Mrs. Mecomber’s Scrapbook

I read this at the You Can Learn Series blog, a blog I’ve found through Entrecards, and enjoy very much.

If you handle your own email processes then you need to take a few minutes and familiarize yourself with these new rules. The CAN-SPAM Act is not something you want to stay ignorant about.

** Any unsubscribe process can request only the recipient’s email address and any opt-out preference changes associated with their subscribed email address

** Any unsubscribe process that requires a recipient to provide more information, or interact with more than a single web page, is prohibited.

** A password cannot be required to unsubscribe.

** A user must not have to send more than one email message, or interact with more than one internet web page.

** A user must not have to provide any information beyond his/her email address.

I think these are good changes in the Act. I do not like having to go through several pages trying to unsubscribe. But I do wonder if these actions really do decrease spam?

Here’s something new that may be of interest. It’s Task Market. It looks really neat! It’s basically an open market of people who can do things that you can’t, like building Excel spreadsheets or creating a logo. These folks sell their services to do things that others can’t. Here’s the scoop from a press release:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Welcome to the launch of the Task Economy. We’d like you to be among the first to experience it, kick the tires, and share your opinions with your readers.

Microsoft® Task Market is a new Technology Preview site that lets people with tasks find people with the know-how to do them – saving time, and improving the end product.

For every person who throws up both hands at the prospect of creating a complex formula in Microsoft Excel, somewhere in the world there’s another person who can make it look easy. For every poor proofreader, there’s an expert one out there who wouldn’t mind making a few extra dollars. For every small business owner who doesn’t have time to do background research on a new business prospect, there’s a talented researcher who could quickly put together a dossier.

The big idea with Task Market is this: create a viable market to get them together and things get done.

Task Market is in the Technology Preview stage. That means that developers at Microsoft Research are releasing the site “into the wild” to demonstrate the potential of the technology, investigate the breadth of user adoption, solicit ideas on how to improve the site and, ultimately, create a market of Task Posters and Task Solvers to help people get their office tasks done.

A Task Market Task is:

· Something that can be done for $20 to $500
· Something that the Task Poster could use help doing
· Something that can be delivered electronically, like a Microsoft Office document.

A Task Market Poster might need help with:

· a specialized Excel formula
· language translation
· letter writing
· an aspect of their accounting
· making a PowerPoint presentation “pretty”
· graphics, charts, formatting or logos
· research gathering
· proofreading
· building sell sheets, listing sheets or simple brochures
· fact checking

Task Market Solvers create profiles of their skills to help Posters assign tasks to Solvers with the right skill sets, and get email alerts when a job arrives that fits their skillsets. Posters can award and pay several solvers for tasks to compare results, and give more work to the ones they like. All without the commitment of a freelance engagement.

Get more done faster with Task Market

Interesting! It’s new and growing. It’s something to watch, for sure, especially if you have a small business and are inundated with enough tasks and jobs! It’s also a way to OFFER your services and perhaps make a little money. I’m keeping m eye on this one!

Here’s a really fun website for those of you interested in business cards. It’s LogoYes and it has got to be the simplest and easiest site I’ve seen for making your own business cards. These days, everybody seems to want to be promoting something (can be either your business or your blog– anything, really). I’ve had 250 cards printed up for my travel blog, to leave at museums and to give to curious onlookers, lol.

Anyway, LogoYes has a huge selection of classy templates and fonts. I loved the Adirondack-looking mountain logo design. I could do all sorts of things with the software. I tinkered around a little.

Wow, I LOVE that design! Doesn’t the card ooze class and style?

I was pleasantly surprised how easy it was to create the card. You can see the card-creating interface in the photos above. The website uses a Flash-based software to create the design, which made it very interactive, like a game. Making changes and going back to alter text was extremely easy.

It is very important that logo designs do not lose detail when you make the text/images smaller. LogoYes met that standard; the mountain design looked great whether I enlarged it or diminished it. I was impressed.

This is a great site for the do-it-yourselfer desktop publisher! Prices are affordable; business cards are definitely an investment, so you want to choose your card style wisely. You can try out the stuff for yourself– the site offers a free demo. Have fun!

Have a small business? The Internet is now booming with entrepreneurs. I am one! It is only natural that services and products would pop up for small businesspeople. I have a whopping one employee (me!), but if your business is a little, ahem, bigger, you probably have need of some timesheet software. Please don’t tell me you are writing things in little books with pencils, still! Welcome to the world of online time and expense software!

You may want to consider Journyx Timesheet. It’s a premier timesheet and expense management product for businesses, small and great. With it, you can bill for services, track absenses, manage employee timesheets, employee expenses, manage customer invoicing and payroll, and more! It’s a pretty handy-dandy piece of software! It’s gotten good reviews from U.S. News & World Report and Canadian Technology News. Their website has
Timesheet success stories to peruse. There’s a free trial available, too.

If you have made any phone calls to any business in the past several years, you’ve come across answering services. I am actually amazed at how many small businesses are hiring answering services for their business. Such luxuries used to be reserved for the higher-end corporations, who could afford it. Not any more! The Internet has been a huge boon for the small business and free-lance entrepreneur. I make a lot of telephone calls to contractors, electricians, etc., and invariably I get an answering service. The ones I’ve encountered are excellent quality. In past where I might have gotten a tired and irate secretary, I now get a considerate telephone professional.

If you’ve got a small business– or even a big business!– check out Answering Services from Map Communications. They’ve been in business since 1991. They have a specialized medical answering service available for medical businesses (a REAL plus for any doctor’s office, believe me!). And calls are NEVER put on hold. They offer voicemail and also offer specialty call screening– the screening of calls as you request that they be screened. I see now why such service have become so popular!

Map Communications offers a free 7-day trial and also have a video where you can learn more about their services for the busy business.