.

A user interface is like a joke. If you have to explain it, it’s not that good.

technotip-blog-homepage

We had built this app some months back and had distributed it privately to some of our readers/friends and checked with them constantly for their feedback. After using the app for 10 days they said they are more likely to read the articles via the app than directly from the website. Mobile app display felt more comfortable for most of the users and hence we made some minor changes after getting real users feedback and today we are excited to release the app for everyone to download and take maximum advantage of it.

You can download our app from Google Play Store.

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technotip-blog-menu

Features
1. Has a list of 8 recent articles on the homepage and user can navigate to older blog posts.
2. Clear reading experience with bigger fonts on article page.
3. Facility to bookmark the article and read later from bookmarks section.
4. Cache the recently viewed article for offline reading.
5. List of pages.
6. Search facility.
7. List posts based on Category.
8. List posts by author/contributor.
9. Invite others to our app via WhatsApp, Twitter, Facebook, SMS, Email.
Option to rate the app.
10. Facility to directly share the posts and pages with others from inside the app via – WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter, SMS, Email etc.

Service
I’ll build your WordPress sites android application for you. You can see more about it at Android App Service For Your Blog

While on the service page, read how you’ll be earning a lot more than you invest for the development of your blogs android app. Also you can do your research and know for yourself how many active mobile users are using their mobiles to read content online.

Here is the link to Google Play Store once again for Technotip.org Android App

Custom Email Address For Your Business

Are you looking for custom email address like your name @ your domain .com ? [name@domain.com] Something which works like gmail but has an email address with your domain name – that you can even distribute to your co-workers i.e., create custom email address for all your co-workers or employees. Also you wish to have a custom URL to log into emails, like – www.yourwebsite.com/email or www.yourwebsite.com/communication ?

google-apps

Business Needs
If you’re running a business you must have your own website, and for all your business communication its preferred to have your own custom email address which looks and feels professional to your clients/customers instead of simply having a general @hotmail.com or @gmail.com emails.

Also having a business/custom email gives a sense of security to your clients/customers or potential clients/customers, that the mail they’re sending will indeed reach only the authorized person within the company. Mailing to a general email address doesn’t bring in such sense of safety.

What we Recommend and use ourselves?
We have been using Google Apps for all our email needs from past 8+ years and we proudly/confidently recommend it to all other budding businesses. You also get a lot of tools to run your business with ease – tools like Calendar, online Docs, unlimited file storage etc to a few. Also you get all the Google Services with your Google Apps account that you’ll get while using Gmail. With Google Apps, you’ll have your company branding and premium service and customer support.

With the calendar we schedule all our meetings in real-time, it merges with clients and employees calendar in real-time lets us know who is attending and who is not and lets us see their schedule as well – of course the schedules which they’ve made public. These tools are such a productive ones for our business so far.

How much time we need to get used to?
Zero. Yes, if you’re comfortable using Gmail, then you’ll get started with Google Apps instantly. Everything looks and feels the same but you’ll have your company logo and name inside.

20% discount Rest assured, it has reduced the cost of our business operations and we do not mind paying a small amount every year. If you wish to make use of Google Apps then you can use the coupons we have got and get 20% discount for the first year. Here are the Google Apps coupon codes / discount codes with their expiry dates!

69YFFGCCM6KRTM – Expires on 09/2016
4RRX7MCDVEMYJG – Expires on 09/2016

Free Google Apps Account

How to set up?
It’s very easy with Google Apps. Once you create Free account(No Credit Card required – you can try it for months, after that you can decide if you want to continue or not), you’ll get some settings which you need to configure at your domain registration account. Everything will be present in the document provided by Google and if you do things as shown in the document it’ll take less than 5 minutes to configure it. But if you think its out of your hand to do those small technical things – you can simply copy the settings provided by Google and mail it to your domain registrar. The technical support team will do it for you in less than 5 minutes and you’ll be up with your custom email address and custom email login URL.

If it’s important, you’ll find a way

So often we encounter with situations wherein we don’t find a way to accomplish things.
We find ourselves in blocks! People name it depending on their work – writers block, creativity block, productivity block etc

My Own Story
I was so much pumpedup with the idea of working online and making huge money to live a life with ultimate financial freedom 🙂

Read some success stories, took notes from their success stories: by then I knew, taking action is the key! Couldn’t wait to get started. I had all these wonderful ideas for blog posts. Wrote all those articles one after the other continuously and then started checking the stats and even replied to those spam comments, which said, I’m not able to subscribe to your blog etc 😛

After some days I had no more ideas to write. (I was new to blogging)
Later on switched topics. As human beings, we’ve interests in wide area of topics. So I had knowledge in other areas which I started sharing on my blog. Next again changed topic!

Later on, with experience learnt that sticking on to particular topic with a domain works out better!

find-your-way

Similar things happen in all the fields: Business, Personal life, Relationships etc

We set some expectations, we do something, we fail, and then we learn, next if we don’t quit- we excel.

Now I can almost write endlessly on the topics of my interest. I can see something special in everything I encounter, that I can share with my readers in a relevant manner.

“Once you master a craft you can recognize it in anything you do.”

Then what is this BLOCK people talk about ?
If it’s important to you, you’ll find a way. If not, you’ll find an excuse.

Possible Solution
Be solution oriented, and not problem oriented.

We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them. – Albert Einstein

Find out what you absolutely love doing:



Stop telling stories which support your excuses.
Know that it’s for your goodness that you need to find a way.
If you keep giving excuses you’ll be cheating no one but yourself.
Be conscious of your steps towards your goal: Take the first step first.
Don’t keep postponing things. Have proper strategies and execute your plans.

10 Platinum Ways How Digital Electronic Signatures Have Altered Business And Corporate Dealings For The Better

This is a guest post by Anna Stacy. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guest post guidelines.

Mull over the last decade and you’d witness that a vast majority of business and corporate processes have shifted to a more technologically rich environment – the World Wide Web – and that too at an astounding rate.

Today, over a billion people worldwide are investing progressively in business-to-consumer (B2C), business-to-business (B2B) and even government-to-consumer (G2C) processes on the Internet, which has become the ultimate breeding ground for various business brands.

With the emergence of fully automated processes, things have become even more convenient. Similarly, electronic signatures have enabled various business transactions online to be approved, accepted or signed without turning towards the traditional – rather more costly – ways of paper-based hand signatures.

Electronic signatures offer a paper-free way to digitally sign a document using a verified electronic symbol [image] or process associated with a document. To understand the process better, check out the ten platinum ways that have minimized much of our everyday business problems or issues pertaining to the driving an e-business more smoothly and productively:

digital-signature

1. With the automation of the verification or signing process using electronic signatures, it offers a more easy way to execute various transaction processes online and reduce the time it, otherwise, takes for businesses, governments, and citizens to make any sales or purchase orders, gather any management approval or even apply for a government program or job online.

2. You can easily execute any business deal or perhaps sign an important legal document sitting in one corner of the world across another safely and securely.

3. You can sign documents frequently and transfer it online. If, for instance, the technical security (such as encryption on transporting data online using the Internet) or your organization’s internal security (such as for clearing gateways) is breached, hacked or failed to offer the essential security, your data can fall in wrong hands and consequently, misused or mishandled for selfish gains. However, with electronic signatures, your documents are completely processed in a secure and automated environment.

4. Traditional paper documents are manually analyzed or carried out with limited computer support; however, unencrypted digital signatures can be analyzed in a completely computerized way, without any third party involvement of any sort.

5. Electronic signatures can confirm the identity of the signer, verify the genuineness of a document, and also enable non-repudiation from the legal perspective.

6. For business transactions, these electronic signatures can offer a greater efficiency and fast turnaround, while eliminate any costly printing requirements including paper cost, or time consumed in fixing typing errors. You can accelerate sales, track all business contracts in real-time, and also automatically store and manage all the signed agreements in a secure vault maintained virtually.

The manual process involves painstakingly going through the process of purchasing paper and that too of high quality, getting the document printed on it, then signing it manually and sending it via fax or scanning it and then emailing it and vice versa when received by the party. Not to mention the high maintenance charges that your printer, scanner and fax machines takes…to simplify the calculation, digital electronic signatures can reduce this entire process and cut down your expenditures cost to thousands of dollar per annum – that’s almost 70% of cost cut down for you. The cost of sending each item is virtually NOTHING! No paper cost, no stamps, no envelops or fax paper. Instead of relying on expensive courier services.

7. Many laws and regulations have been made in attempt to address the effectiveness of electronic signatures in order to accommodate any technology changes over time since, by all means, this digital process offers more flexibility depending on the assurance-level requirements for any particular business or personal work execution or deployment. A bill was passed by the US government to legalize this digital signing process in order to authorize contracts electronically, rather than people relying on handwritten signatures.

This isn’t just limited to the US, legislations concerning the validity of digital electronic signatures have been passed in the European Union and the European Economic Area, China, Switzerland, Turkey, Korea, New Zealand, Moldova, Peru, India, Russian Federation, Guatemala, Canada, Brazil, Argentina, Malaysia, Uruguay, Japan, Philippines, Switzerland, and also United Nations Commission on
International Trade Law.

8. Using electronic signature capabilities, your organization can bring in more of the traditional paper-based processes online, reduce business costs, and invest the amount saved on more productive ways to expand the business. Where time is money, imagine all the valuable ways to expend this time that you can save and conquer heights of success and business prosperity.

9. Not only this, this process use highly advanced and 100% secure means which leads to gathering trust of more customers or key stakeholders and hence increase customer satisfaction owing to the sense of their information’s authenticity and integrity that you provide them with. The process involves information being delivered from one party to another, one desk to another or even one country to another without any human involvement. No one can, hence, copy the signature and use it for malicious self-desires by some third party intrusion.

10. Companies can easily dispatch product notices, bank balance statements, and other disclosures to their customers via the Internet in substitute to the time-taking postal
service.

If you haven’t switched to this innovative and highly-advanced process of document signing yet, you’re missing out on many added benefits that you can otherwise seek with process of digital electronic signatures.

Author Bio:
Anna Stacy has in-depth knowledge and experience of Electronic signatures solutions. Her basic forte lies within process optimization and process re-engineering, and has a long-term obsession with e-sign. She is a leading source of what’s hot and what’s not in the online digital signature space.

Take The 1st Step First

Do not aim for perfection at first shot.
Remember the old saying: Rome was not built in one day.

Building your Blog / Business / Application etc
If you’re not already a celebrity like most of us, then you’ll surly have hard luck with most of the ventures. Many of them may even fail.

This fear of failure is what holds us back and keeps us resisting / postponing / not doing what we ought to do. Let me clear this once for all: Yes, you’ll fail.
It’s sure that we’ll all fail at one or multiple things in life before we succeed. But a person who never tried is always a failure.

take-first-step

Take The 1st Step

The glory of success lies in daring to start.

This might seem the hardest. The gravity seem to be more at this stag!
Lets see what might be holding us back:
1. I don’t have the proper resources to start with.
2. Not enough money.
3. No right set of people.

The common things:
4. He won’t let me do that.
5. She won’t let me do that.
6. They won’t let me do that ..

Yes, all these may be true. But still get started NOW. Start it anyway.
..and then figure out the solutions as and when you encounter the problems.

We all know that problems will always be there. The thing is, how we react( if at all ) and act( taking right decision ) and move forward( progress ) inspite of the problems which is trying to suck the charge out of us.

Set Backs
Yes, we’ll have setbacks once we start. I won’t be surprised with the set backs. You shouldn’t be either. Because we already know we’ll have setbacks.
We should have the right mindset and patience to even start all over again and never stop.

“Awake, Arise, Stop not til the goal is reached.”
– Swami Vivekananda

If you’re losing interest, then you’re not passionate enough in what you’re doing; and may be its not of that significance to the world and YOU!

Focus
1. Start ( ..with vision)
2. Fail (fail early)
3. Face setbacks
4. Figure out solutions
Be solution oriented and not problem oriented.
5. Concentrate / Focus on the right things.

“The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.”
– Stephen Covey

6. Start over again ( if needed )
7. Keep up the curiosity, patience, passion, and the spirit of creating positive impact.
8. Keep serving, keep growing.
9. Stay tuned.

Related Read: Tough Decisions

Have Guts To Take Tough Decisions In Business ?

Some times tough decisions are needed in business.
Some can be proved as wrong steps. But still they will be right for your business!

Confused ?

tough-decision

Let me explain:

Facebook introduced Facebook feed feature, and millions protested against it all over the world back then. But the user engagement had increased, so facebook continued with the feature, later after 4 years, on January 25th, 90k people agreed to turnout for the protest in Egypt. And they organized using Facebook and the same feature helped them get out their messages to wider community of users.

Ruchi Sanghvi, ex-Facebooker



Our Own Application, TwitFever.com
Its a retweet club community application where there are many members who write and submit tweets in languages other than English. I love those members, as they are active in the community. Sometimes I use Google translater tool to convert the writing to English and read their tweets and articles.

But that may not be true with other members of the community. They might find it intrusive 🙁

They may find it difficult and sometimes annoying to navigate inorder to digg English content and then retweet them.

In situations like this, we’ll have to follow the guts. I know, non-English speaking members will be really angry on me when I inform them the new rules of allowing only English content. But when you’re clear about your target audience, you’ll have to make tough decisions even if you don’t like to be rude.

Possible Solution:
Branch out the application and make sub domains or host the same application on other domains for each languages!

Now that isn’t feasible for a application like TwitFever.com
This solution may apply for a business which has bigger audience.

With this situation what I learn’t is being tough in decision is a must in business and some times in life too.
You can’t please everyone with your action/decisions.

What to look at?
Some people may say bad things about your application or business. But don’t lose your focus and forget all the other people who din’t say anything! Posibilities are they are actually loving it, but are scared to face the few others.

Always measure based on reality, statistics and not just by looking at a small group of people who are against it.
Its “ok” to treat it as a feedback: check it, if valid, act, if not carry on with your good cause.

Bad News: you’re not going to fit in with everyone.
Good News: people with big destinies never do.

Accept the things you can’t change;
have the courage to change the things which you can;
and have the wisdom to know the difference!

‘YOU’ Are A Big Deal

If you’re working on your own i.e., if you are your own boss, then you will have the risk of getting distracted or interrupted easily.

This new year, my resolution would be to focus on myself. i.e., You should start focusing on yourselves.

You: Person of the year!

YOU
You are the highest leverage thing in your business/life.

If you are happy, healthy, strong and in good mood, you can perform better and you will have a better result; and at the end of the day you would feel satisfied and thus feel more happy, healthy and strong. Yes, it’s a recursive process. If things don’t work properly, you would feel sad, unhealthy and weak; and there is more chances of getting bad results inturn.

In order to balance our life, we need to take care of 2 things: Profession and Personal Life.

Measure Your Work:
If you are not digging ditches or manufacturing tires or any physical goods for that matter, you will be able to measure the exact amount of work you accomplished at the end of the day.
For example: If you are into information business or if you are into some work which is directly related to information and there is no physical product involved; Like a software: it’s not a physical product.

Tip: Fix the amount of work that you want to accomplish for the day.

Solution:
Fixing a goal and working daily in chunks of fixed blocks of time to achieve the goal. Ex: If you decide to do Yoga, to help yourself with maintaining your health, then do it daily on a fixed time, for a fixed block of time.

Kill Multitasking
All these days I was efficient with multitasking..now also I’m! But if I focus on one specific task alone, I will get better results and finish tasks soon, one at a time.

Do not keep sms’ing, emailing, Facebooking, Tweeting all day or whenever you get distracted by it’s thought. Fix time for most of these things. Yes being in touch with friends is as important, but it’s not the only thing on earth. You dint start your business to end it this way, right ?

Solution
Kill unwanted distractions. I’m going to kill most of it. I’ll sms, email, Facebook, Tweet only once in a day, and not more than 20min for all these things.

And I would make sure, I WILL NOT INTERRUPT OTHERS.

Stop Unhealthy Habit
I’ll not drink caffeine, beer, wine etc. Will stick to healthy diet.

Good Emotional Habits
Yoga, Meditation brings good health to body and mind. It would surly help in the long run to maintain health and good state of mind. With good health and good state of mind, we have more chances of succeeding at whatever that we are doing.
Imagine, if you have some illness and your mental status is out of focus and you are attending a meeting to decide about the future of your company :p How worst the situation can be?

Do’s and Dont:
From now on, we have to do things which brings us closer to our goal. We need to eliminate the useless things which we regularly do, which neither creates value to us nor to others.

Enjoy Life
Regularly Take Break’s. Yes I get satisfied while working. I enjoy my work. But there is a life outside it. We have people who love us. and there are people whom we love.
We need to spend as much time as possible with them. These are the only things that will remain in our heart till the end.
Spend time with your parents, children, wife, girlfriend, friends etc. Remember the last time you had spent time with them, how happy you were.

We need to take time and regularly spend time with loved ones and never ignore them for the sake of business and money.

Reading Books:
If you fall asleep while trying to read books, then, try doing it at the end of the day.
Try to finish reading one book, … two books, .. three books. Take interesting books; things you like to know about.

Slowly you’ll fall in love with books. I’ll end my day reading atleast one chapter from my favorite authors.

Summary:
1. Wake up early in the morning.
2. Start the day with Yoga, Meditation.
3. Eliminate doing things which do not bring any progress in what you want to achieve.
4. Focus on things you want to do: one at a time.
5. Kill multitasking.
6. Take care of yourself. You are the most important thing in your business/life, nothing else. If you stay fit/healthy, you could achieve anything.
7. Your priorities matter. Don’t prioritize wrong things; and don’t ignore the right things.
8. Life has it’s up and down: Know this in advance and continue focusing on your values and do not get distracted.
“Don’t swell when you are happy, don’t dwell when you are sad”

I wish you all the success. Happy New Year. Remember, for all the reasons quoted about and more, ‘YOU’ Are A Big Deal.

Do You Want More Sales ?

We see a lot of ads all over in our lives! like internet, TV, Newspaper, Streets, Radio, beginning of a movie in the theater, at intervals etc. Its all around us. So much so that most of us have developed ad blindness. Geeks can smell adsense ads from far 🙂 let alone click it!

advertisement-everywhere-panti

Do You Have A Business? Want To Sell More ?
If you run any online or offline business, it’s wise to start advertising your business. Well this is common sense, but many businesses are still operating without ever trying to advertise.

“Doing business without advertising is like winking at a girl in the dark. You know what you are doing, but nobody else does.”
— Steuart Henderson Britt
(Marketing Management and Administrative Action)

If you are making $5000 per month without advertising, then how about making $15000 per month, by spending $100 for effective advertising ?
It’s like having a sales force to bring in more leads, more business to you. Wouldn’t you spend $100 to get an additional profit ? Why not, right ?

Product First
But for all these things to work, you must have a good product in place. If you have that, then there is no need to step back.

“If you believe in what you do and you can really help people, then you have a moral obligation to try and bring it to as many people as possible.”
—- Chet Holmes

Most of us think advertising as evil..but if you have a good product, and a nice offer to make, then I don’t think you need to hesitate to get all your target audience to buy your product. Most people under-estimate the power of advertising. If you think you have a good product which helps people, then why not provide them a nice offer via advertisement and help them even more ?

#1 Form of Advertising
The old form of marketing – “The Word Of Mouth” marketing is still the #1. But to get to that point, you can use advertising effectively to build the brand.

See the biggest brands in the world, for any commercial product. There is at least one big dominator in most niches. How do you think someone became #1 ? Yes, they obviously have a good product, and a big budget to market via advertisement.

Darker Side!
There are some products which are not so good, but they still manage to sell ? It’s the marketing trick and the magic of advertisement. But you bet, they won’t be in the market for a long time. If someone has a bad product, and tries to sell via advertisements, these advertisements will eventually hurt the business, no matter how good they are at advertising. But sure, with advertising they will make some quick bucks for a short time.

Essentials
For long term successful business, these are the key ingredients:
1. Have a good product.
2. Market the product effectively.
If you fail in any one, your business is likely to fail as well.

Give advertising a try, if you haven’t already. Build the brand, sell the product, help as many as possible.

Tips for getting started
There will always be (most of the times) some offers for advertisers to get started. For example, Google provides Free Google Adwords coupon, Chitika and Bidvertiser also provides Free $$ for new advertisers to get started. Make a quick search on our blog and you will find a lot of discount coupons for advertising on various ad networks.
If you want to advertise on a magazine, ask for a offer. You will always need to negotiate and never compromise with the quality of the ad copy that you write.

Let us know, how you market your business, both online and offline.