Scheduling Software With Full Google Calendar Integration

We’ve covered a lot of scheduling software here on WWD. For example, I wrote about When Is Good, a lightweight solution that offered very basic, easy-to-access scheduling for busy folks, and there are many other services available, too, as apparent from the “Calendars and Schedules” section of this post. A new service, ScheduleOnce, advertises itself with the tagline “Find a time in no time” and claims to deliver “more scheduling power for your Google Calendar.”

If I believed the hype from all of these scheduling services, I’d have to assume that we were all just careening around haphazardly, making and breaking so many appointments and meetings that we lose all sense of time and date. In practice, I think that most of the time the most scheduling software I need is my iPhone and its built-in Calendar application. That said, there are definitely times when scheduling using Google Calendar, which I already use for group-related activities, would make more sense.

Using ScheduleOnce’s Google Calendar Firefox Add-on, that’s exactly what you can do. Just install the add-on via the ScheduleOnce web site, restart your browser, and then log into your Google Calendar to get started. From there, you can use the ScheduleOnce control panel in your sidebar to pick Tentative Availability times which are then optionally connected back to your Google Calendar. Once you’ve chosen your available times, ScheduleOnce generates a link that you can email to other potential attendees so that they can choose from the times you suggest.

Once invitees reply, you’ll be notified in the ScheduleOnce sidebar window. You’ll also receive a notification email from the web app with a direct link to allow you to view what times your invitee has chosen. When you click on it, you’ll be presented with a view of which times overlap, as indicated by a green block on ScheduleOnce’s daily agenda display. Connecting to your Google Calendar, selecting a time, and clicking “Schedule Meeting” will confirm the chosen slot and send a notification to all attendees. It’ll also add the event to your Google Calendar and those of your fellow attendees, so long as you all have the ScheduleOnce add-on installed. Read more…

Site Powered by: BPO Services, Freelance Projects

Twitter Nabs a Legal Eagle From Google

Twitter, the popular micro-blogging service, has stolen a prominent Google lawyer.

The start-up has hired Alexander Macgillivray, deputy general counsel for products and intellectual property at Google, to be its general counsel, according to a person with knowledge of the hiring.

Mr. Macgillivray has been an important member of the Google legal team, spearheading the controversial settlement with authors and book publishers over Google’s scanning of millions of out of-print library books. The settlement, if accepted by a federal judge, will clear the way for Google to make available online millions of historic books that would otherwise be difficult to find. The Justice Department has said it is inquiring into whether that settlement violates antitrust laws.

Mr. Macgillivray, 36, has also represented Google in a wide variety of other matters, including Viacom’s copyright lawsuit against YouTube and complaints from The Associated Press that Google improperly used its content.

Before he joined Google, Macgillivray was with Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, the prominent Silicon Valley law firm. Read more…

Site Powered by: BPO Services, Freelance Projects

How to Fire Non-Performers

This is one post/chapter in a serialized book called Startup 101. For the introduction and table of contents, please click here.

We added this chapter after reading a recent comment:

“Can you/anyone help me to find the best reading on “Building an A-Team”? I have a friend who has a problem relating to this title and can’t wait for the chapter to be written.

This CEO has two partners who are more of a pair of lead bookends than contributors.

I’ve made recommendations, but he’s too timid to call them to task or, better still, hit the eject button on them.

Hate to see him sink.”

We just wrote about How to Hire an A-Team. But we did not address how to make room for A-Team-worthy players on the A-Team. If the positions are already filled with C-Team players, what do you do? Read more…

Site Powered by: BPO Services, Freelance Projects

When a Blogger Voices Approval, a Sponsor May Be Lurking

Colleen Padilla, a 33-year-old mother of two who lives in suburban Philadelphia, has reviewed nearly 1,500 products, including baby clothes, microwave dinners and the Nintendo Wii, on her popular Web site Classymommy.com. Her site attracts 60,000 unique visitors every month, and Ms. Padilla attracts something else: free items from companies eager to promote their products to her readers.

Marketing companies are keen to get their products into the hands of so-called influencers who have loyal online followings because the opinions of such consumers help products stand out amid the clutter, particularly in social media.

“You can’t really write a review if you haven’t used it or done it,” Ms. Padilla said. “It really is a valuable thing for marketers. It’s a real mom with a real voice.”

Ms. Padilla typically acknowledges in each review which products were sent to her by companies and which items she bought herself. Other items on her site include her own videos for brands like Healthy Choice, which she labels as sponsored posts. But unlike postings in most journalism outlets or independent review sites, most companies can be assured that there will not be a negative review: if she does not like a product, she simply does not post anything about it.

The proliferation of paid sponsorships online has not been without controversy. Some in the online world deride the actions as kickbacks. Others also question the legitimacy of bloggers’ opinions, even when the commercial relationships are clearly outlined to readers.

And the Federal Trade Commission is taking a hard look at such practices and may soon require online media to comply with disclosure rules under its truth-in-advertising guidelines.

A draft of the new rules was posted for public comments this year and the staff is to make a formal recommendation to be presented to the commissioners for a vote, perhaps by early fall. Read more…

Some of resources: CAD Services, Handwriting Experts

Analysis: Five Ways Google Spits on Microsoft

Google really really doesn’t like Microsoft. Even the headlines this week fed off that animus. Google Drops A Nuclear Bomb on Microsoft said one, Google Launching OS, Firing Torpedo Into Microsoft, went another.

The 655-word blog post that announced Chrome OS started it all, of course. But almost lost in the hoopla over that manifesto were the shots Google took at its rival, five taunts that jabbed at Windows’ most notable, and cliched, shortcomings.

Google says: “…the operating systems that browsers run on were designed in an era where there was no Web.”

Translation: Windows is old — it celebrated its 25th anniversary last November — and creaky, with roots that go back even further into the dark days B.I., or Before Internet. And old equals bad.

Google, which is less than half that old — it turns 11 this September — wants to reminds people that it’s a Net-centric firm, unlike Microsoft, and so should know better how to build an OS where the Web is the application platform.

An undercurrent here is the dig that, even though former CEO Bill Gate’s famous “Internet Tidal Wave Memo” ( download PDF) was issued in 1995, Microsoft still didn’t see search, and Google, coming. Read more…

Some of resources: CAD Services, Handwriting Experts

Microsoft Bing Booming; Yahoo Appears in Its Sights

Reports released this week showed that Microsoft Corp.’s Bing search tool continues to gain ground in the search engine wars, but how much ground is a bit up in the air.

For the second time since Bing’s launch just over a month ago, StatCounter Global Stats, which analyzes Web site traffic, reported that the new search engine’s market share has passed that of the Yahoo search tool. According to the StatCounter report released today, Bing held a 12.9% share of the U.S. search market, while rival Yahoo held 10.15% at the start of July.

Both Microsoft and Yahoo are still well behind market behemoth Google, which commands just about 75% of the market, according to the report.

The traffic tracker had reported last month that Bing had surpassed Yahoo on one day shortly after its June 1 launch.

Aodhan Cullen, CEO of StatCounter, said in a statement that the latest figures may have resulted from a positive review of Bing that appeared on the New York Times Web site on July 8 and in its print edition a day later. “While its lead over Yahoo may not last into next week, our data suggests that it is slowly but surely closing the gap.” Read more…

Some of resources: CAD Services, Handwriting Experts

Popular Twitter App TweetDeck Raises $2M More

TweetDeck , a desktop application for organizing messages from microblogging service Twitter, has raised $2 million in a new round of funding. The investment was revealed in a comment made by angel investor John Borthwick at TechCrunch’s Real-Time Stream CrunchUp in Redwood City, Calif.

By dividing Twitter’s stream of messages into different groups and columns, the UK-based company wants to help sort through the barrage of tweets that many Twitter users have to deal with. Built on AIR, Adobe’s platform for desktop applications that also connect to the web, Tweet Deck seems to be the most popular of the Twitter desktop apps (competing software includes Twhirl). It also recently released an iPhone version. Read more…

Some of resources: CAD Services, Handwriting Experts

EBay’s Traffic Drops Amid Identity Crisis

It has been a year and a half since Meg Whitman said she would hand the chief executive’s office at eBay to John Donahoe, and at least by some measures, the company continues to lose traction with both buyers and sellers.

Ina Steiner, the editor of AuctionBytes, a news service for eBay sellers, just published an analysis of eBay’s Web traffic. EBay’s audience — measured by the number of unique visitors in a month — has historically been significantly higher than that of Amazon.com. But eBay’s traffic began to decline sharply last fall, and it dropped below that of Amazon in November, based on numbers from Nielsen.

By May, the last month for which data are available, eBay nudged ahead of Amazon again. But eBay’s audience of 51 million users was down 14 percent from May 2007. The site looks even worse when it comes to Nielsen’s count of the total number of pages the site displayed. By that measure, page views in May were down 32 percent from a year earlier. Read more…

Some of resources: CAD Services, Handwriting Experts

Feeling Tweety in ‘Web Site Story’

From the ArtsBeat blog:

What if Tony and Maria had met on Facebook? If Anita Twittered, would she feel tweety? Those are some of the questions posed by “Web Site Story,” a video parody of “West Side Story” that’s making the virtual rounds.

The video was written and directed by Sam Reich, the president of original content for CollegeHumor.com (where other theater-related offerings include “Waterworld the Musical” and “Food Court Musical.”). The music and dancing in the slickly produced piece mimic “West Side Story” almost note for note. Read more…

Some of resources: CAD Services, Handwriting Experts

Online Backups Could Use Google’s Expertise

It’s all well and good that Google has promised a speedy, secure operating system designed for a Webby world. But why can’t the company — which buys so many darned hard drives — tackle a smaller project first and give consumers something they really want and need: easy-to-use, cheap data backup?

A so-called GDrive has been rumored for years. According to the speculation, this would be a service that lets people manage all of their files online – not just e-mail, photos and documents – and gives people access to their data from any computer with a network pulse.

It’s not a terribly novel concept, and there are ways to perform these types of functions today. Average consumers, however, certainly haven’t tapped into this type of technology in any meaningful way. Read more…

Some of resources: CAD Services, Handwriting Experts