Review the Market

This post is about the lengths that certain sites will go to in order to get attention and traffic. However, in this case, it is also a fun (if not useful) tool. It’s called The Bubblenator. What does it do? Well, it adds text bubbles to your images. It doesn’t actually add the text bubble though; it simply gives you a script which allows you to embed the bubblified image in your blog/website.

Visit The Bubblenator to take a swing at this tool. (Remember what I said about sites doing all kinds of things to get attention). The way it works is that you pick an image from the Internet and run it through their online tool. Add some text (which you would like to see in that speech bubble) and then copy paste the code it generates into your webpage and you are done. It is that simple. Of course, be sure to respect any copyright or trademark in the pictures.

Of course, it does allow a little more than that. It allows you to change the shape of the bubble and also position the bubble wherever you like. In addition to that you can also add more than one bubble and change the size of the bubbles. I guess it can get a lot of fun once you get going. I can certainly think of many fun things to do with this.

Today, we look at a Lead Management Software, that potentially gives even SalesForce.com a run for it’s money. It’s called AIM Promote. Here’s a list of some of the differentiating features that this fully loaded software offers:

• Low Pricing ($33 per user) and No Setup Cost
• Lead Attention Meter - track how much time a lead is receiving from (or not receiving).
• Customizable Lead List Display - allows you to choose which information is important for you to view while looking at the leads.
• Lead Reselling - you can resell leads that you don’t want to handle to others. This allows you to harvest the hard work that you put into lead development only to realize that this lead is not in your sweet spot.
• Reports - a large number of reports which are either not available in competing offerings at all, or cost extra money to generate: Campaign Performance, ROI, Profit, Call Center Performance, Campaign Cost, etc.
• Website Integration and Internet Marketing - a set of features such as web analytics, visitor tracking, etc. allow you to integrate AIM to your website allowing you to integrate data gathered there with your sales force data.

Customer Relationship Management is what this software helps you do. There are many other features which are worth looking at. Overall, it is a very feature-rich software, and yet easier to use then most other such software (as claimed by the authors).

I am sure everyone knows what Meebo is. However, due to recent enhancements in their offering, we though that it makes a lot of sense to review this excellent service just in case there are people who are not hooked in yet.

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I have been a project manager for many years during my professional career and as far as I remember I have been most of the time using applications installed on my personal computer that had to be always with me should I wished to work while not being at the office. Well, today I bring you all a good alternative for all of you, project managers, that love internet-based applications and freedom to work anywhere you are. I am talking about ProWorkflow, a new web-based project management software that promises to make our life easier for small and medium companies, offerting a full range of features for this new PM tool.

I have signed up for one of the free trial accounts they offer to check it out a bit and I have been nicely impressed. Not only you can manage projects, but it comes with a full range of options such a tasks and time manager, contacts, notes, reports, useful links, etc. On the initial screen you get a personal summary of the different sections you may be working in and the status of your tasks/projects. From here you can start fully working on them and easily control your ongoing processes.

The product has been designed by Proactive software, a well known company on the sector, so you know, if you are interested or iIf you want more detailed information just try it out or check out their company website.

WebAsyst is an american company offering an online collaboration suite allowing you to manage all your personal and professional data in an easy and efficient way. There are two ways you can work with their Suite package, either downloading the free version, or now registering for a free hosted account on their website.

 The company, that has always offered 30-day free trial accounts; will allow now users to create free accounts that never expire. These free accounts have however some limitations. e.g. number of entries, storage space, and number of users, but they still allow users to enjoy the benefits of WebAsyst software. Most important, all WebAsyst functions and features available for paid accounts will also be available for free accounts, including free software upgrades.

Customers wishing to remove limitations or add more storage space and users will be able to upgrade to paid accounts at any time. This means that you will be able to combine free and paid services in one account, and even downgrade from paid to free services, if they find that an application offers more than they need.

The title and domain is not so easy to type and remember correctly,but this new service is a funny and interesting application to see how many visitors you have at this precise moment in your blog or site. We are talking about Who’s amung us and it is so simple that the only thing you need to do is to insert a couple of lines of code such as:

<a href="http://whos.amung.us/show/e8627c40"><img src="http://whos.amung.us/widget/e8627c40" alt="hit counters" width="81" height="29" border="0" /></a>

and you will get a nice counter showing your visitors.

Another catchy way to get info on your visitors, don’t you think?

Thanks to TechTear I have found an interesting tool provided by the guys of Text Link Ads named Blog Juice Calculator. In fact, it is a checking tool similar like DNScoop or the Spanish Checker to get some numbers from your blog site and be able to compare it with other similar blogs in your category. You get a comparison table with the readers in Bloglines, Alexa ranking, Technorati position and incoming links. All this gives you a mark that you can use to publicize your blog much better.