Back in the good ol’ analog past, this function would be served by footnotes or endnotes.  But in this day and age, footnotes and endnotes are like Dick Clark - yeah, they’re amazingly still around, but for what purpose?  For starters, continually scanning towards the bottom of the page, or worse, flipping to the end of a chapter or book, disturbs the flow of reading.  And most people - especially college students - don’t even read traditional “books” anymore.

So how can readers get additional context in this post-end/footnote world?  Glad you asked, because into this vortex steps ReadEasy, the next step in online (and analog) reading.

ReadEasy is a pro-active and predictive dictionary system that enhances the reading experience by embedding personalized and contextually correct definitions (“Readlets”) next to that text.  The Readlets are tailored to the user’s knowledge level in the topic and language of the text, and are embedded within the document to allow for faster and better reading comprehension.

So I registered.  Upon doing so, I was prompted to upload a document; it was an old work plan I threw together in Word.  After a few seconds, the new and improved file opened up, rife with Readlets: certain terms were automatically defined in the far left or right margins.  By clicking on any Readlet, I could remove or change them.  All of the hyperlinks from the original Word document were intact, and I had a nice page scroller at the bottom of the screen to help me navigate.

Most importantly, my question about the origins of the Readlets themselves were quickly answered.  Basically, I wondered why ReadEasy chose certain words to define with Readlets and not others.  ReadEasy will select certain words it thinks are likely to need further definition.  Fortunately, I could also add my own.  I simply clicked on a word in the document; a pop-up opened, identifying the word and giving me multiple Readlet options and asking me to select one.  So ReadEasy is stocked with definitions that make their way into Readlets.  (Don’t believe me?  Access their dictionary in the bottom right-hand corner of their home page and see for yourself.)

With a handful of definitions to choose from, I selected one by clicking on the “Use This Definition” button.  Once I was finished with the document, I clicked on the “Update” button to regenerate the file with the Readlets I added and removed.   Simple, efficient, and kind of fun.  Due to a strict confidentiality agreement, I am unable to show a screenshot of the actual ReadEasy-itized Word doc (my lawyer is literally reading over my shoulder as I type this.)  However, here is a similar example:

Having received the Readlet-treatment, it’s only natural to think of how ReadEasy can be applied in the real world.  Most obviously, a document - and its Readlets - can be tailored based on the audience.  For example, high school readers of, say, “Huck Finn,” can have Readlets that match their 16-year old selves.  More sophisticated, ivory-tower academic Readlets, meanwhile, would make more sense for a college-aged reader.  Context is everything.

Which leads me to my next thought: ReadEasy would be extremely valuable in areas rife with complexity and “industry-specific” terminology.  Examples: college textbooks (not sure why, but anatomy comes to mind), product owners’ manuals (particularly in the IT field), strategy and marketing documents, employee training manuals, instructions to assemble stuff, etc.  In other words, ReadEasy can be useful in any field that has their own strange proprietary language and occasionally-depressing buzzwords. It would also be helpful to those learning English as a second language.

Which lastly brings me to the navigational component of the site and suggestions.  The site is very easy to use, so no need to beat a dead horse.  The FAQs are helpful too, and I actually think there’s some room for development there.  For starters, additions as simple as “What is ReadEasy?” and “Why should I use ReadEasy?” would help.  And to that latter suggested FAQ - and also echoing my comments earlier - ReadEasy may want to dial up the practical uses of its product, particularly across its targeted audiences.  A fleshed out FAQ and even some Web copy (e.g. “ReadEasy is perfect for students, employees, and professionals by providing instant and valuable context to textbooks, training manuals, and instructional documents of your choosing) could go a long way.  Just a thought.

So, despite David Foster Wallace’s best efforts, we must face reality and bid a collective adieu to the analog footnote and endnote.  (It was a fun ride, guys.)  The hyperlink, and all of its glory, is here to stay.  But as long as there are textbooks, training manuals, and complex and confusing organizations with their own internal corporate-speak, there is a need for a better, deeper, and more contextualized reading experience.  It’s an experience elegantly provided by ReadEasy.

My personal observations about predicting stock investments is that you just as well might use a magic eight ball. There are many different investment strategies, none of which work all the time. And once you find one that does work, the contrarians tell you to do the opposite. People can spend long hours researching a company and still end up losing money. Others pay advisors to do the research for them. Some blindly pick stocks based upon a nominal amount of research.

PortfolioRunner is a site that applies multiple strategies to make predictions about the stock exchange. They do all the financial research and provide trading recommendations. It’s designed to be a complete substitute for financial advisors.

PortfolioRunner offers three main branches of investment strategies. The first is Technical strategies, which are based on pattern recognition and indicators. Next are Fundamental strategies, which are based on calculating ratios, making projections, and discounting. Finally, Community strategies which track the latest picks by top investors.

The people behind PortfolioRunner are seasoned professionals in stock trading, IT professionals, and math geeks. They have a couple Mathematics PhDs who developed the portfolio management algorithms the drive PortfolioRunner’s analysis. If that doesn’t mean anything to anybody, what it boils down to is they’ll tell you what stocks to buy and then sell, and when. It does all the hard work for you, just like a financial advisor.

Upon signing up you’re prompted through a quick set up process. Here you indicate your risk tolerance, current holdings, as well as how much cash you’d like PortfolioRunner’s engine to make investment recommendations on. It gives you the option to select up to three investment strategies. These are the brains behind the recommendations that are made. Each strategy’s history is documented. What this means is you can readily see the track record from its inception and exactly how much money it made. Once your account is set up, you can get your first set of recommendations. Buy recommendations are ranked based upon the risk level involved, and include the quantity and price it should be bought at. PortfolioRunner isn’t intended to be used for intra day trades, and as such, all engines are run after market close.

A common usage would be to sign up for an account, and then take a few minutes to configure your preferences. From there you can view your dashboard, check to see what stocks are recommended to buy or sell. Every time you transact in real life, just update it in your portfolio. Then PortfolioRunner will readjust your account and supply more buy recommendations based upon the strategies you selected and your portfolio preferences. Although you’re limited to three investment strategies per portfolio, you can have multiple portfolios. So, let’s say you start out with $10,000. After watching it grow to $15,000 you decide it’s time to invest more. Just create a new portfolio with its set of strategies, and off you go.

Another helpful option is that you can research stocks of your choosing using PortfolioRunner’s engine. So say you have a nutty friend that is always coming up with obscure investment ideas. (Doesn’t everyone have a friend like that?) You can submit these stocks to learn how they measure up to PortfolioRunner’s recommendation engine.

PortfolioRunner provides a fully functional risk management tool. It’s designed by professionals within the industry with strong technical backgrounds. All its trading recommendations are tracked so its successes can be measured and monitored. These successful investment recommendations are currently all free for the taking, during PortfolioRunner’s beta phase. From seasoned investors to those who prefer to have someone do the research for them, PortfolioRunner is a powerful tool to guide investment decisions.

Behind the height of the big game is an intense schedule of practice, training, and preparation. Coaches turn into impassioned leaders attempting to hone minds and bodies for battle. Invariably they want nothing more than to drive this year’s team to first place. In order to do so they must interact with league administrators, parents, field or venue owners, businesses and sponsors, the fans, and then finally, their team. This can only be described as a logistical nightmare.

Fortunately, we live in a day and age where connecting and organizing disparate groups is increasingly easy. FireField provides a set of tools to organize the entire system. In their own words it’s, “One central site for the management of all sports. Every player, every coach, every team, every game, every score, and most importantly, everything you need to make it happen.”

What that looks like is you can sign up for a free account as either a player, coach, parent, athletic director, league manager, business owner, or fan. From there each of these users can connect to the others online. For instance, a league manager can establish a little league schedule, and then put all the games and venues on the schedule. Then coaches from each of the teams can set up a practice schedule and invite all their players to join their team. The players will then sign up and stay connected with each other as well as seeing the latest schedule and news updates from the coach. Parents, fans, business owners can all indicate how they’re connected to the sporting teams as well. Once everyone signs up, it notifies you or displays upcoming events, the latest schedule, stats, and any other relevant information. I can only imagine the highs players will go on when someone they like signs up as one of their fans. Yet another part of the highs and lows of sports.

FireField doesn’t stop with facilitating the logistical flow of information. They also provide the ability to exchange money as well.  Most sports teams cost money to join. Many teams are also supported by donations. On top of that, oftentimes various equipment is recommended or required. FireField is integrated with Amazon so coaches or businesses can offer equipment to the teams. People can receive money for goods or services by creating a Seller Account and linking it to a bank account via Amazon. A full set of tutorials can be found here.

Creating a Team

Firefield can be considered akin to a Facebook designed specifically for sporting events. Each user is given a profile that can connect to the other entities. Only in this case, those connections are defined by your relationships in the sports world. On top of that, it can keep track of all your stats and scorecards. Lastly, the ability to handle registration, donations, and sale of merchandise is all facilitated by their integration with Amazon.

I recall back in the day, hearing coaches give inspiring speeches, envisioning each of us holding the trophy, and teaching us to dig deeper within ourselves. I had little appreciation for the long hours coaches and league officials spent organizing the leagues and teams that we so much enjoyed. Although it was a labor of love, I’m sure they sacrificed much to make it happen. With FireField managing your teams online, more time can be spent leading teams to victory and playing the sports they love.

The resume and job search process is and has always been, convoluted. There’s no one single format for a resume and all employers seem to request different pieces of information. What’s more is once your career gets going you continue to accumulate professional and academic experience, all of which needs to be tracked. After a few years it quickly becomes cumbersome.

Behold. A Resume.

Unilaterally solving the resume and job search “problem” is ConnectCV. They provide an online resume builder that allows job seekers to set up their resumes as well as for employers to seek out candidates. They also have a service for educators to network with both employers and students, to help facilitate the introduction of their graduates.

At first glance ConnectCV is nothing more than a location to create an online resume and employers to find them. Upon further inspection however, they offer much more than that. They are set up to track every aspect of your job search, including professional experience, schoolastic degrees, and references. Notably, they also provide the means to authenticate each of these vital pieces of information. For instance each previous employers can be verified via their eVerification system. References can be sent a questionnaire which will be embedded into your online resume through eReference. There’s eLibrary which stores all your career documents. Anything from grades, diplomas, referrals, job descriptions, can all be stored in this central location. Once you’ve uploaded your documents to ConnectCV, you don’t have to go searching for them ever again. Then there’s the eCertificate tool that authenticates your degrees or academic accomplishments. This means potential employers can know at a glance that your degree is valid. ConnectCV is set up to track and validate all the information and materials you need throughout your entire career.

Historically the onus has been on employers to verify that your credentials are accurate. Smaller businesses usually bypass this step and go with their gut instinct. Larger businesses often outsource it. Both employer and employee are given the option to authenticate various items on a resume. This is a paid service, but once something is authenticated regardless of who pays for it, that status remains on your resume. The level of verification is indicated by their resume verification star rating system. This visually indicates the degree to which one’s credentials have been verified, and if any discrepancies were found.

A sample workflow would be for a job seeker to upload all their information to ConnectCV. Once that’s done, they can broadcast their resume out to potential employers that are looking for someone with their credentials. From there employers can contact them for an interview. From the employer side, when they decide to open up a new position, they set up a job posting within their ConnectCV account. From there ConnectCV’s engine will search the web as well as their own database and provide relevant matches. More about that process can be found here. Employers are also provided a web plugin to place on their site, dubbed ResumeLink. This allows candidates to directly email their online resumes.

ConnectCV has positioned themselves to be the central location for job seekers and employers to connect. For job seekers it’s nice to finally have a place to store all the information needed to find a job. For employers it covers all the bases they need to make quick and accurate assessments of candidates. For educators, it gives them the option to begin capitalizing on introducing their esteemed alums to employers. Schools and Universities already are very useful headhunters, now they can get paid for the service as well. Particularly useful is that ConnectCV is designed so their job seekers can look for jobs both inside and outside their network. So you can send a formatted introduction email, resume WebLink and PDF, and cover letter, to whomever you choose. Equally, employers are provided candidates from both inside and outside ConnectCV’s network.

Finding a job can be a tiring process. It’s the culmination of a lifetime of hard work. Finding good employees can seem like an impossility amidst all the resumes that pour in. With ConnectCV this process can be orchestrated and managed to streamline the job search process.

Fast forwarding many years brings us to the iPhone craze, which has taken the mobile world by storm. People lined up in droves to get the precious device. And what’s the first thing you think of when you think of an iPhone? Apps. Or rather, “There’s an App for that.” These applications can be found on the iPhone apps page and can help with anything from accessing your Facebook account to finding cooking recipes. There’s even an app to turn your iPhone into a flashlight. The number of options is astounding.

But there are some limitations to the iPhone as well. For instance it doesn’t come with a full word processing tool. Or you can’t readily create a PowerPoint presentation. Then there’s the whole issue about the iPhone and iPad not supporting flash. At times iPhone users are faced with the reality that it just isn’t a laptop. Sometimes you want an iPad Office Suite and the functionality that comes with having a computer. Sometimes you just want and iPhone & iPad flash player. As it turns out, there’s an app for that, too.

AlwaysOnPC is an application that allows you to remotely access a computer that has a full set of software installed. It has everything from an Office Suite, Photo editing, to FireFox with Flash installed. Their virtual machines include over 40 software applications and have all the tools you would typically install on your personal computer or laptop. It gives you the convenience of having a mobile office suite with everything else you need as well.

The biggest issue with using multiple computers is after a while all your files end up in multiple locations. AlwaysOnPC also has DropBox installed, which is a tool for sharing files across multiple computers. DropBox can be installed on many machines and devices, and all the files you place in the box can be accessed from all the other locations. AlwaysOnPC also has a simple upload/download feature allowing you to move files individually from your computer to your AlwaysOnPC app.

AlwaysOnPC isn’t just available for the iPhone. It can also be installed on the iPod Touch, iPad and Droid, as well as the PC or Mac. The most typical workflow will be to first set it up on your local computer and test it out a bit. Once you decide you want the application, it can be purchased for $20USD ($25 for the iPad), and then installed on the mobile device of your choosing. It may be particular useful for the iPad and iPhone, due to all their design limitations. One of the most blatant of these is the aforementioned lack of flash compatibility. Let us take a moment to remember one slumping moment of Apple’s history. Just over a decade ago Apple was in such a sad state of affairs that they needed a 150 million dollar bailout from MicroSoft.  Apple’s war on Adobe’s Flash is well out in the open. The result of it is you can’t readily use flash on their mobile devices. They sure play hardball for a corporation that was once completely flat on their back. As a result you need an app to do something as basic as browsing flash based websites.

AlwaysOnPC Demo from LapTop

So there are two ways to think about AlwaysOnPC. First, it provides access to a secure virtual computer that is entirely your own. Second, it allows you to surf the web like you expected your iPad to, without the limitations imposed by Apple’s technology war. It’s been suggested that favorable public opinion played a role in Apple’s first bail out. I’m not sure karma’s on their side should the need for a second to come along. In the meantime, AlwaysOnPC provides is a tool to make up for the missing pieces, while the big players fight it out.

Then there are the sites that really didn’t do much at all, but still profited. There’s the Tumbleweed Store, Doggles (goggles for your dog), and my personal favorite, the Million Dollar Homepage. A starving college student built a 1000×1000 grid and began selling each pixel for $1 a piece. Over the course of 5 months he sold all million pixels, earning slighting more than a million dollars. Towards the end the price per pixel was well into the thousands.

The other day I came across a similar grid, called QuickFuse. It has an X-Y axis and the ability to place objects on it. This grid however, isn’t a comedic marketing device. It’s a new and innovative method of creating interactive voice response systems (IVR). To those who don’t know, these are the automated operators you get when calling customer service.

The QuickFuse application is truly an amazing tool. Having worked with IVR systems before, I know what goes into building them. First you design the call flows. If the customer enters “1″ then they get one set of options, if they enter “2″, they get another. And down the line it goes. After a thorough and lengthy design process, it’s then handed over to developers to build. Once everything’s in place, a professional voice talent records the prompts in a clear, friendly voice. And finally, the client changes their mind about one minor detail, and you start all over again. The process can easily run in the hundreds of thousands of dollars and is a huge strain upon IT teams.

No longer. QuickFuse’s grid allows for call flow diagrams to be built in minutes. You just click to add the object, type in the prompts you’d like the customer to hear, and connect it to other objects within the call flow. And let’s say the crazy marketing lady with funny glasses wants the whole thing to change. No problem, just drag and drop the objects, reconnect them with a click of a button, and you’re all set up again. Some examples of the available objects are Yes/No branches, Simple prompts, Multiple Choice prompts, and Voice recording, to name a few. It includes everything you need to build highly complex systems. They have variables, databases, branching logic, and APIs to integrate with other systems. The basic usage uses Text to Speech (TTS), meaning, you type what you want the prompts to say, and it will convert it to spoken language. Currently, German, English, Spanish, French, and Portuguese are available. If your language is not on the list you can simply upload or record your own voice prompts. Many users will do this anyway, as they prefer a professional voice talent for their system.

QuickFuse grants you a toll free number upon registration. They also give you $30USD credit to your account. This will get you started while you build the system and service your first few customers. After that, it’s a pay as you go pricing model, with 5 cents a minute for general usage, and $10/month for the toll free line. This is a trivial amount of money compared to enterprise systems.

As I was essentially stunned by QuickFuse’s tool, I attempted to give it a whirl. Within minutes I had a basic IVR system set up. I clicked the test button, entered my cell phone number, and sure enough my phone rang and I heard the system I just created. I can use the app for both inbound and outbound calls. For outbound calls, just upload a list of contacts, and direct QuickFuse to call them and play my application. As it turns out, I’m not the only one taking notice of QuickFuse. More than 10,000 voice apps were created in the first month since launch. Sure, some of them are just kicking the tires. But as a somewhat seasoned software junkie, the tires never felt so good.

QuickFuse built a web application that represents the height of what the internet has to offer. They took a task that is both costly and highly inefficient, and made it simple and cost effective. They include a full set of tutorials and documentation, most of which you won’t need. The intuitive interface works as you’d expect it to. And after reflecting a bit on just how well this application is put together, there’s really only one question remaining. Will the QuickFuse grid, in all its intellectual and professional brilliance, outdo the Million Dollar homepage? For the love of the internet, and all its chaotic glory, man, I sure hope so.

In today’s world, many businesses are online. It’s both easier and harder to gather customer feedback. Whereas in a store unsatisfied customers can walk up to the manager and express their discontent, now there’s no person you can talk to. Whereas before they could fill out a card anonymously, now they have a form, or email address. When it comes to online stores, most people will just click on the back button and never return to your site again. Particularly vulernable are shopping carts. There’s a whole science to coaxing the prized Credit Card number out of prospects and getting them over the agony of pressing the buy button. Clients have an inherent fear that the world will collapse when they do.

The world of usability testing is one where you set up controlled conditions and watch someone use your product. In its purest form it consists of a special room with one way mirrors. Professional usability testers will sit behind the mirror so as to not obstruct or influence the subject conducting the test. A representative sample of users will enter the room, test the product, and provide real time feedback about their experience. The concept is that their first impressions and comments during their use of the system are the most valuable. It costs thousands of dollars to conduct these tests. One study I was a part of tested a certain financials website. On it was a picture of a golfer, but this particular branch was directed towards their lower income clientele. The client ended up paying tens of thousands of dollars to learn that poor people don’t feel a sense of connection to the game of golf. (And more importantly, they’re less likely to transact because of it.) Another example of usability testing is from a little known urban legend about Disneyland. It’s been said that when the park was first built they didn’t put walkways in. Instead they observed the natural paths that people walked, and then built the sidewalks accordingly. We’ve all seen examples where this would have been helpful in real life. On college campuses there are many fields of grass with well worn paths on them, outlining the shortcuts that people take. Say what you want about people not following the rules. If clients are in your store or on your website, it’s best to accommodate their desires. If the customer is truly to be number one, then it’s up to the planners to design the paths for them.

That type of feedback is exactly what UserFeel provides. They have a network of testers who will navigate to your site, conduct various operations, and provide real time feedback about their experience. The testers record a video of their screen and spoken thoughts while navigating your site. So if they can’t find the submit button you can watch them search for it for 15 seconds and then give up in a frustrated panic. If they are unable to figure out how to register, don’t think the picture of Donald Duck belongs there, or have trouble searching for items, they’ll tell you that as well. A sample tester feedback video can be found on UserFeel’s site.

As opposed to costing thousands upon thousands of dollars, Userfeel is a clean $39 per test. There are bulk discounts as well. It’s available in multiple languages and is also offered as a white label service. What that means is design firms can purchase  usability tests and include them in their own reports without UserFeel’s brand on it. As an aside, here’s a power user tip for designers. If you ever have trouble convincing the client of a certain design choice, prove to them that that’s what their customers want. Truth be told, many of the user tests I’ve been a part of were to settle battles within offices. One group couldn’t convince the other group of a design choice, so we were hired to settle the matter based upon user feedback. It’s invaluable feedback. When signing up fro UserFeelyou’re prompted to describe the scenario and tasks you’d like tested and various questions you’d like answered. It also gives you option to select gender, age bracket, and level of technical expertise of the testers.

Millions of dollars in lost sales has been attributed to bad site design. What makes sense to designers and developers, doesn’t always make sense to the users they built the site for. If uncomfortable, users flee sites as quickly as they find them.  With UserFeel, you can get an understanding of exactly what’s going through their minds and when. From there you can hone your site to keep your clients, happy, comfortable, and choosing to purchase.

Smaller towns are known for their gossip about the residents within. Word gets around fast when someone’s dishonest, unsavory, a drunk, or treats their family bad. If a business is continually ripping people off eventually people start talking about it. They can post negative reviews on Yelp, or they can start a blog about how poor the customer service is. But Yelp is designed primarily for businesses, and blogs or comments may or may not get that much exposure.

GetNosy is a site that allows you to track the bad people you may encounter. They provide detailed anonymous reports about people, email addresses, businesses, and physical addresses. To get started all you do is register for a free account and start submitting reports, or investigating people. The reports are stored by GetNosy and are accessible to others who want to search on that individual or business. For instance, let’s say you have a friend who cheats on their boyfriend. There’s really nothing you can do about it, right? If you confront them they’ll throw a fit. If you tell their boyfriend she’ll most likely come up with a series of lies to keep it going, as well as say bad things about you. But what you can do is submit a bad person report at GetNosy. This will allow anybody she might date to find out what kind of person she is.

GetNosy has a couple of different options. You can submit a report on good behavior or bad behavior. Reports can be submitted based upon a person, an email address, a business, or a postal mailing address.  Another example of GetNosy coming in handy is when a landlord is dishonest. Sometimes they make it difficult to recover your deposit, invade your privacy, or try to change the terms of the lease. So off to GetNosy you can go, and submit a report with their information to record this bad behavior.

GetNosy also has a very helpful daily searching tool. All you do is enter the information for a person, business, email address or postal address. From there it will check daily if new information comes up for it. It’s a useful tool to find out information on someone you’re doing business with, or for when you meet new people online.

GetNosy comes in a variety of packages. Their free service is Bronze, and you have the option to upgrade to Silver, Gold, Platinum, and then Diamond. Premium users  have access to the anonymous email system to privately share their experiences and opinions with other users via private emails. Anonymity is a key factor to GetNosy and all this correspondence is handled safely, without disclosing anyone’s identity. With each package the cost per month decreases, and you get more custom searches per category. The Diamond offering is just $1.91 per month for a full year’s access to the system. It’s also worth noting, all laws are adhered to by GetNosy. Offenders may not like it, but it’s perfectly legal to track their bad behavior online.

GetNosy, brings the small town back to the internet. Love it or hate it, gossip helps protect people from harm. When someone’s behaving badly, it’s to everyone’s benefit to expose that behavior and prevent other people from being harmed. If left unchecked, some people will just keep taking advantage of others. The internet brings this to new levels as people are widely known for misbehaving online. Thanks to GetNosy and their detailed anonymous reports, people now have a recourse to track these bad behaviors, and ensure the safety of others.

As kids get older they (hopefully) learn to no longer be curious about what laundry detergent tastes like. But just as they overcome these small hurdles they gain the ability to land themselves in even greater danger. Friends from school start having cigarettes, and there’s always the kid whose parents let him do anything. One strategy is to enroll your child in every club, sport, and program available. Don’t give them any time to contemplate blowing stuff up or licking frozen flag poles. Monitoring their friends, and then the families of those friends is critically important in keeping your children safe from reprobate influences. And then comes along the internet. Its unbridled access to every piece of visual and written decadence is virtually unlimited.

And it’s all accessible at the click of a button to your child.

Many tools exist to assist with protecting your kids online. There have been internet providers that promise to only deliver content that is suitable for children. Then there are a variety of software programs you can install to monitor or filter your child’s access to the internet. But understanding the various nuances of how these work and then setting them up correctly can be challenging. Sometimes there are ways to circumvent the system entirely. Or other times the system will be so restrictive you can barely access the web anymore. CYBERminder^TM offers a solution to protect your kids online that is both easy to set up, and effective.

Their system consists of USB keys. You just plug these into your computer to indicate what level of access you would like. The first key is the Supervise key. This is for the parent and is used for initial set up. The first time it is plugged in it prompts you to install the CYBERminder^TM software. Once that’s accomplished, this key will allow unrestricted browsing access and is for the parents. The second key is the Protect key, which the child will use to access the internet. They are only able to access the internet while using their key, and their content will be filtered. The Protect key comes in three age appropriate versions. The break down is less than 9 years old, 9-12, and then teenager. They all block adult content and gambling websites. The pre teens are also blocked from blogs, chat, social networking sites, photos and video sharing sites, and advertising or classifieds. The under 9s have all the above restrictions, and are also not able to access search engines.

The obvious reason why parents choose to use CYBERminder^TM is that everything is controlled by having a physical key. The child has no access to the internet without it. The internet filter is handled by CYBERminder^TM; all you need to do is plug in the right key. It also lends itself towards the natural growth steps of a child. As they become more mature and responsible, they can earn a new key and new privileges. These privileges can just as easily be taken away should they start to explore less than wholesome corners of the web.

Keys can be purchased in pairs, coming with a Supervise key and Protect key for the age bracket chosen by the parent. They are currently available for purchase in the UK, Ireland, Isle of Man and the Channel Islands. Coming soon is France, Spain, Germany and other European countries. It costs £28.50 for a Supervise and Protect key pair.

Maintaining a child’s online saftety can be challenging. CyberMinder^TM provides easy to use USB keys to keep your children protected from nefarious content online. This, combined with a little love and support, will help your children grow to be the young adults you hope them to be.

To those who have more advanced budgeting needs Excel spreadsheets are sometimes employed. These work for a while but eventually become unwieldy. Quicken or Quickbooks can be installed locally. But then, installing local applications is so last year. Being able to access your critical information from any browser based computer is quickly becoming the norm. Embarking into the field of online expense tracking is AccPal. They offer a complete set of budgeting tools rivaled only by my Ostrich Technique, ^TM.

In their words, AccPal is a free online multi currency personal finance money tracking and management budget planning solution. I may have taken some liberties in the verbosity of my synopsis. Many budgeting software solutions have similar features. After trying AccPal I noted four distinct reasons why their product stands out. (Other than being completely free online personal finance software.)

1) Multi-currency. I deal with various currencies all the time. I never know what denomination people are going to send me money in. Fortunately Paypal takes care of translating it to USD or I’d be totally lost. With AccPal, you aren’t lost. You have the ability to include as many currencies as you like in your budget. For today’s businesses, in particular online ones, this is critical. We can no longer take for granted being able to exclusively deal with local currency.

2) The Shortcut feature. It is a powerful concept AccPal created to replace “recurring” features that other programs have. It gives you macro like access to common transactions. So if you always are creating a similar transaction you can create a shortcut to automate that process to just one click. It also is used to save common report configurations. The most important feature of shortcut is “staying current.” That is, you can create a shortcut and it will automatically update to the current date. This allows for shortcuts to be relevant for all future transactions. For instance, if users have transactions that occur at a particular date of each month, the shortcut can be set to convert the month. If users need to generate a report of certain aspects every month, or every year, the shortcut can be set to always show the most current month or year.

3) Multi-level tags. This alone makes me an incredible fan of AccPal. Almost all other budgeting software tools will utilize a flat organization of tags or categories. So you have to create one category for Groceries, and another for eating out, and another for home delivery. With AccPal you have the ability to accurately represent your expenditures. For instance all these will fit under the category of food, but you can create subcategories for each. It gives you easy insight into not only your overall food budget, but also the breakdown of how much you’re spending on pizza deliveries. You have the ability to make these divisions as granular or general as you like.

4) Batch Transactions. Oftentimes there are multiple expenses associated with a particular event. Let’s say you order something, ship it, store it, and then finally pick it up. Each of these expenses are associated with the same item. AccPal gives you the ability to group them together so they can be edited within the same transaction group. The grouping feature is especially useful for situations when the user needs to split transactions, or transfer money between accounts.

Other AccPals’ features include:

• Adding multiple accounts
• Associating people with various transactions
• Creating Budget Groups, which consist of separate budget goals.
• Flexibility in reporting and sorting
• Export to Excel. I know this is getting close to Ostrich style budgeting, but we all know sometimes it’s convenient to take a look at the numbers in a spreadsheet.

AccPal is a very powerful and flexible online money management service. For users don’t want any features at all, they can simply record transactions like they normally would balance their checkbooks. If they like, they don’t even need to enter descriptions for each transaction. Due to its flexibility and ability to track multiple currencies, and innovative shortcut feature, it is extensible to both business and personal budgets. Given the nature of it being online, having your budget accessible from any browser is a huge benefit. With a clear view of one’s finances comes the ability to set realistic goals. Once those goals are written down, they are much more likely to be attained. AccPal provides the tool to bring you this clarity. It’s a critical step on your way to future financial success and better money management.