Track changes in Word and text documents

by Sharon Campbell

Have you ever been working on an important letter or proposal where the wording had to be just right? You sent it off to another team member for their contribution, and then they emailed you the updated version with their changes. But while you were reading it over one last time, you realized they didn’t just add the stuff they were supposed to, they changed the wording from a really important part, and who knows what else they changed, and now you’re going to have to go over the whole thing again with a fine-tooth comb…

Actually, you don’t. The same word-processing programs you use to write your documents can also be used to automatically compare them. The differences between the documents will be highlighted in bright colors. You can spend five minutes glancing through the changes and get everything back to the way it’s supposed to be. There’s even a DOS command that will do the same thing for you command line users out there.

Microsoft Word

Make sure you save the updated document with a different name or in a different place, so it doesn’t overwrite your original file.

Now, open both documents in Word 2010. Go to the Review tab and click on the Compare tool. Choose the Compare… option.

In the window that pops up, use the dropdown menus to choose the two files you want to compare. Open the first document as the Original document, and the new one as the Revised document.

This will bring up a screen with a couple of different panels. The panel on the left shows a list of the changes. The center panel is the most useful one. It highlights every change between the two documents in blue. Words that were deleted from the first document are shown with a strikethrough, and words that were added in the new version are underlined. The two right panels show both versions of the document.

File comparison in Word 2010

More about file comparison in Word: office.microsoft.com/en-us/word-help/compare-documents-with-the-legal-blackline-option-HP010368863.aspx

Notepad++

Notepad++ is like Notepad but with lots of extra features. You can download it for free from notepad-plus-plus.org.

Notepad++ is great for comparing files of the “text” type, like HTML files, database backup files, regular .txt files, etc.

To compare two files, first you want to make sure both of them are saved with different names. Open both of them in Notepad++.

Go to the Plugins menu option. Hover over the Compare option, then choose Compare again from the sub-menu.

Two screens will come up, with one file on the left and one on the right. Every line that’s different will have a yellow exclamation point next to it. Specific words that are different will be highlighted in a darker color.

File comparison in Notepad++

More about file comparison in Notepad++: www.davidtan.org/how-to-compare-two-text-files-using-notepad-plus

DOS fc Command

The DOS “fc” command – short for “file compare” – will generate a list of all changes between two files.

To use this command, bring up the DOS command prompt. Type the following:

fc c:\path\to\file1.txt c:\path\to\file2.txt

The output will show any lines that are different between the two files.

File comparison with the command line

More about file comparison with fc: www.computerhope.com/fchlp.htm

Symantec tells customers to disable PCAnywhere

With applictions such as LogMeIn, WebEX, and GoToMyPC, surprised people are even using this. Do we really want to use VNC?

http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-57366090-245/symantec-tells-customers-to-disable-pcanywhere/?tag=cnetiosapp

BlueStacks goes Metro with Windows 8

Very Interesting about BlueStacks in Windows 8 – Can’t Wait Thanks CES and CNET

http://ces.cnet.com/8301-33377_1-57355786/bluestacks-goes-metro-with-windows-8/?tag=mncol%3bcontentBody.4

Target picks Microsoft’s HyperV virtualization software

http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-20045503-75.html

Will Geolocation Services Ever Boost Your Business?

by Mielle Sullivan, Janus Networks

The web world is a whirl for small business owners, especially in urban areas. First there was Citysearch, which did its own online reviews. Then Yelp, in which users wrote reviews — not always good. In 2005, business owners that had just figured out how to make a webpage found themselves making profiles on MySpace or Facebook. Now just when many small business were just beginning to feel good about Twitter, there’s a wave of new services for smartphone users, called geolocation applications.

Today there are three primary apps: Foursquare, MyTown and Gowalla. All cater mostly to iPhone users. As users move about in the physical world, these apps track where they are, so that they can earn points for visiting places, like a business, public spaces or even their workplace. Businesses are already using these apps to promote themselves. Here are some details on each:

Foursquare — Users or players get “badges” for visiting places, and can compete for a top spot — the “Mayor” of a particular location. Some small businesses have begun giving Mayors discounts, because having the Mayor badge means they visit frequently.

Gowalla — Similar to Foursquare, Gowalla is a game that also gives users virtual items that add an extra spin to the badge concept. Gowalla is partnering with big companies to promote them with branded items.

MyTown — For the moment the largest geoloco app, MyTown has almost two million users. In this game, users can “buy” real world properties then charge their friends rent for visiting, similar to Monopoly. This game is also partnering with businesses to offer virtual items. Players want these virtual goods because it helps them advance in the game. And businesses want to give them because it incentivizes players to visit.

For now, small businesses are still trying to figure out where they fit in. But it won’t take long. By the end of the year, geoloco apps will probably be a notable new marketing channel for local businesses in some areas. Areas with large populations of twenty-somethings and lots of smartphone users — like the Bay Area — will see the most growth in geolocation advertising.

For a long time people have predicted that local businesses will draw nearby shoppers by, for instance, sending a coupon to their phone as they walk by the shop; a geoloco game can alert its users to such copuons. It can also identify your existing loyal customers, and help you give them a reason to come back.

The promotions aren’t limited to brick-and-mortar stores selling physical goods, either. Even a virtual business can get some play. For example, The Travel Channel has partnered with Gowalla and MyTown to give out virtual items that promote a new show, Food Wars. Whenever users visit a food-oriented location, like grocery or restaurant they receive virtual good relating to the show.

For most businesses, these services are still in the “watch-and-learn” category–they could be a good place to advertise, but it is still too soon to tell. But if you run a bar, a coffee shop or a restaurant in a college town like Berkley, it’s worth looking into now.

You can contact the author at press@janusnetworks.com

To find out how Janus Networks can provide tech solutions for your small business visit us at: http://www.janusnetworks.com/
Also, visit our blog: http://janusnetworks.wordpress.com/

follow us on twitter: @JanusNetworks

Microsoft Office 2010:How Will it Effect Your Small Business’ Productivity?

by Mielle Sullivan, Janus Networks

Many small businesses began using the Google Docs suite in 2007 and 2008 to create at least some of their standard documents because the programs were light, intuitive, enabled instant collaboration and were hosted in the cloud. But over time, users began to note certain flaws: access to the service, particularly for spreadsheets, can be interrupted, sometimes leaving users stranded for hours. Also, though Open Office and Microsoft document file types are supported, all document formatting is not retained, which means time consuming re-formatting. Not to mention that much of the functionality taken for granted in client office suites is noticeably absent in Google Docs. Want to track changes in a collaborative document? No can do. Want to make a pivot table? Sorry.

Microsoft Office 2010 is an effort to combine the best features of its traditional office suite (upgraded of course) and the collaborative ability of web apps like Google Docs. But there are some differences in how the collaboration tools work compared to Google Docs. Here is a list of some of the most interesting, new features and tools of Office 2010 and how they might effect productivity:

Web Apps:
• Excel, Word and PowerPoint documents can be uploaded to the cloud via a web browser for collaboration and web viewing
• PowerPoint retains much of its functionality in the web version, minus the light video editing capabilities added to the desktop version for 2010
• Excel Spreadsheets look and feel the same in the browser and multiple people can edit at once on the web, provided you give them access
• Word documents look and feel the same in the browser as on the desktop and multiple people can edit at once, though only through the desktop environment

How will this effect productivity: For PowerPoint and Excel documents, easier sharing through the web and collaboration is a huge boost and will eliminate a lot of version confusion. However, creating some of the complex tables and graphs in Excel, like pivot tables, isn’t possible through the web version — but there is considerable more functionality than Google Docs spreadsheets. If the Office 2010 web apps can prove consistently reliable to users, it will be a big boost to productivity, compared to current desktop or web solutions.

Word is another story. If users can’t collaborate over the web, that means all parties need to have Office 2010 to collaborate at all on Word docs, which means a lot of collaboration won’t happen. Because a lot of small businesses collaborate frequently with many different parties, for many Google Docs still may be the best live document collaboration option.

Outlook:
• Emails are now grouped into whole conversation threads
o “Clean up” conversations by eliminating redundant parts of threads
• Improved Search
• Users now have the option to connect Outlook to social networking services like Facebook and Twitter to see status updates from friends, in the application
• View all threads and attachments, calendar entries and more from a given person in People Viewer.
• The ability to add more than one Microsoft Exchange Account

How will this effect productivity: Email is often sited as one of the biggest productivity drains for large and small businesses alike. Anything that gives even small benefits to productivity in email, is bound to have a measurable effect. These new changes add more contextual information and a more intuitive way of viewing and accessing email conversations, which are big improvements and might even make email more fun.

Graphics Editing in Documents:

Users can now:

• Do basic editing of photos and images in Word and PowerPoint
• Do basic editing of videos in PowerPoint.

How will this effect productivity: In my experience, small business employees not familiar with graphics editing will often strip down or leave out graphics because editing them is too time consuming. If they are now able to make graphics (or video) look good easily, I think they will add them to presentations and documents more readily. Documents won’t be completed faster, but they will be more interesting and colorful.

Conclusion:

If collaboration and web apps are the biggest draws Office 2010, use the free web versions and then decide if want to purchase the whole suite. If you are already a happy customer of Office 2007, then it is probably well worth your while to switch to Office 2010 for the new Outlook alone.

You can contact the author at press@janusnetworks.com

To find out how Janus Networks can provide tech solutions for your small business visit us at: http://www.janusnetworks.com/
Also, visit our blog: http://janusnetworks.wordpress.com/

follow us on twitter: @JanusNetworks

Grow Your Small Business with ScanLife

by Mielle Sullivan, Janus Networks

ScanLife, a company out of New York, is offering several small business and enterprise solutions using printed optical barcodes that enable you to entice customers, make your print ads more interactive, ad more umph to your business cards and even better manage inventory — all through a smartphone app.

Link The Web to Print:
Place a ScanLife optical barcode in your print ads, flyers, posters, brochures or even signs. Those who view the add can use the free ScanBuy smartphone app to scan the barcode and are immediately taken to a mobile site, or shown a video linked with the ad. You can even offer coupons or promote a sale. Brand interaction like this is a great way to stay in the memory of potential customers and build brand loyalty. Now your ads are much more than an impression, they are an experience.

Make Your Business Cards Pop: By adding a barcode to your business cards you can link contacts to as much information as you like, a resume, a demo, a picture, the location of your business on a map compared to their current location — the possibilities are endless.

Easier Purchasing for Customers: A few retailers are using the ScanBuy barcodes on the tags of their merchandise and promoting the service in the store. With one click, customers can buy merchandise or add it to a gift registry.

Manage Inventory: Print your own ScanLife barcodes and attach them to merchandise or equipment. Have your employees download the app and they can use a smartphone as regular barcode scanner, no more buying special equipment.

One of the better aspects of all these solutions is that you can change the information attached to a barcode at any time, through your own computer. If you want to offer a different coupon, update your resume or connect a different video, you can do so whenever you want and the interaction will update immediately.

ScanLife is not the only company using optical barcode technology with smartphones, but right now they are one of the front-runners and they are targeting small and micro businesses. For the level of interaction you can offer customers and potential customers alone, I think they are worth a look.

You can contact the author at press@janusnetworks.com

To find out how Janus Networks can provide tech solutions for your small business visit us at: http://www.janusnetworks.com/
Also, visit our blog: http://janusnetworks.wordpress.com/
follow us on twitter: @JanusNetworks

Dos and Don’ts of Google AdWords

by Mielle Sullivan, Janus Networks

Google Adwords is a must for any small business. It’s an essential tool to reach local audiences and is infinitely scalable. You decide exactly how much to spend, what keywords to choose, and what targeting to use. When used with a bit of know-how, Google Adwords offers some of the best ROI in advertising for both big and small businesses. If you aren’t sure where to begin, Google makes it easy, go to www.google.com/adwords/learningcenter.

Do:

Include Location Based keywords/Use Geo Targeting

Most small business depend on business they get from their community, consequently you need to make sure you are targeting people searching for goods and services in your area. At the very least, bid on keywords that have your specific good and service and your city and state. For instance if you are a sushi restaurant in Oakland, you would want to bid on search queries that contain sushi and Oakland California. Also bid on neighborhood keywords– if you are in the Temescal area, bid on queries with sushi and Temescal.

Geo targeting allows you to target only those areas you wish. Depending on the kind of business you run, this can be very helpful. In the example above, it probably wouldn’t be prudent to bid on “sushi restaurant” nationwide, but to it would be worth it to bid on everyone searching for sushi restaurants in Oakland or the Bay Area.

Always Expand Your List of Negative Keywords

Negative keywords are words or phrases within a search query that you don’t want to trigger your ad. Again using the example above, you may want to bid on all search queries for sushi in Oakland, but have a negative keyword of “classes.” Most likely someone searching for classes on how to make sushi is not your best prospective customer. Negative keywords are a crucial way to make sure you are driving the right people to website to increase revenue, but it takes constant experimentation and tweaking.

Make Sure a User Knows Why they Clicked on Your Ad Once They Reach Your Website

It’s crucial that once someone has clicked your ad, that they don’t get confused by the page they land on and think they have clicked on the wrong ad. This decision will happen in less than a second. Companies with larger budgets can invest in custom landing pages tailored to ad groups. If you don’t have the budget for that, at least make sure that the basic good or service you promoted in your Adword ad is very prominent on the page you send them to, very often your home page. The next step you want prospective customers to take should also be clear. Should they call you for an estimate? Make sure they see your phone number at a glance. Should they come to your restaurant? Make sure your address is very visible.

Use Scheduling

Who is your target audience? Are they businesses looking for consultants or are they foodies looking for a good meal that evening? The first group is going search for your business during business hours, while the other is going to do their searching in the evening. Once you know your target, you can concentrate more of your budget on the times they are most likely going to search for what you offer.

Remember Adwords is Always Changing

Google is constantly tweaking the algorithm it uses to determine the quality score of your ad and thus your how much you pay. A campaign that gave you a very high quality score at one time, may not work as well a bit later. Google won’t tell anyone when it has changed it’s algorithm, and their are always a variety of factors that determine an ads success in such a dynamic environment. But an evolving algorithm is just another reason to constantly adapt.

Don’t:

Set a High Budget Until You have some Experience

It is important to start small, experiment and then expand slowly. No one can tell you exactly what will work for each business. There will be some trial and error and without knowing what works for you and what doesn’t, it is easy for costs to expand quickly. So, set a low daily and monthly budget in the Adwords system to start with.

Focus Just on Traffic

All Adwords traffic is not created equal. It is one thing to drive people to your site, it is another to drive the right people to your site and get them to buy something or come to your location.

If you see an increase in traffic, but no increase in business, it means there is either something wrong with your ad (driving the wrong people) or something wrong with your website (you are driving the right people, but something about the website is confusing your customers). If you are selling your product on your website, it is is extremely important to make the check-out process as easy as possible.

If you sell a service, make sure visitors know exactly what your service is on the first page they see and that your contact information is impossible to miss.

Constantly tweak your keywords and your ad wording to maximize customers rather than traffic.

Expect Good Results without Constant Managing and Tweaking

You really have to look at your Adwords account everyday. You have to monitor trends and then make changes to get the most from them, otherwise you will just be wasting your money. That said, it doesn’t have to consume your day. Unless you investing thousands of dollars a week, a half an hour a day should be enough, often less.

You can contact the author at press@janusnetworks.com

To find out how Janus Networks can provide tech solutions for your small business visit us at: http://www.janusnetworks.com/

Also, visit our blog: http://janusnetworks.wordpress.com/

follow us on twitter: @JanusNetworks

Will the iPad Be Useful for Business?

by Mielle Sullivan, Janus Networks

The iPad is now available and consumers & businesses are salivating over it. Business people who have been around for over a decade, may remember the Newton– Apple’s large personal digital assistant from the 90′s — that, like the iPad, was unique. Business people loved it, but Apple canceled the line to focus on consumer goods. The iPad is targeted primarily at consumers, but should businesses buy the iPad right now? Let’s look at pros and cons:

Pros / what it can do:
– Great tool for mobile salesmen to show photographs and documents and obtain signatures electronically, with less hassle than industry-specific equipment
– It can be used as the new notebook or clipboard, providing even better office mobility. Laptops can still be hard to lug around.
– For larger meetings a projection screen will remain the standard. But one-on-one, the iPad could serve as an invaluable shared display.
– It’s literally hands-on, making data manipulation easier through multi-touch browsing and lifting productivity for anything that doesn’t involve typing.
– All the iPhone’s current apps will work on the iPad

Cons / what it can’t do:
– Serve as a convenient e-reader; its screen is not e-ink, more like a computer screeen so it’s not a Kindle replacement
– Probably not very rugged; the iPhone has a reputation for being a bit fragile compared to other phones, the iPad is much more fragile than a laptop or netbook
– No multi-tasking, so no running a spreadsheet, browser, email client and presentation all at once
– Dubious security; Apple is not known for concentrating on security, but businesses care
– Adobe Flash is not currrently supported or a camera for video chats

For now, the cons may outweigh the pros. That said, the iPad will likely be a very nice addition to the businessman’s standard outfit of laptop and cell phone, provided there’s budget for it (at least it’s cheap). And it is probably a must-have for salesman who show any visual presentations.

For most businesses, the best idea is to wait a few months, keeping a close eye out to see what happens. The important thing to watch is not Apple, but the thousands of independent application developers. If the iPad is really a game-changing platform, it will create business apps that we can’t even conceive of now — because they’ve never existed. In that case, the decision will become a lot easier.

You can contact the author at press@janusnetworks.com

To find out how Janus Networks can provide tech solutions for your small business visit us at: http://www.janusnetworks.com/
Also, visit our blog: http://janusnetworks.wordpress.com/

follow us on twitter: @JanusNetworks

A Small Business Disaster Preparedness Plan

By Mielle Sullivan, Janus Networks

We all have seen the pictures of the devastating effects of the Jan. 12th earthquake in Haiti. Thousands are dead and much of the capital city of Port-au-Prince is in ruins. This incident was a grim reminder to us as Californians of the devestation of earthquakes.

If another strong earthquake were to strike the Bay Area next week, what would happen to your business? Every business, no matter its size, should have a disaster preparedness plan. Here are some steps to take:

• Analyze the day to day operations of your company. Identify the components that are crucial to your business’s survival and subsequent recovery. This may include payroll, accounting, and customer relation management systems.
• Schedule an appointment with your insurance agent to review your coverage and see if your coverage needs to be changed or supplemented. If you don’t already have it, think about adding business-interruption insurance, which will replace any lost income should your company get hit by a covered incident.
• Nominate someone to temporarily operate your business in case you become injured or were otherwise unable to work. Perhaps an employee, a member of your board or an advisor?
• Of course, yours will not be the only business affected if disaster strikes. What other vendors/suppliers are you dependent on? Don’t keep all your eggs in one basket. Find back-up suppliers you can use in case of emergency.
• Back-up and secure your data. Data loss is one of the most common problems businesses face after a disaster. It is crucial to back up your data in a safe and secure off-site location. Janus Networks has solutions for just this situation.

Disaster planning can be a bit daunting and maybe even seem a little morbid. It is easy to put off, because we don’t like thinking about undesireable situations. But, a little preparedness can go a long way towards recovery. Remember, more than half of all small businesses never reopen after a disaster. Will your be one that will?

You can contact the author at press@janusnetworks.com

To find out how Janus Networks can provide tech solutions for your small business visit us at: http://www.janusnetworks.com/
Also, visit our blog: http://janusnetworks.wordpress.com/

follow us on twitter: @JanusNetworks