One of the most stirring things I’ve seen on the Internet in a while (besides this) was a photo-story of a young Army recruit in Colorado.  A photographer followed him from enlistment at the age of 17, to basic training, to combat in Iraq, and a tearful homecoming.  Something about the medium resonated far more than mere video.  It was compelling, heart-wrenching, and inspiring.  I think it’s because in our instant-gratification techno-world, we often times simply don’t have the time to appreciate nuance, texture, and context, particularly across a narrative arc (I blame Google.)  The medium of photo-sharing, at its essence, is conducive for deeper more rewarding immersion.

Bottom line: I gained an appreciation for such photo-stories, in that I, rather than a director, controlled the tempo of the experience, and like a good drive down Rt. 1, had the ability to proverbially pull-over to the side of the road and check out the view.  This photo-story – and the question, “That was cool, why aren’t there more photo-stories out there? - immediately popped into my mind the minute I checked out YouTellYou, a wonderful site that streamlines and expands the photo-story creation and viewing process.In short, YouTellYou is a crowd-sourced photo-story magazine. Anyone can create and publish photo-stories in minutes linking to his/her Flickr, Facebook, or Smugmug account or uploading photos from a PC or a camera. Stories can also be published from a mobile phone via email.  The stories are presented in an online magazine, according to number of views, ranking, category, publishing date.  Let it be known that YouTellYou is not just another photo hosting service.  Photos don’t sit there in a vacuum; rather, the emphasis is on creating and sharing stories via pictures.   Of course, the stories you wish to create are up to you: travel diaries, family or sports events, vision quests, etc.

So I signed up. YouTellYou conveniently lets you voluntarily enter your Flickr or Smugmug nickname (I figured that’d come in handy down the road.)  Upon signing up I was informed that I had no stories…yet.  So I clicked on the New Story link, where I entered the date and time, the title of my story, a summary, location, category (e.g. music, family), and tags.  I entered some information about the fine Italian dinner I’m about to have, and upon hitting save, learned that “A Fine Italian Dinner” (my story name) was story #767 in their library.  Next it was time to enter pictures.  Which did not exist yet.  What was cool was that each story is comprised of smaller sections.  I figured the first section could be, say, about my first glass of wine (specifically, Arbor Mist.)  I chose the layout the photo and was prompted to upload the photo, by accessing my photo library, which pulls pix from my computer, Facebook, Flickr, or Smugmug.  I uploaded a dummy photo from my computer, and then entered text to the left.  And there you have it.  I could also manage My Stories from a dashboard-like page called – brace yourselves – “My Stories.”  It was there I could view the story in its final form, delete it, or make edits.

Naturally the other neat part about the site is, as a user, the ability to browse other stories.  Due to my former and sordid past as an office guy, I couldn’t resist the urge to check out “30 Years Working at NTI,” a photo-montage of Leonie Hall’s last day at work.  What I liked most about it was the commentary provided by each picture and the fact that the flow was horizontal (up/down) not vertical (left/right), unlike other sites.  There’s a reason by newspapers are comprised of columns that flow horizontally, right?  It’s more natural to read it that way.  So it was cool.  And you, as a user, could also add comments.

Ever, say, stare at a big apartment building in New York and look into the windows (legally – no funny business; just, y’know, checking it out)?  In one window you may see a man making dinner.  In another a couple is arguing.  In another a cat is sitting on the fire escape.  Each has a story.  Now, were you to try to take a closer look – say, with a high-powered telescope strategically propped in some bushes across the street – you’d be rightfully hauled away.  So spare yourself the embarrassment of a ragtag court-appointed defense attorney and check out YouTellYou, which enables you to peek through the proverbial blinds and escape into peoples’ worlds at your own pace and at the time and terms of your choosing.

OK kids, so remember you met that cool Finnish guy in a VW last summer in Big Sur?  And now you’re “dating” him over Skype?  In a nutshell, you’re using Voice-Over IP technology - talking over the Internet.  OK, you’re rolling your eyes again, which means you already know that.  But you may not know that as we speak, many, many people are taking that technology to the next level.  One of those is Anveo, a hosted PBX VoIP provider that allows businesses and developers to flexibly configure their systems to suit their needs.  Many folks talk big about flexibility; Anveo walks the walk.

First, it must be said that a hosted PBX service is a communications system that solely serves a business, rather than relying a telephone company.  OK, that little tech-y preface may call attention to the face that say, I’m not the sharpest knife in the draw when it comes to, say, hosted PBX configuration (unlike, say, aikido.)  That said, as just an average dude who heard about VoIP many, many years ago, when it was but the gleam in the eye of a drunken Silicon Valley sailor, and as a former and-perhaps future worker, I can conceptualize the value of technology for a business.  In fact, we all can.

Anveo’s site is helpfully broken up across three buckets: solutions for Consumers, Businesses, and Developers.  Consumers and Businesses brought me to the same page, where I was greeted with a host of features, such as Web calls, online faxes, international phone numbers, and disposable phone numbers.  I was particularly drawn to Anveo Communicator – perhaps because its text box was blue (the rest weren’t) and there was a nifty “free” call-out next to it.  The site provides a helpful menu of Communicator’s features on the bottom-left portion, showing screen shots of each.

From that initial feature-overview page, I was also drawn to Anveo’s Visual Call Flow.  This technology allows developers, to visually configure phone calls, from simple PBX management to more advanced Voice 2.0 communication platforms.  And that’s why it’s cool: it’s flexibility, allowing you to change with your situation.  After all, business interactions are rarely static in these go-go times.  Back in the day, Joe’s Widgets would sell a ton of widgets to Tom’s Hardware, and that was pretty much it.  Transactions and cash flow were predictable.  Not so much anymore.  Simple phone calls are not enough.  We have multiple channels of communication: voice, data, video, etc., but for many companies, it doesn’t make sense – economically, or in terms of time commitment – to, say, have a full-fledged, end-to-end multi-channel platform live at all times.  But what if you do need it, for those rare instances?  What if, as the Anveo example articulates, rather than a traditional phone line, you  need said phone line, plus a more complicated routing arrangement, linked go Google Calendar?  Anveo Visual IVR Call Flow allows you to configure your incoming calls on the fly with, better yet, drag-and-drop tools such that you can visually create your call flows. The screen shot below doesn’t do it justice, but it gives you a taste of the drag-and-drop dashboard:

Which brings me to the Developer’s piece of the site.  The platform seems like a developer’s dream; Anveo allows anyone to visually create internet-enabled Voice 2.0 applications without writing a single line of code.  Taken in its entirety, it’s like a integrated data communication Mongolian BBQ.  You know those, right?  You roll up, and there’s a bounty of vegetables, sauces, and tender meats just lying there.  You pick your favorite, throw it in a bowl, and hand it off to your chef who cooks it up all delicious-like.  Same idea here.  There’s no shortage of proverbial tender meats – voicemail, caller ID, fax, video, Google calendar integration, mid-conversation call transfer, text-to-voice capability, etc. – for developers to choose from.  So those are the meats.  And the intuitive, user-friendly drag-and-drop interface is the wok.  The Mongolian chef is Anveo.  So it’s your choice: go ahead gorge yourself on a gluttonous Voice 2.0 feast (see if I care), or show some uncharacteristic restraint with a streamlined Atkin’s dish of basic phone and fax services.  Anveo’s flexibility and ease of use speak for itself, and I actually have to stop now because I’m famished.

Just after graduating from high school, a few friends and I, all well versed in the ways of the internet, decided to start a business. We’d been buying knives and swords for many years through a mail-order company in the mid-west, using a made-up company name, and wanted to turn our boyish fascination with edged weapons into an online business. It was a perfect idea, we reasoned. An online business has virtually no overhead cost, we wouldn’t need any stock because the knife company was willing to drop-ship, and I’d been designing websites for a few years at that point, so we wouldn’t need to pay anyone to build our dream.

We skewed the website toward guys our own age (and with our same tastes) and featured decorative samurai swords, multi-function pocket knives, and science-fiction inspired throwing weapons. We put knife-throwing demonstrations on the site and even had a primitive blog-like section. I got a credit card in my name and, such was my faith, I covered any business costs myself, stipulating to all involved that the card would need to be the first thing to be paid back once we showed profit. We undercut our competitors, offered free shipping, and after one long summer month of preparation, we opened for business. It was a geeky knife-and-sword-enthusiast’s dream. By God, we thought, it was just crazy enough to work.

Unfortunately, the idea wasn’t “just crazy enough to work”, it was “just crazy enough to tank spectacularly and take my credit rating with it”. We had virtually no advertising budget and no concept of how to do guerrilla marketing, so no one knew about us. A few months passed with meager sales and the web-hosting bills piled up on the credit card, and then went delinquent because I didn’t have the money to pay it. The worst thing though, was that the e-commerce solution that I’d chosen required frequent security updates which frequently broke the shopping cart. The front end of the store never looked the way I wanted, it had large encrypted areas that I couldn’t edit myself, and I had to baby-sit the error log and chase down sales that were lost due to downtime. Eventually I grew frustrated with the whole project and it was abandoned, but not without some serious regret.

Even though the bitterness of my first experience with ecommerce lays a decade in the past and many website-building experiences have come and gone since, I still maintain that if I’d chosen a better ecommerce solution, the site could have worked. I could have ridden out the first lean months, tried out some marketing ideas, and worked another job to support the business until it picked up. Instead, I was stuck banging my head against a wall for several hours every day because I’d invested too much time and energy into a software system that was created by lazy, slipshod, corner-cutting code-monkeys who cared very little if their software functioned, just as long as they got to collect the initial licensing fee. If something like ZippyCart had existed, I might have had a chance to become one of those young internet millionaires that we all dreamed of becoming back then.

ZippyCart is a website that allows users to compare and contrast the top ecommerce solutions available today. There is no sign-up required, no mailing list you’re forced to join, and the whole thing is free.

ZippyCart couldn’t possibly make it simpler to compare and contrast various ecommerce software packages. The top ecommerce solutions are presented, so you don’t have to slog through several hundred options to find the best. The very best (most feature-rich and highest-rated) ecommerce software is linked right on the homepage, making it a good place to start if you don’t have a clear idea of what you really want. After selecting a software package, you can read a ZippyCart write-up on each ecommerce solution by clicking on the “read an expert review” button or you can see what customers who have used the product have to say in the “read customer reviews” section. Or, if you’re just interesting in the facts, you can check out a straightforward features list.

Be sure to check out the ecommerce guide and shopping cart area, where you’ll find some well-written articles to help get you started with choosing software that’s right for you. There are resources for learning about how shopping carts work, the benefits of paid solutions versus free or open-source software, and marketing your online store once it’s finished. The marketing ideas alone are worth visiting ZippyCart.

My favorite part of ZippyCart is how easy it makes comparing ecommerce solution features. Viewing an A/B comparison makes it easier to determine which solution will best fit your needs, and also makes it easier on you if you need to sell an investor or partner on one solution over another (something I’ve had to do on several occasions when building websites). You can simply say that you prefer an ecommerce solution, but it’s easier to sell it if you can simply show how your choice stacks up against the competition.

If there is room for improvement, it lies within the limited selection of ecommerce solutions featured on the site. There will undoubtedly be more options added in the future, and I’m hoping they add a few open-source shopping carts to the mix, just for the sake of variety.

Whether you realize it or not, choosing the right ecommerce solution can mean the difference between a successful business venture and a frustrating failure. ZippyCart helps you make this important decision. Better still, it’s easy to use, well-designed, and provides some great resources for free. To put it simply, ZippyCart is one of the best ways to compare the top ecommerce solutions available on the web today.

There are many types of software and tools out there that measure and manage stuff.  HR, finance, accounts payable, the normal buffet of business functions, if you will.  But almost immediately after checking out Traffic Light Feedback, a light – pun severely not intended – went off in my head: who, exactly, really measures customer satisfaction in a simple fashion?  I mean, good grief, it’s the single most critical element to anyone’s business.  The closest thing we have is CRM and customer satisfaction surveys, but that is too cold, too mechanical.  Seem to me like these platforms let you track employees at your client business, track your interactions, manage meetings, etc., but it’s quantity over quality.  I’ve never really seen it done effectively first-hand (but then again, I didn’t escape the circus until I was 29.)   Nonetheless: how can you  consistently get buy-in from users to track their happiness?  And why isn’t this a huge component of business software out there?  What am I missing here?  Could you repeat the question?

Traffic Light Feedback (TLF) can manage every aspect of your customer feedback requirements.  With TLF, you can upload your customers quickly and easily, manage multiple feedback questionnaires, and even brand the system with your corporate color scheme and logo.  But what makes it sing is this: it takes the age-old work of measuring customer satisfaction and applies a simple, elegant solution: the red, amber, green traffic light model to help you act quickly.  Your customer selects one of the three colors – you determine what each color means – and you act accordingly.  None of this silly Venn Diagram business.  No 1-10 scale.  No fluffy Wharton MBA paradigms and 2×2 matrixes.  None of that prep school lacrosse-playing-sweater-around-your-neck mumbo jumbo.  What are these people trying to prove?  Can’t we get beyond our fixation with class inequities?

Here at SlapStart we always try to view each site and solution through the prism of the user experience, and in the example of TLF, me likey.  Think about it.  You’re a customer, and unless you’re livid, you likely won’t make a huge effort to get in contact with the offending business.  But, nonetheless, the business reaches out for your feedback.  “Take a few minutes to go on line and take our customer survey,” it may say.  You scoff.  You have better things to do.  And if you do go, there are too many words.  Words make you dizzy.  How did they come up with so many?  Flip open to any page of “War and Peace” and you vomit instantly.  So what’s better than words?  Shiny, pretty colors.  Colors like you find in the rainbow, or in a glistening Pacific sunset, of in the eyes of your first love, Michelle Yacenda (whom, last I heard, really took a hit when the Ft. Lauderdale-area housing bubble burst.)

TLF is easy, fast, and customizable.  Here are the steps:

1. Add your own logo and corporate branding.
2. Upload the email addresses of your customers into the system.
3. Tailor the wording on your Traffic Light Feedback template(s).
4. Click to send.
5. Sit back and wait for the customer feedback.

Here’s an example of a sample feedback request you can send to a customer:

You can then collect data on the feedback, react to address customer concerns accordingly, and continually monitor those who are persistent problems and who, if need be, must be “erased.” (my words, not theirs.)  A summary of these features can be found here.

In closing, I’d like to do a little exercise with you.  I’ll name some stuff and you tell me what they have in common: A fork.  Skull and cross bones.  Someone giving the thumb’s up.  A spoon.  A spork.  Traffic lights.

…

OK time’s up.  Answer: these are all things that most people universally know how to interpret or use.  People are comfortable with them.  Their meaning (e.g. “Danger!” “Good job!”) and utility is engrained in their psyche and the tapestry of their experience.  Apply these symbols and objects to a task, and poof! people intuitively know what to do.  And that, in a nutshell, is the subtle elegance with Traffic Light Feedback: by super-imposing the traffic lights to the customer satisfaction measurement experience (CSME?), it takes the pain out of the process for the customer and business like.  Simply put, you don’t have to be a Wharton MBA hot-shot - whom I very much vehemently despise - to slip on this metaphorical glove.  And Lord have mercy, what a pretty glove it is.

Asking your boss for time off is like going to confession.  Hear me out: your life (and/or soul) is in the hands of this one person; a person who, among other things, has suboptimal management skills.  Both give you a hard time.  Rightly or wrongly, you are wracked with guilt.  And even if you get what you want – absolution or vacation – it comes at a cost.  You can go to heaven and party with Bob Marley, but first you have to say your 10 Hail Marys first.  And sure, you can get that afternoon off to go check out the women’s roller derby championship, but you’ll pay for it, what with those dirty looks from your co-workers who think you’re slacking (you are.)  Both conservation is encased in weird vibes.

ShiftPlanning is a dynamic, free scheduling tool that not only takes the pain out of these conversations, it also makes everyone’s lives easier by providing a single interface where employees’ schedules can be monitored and managed, freeing up people’s time to, you know, actually work or something.  Because the only thing worse than having to ask your boss for vacation is taking that vacation, only coming back to find out that your boss thought you said September, rather than October.  (How someone could confuse the two is beyond me, but that’s your boss for you.)

The site itself is clean and crisp and effectively articulates the breadth of ShiftPlanning’s features.  I particularly encourage you to check out their tutorial video here. In addition to these nifty scheduling features, it also provides robust reports, user dashboards, and neat extras, like mobile access and file sharing, depending on your threshold of employee schedule management masochism.

The tool makes your boss’ life easier by allowing them to manage their employees’ schedules, approve or reject vacation requests, and – what I like the most – compel their employees to find cover if they can’t work.  This latter piece is great for employees too.  For starters, the act of finding someone to cover your shift is generally an in-person exercise which can get huddled - people are inherently sneaky and wicked.  And worse yet, there’s no audit trail for these conversations if someone flakes.  It’s even better if you can’t appear in person to have this awkward chat: if you wake up with totally sick poison oak, rather than calling the only co-worker who actually seems likes you – and there’s no chance they won’t ignore your call – you can access all employee available online, in the safe and impersonal medium of the Internet.  And heck, in the process maybe you’ll find out other people in the office like you after all, but were too shy to say anything because you kind of come across as self-absorbed and stand off-ish.  Maybe you’ll even meet your soulmate!

The closest analog to a tool like this that I can think of is Microsoft Outlook.  But my gut is telling me that Outlook falls a bit flat in comparison.  For starters, while users can generally see if other employees are busy or on vacation, due to user access rights, it’d be more complicated to work the trade-shift angle, which Shift Planning allows elegantly.  In fact, the Outlook version of shift-trading probably would go something like this:

Mike (sees Rich in the pantry): Hey Rich.

Rich: Hey Mike.

Mike: Whatcha got there?

Rich: Tuna fish.

Mike: Ahhh…[awkward pause.]  Hey Rich, you know how we have to come in one Saturday a month during the busy season?

Rich: Yeah, it’s the worst.

Mike: Ehh…well, something came up, and I can’t come in this Saturday.  Long story, but there’s this [mumbled]…eh…roller derby…[more mumbles]….Allentown…[more mumbles]…met…eharmony–

Rich: — You know what Mike?  I just remembered something, gotta run, bye bye.

Mike: [Stares vacantly at the toaster over, a gentle tear rolling down his face. His damp face says, "Now what?"]

But hey, even if Rich wasn’t such a self-centered jerk (I heard I went to boarding school in Carmel), is that much of a consolation?  Even if Rich said yes, you’d still have to slink into your boss’ office tell them the news.  “And Rich is ok with this?” they boss would say.  “Yeah, I just talked to him.”  “Can you bring him in here?”  And then things just turn gross.

The example above is set in a cryptically corporate office, where, ShiftPlanning would work just fine (especially in a smaller office.)  That said, I feel like it’s sweet spot is in the service industry, particularly for those smaller businesses that can lost in the cracks: too small for something like Outlook; too big for Post-It notes left to feebly flutter away when posted next to the walk-in freezer.  At the end of the day, the beauty of good software like ShiftPlanning’s is that it takes any connection you may have to other people and utterly obliterates them.  This is nice, especially when the connection involves invasive and gnarly work-life topics like approaching your boss about vacation.  Now if only saving your soul were that simple.  And free.

I’m not sure what it is, but a recurring theme amongst recent SlapStart reviews has been “good vibes.”  Good people doing good things in tough times.  It’s inspiring.  Perhaps we here at SlapStart are just particularly adept at tapping into society’s Zeitgeist – it wouldn’t be the first time someone has told us that – or perhaps it’s because tough times bring out the best in people, but today’s feature is especially great.  It’s a site called DonorCharge, an electronic donations payment services that allows folks to allocate portions of each electronic sale or ATM surcharge revenue to participating non-profits or charities of their choice in a paper-free and environmentally friendly manner.

DonorCharge’s secret sauce is it’s dual purpose of supporting non-profits and the businesses that give to non-profits.  I can’t speak for certain, but intuitively it seems like the full potential of the Internet - particularly from a fund-raising perspective - is still untapped for many organizations, public and private alike.  And that’s a shame, because if Obama’s campaign taught us anything, it’s that once tapped, the possibilities are limitless.  After all, a majority of Obama’s donors - or so we’re led to believe - were small, under $100.  We in the business call these micro-donations.  And it’s be wonderful if non-profits can replicate even a fraction of this success because the ocean is made up of trillions of teeny, tiny drops, yes?

DonorCharge allows non-profits to efficiently raise funds by tapping into their network of businesses/donors or accepting direct donations from supporters via more traditional methods.  It’s peace of mind, as the non-profit can always count on contributions each time a business charges a credit card or electronic check transaction, or each time a customer withdraws funds from an ATM.  Here’s why that’s great for non-profits and businesses/donors, IMO:

1. Ever leave a CVS or Walgreens and adroitly avoid someone with a clipboard asking for a donation?  Um…yeah, me neither.  But my friend Fred did once.  He’s cruel.  Ice runs through his veins.  But if you’re like Fred and a business, you’ll be happy because DonorCharge is low-footprint.  Businesses sign up once, and they’re done.  All automated.  No awkward speed-walks or gallops across the parking lot - literally or metaphorically - to avoid the 19-year old Greenpeace kid who smells like patchouli.  That’s more time devoted to actually doing your job.  Conversely, it’s gold for the non-profits: no pestering phone calls, no rattling of the cup.
2. Non-profits can create a “menu” of causes for target donors.  For example, they can create a “Building Renovation Fund” and a “Haiti Relief Fund.”  Business can choose, and who doesn’t like choice?
3. Non-profits can also dabble in…eh, “profits.” Specifically, they can earn recurring donations by referring other non-profits to DonorCharge.
4. Businesses may, in fact, give more than they normally would.  It’s like that old financial planning trick: automatically deduct a percentage of your paycheck to your Roth IRA.  You never really “see” the money, but off it goes, and next thing you know, you’ve saved up quite a little nest egg.  Boca Raton, here you come.
5. At the same time, businesses/donors can donate to their favorite charities without increasing their existing rates while also donating to an unlimited number of charities.

Ultimately, it’s a win-win for everybody.  And moving forward, DonorCharge’s model aims to be all-encompassing, adding a 1-800 fund raising option for participating non-profits.  As a result, along with receiving micro-donations and Web donations, non-profits will be able to have their own 1-800 automated system for fund raising to receive donations via touch-tone phone with minimal start-up costs.  DonorCharge also has the unique distinction of having the coolest, mellowest, quasi-country home page music of any site I’ve come across in a while.  (For a second, I thought I mistakenly stumbled upon a Pink Floyd cover band home page.)

Let’s be honest.  The Internet is filled with a lot of white noise – mellow-harshing white noise (heck of a book!) that I frequently and painstakingly wade through – so DonorCharge is like a breath of fresh air, a nice Bach quartet to offset all that disorienting feedback.  And if these dire, depressing times keep producing such cool vibes and intelligent solutions, then keep ‘em coming I say.  Let the bad times roll!

Loyal readers of SlapStart may know that I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer when it comes to the Internet.  So many times, when the Internet flusters me or makes me cry, I tend to blame myself.  Case in point: we here at SlapStart dabble with the Google Analytics stuff.  We track our traffic, say, 300 times a day, and generally speaking, it’s a helpful exercise.  But for the life of me, I never can figure out the IP addresses of who is visiting our site - where, precisely, they came from.  Which is strange, because I used a similar tool, like, six years ago, and they did that.  And since Google, y’know, knows everything about me, including how I tie my shoes (note: the “weird” way), I thought maybe I was missing something.  Maybe it was me.

So, after many minutes of psychological self-flagellation, it was quite relieving and validating to know that I’m not stupid and it’s not my fault.  Google Analytics won’t let you check by IP addresses.  Google stinks.  Without FootPrint Live, Google Analytics would the gleam in the eye of a drunken-Web analytics sailor on leave with 20 dollars burning a hole is his wallet.  FootPrint Live is an add-on that does what Google Analytics does not: it lets you look up IP addresses and individual clickstreams in real-time.  It’s free, and it’s cool.

All you gotta do is create a free account and install the tracking script on your website and instantly you’ll feel like a CIA spy.  I went to their site and checked out their Free Demo.  It’s rare to get such an instantly gratifying demo for a tool; especially since in this case, I could actually see myself on there.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.  The dashboard not only showed the viewers to their site, but it showed them in real-time. Like, as I write this to you (except you’ll be reading it later.  Then again, what is time?)  Drilling deeper yet, I could hover over the “visitor puppet” icon (green is online and active; orange is recently active; red has been offline for more than 10 minutes) to get each visitor’s profile, which includes country, ISP, zip code, city, telephone area code, number of visits, total page views, duration, shoe size, favorite color, biggest pet peeve involving grammar, and least-favorite color.  And lo and behold, as I hovered, I found  myself, there, on their site, describing my very situation.  (And wouldn’t you know it, as always, my eyes were closed in the picture.)

Here’s a screen shot:

For further, plate tectonic-like, molten-core-ish drilling down, you can check out the visitor clickstreams, seeing where they went on your site, by page, and for how long.  And it’s done in a well laid-out fashion: map of the country on the left, their profile below it, and the clickstream to the right, each page laid out by date, including total time viewed.  Obviously all this frothy data opens a whole new world of analytical possibilities and mind-bending reports to obsess over.  What are the post popular pages?  And for how long?  And why?  And what do people have against magenta?  The mind reels.

The beauty of the product is that it’s simple and it speaks for itself.  I surfed around the site for quite a bit trying to find other things to underscore or comment in a way best described as “gentle constructive criticism,” but I couldn’t.  All the action is in the demo, and beyond that, there are no unnecessary or distracting bells and whistles from the user perspective, which me likey.

In related news, I’m sure by now you’ve read about Google’s debacle with their Buzz tool; namely, their sordid disregard for user privacy.  As a Gmail user myself, it was kinda infuriating and found the whole hubaloo to be straight-up bizarre: how could so many seemingly smart people blow something so badly, especially regarding user privacy?  People are really steamed out there, and 10 years of goodwill has gone out the window.  I mention this because, as we know, bigger isn’t better.  Footprint Live is a far more user-friendly analytics tool than Google’s, it has greater depth and breadth, and most interestingly, it’s all in real-time.  And while both tools can be used in conjuction with eachother, most folks would do just fine with Footprint Live.  Best yet, it makes me feel not stupid; so much so, that if Google were a woman and I was breaking up with her, I’d say, “It’s not me…it’s you.”

It’s Friday afternoon and you’re getting back to your cube after your 4 pm Starbucks run.  Your administrative assistant  (research has shown that 8% of all SlapStart readers have administrative assistants) pops in and says, “Hey, thanks for bcc-ing me on that email on Tuesday.  Have a nice weekend!”  You nod, think it over, and suddenly the extra-hot mocha latte starts boiling in your veins.  You bbc’ed him for a reason: he was supposed to follow-up with the recipient.  That very day.  Four days ago.

You plummet into an existential vortex: “Wasn’t it patently obvious a follow-up was necessary?  Why didn’t I remind him immediately?  But do I need to really to coddle this person?   When was the last time I called my mother?”  The point: you’re in big trouble.  The email and the bcc was misinterpreted.  So now you’ll cut your weekend aikido plans short and spend five hours looking for jobs on Monster.  If only you had bccthis.

Bccthis is an Outlook plug-in that lets you safely send personalized messages to email recipients along with your original e-mail.  It extends the capabilities of Outlook and Twitter by creating a richer, more contextual messaging experience.   It serves a very real need: the information disparity created when sending one message to multiple recipients with different levels of knowledge about the subject matter discussed.  It’s hard to disagree with that.

Heck, I have trouble communicating, with words, face-to-face with real people in the real world (inevitably weeping and minor drooling is involved.)  So who can be surprised when things breakdown over e-mail  with multiple people in the mix?  After all, when many people read one message, the message will often be interpreted differently: context, tone, and intent are all in the eyes of the beholder.   It’s a big Rorschach test.  To some, it’s a butterfly.  To others, an inky butterfly.  To others, Charles de Gaulle.   We’ve all been there.  We read an email and then wonder, “Why didn’t they put a smiley face at the end?  Why no exclamation point?  How should I interpret, ‘Don’t make me get a second restraining order’ when it’s in bold, 48-point font, and underlined?  Are they mad at me?”  That’s the problem with email: context goes out the window, and it’s something bccthis addresses quite elegantly.

The tool itself is simple.  Check it:Once installed, a new bar appears at the bottom of you Outlook screen while you’re writing an e-mail.  The “public,” “old-school” e-mail message is on top, like normal: To, CC, BCC, Subject, and the Message.

On the bottom is the BCCThis bar, where you can enter the personalized, private text.  You have all the same formatting tools at your disposal too - bold, italics, colored-fonts, etc.  Simply type your message, and then, to the right, recipients for whom you want to receive the private message.  Check the box next to their name, and you’re done.

The screen shot above came from their Learn More page, and I suggest it highly.  It’s quite interactive - by scrolling to the bottom and selecting one of six topics, the screen shot above changes accordingly.  It took some experimenting to figure it out; I’d suggest adding some text up top, like, “Click on each topic below for a representative screen shot.”  In fact, it was by doing this that I found an answer to one of my questions: “Do recipients needs bccthis installed to view their bccthis messages?”  The answer: fortuitously, no. The screen shot showed a normal, old fashioned Outlook message, except at the top, in a gray-bordered box, it says, “You received a personal BCCthis messsage from Michael Steuer.”  Simple, easy.

What we’re ultimately talking about here is, essentially, an electronic Post-It note to your e-mail.  To which some folks - myself, initially, if I may be honest – thought, why, isn’t that a tad redundant?  Why not a follow-up email?  But I quickly realized the value.  For starters, refer to my analogy above: we do this precise thing in the real world, so in theory, it’s not foreign at all.  And secondly, context does matter.  Getting the tone right the first time is critical, and follow-up emails only add to the clutter. I also like this tool because it provides another layer of audit trail protection.  If all heck breaks loose, it is nice to have this contextual evidence to absolve workers who’ve been sorely misinterpreted.  Go to bccthis’ blog, here, and scroll down a bit for some real-world uses for this tool in the Sales, HR, and Management context.  It makes a ton of sense.

So I bid you a parting rumination: in the annals of corporate history, how many misinterpreted e-mails have, for example, caused a minor tiff among co-workers?  A major tiff?  A tiff, then a rift?  A – God-forbid – firing?  A moderate tiff that lead to a firing?  A minor rift that escalates to a tiff, that culminates in looting in Detroit?  The cancellation of Hawaiian Shirt Fridays?  Quite a bit, I’d venture.

Bccthis has ruminated on this as well, and addresses a problem older than God Him/Herself - the inability of people to communicate with each other - across a medium as old as apple pie - e-mail.  It makes the experience more contextual and more adept at addressing real world problems.  In fact is somewhere, someday, it can save Hawaiian Shirt Fridays, bccthis will be preserving our very humanity itself.

Call me a West Coast new-ager, but man, I hate bad vibes.  Especially on the Internet.  Being on it is bad enough, but then I get my mellow harshed every time I go to a YouTube thingie or a message board.  Like, 95% of the comments are attacks.  Vicious stuff.   It’s like, c’mon people, relax.  Drink some chamomile tea.  This is why my mellow gets stoked whenever I come across good vibes, like Propadoo.  Propadoo takes positive customer testimonials and uses it as a marketing tool to expand your customer base, boost conversions, and market your product.  Propadoo is a collector, conveyor, and dispenser of good vibes.

Propadoo takes these positive reviews, and using the power of social networks and Twitter(s), blasts it out into the universe, and by golly, that’s good for business.  But it’s also good for individuals too.  Regular folks use Propadoo to compliment colleagues for a job well done, recognize teachers, coaches, civil servants etc. for going above and beyond expectations, and use positive reinforcement by telling someone what they’re doing right.  Just by writing this I feel the chi improving in the room.  So I registered.

On my Account page, I could give props in the upper left hand corner, so I did.  To myself.  I entered my name, and was given a list of other Mikes to choose from.  I wasn’t there (as I registered under my alias), so I was prompted to enter the name and e-mail address of the prop receiver (me.)  The prop was: “Hey Mike, you’ve generally been well behaved in 2010.  Except for that one Saturday night in the Sunset District, you’ve been behaving excellently.”  After submitted, I was noticed I’d receive an email about it, which I did, encouraging me to registered.  I read the prop I gave myself and blushed.

I could also track my Props Received, Props Given, Favorite Props, Referrals Received, and Referrals Given.  But what really makes Propadoo sing is its referral tools.  For example, you can create links for your email signature, Website, and social networking profile that prompt people to give you props.  You can then reject or accept these props and/or send a pre-written Prop for a customer to approve.  Best yet, once you approve the props, you can explode them into the Internet by streaming them on your website, Twitter(s), or Facebook page.  And the  testimonials get indexed by Google and show up in the search results.  This all goes down on the Links and Promote page, where you can copy and paste code to accomplish this very thing (see below.)  Easy!Now for some quick suggestions:

• Propadoo’s secret sauce is without a doubt its ability to tap into social networks to create streaming testimonials.  I discovered this, albeit after some digging.  I feel like it should be front and center on the home page - maybe another quote bubble from Senor Propadoo himself. (Maybe I can set him/her up with my old pal Translationzilla; what a team they’d be!)
• Similarly, my account home page looked a tad stark.  And while I was told to “add a feed of your Props to your web site or social networks. Click here,” that could have been more prevalent, and/or designed in such a way that it instantly grabbed my attention.  Cuz that’s where the action is.
• I may have missed it, but a screen shot of a prop on a Facebook or Twitter page would really make it come to life.

Propadoo’s business model made me think (it happens.)  There’s nothing more valuable in the business world than good word of mouth.  It’s critical.  And while such word of mouth can be captured in pithy testimonials, or those five-star rating systems you see on sites, it’s still an untapped content source.  It’s a big pile of un-mined sparkling gold: a litany of people – would be customers, partners, and, yes, competitors – all out there, floating in the Inter-ether, unorganized, unkempt.  Yelp, of course, allows people to testify, but what’s behind the name?  Can you really access these people?  Have you any control over the process?  Of course not; it’s anarchy, and for a business owner who’s been unjustly slandered on the Internet, it’s frustrating and unfair, darn it.  (Note: the customer is not always right.)  And what if you do get props on Yelp?  Who really sees it?  It just sits there, buried, unused, un-communicated.  It’s over there in the corner, surly.  And you can’t prop individuals there either.

Propadoo harnesses a wealth of positive testimonials, personalizes by putting a name behind the face, and uses it as a tool to grow your businesses, or at the least, improve your standing among your peers, which is nice, because everybody loves to be loved (especially Pisces.) And don’t take my word for it; the folks at the This Week in Start Ups agree as well (check out the Shark Tank segment.)  Basically, I like Propadoo for the same reason I like long drives down Rt. 1, the Grateful Dead’s “American Beauty,” and a nice cold Pacifico beer: good vibes.  Life is too short to complain.  What does it accomplish, other than harsh my mellow?  To quote an old Jersey acquaintance, upon being asked how they were doing: “I’m okay, I can’t complain.  And even if I could, who wants to hear it?”

Not me, that’s who.

ScoopGods is a news website unlike any other, owed mostly to the fact that while none of the articles on ScoopGods are, in fact, real, all of them are really funny. The brainchild of a small team of writers with jobs in the computer industry, ScoopGods is a website filled to the brim with eccentric, off-the-wall humor. Articles lampoon everything and anyone; from President Barack Obama to the Pope; and from Apple Computers to the Hadron supercollider.

The news stories are relevant to the issues of today in the same way that eating a burrito is relevant to the Mexican-American War of 1846; loosely. Articles about current celebrities alternately exaggerate their most notable characteristics to legendary ends or mock their self-aggrandizing behavior by “exposing” their secret side. Other articles are sheer nonsense; studies of ridiculous human behavior in a world where insanity, crazed sexuality, extreme juxtaposition, and irony writ large are par for the course.

ScoopGods realize that their humor may not be everyone’s cup of tea. Subtlety doesn’t exactly factor into their comedic sense and toilet-humor abounds. Certain articles are Monty-Python-esque (in a good way), while others simply beat you over the head with the gag, until you’re left a whimpering, quivering, cowering blob. The best stuff on ScoopGods, in my opinion, are the articles written more tongue-in-cheek rather than fart-in-face, but if you read through a few stories you’ll undoubtedly find something brilliant that will make you smile.

This range of humor works to their advantage as well as to their disadvantage. It would be easier for ScoopGods to skew their articles toward the mainstream, to make things less offensive, and to play it safe, but one gets the feeling that this would go against everything the ScoopGods writers stand for. They write what they think is funny, and if you don’t like it, you can go elsewhere. They don’t really care if you like it because they had a blast writing it. It’s precisely this devil-may-care attitude that will attract kindred spirits, and should be admired, even if you can’t appreciate the product itself. If funny was universal, the world would be a tired and boring place.

In a world where snap judgments are standard practive, we dub things “hot or not” in a matter of milliseconds. We expect our humor to be presented in bite-sized chunks, which isn’t what you’ll find at ScoopGods. The articles are longer than you might be used to reading and sometimes the joke set-ups are long and the pay-off is near the end. The use a rural analogy, the journey to the well is a long one, but the bucket rarely comes up dry.

If ScoopGods can be compared to The Onion, it’s only in a favorable light, and only on the surface. While both websites deliver a comedic slant on the news, ScoopGods is an entirely different flavor of humor: much more personality-driven, like joking between good friends or with a brother. The Onion, on the other hand, feels like it’s written by a bunch of elitist, sarcastic, cardigan-wearing haters with “everything sucks” attitudes. While I love reading The Onion, I wouldn’t want to relax and have a beer with any of the writers, whereas I would probably enjoy having a beer with the guys who run ScoopGods. As long as I didn’t have to pay.

ScoopGods claim to be “determined to push [their] influence around the world and possibly the universe,” and that news today misses the “core message”. They don’t go on to explain what that core message is exactly, but I think I can take a guess. It’s that, despite the serious tone of the news, and contrary to the panic-spreading stories that pollute the airwaves, the human experience is, at heart, a humorous one. From the first caveman who laughed when his friend tripped over a rock, to the latest homosexual escapades of anti-gay congressmen; we are a ridiculous species who like to shoot ourselves in the foot at every possible opportunity. It is only our ability to laugh at ourselves that allows us to continue forward, towards more absurdity. It also gives us our most underrated characteristic: resilience.

Comedy is the funhouse mirror held up to society’s reflection; they don’t invent, they only exaggerate what’s there. A joke shows us some truth about ourselves or our idols that we wouldn’t normally be able to stomach. We laugh because “it’s so true”. We laugh because we think it’s crazy, sure, but we also laugh because we know it’s pretty close to our reality.

To that end, perhaps the articles at ScoopGods are prophetic, or like windows into a parallel dimension where things are only slightly different but seem ridiculous because we’re on the outside looking in. Maybe there is some divinity working through the ScoopGods, a deity that get’s its rocks off by showing us an approximation of what we really look like and then watching us laugh. And that would be the scariest thought I’ve ever had.