Posts Tagged productivity
Give a Free Website to Your Favorite Church or Non-profit!
Posted by admin in church, Company & Product Profiles, Email, Free Stuff, fun, Internet, joomla, mobile, news, productivity, Simplicity, Technology & Gadgets, Timesavers, tips, Tools, Tricks & Hacks, Web, Web Applications, Website Development, wordpress on September 1, 2011
Here at Allyte, we’re big supporters of local churches and non-profit organizations. This month, Allyte is giving away a website (through our new product, called Speak) and 1 year of hosting to one church or non-profit organization. Winner to be announced September 17, 2011.
How to Understand Google Analytics – Part 3 of 3
Posted by admin in Company & Product Profiles, Email, File and Data Sharing, google docs, how to, Instruction, Internet, joomla, mobile, news, productivity, Simplicity, Technology & Gadgets, Timesavers, tips, Tools, Tricks & Hacks, Web, Web Applications, Website Development, wordpress on June 9, 2011
Read part 1 of “How to Understand Google Analytics Reports” here.
Read part 2 of “How to Understand Google Analytics Reports” here.
The last part of this 3-part series on understanding Google Analytics covers the last five pages of the sample report [download it here]. Let’s start with the map overlay.
The map overlay section is a breakdown of the countries your website’s traffic is coming from. In the sample report, the majority of the traffic came from the United States. The numbers that follow show the amount of visitors from each country, the average time they spent on the website, what percentage of the visitors were new, and their bounce rate. You’ll also see the comparison to last month in the sample report.
This information is somewhat helpful in understanding where traffic comes from, but a customized report that drills down to a more local level would be more beneficial. The report can be configured to show this data, but it isn’t configured in the default Google Analytics report, as demonstrated in the example.
The next section down is titled “Content Overview”. This is one of my favorite sections of the report because it shows the most popular pages for the website. There is also a term here that we haven’t defined yet – “Unique Views”. Google defines unique views as “pageviews that are generated by the same user during the same session. A unique view represents the number of sessions during which that page was viewed one or more times.” [source]
For this site, the home page is the most frequently viewed page on the site, which I suspect will be the case for the majority of websites. The report shows the number of pageviews for each page down the list, and the percentage of total pageviews this number represents. It is also compared to the last month’s pageviews to contrast traffic to the previous month.
Lastly, the “New vs. Returning” section breaks down visitor types by numbers. As you can see in this sample report, new visitors outweight returning visitors by a margin of only 54. In the previous month, however, new visitors took the title. If goals are configured in your Google Analytics dashboard, these numbers will also appear here. Google has a great article about getting these setup for your Analytics account.
The sample report we used as an outline for this series of articles is the default report available from Google Analytics. Analytics users can configure customized reports that offer information that is helpful for their specific website. The online dashboard for Analytics allows for interactive reporting, drilling down through the site to display numbers that are helpful in determining how to optimize your website. As I mentioned in Part 1 of this series. The information found in these reports needs to be interpreted for the purposes and goals of your website.
Thanks for reading through the series – and happy number crunching!
Computer Repair in Knoxville and Maryville, Tennessee
Posted by admin in Company & Product Profiles, Computer Repair, Computer Service, Free Stuff, home, how to, Internet, news, productivity, Security, Simplicity, Technology & Gadgets, Timesavers, tips, Tools, Tricks & Hacks on September 15, 2010
Finding a trustworthy place to get your computer repaired can be a difficult thing to do. Some shops want to keep your computer for weeks at a time, cutting down on your productivity. Others have you wait in a long line just to drop off the computer. It can be a frustrating experience just to talk with someone about your ailing computer.
There is a better solution. Allyte Technology Solutions repairs computers in Knoxville and Maryville, Tennessee. We provide friendly, personal, cost-effective computer service at your location. On-site service allows us to ensure the computer works properly and eliminates the hassle of dealing with messy cables and wires.
Call Allyte Technology Solutions for in-home or in-office computer service. You won’t be disappointed.
How to Secure Your Windows PC – Part 2
Posted by admin in Downloads, Email, File and Data Sharing, Free Stuff, how to, Instruction, Internet, productivity, Security, Technology & Gadgets, Timesavers, tips, Tricks & Hacks, Web on June 2, 2010
In “How to Secure Your Windows PC – Part 1“, we established that Windows PCs are often targeted because of their large market share and that the brand of your computer makes no difference because viruses, spyware and malware occur at the software level.
To protect your Windows computer, the first and best rule of protection is to use your head and be pro-active in your browsing and clicking habits. This typically means two things:
- Only visit websites that you know can be trusted
- Use caution when clicking on links in e-mail that are unsolicited
Let’s look a little closer at #1:
How do you know which websites can be trusted? There is a difficult tension here – if you visit only the sites you already know, there are many useful and informational websites out there that you will miss in an effort to be cautiuos. But, if you go out willy-nilly and click on every site that comes up in the search results, your computer will get infected with malicious software sooner or later.
So the answer lies somewhere in between. More experienced users can take a little more liberty in clicking on unknown sites, but naive or less experienced users will need to be more careful when visiting unknown websites.
The truth is that malicious websites will do their best to look like a legitimate, reputable website. But these same sites will do damage to your computer that can be difficult to recover from.
Let’s look a little closer at #2:
E-mail is also a popular way to direct people to websites that are harmful not only to your computer, but to your privacy. If you get an e-mail from a financial institution, never click on the link in the e-mail. Instead, go to your browser to access the institution’s site directly.
It is very possible that the legitimate-looking e-mail you just received will direct you to a “phishing” site that will extract your login information and allow someone else to access your accounts and information.
In Part 3, we’ll consider two types of software that can help protect your computer from viruses and spyware.
DimDim Creates a Totally Free Meeting Space Online
Posted by admin in Company & Product Profiles, File and Data Sharing, Free Stuff, how to, images, Instruction, Internet, Simplicity, Technology & Gadgets, Timesavers, tips, Tools, Tricks & Hacks, Web, Web Applications on February 24, 2010
If you’re looking for some space online to meet, look no further than DimDim. This free web service with a funny name offers a comprehensive package for meeting online.
Here are a few highlights:
- No software installation necessary – DimDim runs completely in your browser
- Desktop Sharing
- Use your webcams and microphones for video and conversation
- Record and embed meetings
- Social media integration
A complete run-down of the feature set is available here.
As mentioned above, a free version is available that allows up to 20 users and 1 webcam. Premium, paid packages are available, too. Here is a full-comparison of the packages.
Zapproved Helps Your Group Make Better Decisions
Posted by admin in Company & Product Profiles, Email, File and Data Sharing, Free Stuff, how to, Instruction, Internet, productivity, Simplicity, Technology & Gadgets, Timesavers, tips, Tools, Tricks & Hacks, Web, Web Applications on February 23, 2010
Does your decision-making process look like the one on the left or the one on the right?
Image from Zapproved.com
The decision-making process quickly and easily becomes complicated and convoluted with dozens of e-mails flying in and out of mailboxes. Zapproved.com helps your group streamline the decision-making process and keep the feedback all in one place.
To use Zapproved, you can begin by simply creating a proposal, or by signing up for a free account. The free account allows users to send 5 proposals/month; each proposal is kept for 30 days. Paid accounts start at $12/month for unlimited proposals and storage retention.
Those who serve on committees or work with groups often to make decisions will find Zapproved a simple and user-friendly tool to facilitate discussion and decision-making.
Keeping Up with the To-Dos
Posted by admin in Email, Free Stuff, how to, Instruction, Internet, productivity on January 30, 2010
How do you keep up with your to-do list? Is it on paper? In your email account? As long as your system works, it’s a good one.
I have used a combination of tools to help me keep my to-do list in order. Most of the time it works pretty well.
Between visual cues (items left on the desk or by the door to remind me), items in my GMail Inbox (I send emails to myself a lot), and an online to-do list for repeating tasks, my bases are pretty well covered.
As for the online tools, I have found a couple of websites to be especially useful. For the past year, I’ve been a user of RememberTheMilk. It’s a versatile site that allows the user to organize their to-do lists in a number of ways. The free version of the site is feature packed, but if you want any integration with a smartphone (I’m on an iPhone, myself), you’ll have to annie-up for the Pro version, at the tune of $25/year.
When my RememberTheMilk account came up for renewal this year, I chose to let it expire and go looking for another tool with similar features. A quick post on Twitter yielded some great feedback. Thanks to Jason Heydasch, I learned about Toodledo.
The free version of Toodledo has as many (probably even more) features than RememberTheMilk’s Pro version. The Toodledo iPhone app is only $2.99, a considerable amount less than the yearly fees at RememberTheMilk.
One of the most useful features of Toodledo is the ability to seperate tasks by context. I work out of at least two different offices during any given week, so this feature makes it easy for me to see only the tasks that are relevant to my focus at the time.
At first glance the interface of Toodledo might seem overwhelming and slightly rugged. But take a few minutes to look over the introduction and explanation of features. I quickly picked up the interface after I understood a little more about how it worked. It’s actually quite intuitive, highly customizable and versatile.
In my opinion, Toodledo is one of the best to-do management applications available, with a feature set that will work for most anyone, smartphone integration at a reasonable cost, and lots of plugins and widgets to help you keep track wherever you are online.