So Who Needs A Web Guy Anyway?

Google AdWords, Yahoo SEO and Microsoft!

2009-08-20T04:23:00.001-07:00

Finally figured some of this stuff out... Google adwords has some challenges, but it came together. Yahoo is easy, as is Microsoft. Will report back on search results as time passes.

Let me know if you'd like to learn more about these guys.

2009-07-22T06:24:00.000-07:00

New Website/blog created!!!

The Main Street Peddler just asked us to create their temporary website.

Visit them at http://mainstreetpeddler.blogspot.com (soon to be www.MainStreetPeddler.com)

Thank you Chris for your business!

2009-07-14T05:20:00.001-07:00

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Creating a URL for your blog on Blogspot.com

2009-06-21T03:05:00.000-07:00

In the blog system is an address URL.

Go to Blogger, to your account, to SETTINGS, to PUBLISHING. the Blog*Spot Address is right there. You nay have to create the word inside the text box.

Example: http://PONYCLUBDAD.blogspot.com

http://vermipostpa.BLOGSPOT.COM

On that same page there is a link that you can use to create a Custom Domain name for $10.00.

Example: www.thewormist.com

Let me know if that works for you!

Jeff

New website for www.mem-x.us

2009-05-06T05:47:00.000-07:00

Posted today, a website for a memory assistance device from France, which is now available in the US. Home page is HERE. This site was built by cloning the french site and replacing the buttons with 'hotspots" linking to all english and locally customized pages.

This device is primarily used by families of Alsheimer's victims to create pre-recorded reminders that are triggered by the device and announced through a small speaker on the Mem-x device. As small as most cell phones, the Mem-x reminder is worn on a lanyard around the neck, or clipped to the patient's shirt.

More details at the new US website: http://www.mem-x.us

Convert PDF files to Word or Excel!!

2009-05-05T17:30:00.000-07:00

Look at this!! It's free and web-based. This one converts PDF Files to Word.docs PDF to Word

This one converts PDF to Excel

Have fun!

Jeff

New Website roughed out for M.S. Pecora Realtor

2009-05-04T01:50:00.000-07:00

We have finished initial design of the website for Mike and Cheryl Pecora of West Hazleton, PA.

Having chalenges getting the Greater Hazleton Board of Realtors MLW Flex msl to appear, but will continue that effort.

Slide show of listings in Hazleton homes for sale is from picasa but may explore flickr.com .

www.actionagency.biz

www.mspecorarealtor.com

www.pecoraactionagency.com

www.pecorarealestate.com

www.pecorarealty.com

Created by Reykur Associates!

Created an opening paragraph: M.S. Pecora Realtor is Hazleton and west Hazleton's leading office for single family, multi-family commercial homes, rentala, properties and land. We help families buy houses and homes from first time buyers to real estate investors. We can arrange for you to meet with local morgage companies, secure financing, get an lappraisal, estimate the market value of my your house.

Loaded a keyword block:

Homes in Hazleton hispanic speaking realtor sell my house West Hazleton hazleton conyngham sugarloaf, drums butler valley, mcadoo keylares freeland beavermeadows, schuylkill county luzerne county carbon county, weatherly eagle rock ringtown shenandoah milnesville shepton, jeddo, eckley minersvillage, poconos, bog boulder, mountaintop, knoebles, hazleton standard speaker, mayor lou barletta, cando humbolt industrial park as seen in the times leader, wkrz, wazl hazleton area high school

Keeping in touch with the kid

2008-12-19T10:17:00.000-08:00

Text'ing the kid when you don't have a cell phone.

This isn't original, but I just received it from a business forum:

When a phone call is too intrusive and e-mail is too slow, or you don't have access to a cell phone (battery dead, no minutes, etc) nothing beats a text message. Google just rolled out a new feature that lets you send text messages straight from Gmail to a contact's phone.

To enable this option, open Gmail, click on Settings, then go to the Labs tab. Scroll down until you see "Text Messaging (SMS) in Chat" and select Enable and Save Changes.

For the moment, "Gmail SMS" works only with cell phones that have U.S. phone numbers. To get started, type a phone number into the search box in Gmail's chat window on the left, then select "Send SMS." You can also select the contact you want to SMS first and then add their phone number.

This isn't just a one-way operation: You can actually "chat" via SMS this way. Your message arrives on the recipient's phone; replies get routed back to your Gmail chat window. Definitely a handy tool for home-bound parents, as texting from a keyboard is a lot quicker and easier than texting from a phone.

1,000 uses around the home:

WIMC? ( Where is my car?)
GBHTI! (get back here this instant!)
IBNCYWTJK... (I better not catch you with that Jones kid...)

but I digress...

I realize this isn't horse related, but emergencies happen.

Hope this comes in handy some day.

Jeff(dot)Kurtz
Mountain Laurel PC

original post: http://blogs.bnet.com/businesstips/?p=2204

Creating a Google Calendar for membes or website

2008-12-13T14:30:00.001-08:00

Here's a video (Google Calendar Basics) to help you create a calendar for your club or organization.

Calendars can be private or public, contain much or limited detail. Go ahead, get creative! I'm certain there are tricks I haven't seen.

Video #2 (Google Calendar Advanced) shows how to acces the HTML code to paste into your blog or website. Shows examples of some uses, and hightlights where the HELP button is stored.

Have fun, and leave success stories!

Jeff

A Question on posting pictures to websites.

2008-12-07T02:58:00.000-08:00

Hi Jeff,
A while back you suggested that I add some pictures to our Pony Club website and I now have a collection of pictures from this past year that I'd like to post. My problem is I don't know how to best do that. We are using Google Pages (which will be converted to Google Sites sometime soon according to Google.com). I thought I could simply copy the pictures into PowerPoint and make them into a slide show and post that, but the file is massive (130KB) and is too big to upload onto the Google Pages site. Now I'm stumped. The pictures are all JPEG files but some are a few thousand KB while others are less than 100. Is there a way that I can compress those big ones so that they don't take up so much memory?

Any hints you can offer would be much appreciated. (You are going to rue the day that I got ahold of your e-mail address!!!).

Thanks (once again) for your help.
Shelley

Try using www.picasa.com Take a look at one of my blogs and the slide
shows there. http://ponyclubdad.blogspot.com also see the front page of
www.dressage4kids.com

Picasa is a google product so you just log in with your google password.
You will want to download the picasa 3.0 . It doesn't take up much
memory, and it doesn't touch your filing system. It simply crates it's
own index system of where your pics are stored. The you can select pics
or folders, at the bottom of the page there's a "linktoweb" or something
like that, and it uploads the pics to your picasa online album system. In
the process it compresses them ( I think you can choose the amount of
compression. And, it takes up NO space or memory on your website.

If you click on things like "album properties" you can set albums to be viewable by the public or not. (just incase you're storing non-pertinent photos in the same account.)

THEN... I know this is getting long... every photo has it's own URL, every
album has it's own URL and a URL for a matching slideshow. you can link to
the show or embed it using the HTML code it creates for you.

I need to do a video of how this works before the national meeting...
sounds like it's time!

I have about a dozen different picasa accounts so that if the viewer clicks
to see other pics they are only going to see pics that relate to each other.
Follow me?

Creating a Yahoo Group

2008-11-12T02:56:00.000-08:00

Yahoo Groups are like private clubs where you can post things for members to read or download. Most importantly, you can send email to every member of the group WITHOUT DISCLOSING EVERYONE'S EMAIL ADDRESS!

Wouldn't it be nice to know that your address is private and not falling into the hands of spammers?

Demo Video is posted at the right of the page.

Enjoy the day!

Jeff

Primopdf.com's FREE PDF file converter.

2008-10-24T12:33:00.000-07:00

"PDF" is a format for transfering and viewing files without having any particular software. ADOBE is the company that is pretty much the guru of the PDF.
Many times you will have a "PDF converter" or "PDF virtual printer in your computer without even knowing it. If you see an icon for ADOBE of PDF, try clicking on it and see what it does for you.
The following video will show you how to download a FREE PDF converter from www.primopdf.com . I've used it for a while and haven't found any difficulties, and it's very fast.

Here's the video

kurtzinpa's Video Demo Library

2008-10-24T12:21:00.000-07:00

This will link you to selected videos about website tools and techniques.

kurtzinpa's Library

Posting pages to internet via Goodle Docs

2008-10-11T00:31:00.000-07:00

OK, so now there's a video (right) with details on posting a document to the internet using Google Docs. No Website Required!!! This opens the realm of pages looking like websites, linking to forms, brochures, posters and such without having a URL or anything... and, it's a google product, so it gets searched.

Just consider... a BLOG can apear to be your website. All the pages can be links to google docs. It's endless.

Have fun, and enjoy thd day~!

Jeff

Registering for a Google Account

2008-10-09T05:51:00.000-07:00

This is one in a series of posts/videos fpr USPC members. I will touch on useful tools for website persons, mostly free, and all tested and effective!

The first is the How To Create a Google Account. See the video link to the right. There are tons of Google tools that can be used with or withoug having a website. Will demonstrate many of them in the weeks to come.

any questions, just call or email.

Jeff jlkurtz@reykurassociatesinc.com 570-401-4843

Online Registration Forms

2008-06-20T03:59:00.000-07:00

This is a pretty slick product that we are developing.

We can create an online form for people to complete, while the resulting input is posted immediately to a spreadsheet for your access. The consumer sees a thank-you screen with optional further instructions upon completion of the form.

The entry form can be posted into your website, posted by itself, included or linked from emails.

Access to the results of the postings can be made public, as in these examples, or restricted to you and your 'invitees'. The input screen can be changed without loosing data at any time. Go ahead and experiment. That's why we created these demos. My family and I have created an interactive calendar spreadsheet to coordinate who's in town and who's away... would be an easy way to schedule that condo of yours!

Looking at the postings below this one you will see that the format for the questions is very versatile. yes/no, multiple choice, check box, text. This could be used for everything from registrations to online testing, job applications, and probably e-commerce!

Here are links to the "results" pages for these three demos:

Youth Activities
Campsite Registration
Refer A Friend

If you enter a "registration" and then come back to the results page you will see that it's updated instantly.

We've added this to our services and will administer a registration system for you for a nominal fee. Please call for details.

Jeff 570-401-4843

Live Demo of Refer A Friend form

2008-06-20T03:56:00.001-07:00

Live demo Example of Campsite Registration Form

2008-06-20T03:54:00.000-07:00

Live Demo Example of Youth Activity registration form

2008-06-20T03:52:00.000-07:00

SoWhoNeedsFrontPageAnyway.com

2008-06-19T05:32:00.001-07:00

Interesting turn of events... This really good friend sent a link to an OLD article about website design... So I take a look at my websie and WOW,,, it had everything wrong...

The perils of not watching the house while keeping tabs on everyone esle.

So how do I bail it out on short notice?

My day had been filled with designing emails for a prospective automotive client... the project had gone well, using a Constant Contact template that included table of contents, lots of space for links, and all that good stuff that Constant Contact automates for us non-html people.

I opened a new template with colors similar to my website, pasted together everything I could remenber that was currently on my roster of services, mailed it to myself and then pasted it into my home page! At that point, I hardly needed the home page anyway, but there are some good links to affiliate programs.

Thhis trick for composing a webpage would work just as well using my email provider, even yahoo lets you install links, photos, all that stuff.

Just a thought if you're amone the same people!

Enjoy the day,
Jeff

Read This before the next post...

2008-05-05T05:20:00.000-07:00

A quick note about a Google tool that allows you to share or publish forms/letters/reports to the internet for sharing or collaborating.

This is supposed to work with No Webguy required!

What can you do with Google Docs?http://docs.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=49008
to upload a document: Go to Google.com . Create your own Google account, or log in to your existing account. Then go to the "documents" page which is found under the "more" tab at the top of the google page. Click on "upload" and browse your files to find the docment. Upload your document. Then go to the "Share" tab. Chooseto "publish" the document to be shared by the public, or "share" the document with a specific list of readers. Individual names can beauthorized as "collaborators" if you wiish them to have access to editing the document. In that case you are sent a notice any time arevision is made.
Once uploaded, your document can be edited by you or designated 'collaborators". It can be viewed by invitation or setto be viewed by the public and can be linked from emails or webpages.
This gets past the issue or the viewer needing any particular software.

Example of document published to the web:http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dgf4zx7b_0fq2tjgdqUsing these tools any show organizer should be able to publish their own documents!
Enjoy the day!
Jeff Kurtz

adjustments to Google Docs

2008-05-05T05:17:00.000-07:00

Happy Monday!

In answer to a couple questions about Google docs ( Gd's?):
Yes, when you upload letters from word processors they may exhibit some strange changes. Lines may shift, underscores can disappear. Unfortunately (for me) the spelling doesn't seem to be improved...

Google is doing a pretty good job of trying to decypher all the variables between the different software programs, but it's doubtful that they can accompdate everything.

Quick Fix? After you upload something take a look and see if what changes may have occurred. Edit the changes on the Gd and you're all set to go. Now if you download the Gd you'll have a copy with the edits.

If you're just starting to create a document do it all right in Google. You can cut and paste from other documents you may have already created.

It's all about the future of the internet becomming a more useful tool. Microsoft grew by giving away software pre-loaded in computers. Now Google wants to go to another level by letting you have the tools online anywhere/anytime/any computer. No updates to download, no "compatible with version XYZ.4 and later" issues. All those 'web-tv' users now have access to the major pieces of software.

The only thing we'll need to do show registrations online is a way to capture an original signature! I'm sure we'll have that covered shortly.

Simple things to check

2008-03-27T03:07:00.000-07:00

I get quite a few requests to check things that don't seem to be working... the easiest is like now I fix 75% of my tenant's calls about their stove not working... check the plug....

If they insist that they did I advise them: If I come to the house and can fix it by checking the plug it will cost them $25. That usually fixes the stove...

With websites, if it appears to be completely innactive, check with your hosting service to make sure of the following:

is your account current?
is the URL spelled the way you think it is spelled? ( I scrabble letters everytime...)
is the 'redirect' address entered correctly?
has anything been deleted or revised recently?

I guess ast last one has a similar origin... Dad taught me that when the car breaks after I fix it that A) the fix was wrong or not tightened or B) the next weakest link just broke...

Enjoy the day!

Jeff

Linking to albums stored in Picasa.com

2008-02-06T04:02:00.000-08:00

Posting Photo albums to your website.

The idea is to have your members create their albums and send you the link (URL) that points to it. When they update their album the photos the updated album appears on your website.

I may have to write a book to explain this... I do it in my sleep, but never tried to explain it.

Here's an example of a picasa photo album:

http://picasaweb.google.com/kurtzinpa/ElysianFieldsJune07

Here's a web page where I have albums stored from Picasa (several different formats) and from a Kodak website. I prefer the picasa, but they both work.

http://www.dressage4kids.com/files/2006/linkedphotopage.html

Once someone has a picasa album and sends you the link (URL), you can post the link and then whenever they update the photos the update is what is displayed at the link.

I much prefer the slide show format, although the collage is cute also. To imbed the slide show the album owner has to click on the picasa tool for that purpose and forward the "code" to you. Then you embed that code on your website. (the tool to do that is in your website software some place. For FrontPage it's in the 'webtools - advanced' dropdown. I suggest you begin by setting up a Picasa photo account for yourself and playing around with it.

To share your photos or receive notification when your friends share photos, get your own free Picasa Web Albums account.

It's the easiest if you have people do their own albums and send the URL to you to be posted. An alternate is they send the photos to you and you post them in an album or albums.

Reply to a client

2008-02-06T04:00:00.000-08:00

Good Morning!

This is text of a note I sent to a participant at my eminar last weekend:

Your blog looks GREAT! I love the colors... You site has all the details also... very nice.

Here's a way to update photos...

slide show

http://picasaweb.google.com/kurtzinpa/SpringCreekFarm/photo#s5163803459406076322

album

http://picasaweb.google.com/kurtzinpa/SpringCreekFarm

I right clicked photos on your website, clicked on SAVE and put them in a folder on my desktop. Meanwhile I had my picasa software turned on and it was filing them in it's little brain at the same time. Then I clicked on my picasa software icon, selected the album and loaded it to a web album.

From there I can select SHARE ALBUM and produced the email that you should have just received. right click the links on the email and paste them anywhere.

also, on the online picasa tool you will see EMBED SLIDE SHOW as an option. that gives you a couple more options.

I hope that helps. I attached instructions I did a while back.

THEN;;; I would link your blog from your website, and put your blog URL at the bottom of all of your emails and, yes, on your biz card. It gives people a place to learn about the day-to-day live, vs the website. Do a whole story about your WEP weekend! ( I should do the same!)

IT takes time, but your blog can be much more active than your website...

I'm headed to Palmyra to work on a house today (http://flipshouses.blogspot.com ) and then home to work on Dressage@Bloomsburg. (http://ponyclubdad.blogspot.com )

Thanks for your blog, and your interest!!!! Keep me posted!

Jeff

http://reykur.blogspot.com

Why Pay Retail?

2008-02-04T05:47:00.001-08:00

This all started when my daughter's involvement in US Pony Club lead to me coaching clubs in website development... it's all volunteer work, and non of the clubs need to be spending 4's on tech stuff they would have trouble finding time to use anyway.

Most of the clubs are organized by Parents with little time, and limited access to software.

Hence Ben V and I created this site to give people alternates to conventional website hosting packages.

Enjoy!

Jeff