2 The Next Level

Archive for the ‘Web 2.0 of the Week’ Category

Our nation is in the midst of the largest financial bail out of Wall Street in history. We as tax payers are going to have to collectively pay out almost three quarters of a trillion dollars due to bad real estate loans and greedy heads of major banks. We are now going to have to look after our finances with a fine tooth comb. Every one of our hard earned dollars has to be stretched to the limit.

Keeping track of our finances has become a major factor with the way our economy has faltered. Mint.com is and online money management service that allows you to see all of your online accounts under one umbrella. Whether you have a savings account, credit card or even tracking the balance on some of your investments you can do it all with Mint.com

Mint.com helps me keep track of my three savings accounts, two checking accounts, three PayPal accounts, two credit unions and one investment account. It gives me an interactive pie chart view of all my spending habits. Mint.com also gives me advice on how I can make more money buy analyzing my current bank accounts and making suggestions on others that will give me a higher interest rate of return.

Mint.com takes just five minutes to set up. All you need is the user name and passwords of your online accounts. Security is really not an issue because Mint uses 128-bit SSL encryption to ensure that all communications between your browser and our Web site are secure. You also can’t make any transaction through Mint.com you can only view your account information.

One of the best things about Mint.com is it will send you email or mobile alerts reminding you of various financial matters that go on with your accounts. You can set them on anything from your bank account balance going below a certain amount to your interest rate changing to whether you have exceeded your budgeted spending limits.

Mint.com does all of this and more for free. Yes, Free! I don’t know about you but I love all things of value that are free or just about free. So if you are in anyway concerned about where your money is being spent and saved you don’t have any reason for not signing up for an account right now.

Saving money is crucial in these trying times. Mint.com lets you see where you are spending most of your money and then gives you to tools to keep more of it in your possession.

All the best

JB

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Its like ebay, meets Lendingtree, meets match.com. Thats how I would describe Prosper.com where you can borrow up to $25,000 for your business-related needs. At Prosper, people who want to borrow money connect with people who want to loan money. That’s right, loans without a bank.

Why use Prosper?

Solopreneurs and Small Business people know that getting your business funded by traditional institutions like banks or even venture capitalist is not easy. Prosper gives us all another alternative to raising capital via the untraditional way of the Internet using Web 2.0 technology.

All the best

JB

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There are a lot of great tools to keep you in touch with your social and professional network. Most of us use the computer, Jott gives us the power to do the same thing using voice recognition on your cell phone . Jott allows you to send emails to yourself, send email and text messages to your list of contacts, and send messages to different web services like Twitter, Blogger and Google Calendar. Jott will listen to your voice commands and turn you words into text to then be displayed as though you had typed the message yourself.

Most smart phones like the Apple iPhone and the Sprint Instinct have application that can give you some of the same kind of access. Jott uses voice recognition to let the rest of us who still use non-smart phones the same capability.

All I have to do is call the Jott toll-free number and my voice does the rest. The main reason I use Jott is to help me send reminders to myself when I am on the road and don’t have a pen handy, but it can do so much more.

Here is an example of a Jott I sent to my email address

Sent with my voice via Jott:

We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to our selves and our posterity do ordain…

Listen to Jeffrey’s Message

As you can see Jott was able to pick up words that are not that easy to pronounce let alone catch by voice recognition software. If your message is a bit long Jott will generate a link to the audio recording of your message that you can retrieve from the Jott website.

I also use Jott to update my Google Calendar and have just started sending post to my Twitter account.
Jott can help you keep up to date with your favorite blog by allowing you to hear the written words instead of reading them.

Jott lets me hear up to date blog post from Tech Crunch, Mashable and Barack20 when I don’t have the time to get to a computer to read it. If your blog feed is not on the Jott Feed list you can add it and give it a name that will be easily identified when speaking it into your cell phone.

The Jott service is currently FREE to all their users. Their is a quick setup on the Jott website that you walk through in order to store your contacts, groups, feeds and web links. Once that is done you are ready to Jott.

Jott gives busy Solopreneurs and Small Business a voice controlled way to communicate with their social media, emails, groups, blogs and up date their calendar. All done with with a non-smart cell phone.

The Jott service is currently FREE to all their users. There is a quick setup on the Jott website that you walk through in order to store your contacts, groups, feeds and web links. Once that is done you are ready to Jott.

Who do YOU want to Jott?

All the best

JB

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We are going to introduce a new section on this blog called the “Web 2.0 Site of the Week where we will pick one web 2.0 site that we think will help Solopreneurs and Small Business owners take their business 2 the next LEVEL.

The first Web 2.0 Solopreneur Site of the Week is Livemocha.com Livemocha brings social media and learning another language together under one space.

Livemocha is an exciting e-learning Web 2.0 startup founded by a group of experienced and successful entrepreneurs based in the Seattle area. Livemocha addresses a $20 billion worldwide language learning market fueled by rapid globalization, immigration and travel. Livemocha is a first of its kind web based language learning solution integrating online instructional content with a global community of language learners. Livemocha is a venture funded company backed by Maveron, a leading Seattle based venture firm with tremendous consumer and e-learning expertise.

I have been using Livemocha.com to help me learn Spanish, French and Chinese. I have not mastered any of them yet but I am looking forward to the day I can travel on business to Madrid, Paris, and Hong Kong and speak the language without embarrassing myself.

Please comment on how your business would benefit from learning a second or even third language.

All the best

JB
http://www.livemocha.com/profiles/view/150965

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