by Ken Burnstein on April 16, 2009
AirBnB.com is a super easy to use online marketplace that connects people who have extra space in their homes with travelers looking for a more affordable alternative to hotels. AirBnB allows you to quickly find rooms, couches, futons and even air beds in most major cities in the US as well as internationally.
If you have some extra space in your pad, you can create your own Bed & Breakfast in minutes on the site, allowing you to make extra money from renting out your space to other travelers. You set your price, and AirBnB takes a 3% fee upon booking.
After browsing through the site for a bit, it appears that you can get a really killer room for much less than you’d pay at a hotel, especially in markets such as San Francisco, NYC and Paris, to name a few. An added advantage is that you’ll be staying with a local, who can offer to show you around a new city. It’s free to post rooms and to search. AirBnB takes a small transaction fee from travelers when booking through the site.
If you have any experiences using AirBnB, would love to hear your comments.
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by Ken Burnstein on April 5, 2009
I’ve been using Google Translate for quite awhile now with pretty good results. It’s usually pretty accurate for translating simple phrases back and forth from English to several foreign languages which I need to communicate in.
Over the last month, I’ve been testing out a new online translation tool called nicetranslator. This is quickly becoming my translation tool of choice, for several reasons.
1. It’s super simple to use.
2. It auto-recognizes which language you’re translating from.
3. You can select multiple target languages, and nicetranslator will translate your phrases into all the languages you select and show them on the screen at the same time.
4. It’s actually pretty accurate most of the time. Almost all online translators have some issues, especially with certain languages which have very different sentence structures.
HINT: I’ve found that I can get better accuracy if I translate from English to another language, and then translate back to English until I get the sentence structure correct.
If you find that you need translation done, either to or from your native language, need to translate into multiple languages, or just want to have some fun with your multilingual friends, I would definitely recommend checking out nicetranslator.
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by Ken Burnstein on March 10, 2009
If you want to simplify your job search, check out indeed, a very easy to use search engine that pulls employment listings from thousands of web sites, newspapers, job boards, professional organizations and businesses.
Working very much like Google Search, just enter your search term and location, and click the “Find Jobs” button. You can then narrow down your search by a number of criteria. There’s also an “advanced search” feature available.
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by Ken Burnstein on March 9, 2009
It’s pretty easy these days to set up a free blog. There are a number of great options, including Blogger, Vox, Wordpress and Tumblr. You simply go to the site, select an available user name, enter your email address and password and click “enter”. You’ll then have access to a dashboard which gives you the options to customize your blog, such as theme, title, about page, etc.
Once set up, you go to your blog’s dashboard and create a new post, add an image, links, and videos. Once you’re satisfied with your post, you click the submit button, and the post shows up on your blog.
I recently came across a new blog platform called Posterous. This system takes the ease of setting up a blog to a whole new level. You don’t even have to visit the website. To set up a new Posterous blog, simply send an email to post@posterous.com with the title of your first post in the Subject Line, and the content in the body, and your new blog is instantly created! It’s that simple.
The beauty of Posterous, is that just about any file type can be added as an attachment, including images and videos, and will then show up in your post. If you add multiple image files, Posterous creates a killer photo gallery, including thumbnails, which looks really professional.
Once you’ve set up your blog by email, you have the option of going into the website and customizing your blog with password and title. There’s also a great Firefox browser plug-in available which puts a button on your toolbar, allowing you to post almost anything from your web browser with the click of a button. Works beautifully.
The way that I (and lots of other people) use Posterous the most, is by snapping a quick pic on my iPhone, and then emailing it to post@posterous.com along with a caption that I enter into the subject line. A few moments later, my new blog post is live. Since I’ve been using Posterous over the last few months, I’m finding that I’m always on the lookout for entertaining photos to take and post to the site, and that I’m posting things I would never post on a traditional blog.
You can check out my Posterous blog at http://kenburnstein.posterous.com. You can also browse through some very amusing blogs at http://posterous.com.
Please feel free to post a link to your Posterous blog as a comment here. I’d love to see what you do with it….
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by Ken Burnstein on March 8, 2009
I recently found this simple to use web application that solves an ongoing problem I’ve had for a long time. I browse tons of web pages, and have struggled with an efficient way to keep track of them, and save them to read later.
I’ve tried bookmarking them in a web browser, bookmarking services such as Delicious, saving the URL’s on my desktop and in folders, and saving the links to pages in web apps such as Backpack. All of these methods have been pretty clunky.
Now, using Instapaper, when I come across a web page I want to save and read later, I just click on the “Read Later” button (which I previously added to my Firefox toolbar) and the page is saved to my Instapaper account. Then, when I’m in reading mode, I go to Instapaper and click through to the pages I want to read in the order I want. I can then archive them or delete them.
Instapaper also works with the iPhone browser, and even comes bundled with Tweetie, my current Twitter iPhone App of choice. You can set up and start using the app in lesss than a minute on both the iPhone and your Firefox browser.
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by Ken Burnstein on March 8, 2009
Photo Courtesy of llawliet
How many times have you gotten on a planned phone call, or attended a work meeting, and realized an hour later that you completely wasted the hour talking about a ton of unfocused and unrelated topics?
Have you ever gotten on a call, or gone into a meeting with a goal in mind, and then realized after finishing that the other parties got the better of you, or that you ended up compromising on what you initially wanted? I sure have.
Try this simple solution for keeping your calls and meetings focused and on topic:
1. Take out a sheet of plain paper, notebook or legal pad.
2. At the top, write down your top goal for the call or meeting. What one thing do you want to accomplish? Write down in detail your desired outcome.
3. Write down, in order, the sub topics and action steps required to reach this outcome. This will give you an agenda for the call or meeting.
4. Write down any possible objections or negative reactions that may arise from other participants.
5. Think through and write down the best possible responses to these objections.
6. Write down all potential participants on the call, and where you think they’ll stand on the topic. Will they be for you or against you, etc.?
7. Now, take out some 4 X 6 index cards, and transfer the info from your written notes to these cards. For simple subjects, you can put everything on one card. For more complex topics, and for longer calls and meetings, you may end up with a number of cards. Distribute the info on the cards to suit your needs.
In some cases for example, you may want to create a separate card for each participant, a separate card for each sub-topic, etc. The goal is to set it up so that you have one card in front of you so that you are completely focused on the correct task at the correct time, then for example, if an objection comes up, you can immediately find the card that contains the correct response.
By taking a little bit of extra time to prepare, focus and set goals for each and every phone call and meeting, you’ll look like a genius, and will find that you’re less and less drained and frustrated after the end of any business related call or meeting.
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by Ken Burnstein on January 16, 2009
For those of us in the Bay Area, Yelp is a pretty well known and well used web service. We use it to check out new restaurants, and even find new service providers, such as doctors, hair stylists, massage therapists and plumbers. If you’re not familiar with Yelp, it’s similar to an online Yellow Pages, which allows anyone to post unedited reviews on pretty much any type of business in your city or town. You can then search Yelp to find highly rated businesses and restaurants.
After throwing out some of the extreme flames on just about any establishment (there’s always at least one person who was having a bad day when they visited and took out their aggravation in their Yelp review) you can get a pretty accurate quality rating of pretty much any type of business in the area.
I recently discovered another way to use Yelp that I’d never really thought of. On my recent trip to Maui, an island I’ve never visited, the Yelp application on my iPhone pretty much made my trip. (If you happen to have an iPhone, Yelp becomes much more useful.) If you don’t have an iPhone, there’s a mobile web version available at: http://mobile.yelp.com/ which works on the Blackberry, as well as most mobile phones with a web browser.
On my iPhone, I just clicked the “Nearby” button, and the type of food I wanted, and Yelp gave me really accurate ratings, locations, Google maps and phone numbers based on proximity.
Once installed, this app requires virtually no technical knowledge on your part, which is one of my top criteria for a recommendation. It’s so intuitive that you can give it to someone who’s never used the iPhone and they can figure out how to use it in a few minutes. Yelp uses the built-in GPS on your iPhone 3G, or the cell tower triangulation feature on the old model to determine your location.
Overall, we found some incredible little spots, some of them really inexpensive on an island known as one of the most expensive in Hawaii. We never would have found these places without Yelp. We were also able to avoid the overpriced tourist joints that were recommended to us by some of the local businesses.
Both the Yelp website and the iPhone application are completely free. I’ll be using them faithfully on all my future trips.
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by Ken Burnstein on December 21, 2008
What we accomplish in life, and our level of success (if you use the definition of success as the accomplishment of goals that are important to you, and of living the lifestyle that you want) depends on many things. We put a lot of focus on the creation of new ideas, making the right connections and setting specific goals, and then working hard to reach these goals.
I think one of the main things that holds us back and keeps us from living out ideal lifestyle, is not so much the lack of desire, good ideas and connections, but the lack of energy. Think about this for a moment. You could have the killer idea of the century, a burning desire to succeed and have access to all the right people to help you make it happen, but if you lack the energy to implement the project, there’s really very little chance of even getting off the ground. [click to continue…]
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by Ken Burnstein on December 20, 2008
A very common complaint I keep hearing is how hard it is to get even the most simple website up and running. You’re starting a small business, a new division of your existing business, or just plain have an out of date website. All you want is something really simple, with a clean design, but you don’t want it to look like a template (a canned design than you can somewhat customize, but everyone knows its the same template that thousands of other sites are using.
What are your options?
1. You can go with the template that your web host, or some other third party offers, and just get the site up, with the plan of upgrading the site once you get some more cash.
2. You can pay a talented US based web design firm a large sum to custom design a high end website.
3. You can put a bid out on Elance, and get a great price on a fully designed website created in India or some other foreign location, with the hopes that the language and cultural barrier won’t be too much of a problem. Not to mention the actual delivery date…
My Recommendation: Wordpress.
I know, Wordpress is a blogging tool, but I’ve found out that it can do so much more. There’s Wordpress.com, which is an online hosted version of Wordpress. What I’m talking about is the downloadable, open source software available from Wordpress.org. This software is free to download and install or your web server, and most web hosts make it available as a super easy, automated install using the Fantastico feature on the control panel.
Once you’ve installed Wordpress, you have the choice of a huge number of templates and plug-ins, some free, and some for a small fee. I’ve found that for most company websites, Wordpress is the perfect tool for the job, for the following reasons:
1. Even though it’s technically “blogging software”, with the proper theme and a little customization, it can be made to look like a static website. No one will ever even know it’s Wordpress.
2. Once installed, you have complete control over your own content using the Wordpress Admin panel, which is super easy to use. You don’t have to go back to a web designer every time you want to change something on your site.
3. Your content is kept separate from the design. This means you can change the look and feel of your site at any time, without having to worry about the actual content of the site. Wordpress is now a true CMS (Content Management System), similar to Drupal and Joomla, without all the complexity.
4. There is a huge base of individuals and companies continuously coming up with new themes and plug-ins for Wordpress, so you can do virtually anything you want with your site in the future without having to pay for custom programming.
5. Wordpress comes with SEO (Search Engine Optimization) features built in, out of the box, meaning you shouldn’t have to pay an SEO expert to modify your site. On top of that, certain themes come with more advanced SEO features built in.
6. Wordpress is a very popular platform, so if your current web designer suddenly disappears in the middle of the night (don’t laugh, this has happened to me several times), it should be pretty easy to find another designer who can pick up where the old one left off.
(I personally use Wordpress along with the Thesis theme for the TechnoDespair site)
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by Ken Burnstein on November 17, 2008
Courtesy of 37Signals
So Why Do I Recommend Using Web Applications:
One thing I’ve done over the last few years to simplify my life has been to make the switch to using web applications instead of desktop applications when possible. A web app is similar to a desktop app, except it is hosted, usually by the developer, and is used my means of a web browser or mobile device.
There are some downsides to using web apps, but I feel the advantages outweigh the negatives. [click to continue…]
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