You may have seen their names come up here before. They are the same fellas that I work with everyday at Parallel, a creative studio that we started half a year ago. Tim also happens to be my brother (identical twins) and Matt is my best friend. When I told the guys that I’ve been struggling with Solution Watch lately, they stepped up and asked if they can help. So, we are going to give it a shot and see how things go.

This is a big change for me and its been a goal of mine since day one to have multiple writers on Solution Watch. I just didn’t expect it to be the guys that I work with everyday! But, I’m glad it turned out this way. The three of us are very close, so I can trust them, and we can work together in person. We all still have our day jobs at Parallel, of course, but I’m hoping that things will be more consistent on Solution Watch and more quality content can get delivered to you with the three of us writing.

So, who are these guys anyway?

Tim is a graphic designer who claims himself to be “a problem solving, graphic designing, visually communicating kind of guy.” He’s also turned into quite the businessman since the start of Parallel. Ever since the age of ten, he would dream of starting a design studio and run things how he felt a business should be run. By the time of high school graduation, Tim already had a growing list of clients and knew what he wanted to do with his life. During his first year of college, he took a leap into his next venture and started his own clothing label. And I kid you not, we have a whole screen-printing setup in our basement; conveyer belt and everything. He’s now twenty years of age and can easily say that he loves what he does. He also hopes to start his own blog soon about design and business.

Matt is a designer, a writer, and a very talented music composer that has been a friend of mine for around nine years now. Like Tim and I, Matt has been involved with computers most of his life and started designing at an early age. He also enjoys gaming and learning new music. Possibly one of his best qualities that Tim and I have noticed is his high interest in learning new things and how fast he can pick up on things. He could start learning something new today and already have a good understanding the next day. Today, he attends college studying digital media and works with Tim and I during the week at Parallel.

Expect to see a post from Matt in the next couple hours and some changes around the site. I’m also going to be redoing the about section of Solution Watch (finally) in a couple days and you will be able to find Tim’s and Matt’s bios in there. You will also be able to pull up each of our bios and latests posts by clicking on our names at the top of a post. Lastly, thank you to all my readers for making Solution Watch what it is today. It will be exciting to see where things go from here.

To start things off, Squirl provides you with a free account and a public address. The free account allows up to 200 items and three collections, and if you need more, you may upgrade to a plus plan providing 5,000 items with unlimited collections at $10 per year (price recently changed and used to be $24.95/yr). Once you’ve got an account setup, login to access your Squirl Home where you can view recent messages and comments from collectors, keep up with friends, and look at featured collections from other collectors in the Squirl community. You can also browse your collections on the right side of the site where you will find recent collections, additions, and tags that you have added.

Before I go on to creating collections and adding to a collection, let’s take a look at a collections so you have an idea of what can be accomplished. You will find basic information about the collection and collector on the left and see a list of items in the collection on the right. Collection items are nicely presented and can be viewed either as a list or matrix of images. You will also find that when in the list view, hovering over an item will popup a box, using Ajax, allowing you to learn more about the item. One thing I did not see when viewing a collection though is a list or cloud of tags. I feel this is an important feature to add as it makes it easier to find what you are looking for. We organize our collection items with tags, so why not use them? It would also be beneficial to list tags in the item popups helping viewers find related items.

One of Squirl’s strong points is with creating and managing collections. The way it works is simple and makes for a very flexible system. You start by creating your collection filling in a name and description as well as basic view and privacy options. Then select “Add Item” and pick one of Squirl’s 30 item categories from the list. Here is where the flexibility of the system kicks in. Depending on the category selected for your item, Squirl will bring up a page customized to fit your items needs. For example, selecting the category, “Movie,” will show that you can either search Amazon and instantly add the movie or manually enter the details in a form relating to movies requesting title, director, cast, and so on. Or say you selected the category, “Stamps.” Squirl will show a page allowing you to manually enter the stamp details asking for its name, catalog number, date issued, and more. I feel this is a great concept and it really makes adding items to your collections quick and painless.

On the social end, Squirl allows collectors to find and interact with other collectors and invite friends and family to view their profiles. I don’t feel Squirl’s aim was to become the next best social networking site, but it provides some basic functionality including adding of friends, sending messages to collectors, and commenting on collections. I can also browse through all collections, find a collector with similar interests, and add them as a friend so we can connect and discuss our hobby.

Overall, I had fun using Squirl and found it to be a great service for bringing collections to the web. Its system is quite flexible allowing collectors to add items of any kind to their account and being able to network with other collectors is a great way for friends and family to share. I felt the interface was a little confusing at times and lacked some features, such as tag clouds in collections, but nothing major. Also, Squirl is just a fun site to browse. I had a great time searching through all of the collections looking at rare stamps, autographs from famous people, and things of that nature.

If you’re interested, check out my Squirl profile where you can find my DVD collection that I’m working on (I know… boring, but that’s all I’ve got). I’d love to see your collections too if you have any.

More on Squirl at CNET and Postbubble.

The way it works is simple, and unlike your average video sharing site, users are not the only source of videos. This is because VideoJug has actually set out to create thousands of instructional videos that teach you how to perform tasks part of our everyday lives. Users can also contribute to the website by recording their own instructional videos and uploading them for others to learn from. You can find videos on cooking, house repair, technology, health, and more. Also, I found that the VideoJug created movies aren’t just basic home videos showing you how to do something. They are actually very well made and professional videos performed by real experts. Take the foods category for example. You will find that some of the videos take you to real restaurants and have chefs actually take you through step by step. Pretty impressive.

VideoJug has all the basic video sharing features and more. Users can upload and tag videos as well as search, rate, and comment on videos. VideoJug also provides viewers with in-video captions that inform you on what to do as the video plays. Users can even pull up text versions that go along with the video, so if you missed something or want to refer to instruction later, you can print them out. For example, this video that teaches you how to tie a tie will show you captions as you watch the video as well as provide full instructions in the text version. VideoJug also allows its users to download any video to their iPod, mobile phone, and PSP so you can learn on the go.

All in all, I like what VideoJug is doing. I’ve always loved learning by video online and now its easier then ever. The videos created by VideoJug are very well made and enjoyable to watch, but I can’t say the same for user submitted videos because I have not found any yet! I’m not sure if this is just because they are new, but I hope to see some soon as I’m interested in how that will work. I also feel that VideoJug is missing some important elements here and there that are common in video sharing sites, such as tag clouds. I also had a hard time navigating every once in a while. For example, in the members area, I could not find an upload button. But, overall, I enjoyed using the service. Lastly, for those of you interested, VideoJug’s business model is to simply serve advertisements and sponsorships spots on the site to remain a free service. Now, back to learning how to golf ;-).

Please, do not take the following quote too seriously. It is a unique shorthand my brother, Tim Benzinger, enjoys using when sending an email to me that I have ironically learned to understand.

“Brian website have. Designed Tim by have good. Look good. Feel good. Good. I have site now. You have site now. Together, we have site now. Viva site.”
- Tim Benzinger

It is hard to believe that the person that wrote the above words, my brother, has actually created this new design of Solution Watch. The words are from the contents of an email he had sent me upon completing the final concept of the new design. Over the years, Tim has developed this shorthand that very few can understand. I am unfortunately one of them. To help you understand, let me translate it for you:

“Brian website have” actually means that this is the new design for the Solution Watch website. “Designed Tim by have good” is how Tim says, I have designed a site I am sure your readers will love. “Look good. Feel good. Good” means, the site was designed to look good, but also function well. Lastly, he writes, “I have site now. You have site now. Together, we have site now. Viva site.” What he is really trying to say is, long live Solution Watch! You now have a site that I hope everyone will enjoy.

As Tim has said, I do hope everyone likes the new design. Once the design was completed, I used my weekend coding it in Web Standards and them created it into a custom WordPress theme. With this release, it really is a breathe of fresh air for me as the old design was really starting to get on my nerve. The old design wasn’t user friendly, rough on the eyes at times, and didn’t provide the flexibility I was wanting. That’s what I get for whipping it up so quick 10 months ago. I feel this new design solves all of the problems that I had with the old design and more. You will notice the layout is wider, high in contrast, involves more white space, and the wide right column allowed me to fit more content and respects in the sidebar.

Side Notes

Side Notes is a new feature that I am excited to release as well with this new version of Solution Watch. Side Notes will act as a small link blog and just an area that I can make small mentions about something. I can’t wait to get started on it because one of the problems I have is that I feel I have set my own “guidelines” when writing and sometimes things I want to mention don’t meet these “guidelines.” So, I present you, Side Notes, a place I can mention other services, things on my mind, and just overall news that I probably wouldn’t normally write here at Solution Watch. You may grab the Side Notes RSS feed if you’d like to keep track of them, but I am not including it directly in the normal feed because I understand some may not like the mix of posts and side notes.

Full-Text Feeds

While on the topic of RSS feeds, if you are a subscriber, you have probably noticed that Solution Watch now runs full-text feeds. It took a while of convincing to do, but I have finally went through with it after receiving numerous requests. I have always had these two feelings with full-text feeds: Why make my feeds full-text when I know the content can be easily stolen and when I would prefer subscribers to visit my site instead of viewing the content through a feed reader? Well, my feelings have changed and I can say that it really has only been of benefit so far. So, I thank my readers for requesting this and also Scoble for mentioning some benefits of full-text.

Miscellaneous Updates

There have also been various improvements around the site in comparison to the last. First, you will find that the commenting area is now clean and organized, seperating the comments from the trackbacks. At times, things got a bit cluttered and reading actual user commentary just became a task when mixed up with the trackbacks. Also, I have added coComment integration to the site so if you are a member of coComment, it will automatically run and fill in the proper information for the post. Another new feature is the “Extra” tab on the headings of posts. You will find that when you click it, a new box will appear displaying related posts and method of bookmarking to various social bookmarking services (may add more sometime soon).

Designed by PARALLEL?

Glad you asked! You will find that it states “Designed by PARALLEL” in the footer and find logo in the right column. You probably wondering why it says this when I clearly stated above that Tim Benzinger is responsible for the design, so let me explain. Parallel is actually a new creative company that my brother and I, along with a friend, are starting. We specializing in design, usability, and development for websites, print, identity design, and content management. We have been planning on starting this company for years now and the time has finally come. We’ve got big plans for our company, so expect to hear from us again! By the way, if you are in need of some work, head on over to the temporary site and pass us an email.

Thank You and Enjoy!

The past 10 months of Solution Watch’s existence has been excellent and I thank all of you (and the startup companies for giving me something to write about!). I’ve got a lot planned for the future of Solution Watch, so stick around! Also, just a quick thanks to Media Temple for being the best hosting provider I could ever hope for. I switched over from my old host to a dedicated server at Media Temple a few months back and I couldn’t be happier. That about concludes it! Thanks everyone and I hope you like this refresh of Solution Watch!

(Directs to external site Product: Information)

Basically, Fixya is a product support site that relies on users to submit feedback to those in need of help. Fixya also states that a lot of support information provided also comes from various sources on the Internet, although it does not say which sources they use. But, on top of receiving feedback from people like you and viewing aggregated support material, you can also easily find information about the product itself like specifications and original product manuals (in HTML format). You may also search on the product if you can’t find the information you are looking for.

(Directs to external site: Problem Page)

So, lets say you purchased something and it isn’t working. Simply go to Fixya, search for the item or select it from their directory of products. On the product information page, you will see an area for troubleshooting, more specifically, the “Most common problems” area of the page. See if anyone else has had the problem before and if someone has answered the problem. If you find one relating to your issue, go to the problem page and you will be presented with the problem in detail and a solution (if any) in a blog or discussion-board type format. Each solution that is shown will be user submitted, which I found to actually be more helpful then real product support documents. But what if you can’t find the answer to your problem? Easy, signup to Fixya for free, find your product, submit your problem, and hope you get some helpful feedback from other users. If a solution does end up solving your problem, or even if it doesn’t, be sure to take advantage of the rating system because it will help other Fixya users find the best solution for them by the ratings on feedback.

That about covers it, for the most part. I found Fixya to be very informative and helpful. Simple in concept, but seems to work rather well. I feel it is a lot easier to solve problems based on user experience rather then relying on a product manual. There have been numerous times that I have come across a problem on Fixya that I have wondered about myself and when reading the solutions made me think, “Oh, wow. That makes sense.” But there have also been times when I’ve come across solutions that are of no help with users saying, “Yeah,” or something pointless as a reply. I have expected this though because solutions are user generated and is not something unusual to see. This is also a reason why you should rate the feedback you read because it will help maintain the quality of solutions for problems. Overall, Fixya is a simple way to find a problem with a product and get user feedback to help solve the problem. I found it to be very helpful, maybe you will too.

View Fixya (via Mashable)

View Harvest

Harvest is a new service that has just recently launched that is built to help with time tracking and reporting. I feel that Harvest is a great solution for small businesses, but not so much an independent contractor or freelancer. It allows you to manage multiple projects, emplyees, contractors, and tasks. Each employee can then receive a login in that they can submit hours worked for each day of the week. When submitting a timecard, you can point it to a specific task for a project, fill in the hours, and save. When the week has completed, you send your timecard off and it gets approved by the administrative users. Administrators can then view weekly, daily, yearly, and custom date reports on timecards organized by projects, tasks, and users that submitted the timecards. I used it briefly, but it seems like a great solution if you are looking to manage multiple employees and view reports on the time spent working on projects.

View Rallypoint

Rallypoint is an online collaborative document service (similar to Writely), but leans more into group collaboration, organization, and communication then what Writely offers. You write documents online using a WYSIWYG editor which you can then share to specific users, groups, or to anyone. Documents can be ogranized by categories and tags, viewed by activity, and you can also subscribe to documents to keep updated on them. One of my favorite features though is template functionality. You can create and save templates for use in future documents to save time, much like Microsoft Word works with templates. Another feature that makes Rallypoint great is that users can also edit your document (if given permission), leave comments, and also view past versions of the document. Excellent for working collaboratively on documents with a team of users. I have reviewed Rallypoint a while back and they have definitely been changing things around and for the better.

View Sproutit Mailroom

I’ve recently reviewed a new service for small business, Sproutit’s Mailroom. Mailroom is a simple email management service that aims to help you spend less time on email and more time on work. In an Technosight interview with Charles Jolley of Sproutit, Charles had said, “We actually talked to about 30 small businesses from around the US. We found that most of them were spending up to half of their day just answering emails!” I then began to think of the amount of time I spend on email each day and I was actually quite shocked. I am constantly sending emails for work, and when I am done working, I have email to manage for Solution Watch and other personal emails. So how does Sproutit Mailroom help? Sproutit has a unique system that learns the way you send and receive email. It finds email that needs attention the most and displays them on one page, allows for tagging, re-assigning of emails to other users, and even suggests replies. Suggests replies? Simply put, when you send an email with Mailroom, the email will be saved allowing Mailroom to learn which replies are more commonly used with each email. Then, the next time you write a reply, it will suggest one for you that you can base the reply off of. This is definitely a huge time-saver.

View Writely

Writely is an online word processor that many of you are probably already familiar of. What I like about Writely is that you have the power of Microsoft Word and much more, but all online. You can write collaboratively with others, save as multiple file formats, publish online or to a blog, view revisions made by others, and best of all, access the documents easily anywhere at anytime. Usually for work, I would be sent a Word Document, open Microsoft Word, make my changes, write an email and send back my changes in hope that my processor is compatible with the recipients processor. But with Writely, you can organize your documents in one place, share with others, and export when needed. Very helpful, simple, and free.

View 37signals Campfire

There are many methods of internal communication for companies, but I have always found real-time chatting to be the most of help. 37signals recently launched a new group chat service, called Campfire, and I think it is excellent for group discussions. What I like is that it isn’t your normal chat in that it aims more directly to business owners. You can create a chat and invite colleagues, clients, members of your team, etc., to discuss a topic in real-time. As you chat, you can reference to files, upload images, and just talk as normal. You can create multiple chats as well with seperate users for each chat. All chats can also be logged and viewed at a later time so you can always look back at past conversations and documents. I do think it is a little pricey, but if your company is active in online discussions, it may be worth it in the end.

View Side Job Track

Lets say you are a freelance designer and you are jumping around with multiple applications, documents, post-it notes, invoices, and just your basic project management tasks all day. A little hectic, right? This is where Side Job Track can help you. Side Job Track is a free web-based job tracking, invoicing, reporting, and project management system. I’ve only briefly used it, but I know of others that have and wouldn’t want to manage projects and clients any other way. Everything from managing clients, projects, cost estimates, invoicing, expenses, reports, and I can go on and on. It is packed with features and even still maintains strong simplicity throughout the service.

View 30 Boxes

Keeping on top of schedules and events are often managed using some type of calendar. But sometimes it could be a pain managing dates with multiple people or keeping track of things with a team and I feel 30 Boxes really helps manage this. The beauty of 30 Boxes is that you can create a calendar online and share it collaboratively with others to help manage important dates. Maybe a project is to be completed on a specific date and you want to let the rest of your team know. Simply add the date to the calendar and everyone will see it. Or maybe even if there is a specific event or time off that is to occur that the rest of the team should know about. 30 Boxes also allows you to add recurring events automatically and set reminders for specific dates. It is very simple to use, collaborative, and free. Could really help getting events in order for businesses and their employees.

That’s about it for my list. There are more services out there, but these are some of the top services that come to mind. I hope you found this list to be helpful and if you do use any of these services, let me know because I’d like to know how they work out for you. Also, if you know of services that you feel are great for managing a business, feel free to comment about it and I will gladly take a look at the service. Enjoy!

Now lets take a look at the Edgeio website itself taking a look at it from a buyers perspective. Right off the bat, you will notice the excellent design (designed by Fred) with a friendly blend of colors, typography, and usable structure. A design I would much rather look at then say, Craigslist. On the main page is an organized listing of tags split into blocks consisting of items for sale, housing, auto, jobs, and more followed by the number of listings assigned to the main tag. Clicking on a tag will then bring up classifieds matching the tag, working much like a search engine. You may also search using the top search form, but I find that the tags themselves match the ads better.

There are two features that you, as a buyer, would want to take notice of that can really help your searching on Edgeio. First is the ability to target your location using the geography slider. I found that it really does make searching easier when looking for items near you. What you do is select to target a city and select your city from the list returned. The slider will then set the position onto your location and Edgeio will only show listings in your area. Now take the position pointing and drag it over to the next position and you will see the listing update with results in that range. Each time you move the pointer, it will go from your city to state, country to continent, and then the world. This makes it very easy to narrow down on results, but also easily look in a larger range then a normal zipcode search. The next feature to help make searching easier is the tag filtering. Say I am looking for a job. I view the tag, Jobs and I am then presented with a list of associated tags on the right in the filter area. I’m a Web Programmer, so I am looking for web related jobs like a Web Developer. I click on the tag, Web Developer and it then brings up listings matching Jobs and Web Development. I didn’t really see what I was looking for though and saw the tag, CSS. It then adds CSS to the filter bringing up less results, but being more accurate on what I am looking for because it is now searching for the tags, Jobs, Web Developer, and CSS. Both the geography slider and filter functionality definitely helps. So, now that I have found a listing, lets take a look at it.

The listing result pages, in my opinion, are very well done and work great for both the publisher and the buyer. Coming across a listings page, you will immediately be able to tell exactly what the listing is, where it is from, what the price is, and even learn about the owner of the listing. Not only that, but you can also go directly to the actual website that the ad came from or contact the publisher without leaving Edgeio, if the publisher claimed the website for the listing. Now, I mentioned that you can also learn about the publisher, which is also in benefit of the publisher. A publisher can provide some details Publisher Information area on the right. What I like is that you can provide links to your LinkedIn Profile, Flickr Profile, and even an eBay username. Providing this information lets me learn more about the publisher and feel more comfortable on deciding an ad to go with. You can also send in comments and rate a publisher. Lastly, I want to mention the Alert functionality for Edgeio. You will see icons on the top right of a listing in the Alert Edgeio section that helps Edgeio maintain a clean and accurate service for you. If you think a listing is spam, is organized incorrectly, or maybe is an inaccurate listing, alert Edgeio and it will be taken care of. It’s there for a reason, so use it wisely. It will help you and Edgeio in the end making a more accurate classified ad service.

Say you are publishing an ad on your site to be viewed on Edgeio. What can you do to better display your listing on Edgeio? Take a look at the above syntax, which is just some basic HTML. This is only some of the various tidbits that Edgeio offers to its publishers to better their listings. The first four lines are geography tags, but they aren’t just normal tags. They are special tags that Edgeio is programmed to pickup and use to better organize your listing. Instead of just adding a tag of a city, you can add 94301 linked with “zip:94301″ on the end and it will be organized in that city and zipcode. The more information provided, the better. Now what if you were selling a specific item? You would want to assign a set price to it and you may even want to end the listing on a specific date. Have a look at the 5 and 6 lines above in the HTML block. Edgeio will search for the classes, “dtexpired” and “price”, grabbing the values inside of the elements. This allows you to easily assign any price and any expiration date to your listings. Edgeio has more little tricks that you can use in your postings too. Just take a look at the FAQ page in the display options area. You may also want to keep an eye on this section as well. It appears that Edgeio will be adding more commands in the future, as stated in the FAQ.

I am blown away by the concept of Edgeio and hope for the best of it. It is up against some tough competition, but I do feel that it has a good chance because the ability to track and organize listings from over 29 Million websites automatically is amazing. It may take a while for users of say, eBay, to get the concept because it certainly works differently then any other classified service. They need to learn how to start a blog and write listings. I feel Edgeio should show more support on this. The FAQ simply says to start an RSS enabled site and directs them to WordPress or Typepad. And in my opinion, I think Edgeio should provide more detailed information for users that don’t fully understand. For instance, how to setup the blog, how to post, and how to write their listings. It will show the user Edgeio wants to help them list ads and also makes it easy for everyone to learn how to make a blog so they can use the service. Not that big of a deal, but I personally think it would help. Next, some of you are probably thinking… Edgeio grabs its data from RSS enabled websites. So, what is Edgeio doing to prevent spam listings from blogs? From what I have read, there are some filtering methods in use, but spam prevention is also in the hands of Edgeio’s users. Remember the Alerts that I mentioned earlier? Use them when you come across spam and it will help make Edgeio a better place! It will probably be tough to manage, but if users act upon it, it may not be too bad. That about covers it! Edgeio is quite the innovation and I feel it is a pretty solid service with excellent offerings for both publishers and buyers. Listings to the edge is right! Best of luck, Edgeio.

View Edgeio – Listings to the Edge.

(Screenshot of profile administration for my profile)

ClaimID has made it very easy for you to create your link resume. You create groups and then you add links to each group much like you would a normal bookmarking service. ClaimID provides a bookmarklet as well to make it even easier for you to just add and go. You can add as many groups as needed to fully describe who you are. For example, you may want to make a group for your websites, family sites, friends, or even user profiles from other websites. Anything that you want someone to know about you, really. So I’ve created a quick profile, although not completed yet. I made a group for personal links, blogs that I visit daily, and music. After a while, you will start to notice that things may get a little out of order, or maybe just aren’t in the order that you would like. That is why ClaimID has made it simple for you to sort any group or link. You simply click on the link to reorder and the groups/links will turn into blocks that you can easily drag and drop to the position that you find best. Definitely came in handy. Another feature that you may want to use are the stars. On each link, you will see a star. If you click on it, the star will continuously change colors. Maybe you just want to associate a color with a link, or maybe use them to signify importance. For example, marking all your work related links with red stars.

Lets talk more about bookmarking with ClaimID. You have two options to bookmark. You can either create a bookmark from inside of your profile, or you can use the bookmarklet to easily add a site as your browsing the internet. Either way, you will get the same form. You fill in the basic information like the address, title, description, and even an option to add tags. But more importantly, you will see two fields that allows you to describe your association to the link by authorship and if the link is about you or not. These two options allow one to easily learn how the site you bookmarked is associated to you. For example, say there is an article about you online that someone wrote. You would say that you are not the author, state who is the author, and mark that the link is about you. That is all there is too it. Once you have added a bookmark, you will see each bookmark listed in their groups with tags, descriptions, and even buttons that allow one to easily search the link in Google, del.icio.us, Technorati, and more.

Now, you must be thinking: I can post links, but what about actual information about myself from within ClaimID? ClaimID allows you to do this as well, although it is limited. You can supply a photograph of yourself, but it must be a direct link because there isn’t a way to upload your photo. You are then able to fill in your profile which can be seen on the right column of your ClaimID profile. I’ve just put some basic information about myself, but you can go a lot further then just basic information as you can see in Fred Stutzman’s Profile, who is one of the guys behind ClaimID. You will see that in his profile, he has placed his del.icio.us feed and even a Sitemeter tracking button to monitor visitor statistics. I am not sure what your limitations are, but you can add HTML to your profile and by seeing Fred’s profile, I am assuming you can add JavaScript allowing for more functionality.

ClaimID is simple in concept, but when used properly, it may help strengthen your online identity. Next time someone is to search your name, hopefully they will land on your ClaimID page providing them all the sources of information they need to get to know you. For an excellent example, I am going to point you to the creators ClaimID again, Fred Stutzman. He has bookmarks for personal work, projects, academic links, blog coverage, occurrences of himself in the media, and even links to Fred’s that he is not! Packed with information about himself. I am sure you can now see the potential that ClaimID has in managing your online identity. If you were interested, here is my profile. It is not completed yet, but I will be adding to it when I get some time.

One last thing. If you own a website, you can easily add your ClaimID Profile to your website/blog (example) with a few lines of JavaScript that you can grab from your account information area of ClaimID. Also, if you are a programmer, an API is available that lets you grab links from a profile along with parameters to filter the links how you want.

ClaimID is currently in private beta and it is unknown when it will be release publicly. If you wanted to give it a try, you can try to signup using my registration key. There should be 4 invites available at the time of posting this. I will see if I can get more.

Update: I’ve been given the Golden Ticket! Use this key to register, 14d95c2dd5b8cf05a5ec8199d28a0b78fd957ed9. It should be good for around 100 invites. Enjoy!

View Manage Online Identity with ClaimID.

Update (03/13/06): Looks like ClaimID is starting to work! I’ve gotten some referrers to my sites already from it and seems to be working as ClaimID said. Here is a screenshot of Google results for, Brian Benzinger – no quotes.

Not bad for just being active for only a couple of weeks. Solution Watch comes up first, one of my old sites second, and then ClaimID. If someone in search visits the ClaimID, they can then find all sites related to myself and learn who I am. Some were skeptical and questioned how helpful ClaimID really is. Well, here is proof that its working – for me at least. Nice work, ClaimID.

The first thing that I noticed was the beautiful design, but more importantly that no registration was required! I did not have to create a username and password or anything. You just go to the website, fill in the name of the event, the available dates, and then the invitations. Click on “Create” and you just sit back and wait for the responses to come in. As for the people receiving the invitation, they will just get an email saying that you request to have them select a day for your event. They then go to the Meet With Approval website and select a day out of the dates your filled in. When they submit the form, you will receive an email telling you they have selected a date.

Once everyone has selected a date, you then go back to Meet With Approval using the URL that they give you and then select the best date that works for everyone else. When you set the date, everyone will receive a confirmation email letting them know the date for the event. Easy! Now, you can also set a few options to make it even easier. You can give attendees access to add and modify dates or even add and manage attendees. And even better, you can set it so Meet With Approval will confirm the final date so you don’t have to! You can sit back and wait for everyone to set the date and once they are all, Meet With Approval will choose the most selected date and let everyone know the events date.

This service makes it extremely easy for anyone to set dates for events and I will definitely be putting this into use for meetings. If I had to suggest one thing though, I would have to say that I would prefer a better confirmation message when you submit a form. As of now, it creates the event and then has a Javascript alert message pop-up and say that the event has been created. It works, but I personally would prefer something a little less obtrusive, like simply a box on the page saying that the event has been created. Otherwise, everything is perfect. I tested it multiple times already and find it to be very useful. Give it a try with the next meeting you have to set and let me know how it worked out!

View Meet With Approval (Thanks Jeremy).

(This will direct you to my Ziggs Profile)

Before I continue talking about Ziggs, it is important that you see what a Ziggs Profile looks like. Take a look at my Ziggs Profile. When you create a profile, you will uses the Ziggs Profile Manager and Profile Creator, or if you prefer, you can even have Ziggs simply direct anyone that comes across your name to any website with your profile (if you have a profile on an existing website, you can direct searchers to that page from Ziggs results). But what happens once you setup your profile and what can you do with your profile? Like I have said previously, Ziggs will add you to their index of professionals and companies, which can then appear in Ziggs search results. Not only that, but you can also view statistics of search activity, profile views, and even emails from the Profile Manager using their “ZTrac Reporting.” What if your not happy with Ziggs search results or their basic statistics overview? What if you want more visibility? No problem, Ziggs can take care of this too with just a small fee of $4.95 a month with their WebPro Service. When you signup for the WebPro Service, Ziggs will add your profile to major search engines, including Google, Yahoo, AOL, MSN, and give you a top position as a sponsored result. On top of that, Ziggs will notify you in real-time every time a visitor reviews your Ziggs profile via any search engine. But don’t only rely on search results, hand out your profile! Give it to your friends, clients, employers, or even link to it on your sites. If you want to know more about how Ziggs works, take a look at their about page, What is Ziggs?

When you signup to Ziggs, you will get access the Profile Manager. This is the area where you can can access the profile creator, view statistics, change search terms and other features, such as ZAlerts (which I will go over soon). First, it is important to take not of the “Search Management” area. This is where you will let Ziggs know if you want to create a profile or just link to an already existing profile. Also it is important to fill in the keywords section as well as this will help with your search result visibility. The next step that you would want to do is to actually create your profile (like the one above), if you aren’t just directing to an existing profile. I’m going to go over the profile creator in a little bit. First, I want to mention the ZTrac and ZAlert features. ZTrac is much like your basic statistic reports of traffic coming to a website. You can see how many visits your profile has received, how many times you have been found by search results, and even email statistics on how many times your email has been clicked or the ZMail feature has been used, which is Ziggs email forwarding feature. It is great being able to view statistics like this and makes it comforting being able to see that people are actually coming across your profile. Now lets talk about ZAlerts. ZAlerts is a tool that Ziggs has created that basically allows you to save a search and get results that meet your terms daily as they get added. For example, if I am interested in PHP Programmers in the Connecticut area, I can create a ZAlert named, “PHP Programmers” and fill in a search with the keyword, PHP, and select the state as Connecticut. When I view the ZAlert, I can then see a listing of results. But what is great about ZAlerts is that Ziggs will notify you when a new profile is created that meets your terms so I do not have to keep searching myself. So, with that in mind, PHP Programmers in Connecticut, I have my eye on you! Alright, lets make this review more interesting now. Lets get creating our profiles.

The Profile Creator makes it very easy to create a professional looking profile within minutes, although I do recommend spending more then a few minutes on the content. When you first enter the profile creator, I would first focus on the left column and get that basic information filled in. You can provide a photo of your self and then write in your basic contact information using their contact information form. Once you get the left column how you want it, it is then time to start adding more content about yourself. Each section in the profile is optional, but I recommend filling them all in. The first page is on your biography. You can enter a quote and obviously, your biography. Both which Ziggs makes very easy for you to do. When you add a quote, it allows you to search for quotes and select one or simply look at random quotes and select one. As for your biography, you can either insert your own content, or you can use their “Bio Builder,” which is a form that you fill out that asks questions about employment, education, and other general information. It will then create a well outlined biography for you. Now, the next section that I feel is the most important fo all, the background section. This is what will list all of your professional and educational history. You can add jobs and other experiences in the “Work History” area using their easy to use form. It only asks you for basic information, which is good enough for me, but one thing that I would like to see is a way for us to add endorsements from people for each position. This way, when someone views my profile, they can see what people have to say about my work history, which can be very helpful.

There are also sections for the profile that viewers can see an interview of you, your interests, and contact information. I personally really liked the interview section. How it works is simple. Ziggs will give you a list of questions, you select questions you want to answer, and then answer them. The questions along with your answers will then be seen in your profile under the interview section. The questions are professional mannered, but they allow your profile viewers to get an idea of who you really are. Questions about your job, your favorite book, hobbies, and some more personal questions. The interests section is simply a section that allows you to add some of your favorite websites, or your own, and also add some of your favorite things, like favorite color, icecream, and just other random things. The last section that I want to go over is the contact section. You can add your basic contact information on this page, such as email, phone, and address, but what I found interesting was the ZMail feature. ZMail is a secure email forwarding tool that Ziggs has created so you do not have to give out your personal contact information. Basically, they create an email address in the formation of random numbers followed by “@zmail.ziggs.com.” When someone uses that email address, it will forward the email directly to you. I have tested this myself, and I am not sure if it is because I sent it to myself, but I haven’t received the email yet and its been a few hours. I’ll give it some time though.

Once you get your profile all created, you are ready to go! Start handing out your profile and if you are serious about getting found in search results, consider their WebPro service that will include you as sponsored results on top search engines. I have seen some promising (search result comparison) comments about Ziggs. I’m going to start throwing my profile around and see how things work out.

If you have used Ziggs, please tell me what you think about it!

View Ziggs, People Search and Professional Profiles.