Sunday, November 30, 2008

Top 10 Sites Your IT Department Will Visit on Cyber Monday

Cyber Monday is tomorrow on December 1st, 2008. Last year, consumers spent $733 million on Cyber Monday, and it's expected to be even bigger this year. Traditionally, this was the day where everyone at work used the companies broadband internet access to get the latest deals online. However, this year retailers are offering up their deals 1 day earlier and it is likely attributed to the fact that nearly 65% of all households in the U.S now have high speed internet access.

Whether you oversee an IT department, or a Customer Service organization - you can bet that some of the sites below will appear on the employee surf reports. IT Departments may get an increase in Internet related tickets to the Service Desk, while Customer Service Organizations are likely going to experience lower call volumes in the non retail sectors, and significant spikes in the Retail Sector. Attached below are some of the Top 10 Sites your IT Department is likely going to visit to get the latest and greatest deals on new gadgets, accessories, and more.

1) PriceSpider.Com - Compare Prices from all retailers to find the lowest price.

2) GottaDeal.Com - Known for leaking deals before they are offered. A great resource for deals, and they host a great forum where you can discuss deals with others.

3) CyberMonday.Com - A site run by Shop.Org that will post updates every hour on the hour during Cyber Monday.


4) PriceProtector.Com - This site will alert you if the price goes down on a product after it's Cyber Monday debut. Great for keeping tabs on a product that you dont want to spend the cash on now, but could see yourself

5) PriceGrabber.Com- Another great site for comparing prices.

6) Best Buy - They went live with its Cyber Monday sale today. Best Buy's site Cyber Monday deals can be found here.

7) Dell Computer Cyber Monday deals are published here.

8) Circuit City got a jumpstart on Cyber Monday 2008, starting its sale today. This link will take you to the Circuit City site and its Cyber Monday deals.

9) NewEgg.Com - A great site for techies with excellent deals on laptops and gadgets.

10) TigerDirect.Com - Another excellent source of gadgets and technology. No deals have been announced yet, but tommorow you can expect them to have many.

Other Notable Mentions:

Walmart.Com - iPod Shuffles as Low as $60.00 and some more great deals here.
Sears - I4U announced Cyber Monday deals from Sears here.

Other Deal Aggregator Sites:

XPbargains.com (http://www.xpbargains.com/)
Black Friday 2008 (http://bfads.net/)
Ben's Bargains (http://bensbargains.net/)
Dealnews (http://dealnews.com/)
FreshBargains (http://www.freshbargains.net/)
Techdeals.net (http://www.techdeals.net/)
Techbargains (http://techbargains.com/)
Dealsontheweb.com (http://www.dealsontheweb.com/)
Dealmac.com (http://dealmac.com/)

Monday, November 24, 2008

Online Reputation Managment Tools & Tips To Protect Your Brand & Identity.


The term "Online Reputation Management" is defined as the act of monitoring, addressing or mitigating undesirable search engine results or mentions in online media for a company or product. As consumers use the internet to Tweet, Chat, Review, and post blogs about a company's products and services, a Google query on your Organization, Service, or Product can now make or break a sale. Whether your the head of Customer Service like Frank over at Comcast, or the Manager of an IT and Operations Organization - your areas of responsibility are now exposed. No more sweeping things under the rug any longer.

If you think that it can't impact you personally, think again! It is not just companies or brands who get positive or negative remarks online, your professional reputation is at stake as well. With Professional Network sites like Linked In and Naymz, co workers can comment positively or negatively about your performance thereby impacting your virtual reputation.

Below are some websites and tools you can use to help manage your brand, company, or idenity online.



Tools To Manage Your Company Name or Brand

Twitter Search - Using this tool, you can find out who is speaking about your company, product, or service. Configurable alerts are available so that you can be emailed whenever your brand is being discussed on twitter.

Google Alerts - Get alerted anytime a page on the web mentions your product, service, or competitor.

Monitor This - allows you to monitor a single keyword across 22 different search engine feeds at the same time.

TrackUr.Com - Can easily deploy your own reputation tracking within minutes. You tell them the names, products, and brands that are vital to you and Trackur will scour millions of blogs, news sites, images, and videos for you. If your reputation is being discussed in the social media, Trackur will alert you.

Moreover.com - News related to your industry. Feeds include retail investor news, clothing industry news, consumer durables news, retail sector news, etc. As well as applicable trade publications.

Brand Watch - The company prides itself on its semantic analysis capability. Some great dashboarding tools.

Radically Transparent - An eBook on Online Reputation Management.

Free Online Reputation Management Beginners Guide - Great review of tips and Tricks for Online Reputation Management.

Create custom RSS feeds based on keyword searches: Feedster.com, Technorati.com, IceRocket.com, Google.com/blogsearch, Blogpulse.com, MSN Spaces, Yahoo! News, Google News, MSN News and PubSub.

Manage Your Identity

claimID.com - Works along with openID to verify your identity on multiple websites.

FindMeOn.com - Link all of your networks together and verify your identity so people know it’s your profile.

FreeYourID.com - Uses .name address to sign you up for sites.

Garlik.com - Searches the web looking for mentions of you that might involve identity theft.

MyOpenID.com - Use one username to verify your log in on sites that use OpenID - great for sites where you might otherwise have multiple log ins.

Spyshakers.com - Identity Management System that allows users to access their websites and passwords remotley.

TypeKey.com - Another provider of the OpenID standard.

WordPress.com - Sign up for a free account and use as OpenID

Manage Your Reputation

Naymz.com - Sign-up and invite your invite people to write reviews about you and your work.

Rapleaf.com - Look up your reputation, rate others, and they will be invited to rate you in return.

RepVine - Reference and reputation management combined.

ReputationDefender.com - A service that attempts to help you get things being said online about you removed

TrustPl.us - An online reputation service that ranks based on trust scores.

List of message board tracking services: BoardReader.com, ForumFind.com, Big-Boards.com, BoardTracker.com, iVillage, Yahoo Message Boards, MSN Money

Places to find groups to track: Yahoo Groups, AOL Groups, MSN Groups, Google Groups.

Monitor This allows you to monitor and track keywords over multiple search engines.

Keotag.com A service that allow you to search for tagged blog posts across multiple blog search engines.

Manage Your Online Profiles

Comwat.com - Put your online identities in one place to make it easier to show and find profiles

onXiam.com - This site lets you link all your online identities into one account making it easier for people to find you across the Internet.

OtherEgo.com - Another way to display you online profiles.

ProfileBuilder.com - Very function heavy profile builder that shows off the parts of your profiles you select.

ProfileMat.com - Pull all you profiles together and allow commenting on your profile mat page.

SimplifID.com - One ID for all your online profiles

SocialURL.com - Simple URL to show all your profiles

Venyo.org - Lets you add all of your online activities, including blogs and comments to one page.

Zoolit.com - A landing page to show all your social networks




Monday, November 17, 2008

How To Contact Me

You can reach me at jperezpgi@gmail.com anytime, or feel free to check in with me on any of the Social Profiles below.

John M Perez.Com Web site:


John M. Perez.Com RSS Feed


John M Perez Social Media Profiles

Twitter


FaceBook


Youtube Channel


Linked In




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Sunday, November 16, 2008

Presentation: The Grid Leadership Theory


So I am finally getting up to speed on The Grid Leadership Theory as I read Rachel Mckee and Bruce Carlson's Book entitled "The Power of Change" during my stay here at the Bolger Center for Leadership in Maryland. I am here learning what is called the Grid Theory. The presentation above summarizes the various leadership styles, but I hope to be blogging more
about how learning these theories can help you to make you a better leader and better manager of projects by end of week. Although I am not a huge fan of these kind of theories in business, this one looks interesting.

The impoverished style (1,1)

In this style, managers have low concern for both people and production. Managers use this style to avoid getting into trouble. The main concern for the manager is not to be held responsible for any mistakes, which results in less innovative decisions.
Features 1. Does only enough to preserve job and job seniority. 2. Gives little and enjoys little. 3. Protects himself by not being noticed by others.
Implications 1. Tries to stay in the same post for a long time.

The country club style (1,9)

This style has a high concern for people and a low concern for production. Managers using this style pay much attention to the security and comfort of the employees, in hopes that this would increase performance. The resulting atmosphere is usually friendly, but not necessarily that productive.


The produce or perish style (9,1)

With a high concern for production, and a low concern for people, managers using this style find employee needs unimportant; they provide their employees with money and expect performance back. Managers using this style also pressure their employees through rules and punishments to achieve the company goals. This dictatorial style is based on Theory X of Douglas McGregor, and is commonly applied by companies on the edge of real or perceived failure.This is used in case of crisis management.


The middle-of-the-road style (5,5)

Managers using this style try to balance between company goals and workers' needs. By giving some concern to both people and production, managers who use this style hope to achieve suitable performance but doing so gives away a bit of each concern so that neither production nor people needs are met.

The team style (9,9)

In this style, high concern is paid both to people and production. As suggested by the propositions of Theory Y, managers choosing to use this style encourage teamwork and commitment among employees. This method relies heavily on making employees feel as a constructive part of the company.


Saturday, November 15, 2008

Video: Googlers try out the new Google Mobile App with Voice Search


Ask your question on your cell phone via voice, and Google returns your results. Pretty slick stuff.





Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Google Is Rolling Out Video Conferencing for Gmail

Google is rolling out video and voice capabilities for the chat function that is embedded in the Gmail interface. It's a bare-bones voice and video-conferencing service, but it's simple to install and use and is a very good addition to Gmail.

read more | digg story




Thursday, November 6, 2008

Video: Linked In Incorporates Applications to End Users


Professional Networking site Linked In adds applications to their site giving end users the ability to collaborate, share, and promote themselves across their networks. For a list of applications click here. Applications include Blog Sharing enabling users to keep up to date and track Blogs within their profiles, sharing of project documents, presentations and more.



Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Will Social Media Numbers Determine The Next Presidential Election?

We will find out tomorrow, but just looking at some of the stats posted in this blog by Jeremiah - it looks like Obama is ahead in the Social Media race. But will he win tomorrow's election? In a couple of hours we will know.