If you’re like me, email is a serious part of your life.  Often times you open your gMail inbox to send an email.. but once you get in there, you immediately start reading and replying to your latest emails… and often times FORGET why you opened your email in the first place.

This happen to me several times when communicating with the people behind this website.

SO – I figured out how to compose and send an email without opening and seeing your gMail inbox… Here is how it’s done….

Simple How To: Send an email w/o opening gMail

You will need:

• To be logged into your gmail account in your browser of choice
• Know how to add a bookmark
• Know how to use your bookmarks

https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=2&view=cm&fs=1&tf=1&shva=1

Step 2: When you want to send an email without opening your inbox… open that bookmark.

(I usually open it in a new window by holding apple (CMD) and clicking.. or with a mouse, click down on the mouse wheel to open a new window)

Done… and the best part is that since you’re logged into your Google account – it still drops down the names of people you’ve emailed and are in your contacts list.. AWESOME!

Hope this helps.. I know it makes my life a lot easier.

Learning about their business model made me think about how profitable software companies must be… check out the “thought flow” I had (below).

Here are the reasons why software is awesome, written from a user, developer, and sales person of software’s perspective.

#1: Everything is Software

Some of the software you will find on my mbPro

You don’t really realize it, but if you think about it – you’re using software right now.

As a matter of fact – anyone device that connects you to the internet uses software!  Computers, phones, credit card processing machines, etc…

Ever burned a CD? You used software.

Have you every wrote an essay or paper?  Did you do it by hand? No, you used software.

So software is everywhere and I’m guessing that people don’t even realize when they are using it.

Why is software everywhere, you ask?  Because of the next 3 reasons below:

#2: Software Makes Things Easy

Software solves problems, makes things faster, and probably most importantly: it makes things easy.

Sometimes a piece of software will come out that allows you to do things that you previously couldn’t do before (TweetDeck is a decent example: allows you to manage multiple social media accounts from one application).

Have you ever used Adobe software? Dreamweaver makes editing HTML very easy.  My man Chris Freeman knows all about this.

Software takes tasks that would usually require classroom training and makes them push button.

AND now-a-days, cloud-based software (which is basically any software that you can access from anywhere that you have an internet connection) is revolutionizing and accelerating the software industry… Google Apps (like GMail, Docs, Calendar) & SalesForce are good examples of cloud-based software.

#3: Software Sells Itself

Most of the time you don’t really need to “sell” software.

The software sells itself!

How many other industries can say their product sells itself?

I just remember a Chris Rock stand up:

Drug dealers don’t sell drugs. Drugs sell themselves. It’s crack. It’s not an encyclopedia. It’s not a f**king vacuum cleaner. You don’t really gotta try to sell crack. Ok?

You will never hear a drug dealer say: “How am i gonna get rid of all this Crack?”

The reason for this is simple:  see reason #2 above

Burn CD’s, manage your accounting, write and format papers, browse the internet… all things that you need to do, so you buy software!

#4: Software is Ultra-Profitable

So you’re telling me that I can develop something one time and sell it unlimited times?  So wait, when someone buys my product, I don’t have to make it from scratch in order to deliver it?

Think about this: when a business wants to grow, it has to get more customers.

In service based businesses, when you get more customers you also have to hire more people, fill more seats, which costs you in both payroll expenses but also administrative headache.

In traditional product based businesses, you have to add to your manufacturing line or supply chain when you grow.

In software companies, all you have to do is have a couple support people and maybe a development team (to improve your software)… both of which you could outsource

It’s no wonder that of the top 20 riches people in America (according to Forbes), 8 of them were running software companies!

Profitable Software Company Thought Flow

Social Solutions sells software to help companies organize their operations and track the company’s efforts to the outcomes they produce… most of their clients are non profit companies… some non profits get government grant money… non profits have to spend money (in order to show no profit at the end of the year) — SO –> Social Solution is indirectly getting government grant money… AWESOME!

(PS, a similar example of this can be found in the computer or IT training classes & trade school industries)

———–

Do you have an idea for a software that could be valuable to a particular niche?

Already work for or own a software (or software related) business?  I admire you and wish you the best! … just make sure you’re ethical and providing value – because otherwise, you won’t be around for long.

Ever time you start a youtube music video and try to do something else, it stops playing. Very annoying.

This is how to play youtube videos in the background while you multitask on your iPhone.

(requires iOS4+ .. if you have an iPhone 4, this will work… if you keep your 3G or 3GS updated with apple’s latest software, this will work… OTHERWISE: sorry)

Learn more about iOS4 features here.

How To: Play a YouTube Video in the Background of iPhones

Here is a step by step guide to playing a youtube video while doing other things on your iPhone.

The youtube video will play in the background much like the iPod app or Pandora app plays in the background while you text, use the maps, check out your calendar or the weather.

Play YouTube Videos in the Background of your iPhone

1. Open the youtube app & find your favorite video
2. Let the video load to the point where it starts playing
3. Press the home button
4. Double click the home button to bring up multitasking
5. Swipe to the right to find the media buttons (rewind/play/pause/forward)
6. Press the play button
7. MULTITASK! – go text, map, whatever your heart desires!

That’s it!

Yet Another Way To Multitask YouTube Music Videos!

Alternatively, you can:

Start playing a youtube music video (like steps 1-2 above)

Press the home button

Lock the iPhone

Click the home button once to show your background – then double click the home button to bring up the media controls on the locked screen

Press play – since the last piece of audio you played was the youtube video, that will start playing

Unlock your iPhone and MULTITASK – since you locked your iPhone from the home screen, you return to the home screen with the youtube video playing in the background and you’re free to do whatever you want!

That’s all there is to it – play youtube in the background on your iPhone by following those easy steps above!

Hey, did you know your can play snake on youtube videos?

If this helped you – let me know in the comment box below!

The main difference is that Meetup focuses on the niche — both topically and geographically.

Users can create “meet up groups” and invite those who are interested in certain topics to join.  The creator of the group is then responsible for organizing a “meet up”.

The meet up can be in person or over the internet, using GoToMeeting or something like that.

It Gets Your Clients Too!

One of WebMechanix’s most recent clients actually called us because they saw me on Meetup.  She said that she noticed I was an active member of the a Baltimore SEO group and since she was in the market for SEO, she decided to give us a call.  Awesome?

List of Meetup Groups

Here is a list of Meetup groups that I am currently part of:

Maryland SEO

Baltimore SEO

Baltimore PHP

Baltimore WordPress

Maryland Internet Marketing

Hospitality Online Marketing

Columbia Business Strategy and Networking

Baltimore Small Business Social Media Marketing

Can You Tell What I Like?

I just realized that you can easily tell what I’m into just be reading the group names… hahaha — Maybe I should join some skiing and tennis groups to round out the heavily weighted Internet Marketint Business groups!

That’s all for now – check out http://www.meetup.com – hope to see you out there!

Don't even try that excuse, anymore!

As technology gets perpetually faster, smarter, and just better.. certain excuses, that were once fail proof, can no longer be used. Here is a look at some technologies that have nullified certain excuses… especially work excuses by text.

Picture Text Messages (MMS)

With cell phone and cell carrier standards of 2010, most people have camera phones and the ability to send picture sms text messages — so for instance:

An employee texts the boss to say “I’m stuck in traffic, going to be late”.

When the employee gets into work that day, the boss asks the employee about his phone.  He finds that the phone has a camera and is able to send pictures over text.

The boss tells the employee that next time he is stuck in traffic, send a picture of the brake lights.

So anytime there is an excuse that can be proved by sending a picture text message – you can’t really use it anymore.

That Stupid Beep When You’re On The Phone

You know when you’re calling someone and you hear that beep at the end of each ring?  That means the person you’re calling is currently on the phone.

If everyone knows about this, then when your friend calls and you’re on the other line – you can’t use any excuse that isn’t “I was on the other line”.

You can’t say, “Sorry I didn’t pick up, I was in the shower”, or “I was driving” – because the other person heard the beep and knows you were on the phone!

There are certainly many more examples … I’ll be back to update this as I think of them — if you know of any, comment below.

So much so that I’ve forgot how bad AT&T’s service is… just recently the service went from being spectacular to being sub-par… Did AT&T knock down a tower near me? — WHAT GIVES!?

Sorry.. on with the iPhone OS4 features and stuff…

My Favorite Updates & Additions on OS4

Here is a list of my favorite updates for the new iPhone operating system.

Spell Check

Everything has spell check now, which for me, someone who only scored 500 on the verbal SAT, is a BIG DEAL!

Threaded Email

Email conversations that have the same subject line are threaded together, much like Gmail… awesome.

Photo Gallery Shows Where You Took The Picture

Are you kidding me with this?  by far the coolest update.

Now when you take a picture with your iPhone, it tags where you are geographically – and then shows you all your pictures on a map.

I think this is extremely neat, and somewhat useful too.
I’m showing off to friends and family.. Look where I’ve been!

Wondering if the it will work internationally too.. anyone know?

Multi Task With Pandora

You know Pandora, the program that plays similar music to an artist or song that you put in?  I love Pandora.

It used to be that when you leave the Pandora application on your iPhone, the music would stop.  So if you got an email or text you want to reply to, you’d have to lose your music to do so.

Now, with the new iPhone OS4 upgrade – You can Pandora and text, email, or even Facebook!

This is my 2nd favorite feature added on OS4 behind the photo gallery geography thing.

Set Your Background

A simple update that allows your background or wallpaper to show once you’re in your iPhone.  It used to only show on the welcome (or locked) screen.

Search Text Messages

I personally don’t text message enough to make this one that useful, but it’s definitely cool that you can now search your text messages.

So that’s it – those are my favorite additions and features of the iPhone OS4 update — what do you think?

Here is the video of the build .. it’s sped up 12 times:

Well, that was fun!

And now for the part list … as usual.. THANK YOU Newegg

Not that easy obviously, but also not too difficult.

I just thought it’d be cool to write a blog post from my bed.. Call me weird.

I can’t type as well using the horizontal iPhone keyboard as compared to when holding it vertically.. Even thou the buttons are bigger, I’m just not as used to it I guess.

So thanks to wordpress and smart phones for making blogging so easy.

Night.