Can you place a price on a labor of love?

Yes I can. What started out as a concept by myself and couple of friends has actually made a difference for an American Indian Compny. We can connect the dots on an actual tangible instance that resulted in dollars exchanging hands using a multiplier effect. 

The Smithsonian Institution has selected Sault Printing to be its printer of choice this fall for a variety of printing projects for the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI). “We were actually contacted by the Smithsonian for a quote and we had been recommended to them by Ryan, who is a well-known designer from the Osage Nation in Oklahoma,” explained Ron Maleport. “We’ve had a great working relationship with Ryan and even recently worked with him printing a program for a golf outing that Tiger Woods played in.” That outing, the Notah Begay III Foundation event, was held in Verona, New York as a fundraiser for the health and well-being of  Native American youth.

Ryan in turned sent us an email stating "I located that business off of Americanindiansearch.com True story. Real talk."

We at AIS are tickled red to actually see the fruition of our labors. To connect american indian businesses with people that need their services and products.

We are currently thinking about AIS 2.0 and wondering how we are going to leverage new technologies to assist us and we are looking for more stories like this one. It takes me back to tellings of historic trade routes that we used to purchase products from one another as tribal entities and let's me know we are still doing it today.

Buy Indian it's tradition.

Joseph Brown Thunder

Co-founder, American Indian Search

For link to news story click here

What is this Social Networking thing?

People want to interact with their media. They want it to know who they are and what they want without telling it. How do we get our products and messages to do this? Some of these questions are simple but the answers are anything but. If it looks easy then it probably took a lot of time to make it appear so. Research, research and more research on your market and customer is the only way you can get this data. Understanding your niche market takes alot of time and effort depending on whether it's local, regional or national.

What do you want to achieve determines how you will present your platform as well as how you choose it.We work to understand what it is that you do. We truly partner with your organization to get your message to those groups and parties that will help your cause and move you forward. Same communication process different technologies.

"We all want to be led to do something just not told" -joseph brown thunder

New CMS in Town

New Kid on the Block
We don't write about stuff unless we think it has practical implications but we discovered a new open-source CMS (Content Management System) called Mura, f.k.a GoSava. While it’s only been publicly available under a year, it does seem to have the right stuff. Formerly known as Sava, it’s a CMS that’s feature-rich, highly-intuitive, and easy to use. We are impressed by its out-of-the-box web modules. It seems like every need has been anticipated, planned for, and built out.

Here’s a quick breakdown of some of the top features and benefits we uncovered.

Top Features Every Organization Wants that Mura Has:
Multiple sites – manage the content of more than one site from one Mura Administrator Dashboard
Permissions – set access for individuals and groups down to a specific page
Users and Groups – create users and groups
News – create a section for news stories with summaries
Forum – create a sense of community by implementing an interactive forum
Calendar – enter events, meetings, and more and allow visitors to see what’s ahead
Document Management – upload files and track them from the backend, create a permissions-based document library, etc.
Forms – create feedback and contact us forms
Blogs – create a site blog
Image Gallery – add an image gallery and control sizing and display attributes
Video – embed Flash movies

But wait…there’s more:
- Advertising Management – run advertising campaigns right inside Mura
- Email Marketing – send email newsletters for marketing or group communication
- Site Search
- Real-time User and Session Reporting – the dashboard shows basic statistics
- Save Drafts and Version History – you don’t have to publish immediately plus you can go back to an earlier version
- And more…

Fast and simple content editing
Browse to the page you want to update, log in as the administrator, and begin editing either from the front or the backend. With wysiwyg editing features, all you need is the ability to type and click on icons.

Worry-free editing
You won’t accidentally break any pages because content is separated from presentation. You can preview a page before publishing it. Also there is versioning and history that tracks previous file iterations. You can go back and republish older versions of pages in seconds.

Copy and paste entire pages
Instead of reinventing the wheel, you can copy and paste entire pages. This includes the page's template, navigation options, content objects, and more. Save time and prevent repetition.
Scheduled content publishing.

I wish I had this several years ago when I had to publish content for different time zones. With Mura, you have the ability to schedule the date and time you want content to go live. You can also set a date and time for when you want the content to be removed from the site to prevent outdated postings and unnecessary site clutter.

Permissions and workflow
Grant administrative users access to only the sections you want down to the page level. Give certain users only partial rights such as the ability to only post a draft instead of full publishing rights. Give access only to certain users or groups.

Built-in help
Mura has a built-in help system including extensive support content, documentation, FAQs, tutorials and a user support forum.

Rapid site development
WIth Mura's pre-built content objects, starter templates and intuitive interface, you can quickly get your site built. You can create content objects that behave like server-side includes. Edit one file and make it appear on multiple pages across your site.

Pre-built navigation options
There are several built-in navigation options to choose from including top nav, sequential nav, and subnav with nested menu items. There are dynamically-generated sitemaps that automatically update.

Intuitive, easy interface
The best part for users is the easy-to-use interface which allows you to basically see where everything in your site resides. You don’t have to go to three, five, or 10 different folders just to change one little item in your site. It takes two clicks to add a new page, and the new page inherits the correct template and content configurations by default.

Building community
If you’re building a site that requires user interactivity and feedback, Mura has features such as the "accept comments form" with integrated CAPTCHA that can be added to any page or content node, event reminder forms, content ratings (1-5 stars), user favorites, and more. Features like these come in handy when including a blog on your site.

Other Stand-out Features
Mura also offers an image gallery with automatic thumbnail creation and image resizing and ShadowBox display. It also offers an integrated Forms Manager, with form data storage and reporting. And for eCommerce, Mura has a shopping cart with PayPal integration.

Final Thoughts
After years of experience working with other proprietary and open-source CMS software, our group has found that Mura is one of the most user-friendly builds from a development as well as user perspective. From the intuitively designed backend, almost anyone can go in and make immediate changes to a website without fear of breaking the site or overwriting a page. Best of all, there is no question where a page resides in the bigger scheme of things. The Site Manager, for example, shows in a folder-like structure all the pages, subpages, and files of a site and allows easy access for adding, editing, deleting, and publishing. A lot of the in-demand web features are built-in. There is almost no need to ever spend extra time and money customizing and hacking the main build just to implement a single must-have feature. If you would like a demo get in contact and see how this CMS can help your organization.

Keeping Our Bases Covered.

Because our team juggles so many open projects at any given time, we needed a place and way to track the progress of these various projects. It had to be a centralized area that each team member could access at any time, it had to be a tool that was easy to use, and it had to allow us to share information directly with our clients. We needed the ability to store and share project files, set up and assign tasks, and communicate with each other within the context of each project.

Enter Basecamp, www.basecamphq.com.

Basecamp by 37signals (www.37signals.com) is a fantastic and intuitive web-based project collaboration tool that allows us to do everything we need to do for our internal and client projects, plus more. It resides strictly on the internet hosted by 37signals’ web servers.

Our Basecamp account is safe, private, and secure – it’s password-protected. The beauty of this arrangement is that all we need is an internet connection and a web browser and we can access our projects from virtually anywhere. The same goes for our clients.

It’s easy to add our own team members to various projects or to add client members to various projects. We can restrict access of each individual using a simple permissions system that allows us to specify who can see what.

There is also a handy Messaging system that works very much like email and we can either share a message or make it a private so that internal communication can only be read by our team.

Here is a breakdown of some of the various sections and features our team uses the most:

The Dashboard
The Dashboard serves as our home base. It gives us a bird’s-eye view of our various projects and any new developments.

From here, we can view all our clients and projects on one screen. In the main content area on the left is a Late & Upcoming Milestones box. Any late items show up at the very top of this box. Anything due in the next 14 days shows up directly below this within a snapshot of a calendar in days format. Then right below this, all latest activity across projects is listed. Anything from the newest Milestone to the latest Comment, or from the most recent message to the latest revision of a File, is listed here.

Directly to the right of the main content area is a column that contains our company logo (this was uploaded by us) at the top. Below this is a “Create a new project” button. Then below this is the list of Your Projects.

Create New Project
The Create New Project button is obviously very important and is the starting point for using Basecamp. Once we click the button, we’re able to name the project and choose who can access it. We usually name a project by company name. If the company has us working on more than one project, we’ll create a new Basecamp project for each, while using any client-provided acronyms or subtitles for the new projects’ names. Basecamp then gives us a choice as to who should be able to access the project: “just our company for now” or “a client or another company, too.” We leave the default radio button “just our company for now” checked and click “create this project.”

People & Permissions
Using the People & Permissions tab, we can go into a new project and add access permissions. From here we can add people, remove people, and change permissions. Basecamp has it set up so we can add the client’s company and its team members, as well as our own internal team members. We set up a team member by filling out his/her email address, creating a Basecamp username and password, and sending a Basecamp invitation to that member’s email address. The invitation contains a default welcome message providing a link to the specific Basecamp project page for that company and the member’s username and password. The invitation is sent from Basecamp with a single click. Other member information can also be filled in including title, phone number, fax number, etc.

File Sharing
File sharing for our group is crucial. We share internal documents for the team’s eyes only (files set to private) as well as documents for our clients. Files like sitemaps, powerpoints, meeting notes, and project plans are the kinds of things we post. Basecamp allows us to save new file versions without overwriting the originals. All file versions remain accessible by whoever has permission. We can add, delete, and edit a description line for each file and each file version. We can also delete an entire file or file version. Files can also be attached to messages.

Messages
Messages in Basecamp work just like email only they are project-specific. We click to a specific project, write a message in Basecamp, click send, and the message will arrive at whatever email address(es) we have specified in Basecamp for that individual project’s members. We can specify who receives and who doesn’t receive a message by checking or leaving blank a checkbox next to member names. If it is a public message, anyone who has access to a particular project can sign into the Basecamp project page and view the message even if the message wasn’t sent to him/her. However, just like with files, we can set a message to private which means only our internal team can view and respond to it. Any replies, whether sent via email or added as a comment within Basecamp, post directly to the project. It’s a great way to track and record any and all project-related communication without crossing over into non-related projects and causing confusion.

Additional tools on Basecamp (depending on which package you subscribe to) can include To-Do Lists, Milestones, Writeboards, Chat, and Time Tracking. While just as intuitive and feature-rich as the other tools, our team rarely uses these, opting for other applications and custom methods to get the job done.

Pricing
As of this writing, there are three monthly plans to choose from. Taken from the Basecamp website, here are the plan descriptions:

Basic $24/month
Built for smaller businesses.
15 Active Projects
3 GB of space for files
Unlimited Clients/Users

Plus $49/month
Most popular, best value
35 Active Projects
10 GB of space for files
Unlimited Clients/Users
Time tracking
SSL Security

Max $149/month
The best, top of the line
Unlimited Projects
50 GB of space for files
Unlimited Clients/Users
Time tracking
SSL Security
Free Campfire Premium

All plans come with a 30-day free trial. If you’re looking to get your business communications organized, centralized, instantly accessible, and secure, give Basecamp a try. Our team is very happy with it.

SKYPE for 2009

SKYPE Review by ResTeam

Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, is a general term for delivering voice communications over the Internet. In layperson terms, this means you can talk on the “telephone” via your computer as long as you have access to the Internet.

One of the big-name service providers in the VoIP arena is Skype. Our company has been using Skype for about a couple of years now. While it’s far from perfect, it has come through for us in a positive way about 90% of the time.

I’m going to provide a brief overview of our experience with Skype including helpful tools as well as a list of pros and cons.

Skype offers a myriad of services, some of them bundled and some of them a la carte, with either a pay-as-you-go plan or a subscription plan. While their website is all cheery and nice-looking, it can be a little difficult to navigate, and even harder to determine exactly what services you need.

We’ve kept it simple by subscribing to the service called SkypeIn which enables our team to receive incoming calls from phones and mobiles. Subscriptions are in 3 to 12 month increments. (Skype to Skype calls are always free which saves our company money when we have any internal conference calls or one-on-one calls.)

A very cool feature of Skype that comes in handy in this increasingly mobile world is the forwarding feature. You can have your Skype calls forwarded to your mobile phone/device number after a predetermined number of rings set by you. You can then answer the call from wherever you are.

You can also have your Skype calls go into voicemail after a certain number of rings (again, set by you) and you can retrieve your messages through your Skype interface.

There are some general tools that have been helpful to us when using Skype such as:

A VoIP headset microphone. Many third-party companies make these. We generally go with Logitech. These allow you to hear the party on the other end of the line as well as speak to them through the microphone hands-free. You can get headset microphones that have a cable that splits into two separate plugs, one for the microphone jack and one for the headphone jack on your computer. Other slightly pricier models offer a usb cable which simplifies things. Comfort level, pricing, and to a lesser extent sound quality vary so shop around.
A VoIP handset. If you already have a headset microphone, you don’t need one of these, and vice versa. Again, third parties make these and they operate similar to a standard handset phone except for the fact that they respond and work with Skype. I typically like to go hands-free but if you feel you need a more traditional approach to talking on the phone, go for it. Again, shop around for the features you desire.
A broadband internet connection. Skype can work just fine over 56k dial-up according to what I’ve read, but our experience has been with broadband.

Not everything is peachy keen with Skype. Though rare, sometimes the quality of the calls suffer. We have experienced the following issues when using Skype:

Dropped calls in the middle of a meeting
Echo
Sound going in and out resulting in randomly dropped words
In one-on-one calls, one party cannot hear the other resulting in hanging up and redialing
Also, another thing I found irksome is the business administrator panel user interface. It’s not the best user interface and requires a little digging before you find the areas you need to access. When you finally learn your way around, you can access your entire team’s profiles and Skype information. You can also renew individual subscriptions here with a valid credit card or with Skype credits still remaining on your account.

Finally, the subscription lengths max out at 12 months for a service like SkypeIn. If you forget to renew, you can risk losing your SkypeIn number, the one you might’ve already had printed on all your marketing materials. If you lose your number, it’s released into the open where it may be assigned to any new subscriber or even a consumer purchasing telephone services from another provider. Thankfully, you’re given a grace period before this happens and allows you a chance to renew.

Other than a few gripes here and there, Skype has been a very useful tool for business. It has allowed our team to stay in contact with clients as well as each other, and to remain fast, light, and mobile. If you need a quick, easy, and fairly inexpensive way to outfit your business with VoIP, look into Skype.

Based on our team’s subscription plan and our experiences, here’s Skype at a glance. Be sure to check their website for specific details, pricing, and the features you desire.

Pros
Offers free services
Skype-to-Skype calls
Transfer calls to people on Skype
Video calls
Instant messaging and group chats
Conference calls with up to 25 people
Forward calls to people on Skype
Offers independence and mobility
Easy to use
Can view online status of fellow Skype contacts
Forward your Skype calls to your mobile phone/device
Voicemail
Requires only a VoIP headset microphone or handset to start using it
Fairly inexpensive plans
Ala carte services
Pay-as-you-go or subscription-based (subscribers save more)

Cons
Sound quality can sometimes be subpar
Dropped calls happen (but are rare)
One side cannot hear the other (again, rare)

More Pros then Cons and we recommend this product as a needed services for your business in the new year.

Choosing a technology partner for IT support and web development firm

Choosing a technology partner is like finding a good car repair shop. Once you find one you probably will stay with them for as long as they are in business. I had an import car and I used to take it to the dealership because I had heard that a local shop doesn’t understand the make and model like the dealership does; but then my uncle was a mechanic who worked under the assumption that if it has wheels and a motor, he could fix it. So I found a local shop. I may pay more, but I know the mechanic and the shop is local which stands by its reputation. This is the same for most tech shops. The first thing is to collect a list of local shops in your area or even national, depending on if they can work remotely and you’re comfortable with that. Ask people you trust who their firm is. Remember this is a partnership. Assess the long term stability of the firm. As with any relationship value will build over time.

Good communication. Make sure the firm has a good process in place, and takes the time to understand your organization and listens to your goals and objectives. Development and support could take several months, and will involve numerous phone calls, emails and possibly face-to-face meetings. It's important the firm communicates effectively and is available to offer support.

I almost always choose my vendors through word of mouth or viral marketing because I trust the people I know and trust the people they give their money and time to.

Price structure. A development firm can either charge you by the hour, or quote a fixed cost per project, depending on the pricing structure of the firm. If you are being charged by the hour, the company can charge you for any extra unexpected developments the project takes. With a fixed quote, you will be charged the quoted price even if the project takes the developers twice the estimated time.If you can't afford everything your website requires, then opt to build your site in phases. Avoid cheap package deals and claims of $300 websites: you get what you pay for. Don't take the risk of driving away traffic and working against your image with a cheap site.

Initially I didn’t understand the old adage, “You can have fast, cheap or good. You choose two but you can’t have all three.” Once I started running a business I ended up living by it. The best firms will almost never be the cheapest because they usually have a waiting list or you need to schedule your work months in advance. If you want your project ramped up quick your going to have to pay. And ultimately you get what you pay for. The first place people go for more information is online. Be sure to create a great site, packed with valuable up to date information for all your potential clients.

It's August .... Again

I haven't posted the last couple weeks cause it's August. I'm sure their are groups out their that have certain months that are tougher than others for us this month has always been August. Whether this is because most of us are on vacation or clients are on vacation or the stars have lined up in a certain pattern it always seems that the tough scenerios of running a business always come to a head here. So I'm always extra busy with putting fires out or getting projects back on track or dealing with client issues. Some years it's been business was down or clients were not getting back on revisions or change requests. This year is no different except for the fact that I'm in my new house in St. Paul and located in the midwest and I'm running another business besides my apps dev company. I always try to take the third week off because I have three kids and it's the end of the summer and we like getting crazy together but as with any business owner "Can you ever really turn off the business side?" I sleep, dream, eat and breath my businesses 24/7 and 365 days a year. I don't consider my self a workaholic although my family may disagree but I work all the time. Most people envy me cause I work from home but if they only knew how I can't separate the two I don't think they would be as envious. I've tried to back away for instance I gave up my blackberry last year and switch to pull email so I'm not always checking my phone everytime it vibrates (the phantom vibrate was the first sign I needed to stop). I now try to check email every hour except for when I'm at my desk. I try to adhere to a routine of what I do every day with taking time in the afternoon but this is often interupted because of conference calls or pressing needs. But time management is key to my sanity. Often times I'll let friends take me out for a movie or round of golf but even then I'm feeling guilty cause I should be in front of my computer solving technical issues or planning our next month or handling some sort of request from someone and of course if I geta call forwarded to me I take it and then get antsy about getting back to the office which makes me a bad friends cause I probaly act like I don't want to be there. I think just cause I don't work a traditional 8 hour days dosen't mean I don't work a non traditional 12 hour one. I've been lying to myself but I wonder how many other business owners do the same thing? I try to establish boundaries but I still work on the weekends just ask my wife. She's implemented a new rule that I can't take my cell phone with me when we go to dinner on the weekends. She says that if someone needs to call they can call hers. I agree but man that's a tough couple hours worrying that maybe something is happening. Ultimately I know it boils down to having good staff and trusting them and we do have excellent staff which I fully accredit to our success. But I wonder am I the only business owner who experiences this?