All of us have been busy between our businesses, blogs, side projects, and countless professional & networking events. If you are interested in some of the other blogs we write for, contribute to, or help manage, look no further: GreenWerk’s Green Eco Friendly Bloghttp://www.greenwerkspro.com/blog/This blog covers green and environmentally friendly news from Chicago and around the world. Articles range from Greening up your Office to Local Produce Supplier Recommendations in Chicago. Elevate Printing’s The Perfect Printing Bloghttp://elevateprinting.com/blog/This blog covers topics relating to Digital Wide Format printing, Industry News & Updates, Product Comparisons, and everything else that is going on in the printing industry. DigitalPrinter’s Adventures in Digital Printinghttp://digitalprinter.blogspot.com/This blog covers digital printing news and issues affecting commercial printers, digital printing, photography, graphic design, and fine art reproduction.
Web stuffMatt Cutts is a head of spam prevention at Google. He has a blog that keeps me up to date with tools for search optimization (SEO and SEM) and whats up at Google. He also has some videos on you tube, that are great for understanding certain elements on search.Google webmaster and official Google blog are great additions to the list.Searchengineland is all about the internet business to hear what is going on around town as well as best accepted practices and constant updates to current search engine strategies for SEO and SEM.Google has the official blog and the webmasters blog. EnvironmentA fresh squeeze is a great blog about being Green in chicago. Only a few posts a month. Green Bean is about green buildings in Chicago.Tree Hugger is a great blog about the environment. They usually have 20 posts a day.
One of my favorite services that Google offers is google reader. This service basically organizes all your feeds in one place. So you can follow the blog at Crains Chicago Business and Search engine land for example. Blogs are a great way to select the content that you want to read and google uses this tool to keep you organized. The world continues to get flatter….
I am pretty sure everyone says that they will go to the gym and lose weight for the new year. I am pretty sure I have used this one several times and I am still waiting to hit my goal…lol. A few weeks ago I heard a speech from Ryan the creator of iContact. He described his plan to BHAG, a big hairy audacious goal. He want on to explain the purpose of setting specific goals and then printing them out and putting them on your wall. I kind of relate this idea of setting goals back to the idea of New Years resolutions, we set the BHAG but we do not make them specific. Weither it is the time line, specifications of the project, how it will be done etc. This year I plan to make my BHAG much more specific and I am determined to reach those goals. My newest venture is GreenWerks an eco friendly contracting firm – Read the full article
I was first introduced to ZipCar about a year ago. It was a novel idea, rent cars by the hour for an affordable rate. Most cars start at $9 an hour (ie a Honda element, Toyota matrix etc.) The hourly fee covers insurance, gas and the parking spot you found it in. The cars are conveniently located around Chicago and tons of other cities around the globe. They actually just merged with Flexcar to offer the service in even more cities. If you do not drive much this is the perfect solution. I sold my car this summer and have used ZipCar ever since. I save hundreds a month, before I had a truck that was $275 note, $100 Insurance, $200-350 in gas a month. Compared to ZipCar I rent a car a few time a month, usually not more than $150 a month. The thing that I like the most is the different cars you can choose from. If – Read the full article
Eco-friendly Contractor is the new brand that we are launching! GW is a eco friendly green contractor that will serve the Chicago area. The company will launch at the end of December. Lakeshore Branding is creating the website and the marketing materials. It will be a great example of what we can create for you. This week we set them up with a vanity 800 number. The new number is 877* 4* G Werks, for those of you who would like to use their service. We purchased the number so if they wish to switch carriers in the future, it will not be an issue. The service we use is a virtual pbx. This is a fancy term for a online version of a phone system, without all the hardware. Virtual phone systems start at $5 a month plus per min fees. The some of the perks are virtual voicemail and never having a busy signal to name a few. – Read the full article
