Cityen.cl - Emprendimiento y Negocios

When we set up the hosting for our clients we always recommend to use Google Apps for Emails under your own domain. Even in 2010 you still get messages like 'User mailbox size limit exceeded' when you are trying to send someone an email. This should be something of the past, but there are still a lot of businesses around that limit the Mailboxes of their user to 20 MB or less, as if webspace was still a scarce resource.  With Google Apps users you don't have that problem.
From my point of view the main benefits of using Google's Apps are the following:

1. Costs - It's free for up to 50 user accounts, a very good option for PYMEs. The business version costs 50 USD per user and year with more space, advanced security and support features.
2. Space - 7 GB Mailbox size for each user in the Standard Version (25 GB in the Business version).
3. Reliability - Don't need to worry about the service being down and you are left alone with no access to your email. We've been using it for 2.5 years and there was one major outage about a year ago for a few hours. The next day it was in the press, globally. If your local ISP screws up the mail server, it might well be that nobody answers your calls.
4. Forget Oulook - At the beginning I was releuctant to use the webmail and was still using Outlook with all my Contacts, Calendar and Tasks. The web based Mail, Calendar and Task Management is much better than Outlook; and you can access it from any Computer. On top of it, Google offers an offline version that lets you access your emails when not connected to the Internet and syncs automatically when back online.
5. Search - You are looking for an email you wrote to a client 3 months ago? Just put the name and one or two words that were part of this email in the search box and it'll appear in seconds.
6. Chat - The integrated chat is awesome. You can exchange short messages with your co-workers, customers and suppliers that are also using it. You can opt for chat conversations to be saved so you can search for it at a later stage. Still to be improved is the integrated Google Talk function. The quality is not always good for video calls, so I often have to switch to skype.
7. Calendar - You can create as many calendars as you wish (private, Business), manage them in one place and share with you colleagues. You can set the parameters to allow other people to view details or just view whether you are busy or not. A public calendar can be generated and easily embedded into your website for example for events you are organising.

www.google.com/a

When we had a session with the Revista City Team recently on advanced uses of Joomla, the CMS on which this website is built, Stefan was using Measure-it a Firefox add-on to measure how much space we had for an ad banners in a particular space of the website. The ladies said to me: "You should write a post about these tools". Here we go:

Firefox, the Internet Browser of the Mozilla community is built on the open source concept. That allows developers around the world to build extensions for this browser. Right now there are more than 170.000 extensions available, so called add-ons. Toolbars, Themes and search engines which help you to fulfil better your everyday tasks. I picked a few which I think are quite useful for young entrepreneurs that transfer your Firefox browser into a real Swiss Army Knife:

Google Translator

With this addon you can translate any text to your own language. Just select the text, right-click with the mouse and click "Translate this text with Google Translator". The translated text will overwrite the original selected text.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/46308/

Search Preview

The extension previously known as GooglePreview. Inserts preview images (thumbnails) and popularity ranks of web sites into the Google, Yahoo and Bing search results pages.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/189/

WOT

The WOT add-on shows you which websites you can trust for safe surfing, shopping and searching on the web.

http://www.mywot.com

FireShot

FireShot is a extension for Firefox and Internet Explorer that captures, edits, annotates, organizes, exports and prints screenshots of your web pages.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/5648/

This images is created with screen capture!

 

Directions with Google Maps

Highlight an address on a web page, right click the mouse, and select "Map with Google" from the context menu, a Google Maps tab will open with the searched location.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/13028/

Quick Fix Note

I use this a lot as note taking, instead of having paper notes all over the place: QuickFox Notes is a multi-tab note taking add-on for Firefox that uses the integrated bookmarks system to store the notes. A bookmarks synchronization add-on (e.g. Xmarks) can also be used to synchronize notes between computers.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/13572/

Ad Blocker

Adblock Plus change the way that you view the web by removing unwanted ads. You can also choose from over forty filter subscriptions to automatically configure the add-on for purposes ranging from removing online advertising to blocking all known malware domains.

https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/1865/

... and for the advanced user:

Colorzilla

Advanced Eyedropper, ColorPicker, Page Zoomer and other colorful goodies...

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/271/

MeasureIt

Draw a ruler across any webpage to check the width, height, or alignment of page elements in pixels.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/539/

If your webdesigner asks you to clear the Cache of your Browser because you can't see the update on your website, use:

Clearcache: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1801/

.... and last but not least for the twitterers: URL Shrink Easy

https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/13893/

Which add-ons are you using, feel free to comment!

RSS Feeds have been around for many years, but still haven't made it to mainstream. They now have big competition from Facebook and Twitter but are still worth looking at if you want to organise your information more efficiently. You can basically create your own Newsportal with up-to-date information about only the things you are interested in.
The basic concept is the following: Instead of searching for information on different websites the information is automatically delivered to you, free of charge.
Say, your are interested in the latest business news about Chilean Tourism, International News about Chilean wine, the latest updates on Carolina Bianchi's Blog (the Director of Revista City) and the Updates from your contacts on Linkedin or Facebook . Instead of visiting each website every day or even search on Google for the news, you subscribe to the various feeds and all the updates are delivered automatically into one place. All you need is a feed reader. If you want your reader to have a magazine style look & feel, get feedly, a firefox add-on that converts your Reader Feeds into your own individual Newsportal.

And this is how it works (en español).

If you are a local business owner you might consider Google Places. It combines Google Maps with the former Google Business Directory. These listings are more and more relevant and positioned within the organic search results; especially for local searches such as "Dentistas en Las Condes", "Restaurantes Vitacura".

It is very simple to set up and you can enter your opening hours, address, contact number and then verify via SMS, phone or postcard.
You can also add a few key words, upload images and even attach a video to your listing.
Google has recently introduced an ‘areas served’ option to this service. This allows you to specify whether clients come to your store or, if you provide services at the client’s site. You can specify how far outside of your verified address you’re willing to travel and which in areas (Citys or Comunas) you cover.

Even in Google Places 'Content is King'. The more information you provide in your entry, the more likely is it to rank higher. Use a keyword rich text including the brands you are selling.

A really nice feature is the Coupons tab. It takes just a few minutes to set up and can actively encourage new business. Even small incentives such as 15% off or buy one get one free can draw attention and clicks. Simply input a one or two line description and within a few hours, coupons for your company will start to appear. They can even be downloaded to Smart Phones!

As always, also in Places it is very important that the listing is up-to-date. Does your shopping window shows the new collection, has the entrace hall of your hotel been redecorated; log back in and add the new images. If you have a video from a recent event, log back in and upload. The more often you add information and content, the more likely your listing is to be seen within the first block of local business listings on Google.

Using Social Media for Marketing you have the opportunity to reach much more people than just by putting the information on your website or sending out an email campaign. You can use a combination of free Internet Tools and Social Networks.

Say you have a special discount on one of your products. First you write the news with all the relevant information, i.e. the features and price of the product, when is it on sale, and where to find you (including a Google Map).

With modern RSS Technology you only need to publish the message once. The rest can be fully automated and on top of that: It's free Marketing!

What you need is a blog, and profiles on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin. You publish the information in your blog. Blogsoftware like wordpress or blogger provide RSS Feeds. These RSS Feeds can be automatically fed into Twitter and Facebook. Twitterfeed for instance converts your RSS feed into a Twitter Tweet. Once published on your blog it will be automatically "tweeted". You reach your Followers and the Followers of the Followers!

Your RSS feed can also be loaded into your Facebook profile. The message reaches your Friends and the Friends of the Friends. Your twitter feed can be included into your Xing and Linkedin Profile and reaches your Connections. That means you publish the information once and technology spreads it across social media sites and you can profit from viral Marketing effects.

Social Media Syndication

This article can be read not only by visitors of the Revista City Webpage, it has also been publsihed automatically:

- in my Twitter Stream

- on my Facebook Wall

- in my Linkedin Profile

- Still need to include the feed on my website...

Using these channels wisely gives you an incredible marketing potential for free. Test it and comment how it is working for your business.

Para poder aumentar el desarrollo y la utilización de la biotecnología en Chile es fundamental que los distintos actores de este mundo conozcan los beneficios de su implementación.

En nuestro país la biotecnología realmente no se conoce. No se conocen sus logros, sus implicancias ni sus proyecciones. Este tema no sólo implica un menor uso de este tipo de avances, si no que también significa un menor interés entre los jóvenes para participar y desarrollar este conocimiento.

Los logros biotecnológicos no sólo constituyen adelantos en las grandes empresas, cada uno de ellos implica una gran oportunidad de negocios y de éxito emprendedor.

Si se desarrolla un producto exitoso y novedoso, las oportunidades para un investigador o científico emergen mucho más allá de las clases o la investigación dura. Se abren las puertas de los negocios, de las empresas y del exterior.

Esta veta del avance biotecnológico es fundamental desarrollarla y ampliarla. Este paso se debe dar en todos los ámbitos. En primer lugar, desde la formación de los futuros investigadores. Es necesario inculcar en las salas de clases que las investigaciones que se realicen tengan como horizonte no sólo el laboratorio y las publicaciones científicas, si no que también el desarrollo comercial de los descubrimientos y los avances. De esta forma los que generen el conocimiento en el futuro también tendrán en sus horizontes la idea de crear negocios y desarrollos económicos.

Otro aspecto fundamental es el rol de las universidades ya no sólo como educadores, también como lugares en donde las empresas y los distintos sectores productivos pueden acudir en búsqueda de nuevas opciones para sus negocios. Para esto, los planteles educacionales deben tener abiertas las puertas para que sus académicos puedan participar del sector privado. Este "cambio de aire" no sólo será beneficioso para el experto, también lo será para la universidad, que se convertirá en un semillero de opciones con un gran potencial económico, lo que redundará en un mayor prestigio y en mayor capacidad para atraer a los mejores alumnos y, por consiguiente, mayores fondos para realizar su proyecto educativo.

Al sector privado también le cabe una responsabilidad. Las empresas deben arriesgarse en la búsqueda de nuevas opciones relacionadas a la biotecnología. Deben saber que la inversión en estos procesos puede ir más allá de convertir el negocio en "innovador" y "vanguardista". Deben saber que una adecuada participación en los procesos de investigación, desarrollo e implementación de nuevas técnicas pueden efectivamente generar importantes cambios a nivel de la producción y de la eficiencia del negocio, lo que se traduce en mayores utilidades económicas. Como parte de este compromiso, las empresas tienen el deber de involucrarse con los generadores de conocimiento, y participar activamente, para así crear el círculo virtuosos que la biotecnología es capaz de generar.

For the different types of media you can use dedicated social media sites, i.e. Twitter for short announcements, Youtube for videos, Flikr for photos, and scribd for articles in pdf, Powerpoint or Word Format. These services offer subsription to your content, i.e. if people subscribe they get automatically notified whenever you upload something new. If you use it regularly you might attract potential clients, partners, suppliers, staff who are interested in your business and your publications.

Another reason why you should be distributing your content across these sites is that Google loves social media sites. Google more and more puts results from video and photo search into the organic web search results. If you tag your uploads with relevant keywords, people might find you there and then come to your website.

An example could be that a hotel for Fly fishing in Patagonia puts photos of the hotel and the surrounding area tagged with the words "Fly Fishing", "Patagonia", "Chile" and geo tagged with the exact location on Flikr and Picasa. Their hotel brochure could be publsihed as an eBook on scribd and a video of the adventure trips on Youtube.

All of these social media sites offer an embed code. This allows you to embed the item simply on your website while it is hosted elsewhere.

Some ideas:

• Do you have a Powerpoint presentation of your business or your area of expertise? - Use slideshare or Scribd!
• Upload your business brochure to scribd and publish in eBook style on your website!
• Have you written some articles? - Upload to scribd and embed the playlist on your website!
• Do you have a product catalogue in pdf format? - Upload to scribd and embed it in the products page of your website!
• Show photos of your reference projects - Upload to Flikr and embed the Flikr Stream under references!
• Shoot some videos of you, your services and your products, publish on Youtube and embed the videos!

... and never forget to add a discription and keywords!

Here are some examples how embedding content from social media websites works:

Video - The Simpsons and Chile:  

 

Photo - This is a Flikr Phot Stream for the Keyword Chile:

 

In the last post I wrote about how to set up your own website with blogging software. Now that you did all fancy design it is time to start working on your content. Content is basically written text, pdf articles or brochures, photos and videos.

Start with the usual 'Home', 'About us ', 'Our Services or Products', 'References', 'Contact'. People want to quickly find the most important information about you and your business, keep it simple. Use static pages for these main information pages. Use short descriptive text and don't forget to use relevant keywords in your writing.

When you are a small business, people contract you because of you, so show a picture of yourself, the person behind the product. That creates trust and credibility. Here in Chile still lots of businesses do not publish any address, phone number or email on their website, instead they use a contact form that often doesn't even work. In the Internet you need some transparency.

A website should be dynamic. Keep publishing content about your products and services: A new product launch, a special discount promotion, an interesting article from your industry, events that you are organising or participating in. Your website needs to be alive, add new content on a regular basis!

In the next post I'll write about how you can use social media sites to publish your content and how to integrate it on your new website.

Many small businesses here in Chile struggle with their websites. They can't keep them up to date. The person who once developed it (usually a friend of a friend) has disappeared; and the site can hardly be found on search engines, so little traffic is coming in.

When you start a business you usually cannot afford to spend a lot of money on fancy web design and Internet Marketing consulting. What you need is a site that shows who you are, what you do, what you offer and how people can contact you. With modern technology it has never been easier to create your own website with little technical knowledge. I suggest using either Wordpress.com or blogger.com. There are very good manuals for both services plus hundreds of videos on Youtube on how to use it:

Domain

The easiest and absolute cost free option is to use a sub domain like yourname.wordpress.com. If you are serious about your business you should have your own domain. If you like a .cl domain you register this domain with www.nic.cl (about 20.000 CLP / year). A .com domain is much cheaper. At GoDaddy.com you get .com domains for about 12 USD per year. You do not need to buy online web space, just the domain!

Your Website

Blogging software is the way to go. Wordpress or Blogger are the most popular tools. When you start your business and do not want to invest in buying online storage, you can use the hosted services of blogger.com or wordpress.com. However, their funcionality is limited, but often sufficient for starters. Posts (sequential information posted over time) can be published with no limits. Just create an account and get started.

Link your web site with your domain

If you have a .com domain from e.g. Godaddy you can point the domain to your Blogger or Wordpress account, so it appears under www.yourdomain.com. This is a free service for Blogger and costs 10 USD per year for wordpress. On Blogger, Wordpress and Godaddy there are manuals available on how to do that. Or watch this video.

If you have a .cl domain it is a bit more tricky. You need a nameserver as NIC does not provide name servers. However, you can use free dns services like dnsmadeeasy. You might need some assistance of a professional at this stage.

Email with your domain name

It appears much more professional if you use emails with your own domain e.g. Esta dirección electrónica esta protegida contra spam bots. Necesita activar JavaScript para visualizarla instead of using Esta dirección electrónica esta protegida contra spam bots. Necesita activar JavaScript para visualizarla or @vtr.net.

You can use Google Apps for free (up to 50 email accounts). This comes with 7 GB of free web space, the best spam filters and an incredible Apps suite that allows you not only to manage your emails but also share Calendars and documents.

Start Building your site

Now it is time to start building your site. Both wordpress and blogger offer a variety of pre-designed templates that you can use and adapt to your Corporate image and there are hardly any limits to your creativity. Look what you can with blogger:

Watch this video:

In the next post I'll talk about putting content on the site, the hard work :)

Las naciones innovadoras se reconocen por diversos factores, desde su cultura, donde sobresale la apertura para desarrollar nuevas ideas y no castigar el fracaso, sino –incluso- premiarlo como experiencia; hasta cifras más específicas, como el número de compañías que se forman alrededor de una universidad y la cantidad de patentes per cápita.

Por Macarena Anrique Vial

This week I received a CD from a client in Europe with Videos, Powerpoint Slides and PDF Files, all in all just about 80 MB. Imagine what went into this file transfer. It was a very costly and energy intensive process from the manufacturing of the CD to the shipment from Europe to Chile.

But, is there another way of transferring large files between computers? Yes, there are plenty of opportunities of free file transferring and sharing services on the Internet. I am using yousendit and dropbox.

With yousendit you can upload a file of up to 100 MB for free. You then enter the email address of the recipient who is notified by email. He or she can then download the file by clicking on a link in the notification email (It expires after one week in the free version!).

What if you have more than 1 file to send? Just zip the files, as long as it is less than 100 MB it's still free: www.yousendit.com

We use dropbox especially on clients' projects. When we need to exchange lots of files during a project, we create a folder on dropbox and give access to the people involved. You can upload up to 2GB for free in your account and can access the files from any PC. Dropbox also offers a client that you can install on your PC. Files shared with dropbox are then located in a special dropbox folder on your machine which is synchronized with your online account. If someone changes or adds a new file, it is automatically synchronized on the PCs of the people who share that folder. Awesome! You can set individual access rights: private, shared with other users, or even pubic.

This is a much more efficient way of working with multiple people on multiple files as sending Email attachments back and forth, or a even burn a physical CD. How often do you get the "latest" version of a xxx.xls by email which does not include previous changes. With this type of file sharing there is only 1 version and everybody is up to date. Learn more on www.dropbox.com

And please don't burn that CD!

Alternatives: Google Docs, Megaupload

When we were in Germany recently, I ordered a new netbook from ASUS. I armed the new machine with free software only. As a young entrepreneur these days you hardly need to buy any software to manage your daily tasks on the computer, such as Word Processing, Spreadsheet Calculation,  Communication; or Image Editing. This is my list of useful free software tools that I installed on my Computer:

• Firefox as a browser, especially the thousands of Add-ons around firefox make your browser the most important tool on your PC. Alternative: Chrome.
• Of Course you should install the latest versions of Java and Flash Player, in order not to limit your browsing experience.
• Microsoft Security Essentials to protect your PC against viruses and malware, for Windows Users. Alternatively: Avast, Antivir.
• OpenOffice as a replacement for the MS Office Suite. I have been working with it for 3 months now and am still not missing my good old MS Office.
• Acrobat Reader.
• PDF Creator to convert documents into pdf format. Open Office can directly export to pdf.
• PDF Sam to split and merge PDFs. Especially if you need to put docs from various sources into one pdf.
• Dropbox for file sharing. 2 GB free online space to share files with colleagues, customers and suppliers. The beauty of Dropbox is the dropbox client. As soon as you update a file on a shared folder on your PC, it is automatically updated on the person's PC you share it with, anywhere in the world.
• Windows Users: CCleaner to clean up Windows regularly. Unfortunately still needs to be done even in Windows 7.
• Skype to make free video calls between Skype Users and cheap international phone calls. Alternative: Google Talk.
• Keypass to manage my passwords. Don't you have hundreds of Passwords. This tool helps you organize and find them.
• Picasa for photo editing and management.
• xnview (Image editing). This tool has an amazing batch processing tool. Ever had the problem that you've got 30 images you want to send, each 5 MB. This tool resizes and compresses all in one go. Alternative: Paintnet.
• VLC Media Player, just the best, plays all formats.
• Filezilla (FTP client), if you want to connect to a web server.

You can also refer to these services that install some of the software I mentioned above in one Go:
Google Pack
Lifehacker Pack 2010

My name is Dirk Röttges, Managing Partner of Hess y Röttges Marketing Solutions. We have developed this Website for Revista City. I was invited to share my knowledge about the Internet with this Community. I will write about Tools and Techniques which help you manage your business and you day to day work more efficiently. Most of the Services and Software are available for free on the Internet. There are hundreds of thousands solutions available.

The idea of this blog is to help you pick the right one! These are the topics I will write about in the coming weeks

1. Which software do I need on my PC?
2. Which Browser Add-ons make my life easier?
3. How to colaborate online - Alternatives to Email Attachments?
4. How to share files with colleagues, clients and Providers?
5. Marketing my content (articles, Presentations) across platforms?
6. How to send Newsletters to my clients?
7. What are you interested in?

What are you interested in. Please comment.

Pensando en el Bicentenario caímos en la cuenta de que estamos celebramos la invención de Chile como país. Un momento de atrevimiento y osadía, lleno de anhelos, pero también de dudas.

Llevamos 200 años en esta aventura, llenos de logros, problemas y desafíos, y más que hacer un catastro queremos invitarles a pensar que tan lejos podemos llegar.Queremos saber cómo imaginan Chile desde sus intereses y áreas profesionales, pero no sólo la frontera de posibilidad sino ese espacio donde deseamos que vivan nuestros nietos.

Por eso dos preguntas:

1. ¿Dónde estaremos dentro cien años?

2. ¿Cuál es tu proyecto estrella para llegar a ese momento?