Online Colleges and Degree Programs

I was recently made aware of  OnlineColleges.org by one of the sites co-creators, Chase Gugenheim. This site represents a remarkable amount of research into online and distance education resources and they are organized intelligently and intuitively.

I wish this site had existed when I was working as an Academic Adviser. This  database of 343 accredited online colleges and universities is a comprehensive and unbiased resource for students, educators, or anyone looking for a flexible option to further their education.

Take a look and see if you can find a program that fits your needs – and if you do, I recommend you follow an excellent piece of advice from Online Colleges: ‘If you are interested in enrolling in an online college, request information from at least 4 schools that have a degree you wish to pursue;  there are differences between each school’s program that are best explained by the schools themselves.’

Online Colleges :: 300+ Top Accredited Online Colleges.

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It is significant to note that there are many search utilities on the web that are ‘powered’ by one of the major search engines, and are therefore essentially extensions of those engines. This means if you are registered with the main engine, you will likely also be included in the additional directories it is powering.

To learn more than you ever wanted to know about Search Engine Optimization and Search Marketing consult Search Engine Marketing 101 by the good people at Search Engine Watch.

The 7 best FREE Places to Submit your Website for Increased Traffic

1. Google (also powers AOL Search & Netscape Search) – The King of Search Engines, the 600 Lbs. Gorilla, Google has the largest market share of U.S. based web searches at 67% of all searches as of April 2008. Google’s stated mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. Google is now widely recognized as the world’s largest search engine — an easy-to-use free service that usually returns relevant results in a fraction of a second.
Free Submit: http://www.google.com/addurl/

2. Yahoo! Search (also powers AltaVista & Alltheweb) – The #2 seed with a market share of 20%. The stated goal of Yahoo! Search is to discover and index all of the content available on the web to provide the best possible search experience to users. The Yahoo! Search index, which contains several billion web pages, is more than 99% populated through the free crawl process.
Free Submit: http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/submit

3. MSN Live Search –Microsoft Network’s search tool is third with a market share of 7%. Everyone knows Microsoft, and as hosts of msn.com and Hotmail it is understandable that MSN Live Search would place in the top 3 practically by default.
Free Submit: http://search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx

4. Ask – Powered by Teoma: the first major search technology based upon the clustering concept of subject-specific popularity. The Teoma algorithm, now known as ExpertRank, claims to go beyond mere link popularity to determine popularity among pages considered to be experts on the topic of your search.
FAQs: http://about.ask.com/en/docs/about/webmasters.shtml#18

5. Gigablast – In 2006 Gigablast began to focus on providing search services to businesses. A “re-launch” in 2008 aims to bring high-quality, highly-relevant search engine functionality to individual search users.
Free Submit: http://www.gigablast.com/addurl

6. Exact Seek - ExactSeek is an internet search engine and directory that also powers 6 other web search engines (Aesop.com, OnSeek.com, MaxPromo.com, Best-SearchEngine.com, SitesOnDisplay.com and MetaWebSearch.com).
Free Submit: http://www.exactseek.com/add.html

7. Entire Web - When you submit your site to Entireweb it gets listed throughout their partner network of more than 20 search engines.
Free Submit: http://www.entireweb.com/free_submission/

Also visit Do-It-Yourself SEO: A Beginner’s Checklist for a great introduction to Search Engine Optimitization published in EntireWeb.com’s newsletter in April, 2008.

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Recently I was traveling to Boston for a week to meet with some clients.  The hardest part of the trip was being away from my wife and 2 year old son Spencer.  We decided to make things more bearable we would have a video chat at least once a day using Skype. I also decided to send them frequent video emails using a great service called Tokbox.

Tokbox is a free service that allows you to send up to 10 minute video emails and have video conferencing with up to 20 people.  Both of these are very impressive as most other video email programs allow for only a minute or two and most video chat programs only support one-to-one conversations.

To see a sample of Tokbox in action view this short video I recorded using their service:

TokBox – Free Video Chat and Video Messaging

I haven’t tried their video conferencing services much as I currently use Skype for real time video chats but I will be testing it further in the coming weeks -  especially the multi-person video conferencing. I’ll follow up with another blog post to let you know my thoughts and share some of the other video conferencing services I have found.

I used to use Eyejot for video email and while I found the service to be good – it limits you to a recording of only 60 seconds unless you upgrade to one of their paid options.  Tokbox on the other hand blows that away with their 10 minute limit. This past week Spencer and I have been sending lots of video emails to family and friends that haven’t seen him in a while (he has even been strumming on my ukulele and singing some songs – needless to say everyone is amazed!)

Sending video email to family and friends is fun and a great way to keep in touch but video email can always be used as a serious business tool.  Video email among virtual team members is a great way to improve informal communication, boost team cohesiveness, and add a greater level of presence to conversations.  As a manager of a virtual team you could send out a video email to email to everyone on your team once a week letting them know about upcoming project deadlines or celebrating milestones reached.  Imagine how much more powerful a virtual pat on the back to a team member would be if you did it via video email and shared it with the whole team? The possiblities are endless and limited only by your creativity.

Want to know more about the service?  Read 10 Reasons to use Tokbox for Video Mail from their own blog.

Another great feature of Toxbox is they allow you to create a video recorder box to include on your website.  This allows people leave you a video message without having to have a Tokbox account.  We decided to give this a try so we are including a Video Recorder box below – if you have a webcam and a mic leave us a message using the box below and let us know what you think of the blog and if there is anything you’d like to see us cover here on The Anywhere Office.

UPDATE (12/3/10): Unfortunately since writing this post Tokbox has done away with the video email feature.  You can now only use this to leave a video message for another Tokbox user that isn’t available when you try to call them.  I was pretty bummed about this as I thought this was a great feature – but they are focusing more on live video conferencing now. I am exploring other services to use for video email and will write another post reviewing them soon.

No video camera? Leave us a comment below and let us know if you’ve used video email and how you think it can improve your virtual teams.

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I hate to feed anyone’s procrastination habit, because sometimes i get it bad (did someone say boomshine?), but the link above will take you to an IRS approved provider website that will file an income tax deadline extension for you FREE of charge if you do it before April 20th. The vast majority of extension requests are accepted and they postpone your tax filing deadline for 6 months, until October 15th.

Taxextension.com is basically an automated, online way to file a Form 4868. As far as i’m concerned, the ability to efile tax forms goes firmly in the ‘computers make my life better category’. The jury is still out on Boomshine…

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Whether you voted for Barack Obama or not – one thing everyone can agree on is his campaign had a very effective strategy for using the Internet to raise awareness and build community.

One of the refreshing things about his strategy for modern politics is the transparency and grass roots approach he believes in.  Using a mix of offline and online media and extensive use of videos on YouTube Obama released a constant flow of information about what he was doing, how he was doing it, and where they were spending the money they raised.  He connected with his supporters and the public was given the ability to respond, share their opinions, and get involved.

According to a recent NY Times article – Campaigns in a Web 2.0 World:

Not since 1960, when John F. Kennedy won in part because of the increasingly popular medium of television, has changing technology had such an impact on the political campaigns and the organizations covering them. For many viewers, the 2008 election has become a kind of hybrid in which the dividing line between online and off, broadcast and cable, pop culture and civic culture, has been all but obliterated.

I applaud Congress for taking these bold but necessary steps.  This new direction which involves a using a combination of video sharing and social media, will provide a level of access and transparency never before seen in government. This will make it much easier to follow what is going on in Washington and for people to voice their opinion about it.

Here is their welcome video message on YouTube:

You can now find your Representatives and Senators’ YouTube channels on two new special platforms:

• The House Hub: http://www.youtube.com/househub
• The Senate Hub: http://www.youtube.com/senatehub

This is your backstage pass to your government. So tune in and make your voice heard!

Many people are wondering how this will differ from C-Span . . .

Because the YouTube videos would be controlled by lawmakers, they would be fundamentally different from C-SPAN coverage of House and Senate debates and congressional hearings. C-SPAN covers floor debates and hearings in their entirety without editing or editorial comment.

I am very interested to see how our first really “connected” President uses the modern technology at his disposal.  He already won the battle to keep his Blackberry. This is a topic I’m sure we will be discussing a good deal throughout this blog – I find it truly fascinating.

All the while I’ll be following along on Obama’s ChangeDotGov YouTube channel. The President’s weekly radio address, a staple of American politics since the Franklin Roosevelt administration, will be posted on this channel and is also available as a downloadable video and audio podcast.

I’m excited to see what this change in approach to government and communication means for politics, public opinion, and technology in general. Post a comment and share your thoughts!

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What if I told you that you could have the equivalent of a team of researchers keeping their eye on the web for you and finding all of the latest information on all of the searches you need to do – and they would email this valuable data to you either weekly or daily right to your inbox – all for free? Interested?

Well I’m going to let you in on one of the most useful automation tools I’ve discovered – Google Alerts.  Google has expanded way beyond their normal basic search function.  They offer a staggering array of software, services, and online tools.  One often overlooked gem is Google Alerts – which is a service they offer that notifies you by email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your choice of query or topic.

Here’s how it works:

Google currently offers six types of alert searches: “News”, “Web”, “Blogs”, “Comprehensive”, “Video” and “Groups”. For example a Google Web Alert sends you an email each time a new page for your chosen term makes it in the top twenty results on Google’s web search. You can also have the alert check Google News and/or Google Groups.

To sign up for a Google Alert, all that you need to do is visit the Google Alerts homepage, enter the search term or topic you are interested in, choose the type of alert, frequency of emails (daily, as it happens, or weekly), and your email address.

You can set up alerts for as many terms as you like using a Google Account (which is also free). In October 2008 Google also made alerts available as RSS feeds.

I have several Google Alerts setup to send me daily updates.  I use it to find mentions of myself, our websites, and business (searching for “Phil Montero”, “YouCanWorkFromAnywhere.com”, and “The Anywhere Office”).  I also have alerts setup for phrases like “virtual office”, “virtual team”, and other similar queries which help me keep tabs on what’s happening and find interesting topics to write about in this blog.

Of course your use of Google Alerts doesn’t have to be limited to business – you can use it to search for getting the latest on bands you like, an upcoming event, or keeping up with your favorite sports teams.

To get the most targeted information you want – I suggest reviewing Google’s Advanced Search Tips – these tips can make you an expert Google Searcher and help you create more effective alerts.

One of our core philosophies for working effectively in The Anywhere Office is finding small adjustments that lead to big results.  Google Alerts are the type of tool that achieve this and help you work smarter not harder.

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Visit www.TheAnywhereOffice.com and click archives to listen to the complete show. While you are there be sure to visit our blog and post comments and feedback as well.

TAO Podcast Theme Music – Begin by Andy Simon

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If you missed the show you can listen in below or download the MP3 file.

Show # 10: Search and Research – How to search the web effectively
The internet is arguably the single largest repository of knowledge and information in the world. Knowing how to search through this data and find what you’re looking for is critical to reaping the benefits of this incredible resource. We are joined by Richard Robinson, an award-winning family history writer, co-author of two books, and the information officer for the international Association of Professional Genealogists. Learn how to avoid becoming road-kill on the information super-highway.

Here’s what we covered:

• Why people search: We look at all the different things people search for everyday both personally and professionaly. We spend more time searching than we think . . . we’ll show you how to save at least an hour a day!
• Where to search: We explore the various types of search engines and list some of our favorites for more niche based or narrow searches.
  • The Big Boys: Google, Yahoo, and MSN (with their newly launched LIVE search).
  • Meta Search Engines (search more than one engine at a time): Metacrawler and Momma
  • Specialized Search Engines:
    • IMDB (Internet Movie Database)
    • Amazon (books and music)
    • eBay (items for sale and vintage items)
    • Epinions (product reviews)
    • The Internet Archive (very fun – open access to writings, literature, music, and images)
    • Great collection of specialized search engines
• How to search: We discuss various tips and strategies for conducting effective searches and finding what you need quicker:
  • Is it best to start with a wide or narrow search?
  • Boolean search tips – using operators like AND, OR, NOT, +, -, and quotes to fine tune your searches.
  • Using Google niche searches to find specific items including Images, Videos, Froogle, News, Discussion Groups, and Maps
  • Google Alerts – Setup robots to automatically search important terms for you on the web and in the news and have Google email them directly to your inbox . . . What a time saver!
• Guest: Richard Robinson, president of Legacy Scribe, an award-winning family history writer, co-author of two books, and the information officer for the international Association of Professional Genealogists.

To listen to the show you can use the flash player below or download the MP3 file. Use the PLAY IN POPUP link below if you want to use our flash player and roam the web while listening.

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