FEATURES

Xero. Easy.

Xero is a web-based package of accounting software designed for small businesses. Founded in 2006, and a New Zealand company, they describe themselves as “the world’s easiest accounting system.”

Currently, one of the Internet’s hottest trends is to move away from localised, in-house software to that of global, Internet-based software (e.g. Google Docs). The logic is: why buy an expensive application, and have the trouble of maintaining and upgrading it on your computer, when for a fraction of the cost and no effort, you can outsource to the Net?

For a monthly fee, you can use Xero’s fully-featured accounting software to do your bookkeeping. Features include, bank reconciliation, invoicing and payables, report creation, contacts lists, taxation, and more.

Xero is online – it runs on their computer servers, not yours – this means there’s nothing for you to install or configure. You log into Xero via a web browser from any computer, anywhere, at any time – no problems if your office computer is stolen or decides to take an early retirement.

Upgrades to Xero are free and require no downloading - they become available when you next log in. And naturally, Xero offer a high standard of security and maintain regular backups.

www.xero.com

Will Cuil get Hot?

Launched in July of last year, Cuil (pronounced COOL) is a search engine that claims to be the world’s biggest. According to their website, Cuil are 3 times bigger than Google and 10 times bigger than Microsoft. Bold declarations, but then Cuil has been developed by a group of seriously experienced boffins from the search engine field—former Google and IBM staffers among them.

Cuil has pointedly been developed with a fresh approach to searching (new architecture and algorithms) to tackle the rapid, exponential growth of the Internet. Their goal is to place “nearly the entire Web at the fingertips of every user.”

Cuil ranks pages based on content and context. When a searched-for keyword is located on a webpage, Cuil examines the whole site, putting that keyword into context to gauge its relevance. Depending on the search query, this can lead to a more intuitive list of results, and Cuil’s magazine-style presentation of these is distinctly different from the traditional blue-lines approach of most other search engines.

Cuil is the new searcher on the block. They have a tiny share of the world’s searching at this point, but they have solid funding and a reasonable point-of-difference that could see them emerge as a major player. File under one to watch.

www.cuil.com

Google Trends

Research is important in any web business venture, and Google Trends is a useful utensil to have in your research toolbox.

Type in something to search for, as you would for a regular Google search, and instead of getting back a list of links to websites featuring your search word or phrase, what you'll get back is a Trend History outlining where that word or phrase is being googled most frequently.

For example, type in "mobile phone" and you'll discover the term is most frequently googled in the United Kingdom, India, and Australia. Google Trends is in effect a reverse-term lookup, or personal Zeitgeist analyser.

A searched term's Trend History reports the volume of searching for the term over the last four years, the regions and cities from where it is most searched for, and the languages it is most searched for in. Click on a region and you'll drill down and get a regional breakdown - for example, "mobile phone" is googled more often in Hamilton than Auckland.

Another feature of Google Trends is its ability to compare. Type in up to five words or phrases (separated by commas) and the resulting Trend History will detail each term, as above, and will also compare them.

You can find out which of a series of terms is more popularly searched for and where - for example, typing in "war, peace" reveals war is, by far, the more searched for term ... and searched for the most by Australians.

www.google.com/trends

What is a CMS? Why do I need it?

Content Management Systems

Your website, in its raw essence, is a computer program. It's made up of thousands of lines of computer code and scripting that are read and interpreted by web browsers (e.g. Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera), and then rendered for display on your computer monitor.

Not surprisingly, websites are created by skilled designers and programmers - people experienced and conversant with all the software and computer languages required to put a website together.

And after a website has been created and is live on the Internet, it will need to be maintained and looked after - there will be prices to change, telephone numbers and email addresses to update, new products to add, and content to keep fresh and up-to-date.

And unless you can read and write the computer languages that came together to give shape to your website, you're going to be stumped making those changes.

You can, of course, pay the people who made your website to look after it... or you can use a good CMS (Content Management System). A CMS a programme that sits between you and befuddlement.

A CMS is part of your website. You access it with a web browser - the same way you do for the rest of your website. The difference is it's password protected, so only you can access it.

A CMS is commonly referred to as a website's backend (the front-end is the public side of your website, e.g. your home page).

A CMS enables you to make changes to your website without having to take a course at university. It's an interface you use with the simplicity and ease of using a programme like Microsoft Word.

A good CMS will let you edit and revise the content of your web pages - making changes to text and images. It will let you manage your products catalogue, moderate your website forum, review your website visitor stats, respond to queries submitted via website forms, and edit your website's metatags - indexing data used by search engines.

And your changes will be live immediately. If you want to change something at 2:30 in the morning, you can login, make the changes, click update, and those changes will be live as of right then and there.

As a CMS is browser-based, you can administer your website from anywhere there's a computer and a connection to the Internet - from your office, your living room, or even on a cruise ship heading to Hong Kong. And as there's no requirement for software downloads or dedicated programmes to be installed on your computer, all you'll need is a username and a password.

A good CMS should also be expandable. There should be the facility for plugging in further modules, as your needs grow. It should also be custom-tuned to your business or organisation. For example, there may only be one user (yourself), or there may be several - with each one having a separate username and password and access to their own specific areas of the website.