Essentially the aim is to help us get a grip of all the tasks and projects we have to cope with during our busy lives. You may have heard of GTD (Getting Things Done) or David Allen (the author of GTD) already. David Allen has been around for many years and has built a sucsessful company around the art of getting things done.

Why do you need a workshop or a book to tell you how to get stuff done though? Well, at the core of the concept is the fact that uncertainty causes stress. Stress is your bodies way of dealing with demand. Just think about how much demand is placed on you within your professional and personal life. It’s quite a lot isn’t it?

The presenter (or Facilitator as they called him) was Matthew Brown. Matthew clearly has a lot of experience presenting and you can clearly tell that he has run that workshop many times as it’s pretty slick. The important point is that he believes in what he is talking about and actually uses the systems and processes that he promotes. I’m not going to go into the exact details, you can attend a workshop or read the book written by their founder Graham Allcott if you want to find out more.

What I will say is that I highly recommend going on one of their workshops. They also run other workshops and one-on-one sessions that cover over valuable topics such as Getting your Inbox to Zero, Making Meetings Magic and Team Building.

WordPress Themes and Templates to download

There are quite a few affiliate schemes for selling premium WordPress themes. At the moment I have accounts with: Woo Themes, ThemeForest and Elegant Themes. InkThemes looked interesting but you don’t seem to be able to link to every theme they sell, weird.

The site launched today and I’ll post comments on this post as things happen (hopefully soon!).

There are a few options when it comes to online accounting packages. After a little research I decided to sign-up to FreeAgent.

In a nutshell FreeAgent is amazing! It allows you to manage invoicing, clients details, profit & loss, expenses and calculates the tax you are due to pay HMRC. It also has time tracking so that you can accurately bill your clients for the work you have completed. One of the features I really like is the bank account linking. This allows you to see an up-to-date view of your business bank account so that you can monitor cashflow.

FreeAgent is really easy to use and you don’t need to know anything about accounting to use it. Plus, the company that created FreeAgent actually hire certified accountants so that they build in the correct functionally into the service.

If you are anything like me you’ll hate having to keep paper records and scanning in documents. FreeAgent lets you upload a picture of a receipt so that you can log it as a business expense, and then recycle the paper.

I could rattle on for hours about this service but trust me, its worth looking into.

Cost wise its a no-brainer. At £15 per month for a sole trader its well worth it. To make it even more appealing if you refer someone who becomes a paying customer you will receive 10% off your subscription fee. It gets better! You can keep referring people and once you have referred 10 people you get the service for FREE!

Here’s screenshot of the overview page in FreeAgent:

You can also trail the service for one month for free. Click the big button and get started:

Start FREE trial

Read the article when you have time. A quick run down of their 11 points to consider:

1. They’re not mature enough.
2. They may be focused on their own social-media activity.
3. They may not have the same etiquette–or experience.
4. You can’t control their friends
5. No class can replace on-the-job training.
6. They may not understand your business.
7. Communication skills are critical.
8. Humor is tricky business.
9. Social-media savvy is not the same as technical savvy.
10. Social-media management can become crisis management.
11. You need to keep the keys.

Here’s the article: http://www.inc.com/hollis-thomases/social-media-dont-put-intern-in-charge.html

Mobile Application Measurement

This is a real step forward as it allows the marketing team to measure the entire customer journey within your mobile application, something that was difficult to do previously. Metrics that can be tracked are:

• new/active user
• visitor flow
• loyalty
• app crashes
• goal conversions
• in-app purchases

Intelligence Alerts for monitoring issues

This second feature doesn’t sound like much at first but in reality it’s very helpful. If you currently have custom alerts setup for your websites / apps you will need to go and find them within google analytics or check your email.

Now the new widget lets you place this information anywhere within your GA account. Of course you can easily click through and drill down to more detailed reports directly from this widget.

Web browser size analysis

Another new feature that might have a few people thinking this isn’t major but its actually pretty handy. Where your important content is positioned within the page and whether it is above the fold or not can make a big impact on conversion rates.

Everyone is aware that mobile apps and responsive websites are all the rage at the moment and will be for some time. These new updates from Google are a sure sign that marketeers need to monitor their mobile data very closely as it is a hugely important communications and sales channel.

You can find out more about these features and download the nobile app from Google Analytics.

If you would like to discuss analytics tracking, data analysis or have some training please give me a call on 020 7112 8859 or drop me an email.

A new law surrounding digital privacy came into effect on May 26th regarding the placement of cookies (small pieces of data) being stored on your computer when you visit websites. Here’s a short list of 10 resources that may help you get your head around the law, some useful tools and articles on the subject.

1. What are cookies – If you are unsure

Just in case you think this post is about baking and you have no idea what all this other stuff is.

http://www.whatarecookies.com/

2. EU cookie law (e-Privacy Directive) from the ICO

Read through the guides and the e-Piracy directive below. The UK law officially came into effect on May 26th 2012.

The PDF guide can be downloaded here.

http://www.ico.gov.uk/for_organisations/privacy_and_electronic_communications/the_guide/cookies.aspx

3. Attacat Cookie Report Plugin for Google Chrome

This is my favourite cookie report plugin. It only works on Google Chrome but that’s fine with me. You can enable it on any site you want to run a report on and the results have a handy “naughtiness” rating to help you understand how serious they might be and  what you should do with the cookies.

http://www.attacat.co.uk/resources/cookies

4. View Cookies Mozilla Firefox Plugin

An alternative cookie plugin for Firefox. It’s pretty good but doesn’t give you the reporting stuff that Attacat does. You just get a list of cookies and then you’ll need to do some investigation to find out what cookies do which function.

http://www.bitstorm.org/extensions/view-cookies/

5. Implied consent is ok in UK?

This is a link to a story from the Guardian UK website written by Charles Arthur. The talking point here is that the guidance from the ICO was changed 48 hours before the law came into effect. This change essentially allows for ‘implied consent’. Yeah, what?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/may/26/cookies-law-changed-implied-consent

6. Civic Cookie Law Solution

An excellent solution put together by CIVIC. The configuration and helpful resources on this site make implementing a solid cookie notification / control panel really simple. There are also some plugins and modules for WordPress, Drupal and Magento e-commerce.

http://www.civicuk.com/cookie-law/index

7. Cookie Cuttr

Another elegant JQuery solution that I think is pretty good.

http://cookiecuttr.com/

8. Jquery cookie solution from Wolf Software

This is one of the first solutions I came across. The message bar looks a little like a Microsoft IE browser message. One downside is that it is branded by Wolf Software. You can pay £25 to have the branding removed but I think there are better solutions above that are free. I’d be interested to know how many people have paid the £25…

http://cookies.dev.wolf-software.com/

9. Cookie Guard EU

Easy to configure solution that allows you to customise your cookie information that is displayed if the visitors chooses to find out more about your cookies. Its free but you can donate if you like it.

http://cookieguard.eu/

10. No Cookie Law

Silktide made this little microsite to demonstrate how ridiculous the cookie law is and explain it in simple terms. Thanks Oliver!

http://nocookielaw.com/

That’s all folks. As you might have noticed I haven’t added any cookie control or notification on my site yet. I am going to review all the options and implement something very soon.

If you have any other tools or resources related to the cookie law please comment below or find me on Twitter @iamtotallyrich.

“The impression I’m getting from the ICO is that even if there are complaints and you’re found not to be compliant, unless it can be shown your intent was to avoid compliance, then they would work with you,” said Mike MacAuley from the Local Government Association, which has hosted discussions on the issue.

I checked out the Number 10 website and all that I can see is that their Privacy Policy has had an update.

Its not surprising that many Government websites will not make the deadline as it’s a huge task to ‘become compliant” and many of the website within their estate are running on legacy software that would be very difficult to remove all cookies.

You can read the full article here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18090118

DOWNLOAD THE PDF GUIDE or visit the ICC website

“ICC UK will update this guide on a regular basis to include further developments in the regulation of cookies and examples of best practice in complying with UK law.”

For us the most important part of the guide is this:

“These cookies [performance cookies for website improvements] only collect information about website usage for the benefit of the website operator, consent for use of these types of cookies may be obtained in any of the ways outlined earlier in this guide, for instance in the terms and conditions of the site or when the user changes the settings for the site. The method used will depend on the nature of the website, and the precise function/use of the cookies involved”

This would appear to cover off the biggest concern for website owners / managers. Add a few lines of text to your T’s & C’s and you should be ok. Again, this isn’t legal advice but it’s the route we are going to follow until we find out what other organisation are doing.

“The ICC UK guide is not a statement of the law and does not constitute legal advice. Website operators are responsible for their own compliance strategies, depending on the cookies they use and the nature of the website. ICC UK does not endorse any particular method for gaining website users’ consent.”

Useful information about the technical aspects of cookies can be found at: www.allaboutcookies.org

The new law could be enforced from May 26th 2012 and there is a large amount of discussion about what website owners can do or should do to conform.

We’ll be publishing some advice on what options are available and what other companies are doing.

(Thanks to Oliver at Silktide for a great video)

I would be interested to see if Tina’s contact manager idea went anywhere…

My hobby is Shodokan Aikido which I practice at Central London Shodokan Aikido in Holborn, London. What’s your hobby?