This is one of the best available task management apps for the iPad, iPhone and Mac. Things will help you manage your diary, keep a logbook, stay on top of short and long-term tasks, and maintain an overview of how small projects are progressing. You can also install Things on your iPhone and your Mac, so all data is in sync'. This established iPhone app is even better on the bigger iPad screen.

Pages

Apple's iWorks Pages app brings to your iPad many word processing features that make it easier to create and edit documents.  Pages offers much that you'd want for formatting, image embedding, charts, tables and more.  It takes a bit of time to get to grips with the available features, but once you have, it is easy to use on the iPad big screen.

Numbers

Also available in Apple's iWorks suite is 'Numbers' for viewing and editing spreadsheets. This is compatible with Microsoft's Excel, and you will be surprised at how easy it is to attractively present numbers and data with this app.

USB Disk for iPad

USB Disk turns your iPad into a storage device for all your documents and files. That includes those Microsoft Office documents that you want to view on the iPad as well as PDF files, picture formats such as jpg and gif, and various audio and video files. It is designed for easy searching via thumbnails, and you can email in and out of the app.  We particularly like the way USB Disk bookmarks a large document where you last finished reading it, so that it is easy to pick up exactly where you left off.

GoodReader for iPad

GoodReader is one of the best document readers/file managers out there for iPad users. It allows fast easy access to files, including large PDF or video files.  Like many apps, it's a little tricky to set up, but once you have it up and running, it's a doddle to use.

Social media

Social media is in increasing use for business, and two apps have become our favourites. Flipboard brings online news and image sources together with social media apps like Twitter and Facebook so you have everything you connect to online presented in a beautiful magazine style layout. Twitter for iPad is a joy to use for simple scanning of your twitter feeds, particularly where lots of online content is shared in the tweets.

As each app emerges, iPad becomes better and better. The bka team is moving from love affair to committed relationship.

Our team have found a lot that they like about this 'first edition' of the iPad.  It is just a really nice piece of equipment to handle: a comfortable 'book' size, the weight is reasonable (about 700 grams), and there is a rim around the sides sufficiently large that you can hold the device without touching the screen.  This is good, as the touch sensitive screen really is sensitive, responding quickly to your fingers tapping or gliding across it as you choose menu items, turn pages, and open emails and web pages.  It is easy to move between applications, and it is always easy to get out of an app and back to the full menu, simply by hitting the 'home' button.  The large screen and faster processor makes it easy to enjoy to the max  all those apps that were hard to use on the iPhone.  The team thinks that the battery life of 6-10 hours is 'awesome!'

There are enough built-in applications to do most things you would want to though you cant install just anything. As with the  iPhone you are limited to using applications you can purchase from the Apple app store.  But Apple says the iPad will run almost all of the 150,000 applications already developed for the iPhone and iPod Touch, so you're not going to run out of things to play with any time soon.  

So if you have a spare $799, buy one.  We're pretty sure you will love it as much as we do.  And there are still few enough of them out there that you can still score coolness points by taking it to meetings and passing it round for everyone to admire!

Start with a check of the design of your web site.  If you have used a cheap and cheerful template, you run the risk of coming across as a cheap and cheerful business.  If that is your brand image, that's not a problem, but if your products or services are in the higher value/higher price market, your web site should reflect that.  

Investment of a few thousand dollars in quality web design so that your site supports your brand values, is an investment worth making.

Check the details

Increase your searchability with close attention to the visible content of your pages - and those 'behind the scenes' details, such as your meta-tags.  What will someone coming to Rugby World Cup 2011 be looking for?  "Best day trips from Auckland?"  "Luxury lodge near Christchurch"?  "Home stay Wellington rugby lovers"?  If your content and items such as meta-tags are developed to address the information interests of the people you to talk to, you will make it easier for search engines to bring them to you.

Think mobile

If you are in London or Tokyo or Buenos Aires now planning your World Cup trip, you are probably checking out the options on your computer.  Once you arrive in New Zealand, though, you are more likely to use your iPhone or iPad to search for local information.  (Yes, the international rugby audience that will be here will be fairly affluent - you can assume many of them will be using an Apple iSomething.)  It is relatively easy to create a simple iVersion of your website, and have your server detect iPhone or iPad users, so it can deliver your information in an iFriendly format. If you are a Courtenay Place or Mt Eden restaurant, for example, you will want your iSite to include a map so that it is easy for someone leaving Eden Park or the Westpac Stadium to find their way to you.  You will also want your phone number right up front so you can be called to check if a table is available.

If you have an iPhone, enter www.bka.co.nz into your browser and see the simplified version of our site that you receive.

Domain names are often purchased some time before a website is launched and should be purchased by the website owner. They can be bought through any number of providers online and need to be renewed annually or bi-annually.

More often than not, a company's domain name will be hosted with one provider, and their website will be hosted with another. There is no problem with this at all, as it easy enough to "point" the domain name at the website by use of the I.P. address.

I.P. address stands for Internet Protocol address and is a set of numbers that act a bit like your house address. A person might think they are visiting "bka's office" but they are arriving at "209 Great North Road".

The same goes for websites. You may type in www.bka.co.nz, but underneath that URL, you are actually arriving at 60.234.247.128.

When you first register your domain name, you will be required to give your admin and technical contact details. These are important to note down because when the time comes to renew your URL, you will be required to use the same email address to identify you as the correct owner.

Many grey hairs have been born trying to find an old employee who was the only one who had the password, or trying to reinstate an old email address.

So remember:

• Try to use a non-personal email address, (eg: admin@bka.co.nz)
• Nominate your web company as your technical contact so they can help you out in times of need such as this
• Note down your registration details and keep them in a safe place.

A customer visiting your website is opening the door to your business.  Ensure they can see what you are offering immediately. A Flash intro page can be an irritating obstruction to someone who is taking a first quick look.

Support your brand proposition

When someone looks into your site, the look, the content, and the functionality should all be consistent with your overall brand positioning. If you are exporting, "international' is automatically a brand attribute. You should aim for a site that is of a quality similar to that of your best international competitors.

Have content that connects

Provide the information your customers want.  Sounds obvious, but many sites require customers to dig to find basic product information.  Content should be concise, scannable and above all pertinent.

Make them feel at home

Make sure it is easy for customers to see your credentials.  They have to feel confident about doing business with you.

Keep them with you

Useful tools such as currency converters or support blogs,  ensure it is easy for customers to stay on your site.

An exemplary website is the foundation of your online presence. But wait, there's more!  New ways of connecting with customers emerge every day from iPhone applications to Widgits to serious software, to integrate stock and accounting systems with your ecommerce site.  We help you choose the innovations that will deliver the greatest benefit to your business.

Please give us a call.  We want to help you take your business to the world.

• It's generally reliable - the companies involved hire brainiacs to make sure nothing breaks - you no longer need to trawl through frustrating help files and forums to work out why your software isn't working because they do it for you.
• It's generally free - companies often offer cloud services for free (think Google, Flickr) and support their operations with advertising.
• It's device and location independent - if you have internet access you can get to your data anywhere, anytime on anything.
• It's secure - (good) companies invest heavily in security because their reputations depend on it, so you can rest assured that (good) cloud services are pretty secure.

Disadvantages:

• Reduced control: You have you trust that your service won't go down but most good cloud services allow you export and backup your data anyway. Also you generally have less customisation options compared to stand alone desktop applications.
• Privacy: You are housing all your data in another company's computers so there are some surrounding privacy issues here.
• Connectivity: Simply put, if you can't access the internet you can't access your data. However some services now allow you to synchronise your data to your computer so that you can view it offline.

Our favourite cloud services:

Dropbox.com.

2gb free storage that can be accessed anywhere in the world with options to upgrade to more storage at a cost.

Flickr.com.

Everyone knows Flickr and it's a quintessential example of the cloud in action - storing, viewing and sharing your photos and videos anywhere in the world, for free.

Google…everything.

Google is virtually synonymous with cloud computing as almost all of its products exist in the cloud. Be it Gmail, Google Docs, or Google calendar, almost everything you do with Google takes place on their servers and is accessed through your browser.  Interestingly Google offers no dedicated file storage, despite being the company that made cloud computing famous. There are of course hacks to get around this, but that's for another post…
Xero, Saasu, Workflowmax, Bootcamp etc: There are a great number of business products and tools in the cloud and they are indispensable in the modern workplace.

Spotify, Grooveshark: These are outstanding cloud based music delivery services that allow you to access and stream virtually any song you want for free.

So...

Cloud computing is the way of the future and with the current progress towards cloud based operating systems there will possibly be a time when we're so used to it that it will feel strange to install software on your computer. We will increasingly fulfil our computing needs through our browsers and I welcome the transition!

Some further viewing

A nice explanation

Two interesting counter arguments
This one is pretty funny - Larry Ellison (CEO of Oracle) saying why he hates "the cloud"

Frank Gillet explaining some misconceptions and giving a perhaps more realistic marketing-less view

Optimise page content

Search engines are becoming smarter by the day.  Good content that provides answers to what searchers are looking for, will help you rank more highly.  For your after-hours clinic, for example, you might have information on health and wellbeing issues for your community listed on your site.  This might include useful 'accident and emergency' information, such as a checklist on when to call an ambulance versus ringing the clinic for an appointment.  Make sure your key search terms are appropriately integrated into your copy.

Good content is built on through optimal use of website coding.  Here are our top three tips.

Page Titles:

Use keywords in your page titles as these provide Search Engines with a snapshot of page content. Each HTML page has a separate title at the top of the page beginning with <title>. You can include variant spellings and abbreviations that wouldn't sit comfortably within the content.

H1 tags:

Search Engines also rate the content within H1 tags. <H1>Subject of your article</H1>.  These tags can be used once each page and provide to opportunity to provide a brief overview of the content on a page with key search terms strategically interwoven.

Image Alt tags:

Images on a website cannot be 'read' by search engines so they look for the Alt tag to provide a description of the image. The best practice is to provide descriptive text around the image content and purpose, adding in key search terms wherever appropriate.

Once you have your basic SEO in place, you can increase your searchability (and improve your service to those who visit your site) by strategic use of links to other high quality sites.  Plunket, for example, has useful online information for parents around "What to do about hiccups, colic & crying" - a classic 'after hours' concern for first-time parents.

Finally, there is no easy way to push your site up the search engine rankings.  Ignore those emails that offer 'thousands of inbound links'. Links that are not relevant to your site are likely to result in lower rankings, not higher.  Attention to quality content, and links that deliver real value to your audiences, are the best guarantees of long-term success.