It’s Virtually Done (IVD) Blog

I don’t let my fingers do the walking much anymore. Instead, my fingers do the tapping on the web when I’m looking for services to purchase. I decide very quickly whether a business has a “good enough” website to get my patronage.

Creating website content and launching it is very time consuming, especially when you have a business to run. Believe me, I know! But, it is important that one’s website have links that work, content that is current, and have a look that is pleasing, and keeps up with the times.

I once tried to refer work to a colleague, but the potential client later told me that she checked out the colleague’s website, and it wasn’t up to the client’s standards. None of us know how much business we miss by not being up to par.

So, what can we do to avoid negative website judgments?

•  Check your links regularly.
• Review your content at least annually.
• Compare your website to those of your contemporaries annually.
• Stay on top of the latest technologies for creating websites

Too busy to do all this yourself? Consider hiring someone to do it for you. The business that you gain may pay for the website improvements.

I couldn’t wait to connect my new flat panel monitor and free some space on my desk. But wait! Why are all those icons on my desktop blurry? What is going on?

I called the manufacturer (Samsung), and after 2 phone calls, over an hour, and lots of different techs, I was able to figure out several things. All of this became necessary because of my system (3 year old Windows XP).

The following changes can all be made in your control panel under the display properties section.

1. For optimal viewing of my new monitor, I had to change my screen resolution to 1280 x 1024 pixels. Great. Everything got clear, but wait: now everything is way too small. Now what do I do?
2. I tried making the icons large, but they became too large for my taste.
3. I changed the DPI (dots per inch) setting from normal to large making everything 125% of its normal size. Much better, but there’s more. (Warning: this may affect how some programs work. For me, it affects Dreamweaver.)
4. I changed a flag so that shadows appear under menus increasing readability.
5. Per the tech’s recommendation, I changed the monitor refresh rate to 60 hertz. (I think this helps kids with their video games, but I took their recommendation nonetheless.)
6. I saved the best for last: Clear Type. This came as a default setting with my lap top, but had to be installed with my older system. Clear Type is awesome. Check your control panel display properties to see if it is active with your system. If not, here’s where to download it: http://www.microsoft.com/typography/cleartype/tuner/Step1.aspx

I hope this helps someone else with an older XP system (only 3 years old!) that wants to upgrade to a flat panel, and has eyes over 40 years old.

It helps if you use the appropriate subject line. As emails go back and forth, the topic often changes. I recently received an email that had a subject line related to a business topic that didn’t pertain to me. Because I was expecting an answer on another topic, I opened the email from this person. To my surprise, it was an email intended for someone else and contained an important family announcement.

Quick tip: As the content of the email changes, change the subject line

Instead of: Feedback on Business Forum
Change the subject to: Mother and Baby Fine

Result: The subject line will attract the attention of the right people. The added benefit is that when later you are searching for that birth announcement to forward to someone else, you won’t have to plow through 10 emails with the subject “Feedback on Business Forum.”

If you are really kind, you’ll delete all the information below your topic that doesn’t relate to the new subject at hand.

Ever get email newsletters, also called ezines, that contain strange characters in appropriate places? For example, sometimes there are question marks where apostrophes or double quotes should be.

If you don’t want to be the person sending a newsletter that looks like that, here are some tips:

1. Use straight quotes instead of “smart” or “curly cue” quotes for both contractions and double quotes.
2. Use double hyphens — rather than em dash (a longer hyphen).
3. Don’t use superscript or subscript.
4. Don’t use ellipses (…).
5. Don’t add manual carriage returns; let your word processor wrap the text.

The difficulty here is that if you create your content in Word, which many of us do, Word will automatically create problems 1-3 above when you type certain characters. It looks better in print, but it wrecks havoc with certain browsers.

Solution: Tell Word that you don’t want these specialty autoformat features:

Open a blank document

Format>Autoformat>Options>Autoformat Tab

In the Replace section, uncheck the first four boxes

Okay

Cancel

For added insurance, after composing your text in Word, cut and paste it into Notepad. This will get rid of other Word formatting that may cause you grief.

Good luck and may all your apostrophes be straight.

 

One of my clients has a very big heart. Her passion is the women and children of Rwanda. Your money will be well spent. Check out the Itafari website.

Remember: if you’ve paid people/businesses $600 or more last year for services, you need to get them an IRS Form 1099 by the end of this month (January).

To figure this out, run a report in your financial software and analyze who you’ve paid $600 or more to in the course of running your business in 2005. Examples might be your accountant, attorney, coach, graphic designer, web designer, virtual assistant, etc. Note: If they’re incorporated, you don’t have to send them a 1099.

The IRS & your state need their copies of the same 1099 form by the end of February. This article provides some background information, but be sure and read the IRS’s directions or ask your virtual assistant or accountant to prepare the forms for you.

Avoid fines; stay compliant.