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Several people sent me the link to NYC VC Fred Wilson’s blog post in which he asks his readership for suggestions for a “Family CRM” service. He explains that he and his wife Joanne Wilson a.k.a Gotham Gal are looking for a way to share basic contact/calendar information, build some e-mail lists for social correspondence, planning and general family-managing.
In the thread, a few BatchBook customers recommended our CRM BatchBook (thanks Boris, Sri, Stefano and Sandro!), so I’d talk about how I use my BatchBook account to help manage my busy family.
First, I should explain that BatchBook was not designed for managing families, but it WAS designed for those small businesses that are about the same size, shape and energy level of an on-the-go family. I think the folks who recommended us recognize that the flexibility of BatchBook makes it work for all sorts of situations, including the work/life balancing (or is it juggling?) act that we small business owners face every day. As we know all too well, the line between business owner and family member frequently blurs.
My other co-founders and I started BatchBlue so that we could build a business deeply integrated with our family lives (I have three small children; they have two). Part of the solution for me has been using a personal BatchBook account to manage my family life. Here’s how I do it:
- I use my personal BatchBook account for my holiday mailing list, I’ve created a separate record for each person in a couple and link them with a “spouse” affiliation. I also created a field for how I want to address the collective them – ie “Dr. and Mrs. Allen” for my best friend’s older parents vs. “Sean Ransom & Michelle Riggen-Ransom” for my modern dual-name friends. I also created a field for their kids names so I can include them in the addressing.
- I’ve created tags for #doctor (which includes custom fields for hospitals & medications – my son has medical issues), #poker (my husband organizes a monthly game), #house (I seem to always call the plumber from the road), #holiday list, #teachers (with comments for gifts given so I don’t duplicate as multiple kids go through the same classes), #coach (same as teachers), #travel (my sister and I plan our family’s annual vacation so I’m usually dealing with hotels, house rentals, etc.)
- I am now the official keeper of my extended family’s official birthday and anniversary list, so I’ve created custom date fields for birthdays and anniversaries. My husband and I share a Google calendar and events I create from these dates automatically feed to it.
- I don’t keep my daily task list in BatchBook, but I do add events for recitals, performances, doctors appointments, etc. that feeds into my professional and my husband’s calendars.
- If I wanted to I could see my friends’ and families’ most recent Tweets, Flickr images, blog posts, etc. from within BatchBook, but honestly I don’t use this feature much in my personal account. These are all the same people I have on my special private Twitter list and I tend to keep up over there.
- I keep these all synced to my Android (and before that Blackberry) through Gmail. There is also a mobile version of BatchBook, and we are working to release native apps for the iPhone and Android soon.
My favorite criteria listed in the comments of Fred’s post (from wife Gotham Gal) is that the application they need should be built by a mom (we have a lot of those at BatchBlue, though we would add that a busy Dad’s probably just fine too!)
When it comes down to it, running a family is about managing relationships. No need to pie chart the likelihood of closing the deal, or dole out sales scripts to new employees. Just give me my son’s last prescription data when I need it, help me manage three different soccer schedules and keep me in good graces with my elderly Southern relatives who expect to hear from me no matter how busy I might be with work. Thanks to BatchBook, all that I can do.
Tags: batchbook, contact management, how-to, supertags, work/life
Global climate change is obviously a big, big issue. So what can we as small businesses do about it? As part of Blog Action Day 2009, BatchBlue turned to our resident experts in all things small business (our customers and our contact network, of course!) to find out what they are doing not only to bring in the green, but also to be green in their business practices.
During Tuesday’s small business Twitter chat #SBBUZZ, we discussed how there are many small steps you can take to help green up your business (and thus help do the big work of saving the planet!)
We were fortunate to be joined on #SBBUZZ last night by green expert, author and professional organizer Candita Clayton, who helped guide the discussion about what small business can do to save energy, reduce waste and fight climate change. Here are some simple, easy-to-implement tips that came out of our discussion:
Recycle: Make it easy to recycle paper, glass and plastic. Set up separate bins where they will be seen and used. If your business doesn’t have a program in place, start one! It’s worth it to be the squeaky wheel on this issue since it’s so important. And many communities have programs in place where you can drop off unwanted computers, printers etc. Keeping these hazardous items out of the landfill will go a long way in helping to halt pollution and resultant climate change.
Reuse: Before you toss something in the trash, see if it has a potential secondary purpose. Tricia Mumby from Mabel’s Labels says “We have found a very unique way of disposing of some of our paper waste: donate to daycares and schools! Some of our cardboard, paper and plastic waste is very much appreciated for craft time!” Mumby adds that one of their goals is to generate as little trash as possible, so they make sure to provide their breakrooms with adequate dishes, cups, tea-towels and containers that are re-usable.
There’s also the great site Freecycle.org, which allows your trash to become someone else’s…well, you know!
Power down: Several folks suggested unplugging computer equipment and related electronics when not in use. I chimed in with an idea I heard a while ago: plug all your electronics into a Clapper, then “Clap Off!” when you are done working for the day. So much fun, you’ll never forget to do it! (Clappers can be purchased via Amazon.com)
Promote green computing: Nancy Cobado from Brain Trust Technologies suggests trying electronic document management, online meetings and collaboration. “Print less, consume less power and travel less,” says Cobado,”It’s amazing what you can save!”
Go paperless: Another popular suggestion was to try for a paperless office. There are many small business web apps out there that will help you manage tasks like invoicing, payroll and contact management (ahem!) without killing a single tree. Check out our friends on the Small Business Web for inspiration.
From a practical standpoint, Fernando Labastida of KPIOnline.com suggests the following: “Small businesses can use Business Intelligence tools to track the purchases of line items such as copy paper, notebook paper, tissue, set disposable reduction goals for these items, and track them on a monthly basis. The pure act of measuring something spurs creative ideas for improving the metrics of something that needs improving.” He adds, “If your goal is to reduce copy paper consumption by 20%, you now have a way of actually measuring the consumption of your copy paper.”
Telecommute: At BatchBlue, we’re huge fans of working from home (or the local coffee shop, or waiting for the kids’ soccer practice, on a train etc.) Mobile technologies and laptops have freed us to work where we choose to work rather than being arbitrarily tethered to a desk. There’s even a name for this brave new way of working: Workshifting. This site is full of advice for those either currently workshifting or seeking to start. And on our site, BatchBlue president Pamela O’Hara has written a blue paper about how you can set up and manage your own virtual office.
Obviously…the difference of the impact on gas consumption and related climate change between commuting two hours and walking to your dining room table? Huge.
Small business, big change
BatchBook customer Daniel Mark Wheaton summarizes his company’s efforts nicely “At Canuka Web Solutions, we’re a pretty small company, but we try to take little steps to be as green as possible. All of our invoices are e-mailed, or printed on recycled paper. Our promotional material is also printed on recycled paper and placed in folders made from 100% recycled material. And by using technology to share ideas and teleconference, we cut our costs as well as minimizing our impact on the environment by reducing unnecessary travel.”
Leave a comment, save a fish
We know you’ve got even more great ideas, so please feel free to share them in the comments below. Or just say hello! BatchBlue will donate $2 for every commenter on this post to the Blue Ocean Institute. Because a healthy climate means healthy oceans and vice versa, and because we love the work they are doing to save the world’s oceans and coastlines. As an added bonus, one lucky winner will be randomly selected to win their very own Clapper!
Thanks for joining us in thinking about how small business can help combat climate change. Please try some (or all!) of these tips and let’s join the fight against climate change one small business at a time.
UPDATE: Well, we didn’t get as many comments as we hoped, but we’re still making a donation in the name of small business to The Blue Ocean Institute. And the lucky winner of the Clapper will be contacted within the next couple of days. Thanks everyone! –MRR
Tags: blog action day, green, how-to, mobile web, small business, twitter, virtual office
I recently spent a few weeks vacationing with my husband, 3 kids and a rotating stream of relatives and friends at our family retreat on a tiny island north of Portland, Maine. Each day wondering if we should sail, climb the rocks, play on the beach, boogie board, collect starfish, hunt crabs, fish, play tennis, eat mussels, clams or lobsters, or all of the above. At BatchBlue we put a high premium on family time. We talk a bit about mandatory vacations in our Virtual Office Blue Paper, but a customer wrote in recently with the comment, “it is great that you know how to disengaged, but do you find it hard to re-engage?” It’s hard to benefit from the personal time if you are worried about the mounting workload, so I thought I would share a few of my tips on quickly catching up on the waiting backlog.
Here are a few of the things I did to quickly get back up to BatchBlue speed::
- Read staff meeting agendas – ok, alright, I did this one while on vacation. Not to prove I work harder than anyone else, but just because leaving your business for a few weeks is like leaving your kids for a few weeks. You can’t not check in once in a while. So on staff meeting days I would check our company wiki and read through the notes that the team had taken during the meeting. Great way to peek in without being noticed.
- Search of the daily staff updates – at BatchBlue each staff person sends around a daily report on what they are working on. I set up a filter in Gmail to collect these in a folder while I was gone, so it was pretty easy to quickly read through them chronologically and get a sense of what progress was made while I was out.
- Click back through the history of my Twitter feed on the BatchBook dashboard to get a sense of what the Twitterverse was saying about BatchBlue, SBBuzz, or me.
- I already have a “BatchBlue” folder in my Google Reader where I subscribe to a number of company related RSS feeds. So all in one place I get a quick glimpse of the following:
- BatchBlue Blog posts written by the staff while I was gone.
- BatchBook comments or notes added to contact records in BatchBook. For the most part these were silly remarks by staff about each other, but there is something comforting about catching up on some of the inside company jokes, as well.
- BatchBlue communications including all e-mails, phone calls, Twitter messages or other communications sent out or received by BatchBlue staff. I admit I would flip back into BatchBook reading most of these – such a great way to remind myself who some of the e-mails recipients are (thank you social media SuperTag!).
- Forum posts showed me all of the BatchBook questions and suggestions our customers posted in our online forums as well as the BatchBlue responses. I always learn something new in there.
- Hubspot Feeds are the nice messages our friends at Hubspot send telling us about anyone in the wonderful world of the Web talking about us. A little self-indulgent, but in a good way.
- And lastly there is the 200 pound gorilla: the Inbox! I learned my best trick from the Magic Fairy of Organization, Miss ChelPixie. I use the GMail Labs “Superstar” feature to do a once through of all of my outstanding e-mails and either delete them or color code them. I prioritize time sensitive messages, staff questions and customer requests. I group admin issues (mostly bills – ugh!) and personal ones. The first pass was read only – I had to get them organized first. And I did not let myself go to sleep that night until all messages were coded and all priority mail had gotten a response.
So I was able to start the week not only relaxed and refreshed, but with a comfortable sense of what I had missed and a manageable workload ahead of me. What better way to jump back on this speeding train!
Tags: batchblue, communications management, how-to, small business, work/life
This is the final post in a three-part series about how I made the BatchBook Screencasts. In Part 1, we recorded the screencasts. In Part 2, we encoded the screencasts and embedded them on the web. Today, we’re going to take your screencasts and turn them into a video podcast. We’ll also submit the podcast to iTunes.
Making the screencast into a podcast
First of all, what exactly is a podcast? Sure it’s audio, and you can subscribe to it, but really… what is it? Luckily, we included “Podcasting” in our glossary of tech terms!
Podcasting is a kind of audio broadcasting that uses the Internet, like an on-line radio show. The name was created by combining “iPod” and “broadcasting”. Podcasting involves making one or more files available in an RSS feed. A pod-caster (the creator of the podcast) makes a list of music and/or other audio files and makes the list available for other users to retrieve.
So, once you have a few audio or video files, all you need to make them into a podcast is an RSS feed. That’s what your listeners/viewers can “subscribe” to in an RSS reader or podcasting client (such as iTunes).
What’s an RSS feed? That’s in the glossary too!
RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. An RSS feed is a document that contains either a summary of content from a web site or the full text of a website. RSS feeds makes it possible for people to keep up with their favorite web sites automatically rather than checking them manually.
What does an RSS feed look like? It looks a lot like an XML document (because it is an XML document!). Here’s an example of a feed—our BatchBlue News RSS feed (truncated after the first news story):
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<rss version="2.0">
<channel>
<title>BatchBlue News</title>
<description>News updates from BatchBlue Software, LLC</description>
<link>http://batchblue.com</link>
<docs>http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss</docs>
<lastBuildDate>Thu, 22 Jan 2009 11:21:00 -0500</lastBuildDate>
<pubDate>Thu, 22 Jan 2009 11:20:14 -0500</pubDate>
<generator>FeedForAll Mac v2.1 (2.1.0.1); http://www.FeedForAll.com/</generator>
<item>
<title>BatchBlue Launches New Social CRM Solution Specifically for Marketers: BatchBook for Marketing</title>
<description>New BatchBook for Marketing Includes Functionality to Manage Queries from Peter Shankman's Popular Help a Reporter Out (TM) Service</description>
<link>http://batchblue.com/pr-090122-batchbook-for-marketing.html</link>
<guid isPermaLink="false">BF056ABF-4EAA-4872-8FC5-247166D68DBE-3971-000031C872E078D5-FFA</guid>
<pubDate>Thu, 22 Jan 2009 11:21:00 -0500</pubDate>
</item>
...
Looks scary, huh? If you look carefully, it makes sense… the “channel” is what the feed is about (in this case “BatchBlue News”). There’s the date last updated, link to the feed’s author, some technical jargon, etc. An “item” is an individual entry (or in this case, a news story). Each “item” has a description, a link, a date, etc.
Luckily, you don’t have to edit this by hand. There are some nice tools out there to help you do it. The one I use is called FeedForAll. Specifically, I use FeedForAll for Mac ($40).
The interface is much less scary. In fact, it’s downright inviting. Here’s the “channel”:
And an individual item:
So, that’s an RSS feed. But there’s one more thing needed in an RSS feed to make it a podcast: an enclosure. In a podcast feed, each “item” will contain not only a <link> but an <enclosure> (a link to the actual media file). What’s the difference? When a podcast episode is published, it will often be posted on a web page or blog. The <link> is that page. The <enclosure> is a direct link to the media file (audio or video) itself. That way, podcasting clients such as iTunes know what file to download.
Here’s an example of an item from our screencasts feed. The screencasts have an <enclosure> (the video file) as well as a <link> (a direct link to that video on our screencasts page).
<item>
<title>Manage your contacts and social network</title>
<description>Manage your contacts and social network</description>
<link>http://www.batchblue.com/screencasts.html#contacts-video</link>
<enclosure url="http://www.batchblue.com/screencasts/contacts.m4v" length="8750577" type="video/x-m4v"></enclosure>
<guid isPermaLink="false">0BB7B405-54E1-4BD3-85D8-9E43757ED8A7-29077-00011275E171D3F1-FFA</guid>
<pubDate>Wed, 19 Nov 2008 21:05:32 -0500</pubDate>
<itunes:subtitle>Manage your contacts and social network</itunes:subtitle>
<itunes:summary>Manage your contacts and social network</itunes:summary>
<itunes:duration>00:03:56</itunes:duration>
<itunes:explicit>no</itunes:explicit>
</item>
Getting the podcast on iTunes
The first thing everyone wants to do when they get a podcast is submit it to iTunes. Why? iTunes has the largest, most popular podcast directory built into the application. You can submit your podcast to get it listed on iTunes. An iTunes listing looks like this:
To submit your podcast, open iTunes. Then go to the iTunes Store. Choose Podcasts. Near the bottom, you’ll (eventually) find a “Submit a Podcast” link. That will bring you to a screen that looks like this:
That’s all it takes to actually submit your podcast. Within a few days, it will be approved.
Now, there are ways to enhance your feed for iTunes, to make it look better. iTunes uses a slew of additional tags for the RSS feed. For example, here’s the “channel” for the screencasts feed:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<rss xmlns:itunes="http://www.itunes.com/dtds/podcast-1.0.dtd" version="2.0">
<channel>
<title>BatchBook Screencasts</title>
<description>BatchBook is an easy-to-use customer relationship manager (CRM) designed for small business owners. The BatchBook Screencasts will show you the ins and outs of using BatchBook.</description>
<link>http://batchblue.com/screencasts.html</link>
<copyright>2006-2008 BatchBlue Software, LLC</copyright>
<docs>http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss</docs>
<language>en</language>
<lastBuildDate>Wed, 19 Nov 2008 22:33:55 -0500</lastBuildDate>
<pubDate>Wed, 19 Nov 2008 22:33:44 -0500</pubDate>
<generator>FeedForAll Mac v2.1 (2.1.0.1); http://www.FeedForAll.com/</generator>
<itunes:subtitle>BatchBook Screencasts</itunes:subtitle>
<itunes:summary>BatchBook is an easy-to-use customer relationship manager (CRM) designed for small business owners. The BatchBook Screencasts will show you the ins and outs of using BatchBook.</itunes:summary>
<itunes:category text="Technology">
<itunes:category text="Software How-To"/>
</itunes:category>
<itunes:keywords>small business crm, contact management</itunes:keywords>
<itunes:author>BatchBlue Software</itunes:author>
<itunes:owner>
<itunes:email>adarowski@batchblue.com</itunes:email>
<itunes:name>Adam Darowski</itunes:name>
</itunes:owner>
<itunes:image href="http://www.batchblue.com/screencasts/itunes.png" />
<itunes:explicit>no</itunes:explicit>
...
As you can see, the iTunes info contains such data as a summary, categories, contact information, artwork, and more.
Here’s an example of an “item” in an iTunes-optimized screencast feed:
<item>
<title>Manage your contacts and social network</title>
<description>Manage your contacts and social network</description>
<link>http://www.batchblue.com/screencasts.html#contacts-video</link>
<enclosure url="http://www.batchblue.com/screencasts/contacts.m4v" length="8750577" type="video/x-m4v" ></enclosure>
<guid isPermaLink="false">0BB7B405-54E1-4BD3-85D8-9E43757ED8A7-29077-00011275E171D3F1-FFA</guid>
<pubDate>Wed, 19 Nov 2008 21:05:32 -0500</pubDate>
<itunes:subtitle>Manage your contacts and social network</itunes:subtitle>
<itunes:summary>Manage your contacts and social network</itunes:summary>
<itunes:duration>00:03:56</itunes:duration>
<itunes:explicit>no</itunes:explicit>
</item>
Thankfully, we don’t have to edit that by hand either. FeedForAll can handle iTunes data just fine. Here’s the interface for adding “channel” information:
And here’s the additional info for an “item”:
Every time you add a new item (or episode, or screencast), simply update the feed and iTunes will automatically update as well.
And you’ve done it!
If you’ve followed along since the first post, you’ve got a bunch of screencasts, they’re embedded on your site, they’ve got a feed, and they’re listed in iTunes. Sweet! I hope you found this series helpful!
Tags: enclosure, FeedForAll, how-to, itunes, podcast, rss, screencasts, tutorial, video
Earlier this month, I kicked off a three-part series about how I recorded the BatchBook screencasts with a post about the hardware and software I used to record the screencasts. I also included tips about scripting and recording the screencasts.
Today, I’m going to talk about how I exported the screencasts and embedded them within BatchBlue.com and BatchBook, our small business CRM.
When we last left our heroes, we had just recorded our screencasts (with Screenflick), done some simple splicing with QuickTime Pro, and saved a full-size, full-quality QuickTime video. This video looks and sounds great. The only problem is, it’s too big for the web. I’m not just talking about the file size. For example, the uncompressed version of the “Manage your contacts and social network” screencast came in at 27.1 megabytes. That’s not bad for a four-minute video.
The problem is the video’s dimensions. Before resizing, my videos were 1038 pixels wide and 758 pixels tall. While many users have large monitors now, there are still a ton of 1024×768 screens out there. That’s pretty much the size of our video. Factor in menu bars, task bars, browser windows, browser buttons, and other toolbars and we quickly realize we need to shrink our video.
While we’re shrinking our video, we might as well make a decision on what format to use. As a Mac guy, I love QuickTime. But the reality is the Flash Player is going to be on more computers by default than the QuickTime Player. And quite frankly, when you’re looking to sell your product, you want to get in front of as many eyes as possible. So, Flash it is!
Encoding the screencasts
Wait, why not put it on YouTube or Vimeo? I mean, they’ll host it for you with no bandwidth costs! That’s true. But the quality of those sites is absolute crud. Particularly for screencasts. I’ve just never had any success uploading something that looked good enough to put my name on it. By hosting the screencasts ourselves, we have full control over the quality.
As an aside, if your goal is to spread your video virally, you’d be nuts not to put it on the video sharing sites. But this video isn’t a viral marketing piece—it is a tutorial. So, image quality matters much more than sharability.
I’ve had good results encoding to Flash using Adobe’s very own Adobe Flash CS3 Video Encoder. The Encoder comes with Flash CS4 Professional ($699), but can be found packaged with other applications in the many Adobe bundles. I know there are other applications that export to Flash Video, but I haven’t tried any since I have Flash handy.
I export using the highest quality. I figure if you’re taking the time to watch a screencast, you probably don’t care about downloading a couple extra megabytes to get the best image quality possible. Here are the settings I use:
Basically, I used the default High Quality setting and then resized the video to 800 pixels wide. If you are compressing multiple videos, you can select all before entering these settings. That will apply the same settings to all videos.
So, now you’ve got a bunch of .flv files. But, how do you get them on your site?
Embedding the screencasts
I did quite a bit of Googling to find the best way to embed your own Flash videos. I was completely impressed by JW FLV Media Player. It’s open source, it’s cheap (€30 for a commercial license, free for personal use), it has great support, it has all kinds of add-ons, and it is accompanied by simple tools like this setup wizard.
JW FLV Player comes with two files you need to upload to your site—player.swf and swfobject.js. Then, in the page’s <head>, you need to link to the Javascript file like this:
<script type="text/javascript" src="swfobject.js"></script>
Then, where you want your video to be embedded, you drop something like this:
<div id="contacts-video" class="screencast">Screencast: Manage your contacts and social network</div>
<script type="text/javascript">
var so = new SWFObject('player.swf','mpl','800','604','9');
so.addParam('allowscriptaccess','always');
so.addParam('allowfullscreen','true');
so.addParam('flashvars','&file=screencasts/contacts.flv&image=screencasts/title-contacts.png');
so.write('contacts-video');
</script>
Just to explain what is going on here, we’re creating a <div> (with the id of contacts-video) that the screencast will live in. The text “Screencast: Manage your contacts and social network” is what will appear if the user does not have the Flash Player installed (the iPhone is handy for testing this scenario!). After that, we have a script that takes the player (player.swf) and customizes it based on a whole bunch of parameters. Then, the “so.write('contacts-video');” part replaces that text with the Flash video.
And huzzah! You’ve got this!:
Screencast: Manage your contacts and social network
Next steps
Congratulations! You now have your screencasts embedded on your web site! Next time, I’ll talk about how to make an iPod version of the screencast, build a feed for it, and get it listed in iTunes as a video podcast.
Tags: embedding, encoding, flash video, how-to, jw flv media player, screencasts, tutorial, video
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