Make GMail Social with Rapportive
A few weeks ago I visited an old friend who has spent his entire career in outside sales. He asked me what my company did so I explained that we provide clients with technology solutions to business challenges; however, as soon as I mentioned Social Media he crossed his arms and got a sour look on his face. I asked him what was wrong, and he said “Social Media is just a way for people to tell their friends what they had for lunch. Who cares???”
Unfortunately my friend’s opinion of Social Media is not uncommon, although it is misguided. Social Media is one of the newest ways for people to communicate although some have refused to try it and thus don’t understand it. While Social Media is revolutionizing how humans are able to connect with each another, it’s still in its basic form, just another set of tools for people to use to communicate just like email or telephones. And while there are those who use it to broadcast their daily culinary choices, there are millions of people who use social networking for business – just ask the 59 million Americans who use LinkedIn or the 4 million businesses with Facebook fan pages. But what if you’re busy? What if you don’t have time to keep up with Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and every other social network out there? Luckily, Rapportive is here to help.
Rapportive, pictured below, is a plugin for your web browser that consolidates social information about your contacts right into GMail. Not only does it list your contacts’ name, title, and company right next to GMail’s “Compose” or “Reading” panes, but it also shows you their profile picture, latest status updates from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and more.
As you can see above, Rapportive shows me all the networks I currently have connected to the plugin. If I’m viewing one of my contacts, it shows their information instead of mine as well as updates for the social networks that contact participates in. I now have an easy way of keeping up with my colleagues’ and clients’ social updates without having to dedicate time to checking Facebook and Twitter for them. If I’m emailing someone Rapportive will even identify when I’m not yet connected to that contact on a given social network and show me a button I can use to connect with them in one single click!
Rapportive was purchased by LinkedIn (NYSE: LNKD) earlier this year but so far it is a free product and supports Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Mailplate (but not Internet Explorer or Opera). To get started, all you have to do is go to the Rapportive install page and add the plugin to your favorite web browser, then link Rapportive to each of your social networks. All in all installation and setup take only five minutes, depending on how many social networks you plan on connecting.
If you end up installing Rapportive come back here and let us know what you think about it. Are there other tools you use to keep up with your business contacts? Leave a comment below and let us know – we’d love to hear from you!
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Twenty Time Saving Keyboard Shortcuts
As an IT consultant for small businesses, I spend a lot of time at the computer and most of that time is spent typing. Whether I’m answering email, drafting a client proposal, or authoring a client status report I try to be as efficient as possible when I’m sitting in front of a keyboard. One of the ways I save time is with keyboard shortcuts. It sounds silly but the less time I have to spend using my mouse the more time I’m actually getting work done.
There are many types of computers used in small businesses today but statistically the most common operating system is still Microsoft Windows so these lists are built for Windows-based PCs. That said, we don’t want our Mac users to feel left out so I’ve found the current list of Mac OS X Keyboard Shortcuts also. Without further ado, in no particular order here are my favorite time-saving keyboard shortcuts for Microsoft Windows:
Microsoft Windows Keyboard Shortcuts
- Alt + Tab: Hold Alt and tap Tab to cycle through all open applications. When you land on the one you’d like to switch to, release Alt.
- Alt + Shift + Tab: Same as above except the rotation is “backwards.”
- Ctrl + Arrow: Hold Ctrl and tap the left or right arrow key to move through text a word at a time. Handy for fixing a spelling a error a few words back as you type.
- Shift + Arrow: Hold Shift to highlight text as you move through a document with the arrow keys. If used with the left or right arrow key you will highlight one character at a time. If used with the up or down arrow key you will highlight an entire line at a time.
- Ctrl + Shift + Arrow: Same as above except text will be highlighted. Handy for copying or deleting entire sections of text. Keep in mind that you can use paste (Ctrl+C) in conjunction with the highlight function to replace text. Use of Delete and backspace is not necessary.
- Windows + L: Lock your PC.
- Windows + F: Open the Windows “Search” dialog box.
- Windows + R: Open the Windows “Run” dialog box.
- Windows + D: Immediately minimize all windows and show your Desktop.
- Alt + F4: Closes the selected program.
Web Browser Keyboard Shortcuts
- Tab: When navigating a web form, Tab will move forward one field.
- Shift + Tab: When navigating a web form, Shift + Tab will move backwards one field.
- Ctrl + Tab: Cycles through the tabs of a single instance of most popular web browsers. Works similar to Alt + Tab for applications.
- Ctrl + Shift + Tab: Same as above except the rotation is “backwards.”
- Alt + Arrow Key: Equivalent to using the “Forward” or “Back” buttons in your web browser.
- Ctrl + D: Add Bookmark.
- Ctrl + T: New Tab.
- Ctrl + F: Find text within the currently-displayed webpage.
- Ctrl + +/-: Holding Ctrl and tapping+ will “Zoom in” to a webpage (make the text larger) while holding Ctrl and tapping- will “Zoom Out” (make the text smaller).
- F5: Refresh the current webpage. Equivalent to clicking your browser’s reload button.
We realize this is a lot of keyboard shortcuts to learn but if you can integrate them into your daily routine they really will save you some time. I suggest you bookmark this page or print it and keep a copy somewhere near your computer. If you can learn one new shortcut a week you’ll have learned all of them in just a few months!
Have we left out any important shortcuts? Feel free to leave a comment below and let us know, and don’t forget to click in the boxes to the right to Like us on Facebook and add us to your circles on Google+!
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Ten Reasons to Switch to Google Apps
Google Apps Logo
At DBS we’re pretty excited about the Google Apps productivity suite. In fact, we use it every single day. Here are ten reasons to join the three million other businesses running Google Apps.
- Gain the productivity, collaboration, and communication capabilities of a large enterprise at a small business price.
- No hardware to buy, maintain, or upgrade. Ever.
- No complicated or expensive software licensing. $50 per user per year.
- Provide employees secure remote access to corporate email, calendar, documents, and software.
- Mandatory SSL connections and additional security safeguards keep your data safe.
- Enable users to collaborate on project documents in real-time from anywhere in the world.
- Free up your IT staff to work on other strategic projects.
- Rely on Google’s geographical data center redundancy and 99.9% uptime SLA.
- Gain free access to 24x7x365 live technical support.
- Preserve your current technology investments with integration tools like Google Cloud Connect.
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