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You are here: Home / Archives for Technology

April 3, 2016 by Eric Butts 2 Comments

Rainmaker Review: Sometimes We Need Protection From Ourselves

Free Rainmaker Demo
“The one who makes it rain makes the rules.”

Note: there will be a lot of links here. Some will he affiliate links where I get a commission if you buy. To be clear, this doesn’t cost you anything extra if you buy/sign-up, and I wouldn’t be writing this if I didn’t have the first-hand experience.

It’s been 5 weeks since I switched to the Rainmaker Platform instead of continuing to host my own site on Bluehost. Now seems like the right time to write a balanced review while everything is still fresh but not so fresh that I rant – instead of presenting facts – on the rare instances I was second-guessing my decision to change. You know, because change is hard.

TL;DR: I switched to Rainmaker and would recommend the same for anyone who takes their site seriously. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Technology Tagged With: Bluehost, Copyblogger, Rainmaker

April 8, 2014 by Eric Butts 2 Comments

If You Hate Grammar (Or Just Aren’t Good At It), This Lifehack Is For You

We live in the “life hack” era where everyone is looking for ways to streamline how they work and live. 
One of the ways many people try to save time is by skimping in the testing and review area. I’ve seen it done many times at clients testing big financial systems, and have come across several bloggers in the #Blogchat twitter chat who openly admit not proofreading their stuff until it’s already published or someone calls them out on it. In fact, I’ve been called out a couple of times recently for some shoddy proofreading :/

Coincidentally, the latest reprimand came the same day as another email. This other email from a company called Grammarly asking if I would try out their product. Considering my need for an extra set of eyes and my current lack of budget for the blog, I agreed to have a look and see if it made sense to share with my readers. If you do a lot of written communication, whether for school or for work, you definitely want to keep reading.

What does Grammarly Do?

Grammarly does a few different things. At a high level, it’s a web-based grammar checking tool which updates as you write and not only suggests corrections but gives the rationale behind it. 

Grammarly editor

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Technology

April 3, 2014 by Eric Butts Leave a Comment

Electronic Signature Apps: Which Is The Best And Why It Matters to Your Business

Docusign edges out the competition
Which Electronic Signature App is Number One?

 

I Want to Live in a Paperless World. 

The reasoning behind that, however, has nothing to do with the environment. Going completely paperless will make my life and business easier, and I’d bet money the same applies to you. 

Think for a second about how many paper documents you’ve lost: essays, birth certificate, presentations, meeting notes, or whatever it may be for you. Then think about how many electronic documents you’ve lost in the cloud. If you’re anything like me the former far outweighs the latter.

How many times have you waited less than patiently for USPS or FEDEX to deliver time-sensitive documents requiring your signature or a signature from your customer? That wait time adds zero value, and in 2014, it seems like there should be a better option, so I went looking for it.


I’ve talked about having a solution to sign documents electronically before (click here to read) but that only solved the specific problem I wanted to resolve at that time. It didn’t handle the end-to-end document signing process between two parties. You might be asking how this could apply to you but this has real implications on normal activities you wouldn’t even think about.

Just the other day, my wife and I needed to sign a release form for some photos taken of our kids, and the online form was unsophisticated, to put it nicely. It looked more like a contact form you’d find on a blog than a legally binding release form.

As it turns out, there are apps built specifically for this scenario when you need to get a signature from someone else or even a group of people, with the emphasis on collecting those signatures as fast as possible.

Why Should You Care About The Electronic Signature Technology?

I’ll answer that with two reasons – money and money.

 

  • Money saved from not wasting money on paper, express shipping, and physical storage space
  • Money in your pocket sooner because the sooner you can get deals signed, the sooner you can start work, and the sooner checks hit your bank account.
  • Bonus reason: mother earth will appreciate you sparing those trees, if you’re into that kind of green.

 

Cash is king, so putting more in your pocket today instead of deferring should be the focus of every small business. Having tons of sales means nothing if you don’t collect the money you need to pay your staff and vendors.
 

After spending some time looking around on the internet for an overview of the electronic signature options, it quickly became clear I’d only be able to piece together information from multiples sources about the various options available. No comprehensive view existed…so I decided to create the thing I was looking for, a clear way to determine which electronic signature app is best for a given user.


The answer for me was Docusign, but there’s a chance it could be different for you so let me show you my approach to choosing Docusign. Before I give you the answer, thought, let me explain what I did so you know how I reached my conclusion. 

Which Apps Were Part of the Comparison?

First, I needed to know which apps should even be considered in this review. Through some conversations, research, and my own experience I landed on the following list to battle for the crown of best e-sign app:

  • Docusign
  • EchoSign
  • HelloSign
  • RightSignature
  • Sign Easy
Next, I signed up for trial accounts for each service and spent HOURS going through every detail trying to figure out where one app differentiated itself from the others. I considered technical function and what just felt or looked better even if the functionality was the same, the UX factor, if you will.
 

What Characteristics Were Used to Grade Each App?

Each area considered was graded on a 5-point scale with 5 being the best. The areas graded were as follows:

 

  • Compatible file formats (e.g. PDF, Word, PPT)
  • Cloud service integrations (e.g. Box, Dropbox)
  • Signature types (drawn vs typed)
  • Ability to use “sign here” tags (to indicate signature location for recipient)
  • Template available for frequently used documents (e.g. employee HR docs, non-disclosure agreements)
  • Sequencing options for document workflow 
  • Audit trail (when document was sent, reviewed, signed)
  • User interface of web application (look 
  • Overall functionality and usability of the mobile application (can you do all the same things as on the web plus look and feel)
  •  Price (individual/free vs business)

 

A lot of the functionality was similar.  I’ll give you some of the key highlights below, and you can go here to get the full details of the comparison if you want a bit more detail.

Key Highlights of the E-Sign App Comparison

 

  • File format: PowerPoint was the least common of the file formats, but most people I’ve come across don’t use PPT files to obtain signatures.
  • Templates: Use of templates could add great efficiency for documents you need to send out with the only variable being the name/email address of the recipient. Email text is already prepared, and the fields to sign are highlighted with placeholders. All had this, but EchoSign took it a step further by adding a summary to let the recipient know how many places require signatures. Very Nice touch.
  • Cloud service integrations: There is some variation in the integrations available across the platforms but all had integration with Box and Dropbox. Most had integration Google Docs.
  • Audit trail: All had audit trail functionality tracking when documents were signed HelloSign didn’t produce a full audit trail until all signatures were obtained. It then attached the audit trail to the document itself instead of in the system.
  • Price: HelloSign has an option where you can send three documents every month for free, and no other option had this although DocuSign lets you sign unlimited documents others send to you for free.
  • Bonus: 
  • HelloSign has a nifty integration for signing docs directly in Gmail and GoogleDocs that is worth checking out.
  • RightSignature has integration with Citrix Sharefile if you use that for your cloud storage.

 

 

Conclusion

All things considered, DocuSign was the best solution for the way I valued each of the above features. If you look at this and have questions, don’t hesitate to ask. You can also click here to download the model used to do this analysis. By forcing you to be explicit about what’s most important to you, you make a better decision in the end.


Good or bad, let me know what you think in the comments!

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Filed Under: Technology

November 29, 2013 by Eric Butts Leave a Comment

Why on earth would Facebook value Snapchat at $3B?

I recently found out via Twitter during #Blogchat (thanks +rhonda hurwitz!) that Facebook offered to buy Snapchat for $3B. In case you don’t know what Snapchat is (read: you’re old), it’s yet another social network which allows you to send messages and pictures with an expiration date up to 10 seconds in the future.
I can’t tell you what was intended but Snapchat seems to serve two purposes. First, it allows you to send silly, possibly embarassing pics to friends without the fear of it going viral on the interwebs. Second, it allows horny teenagers (and adults) to send “nudes” to each other without fear of it going viral on the interwebs. Snapchat  attempted to make it a challenge to screenshot snapchats but based on what I’ve also learned from Twitter, that challenge was conquered fairly easily quite some time ago. So if you don’t want your junk or lady parts scattered all over the world wide web, you might want to think twice before clicking send on that steamy photo to the person you met 18 min ago. 

My first question was why would anyone in their right mind do such a thing. My second question was how does someone running Snapchat pass on such a ridiculously generous offer. After letting my impulse response subside, I thought it’d be interesting to try to figure out a scenario where I wouldn’t take $3B for an application with seemingly limited long-term value. So let’s try to piece together what Facebook might be thinking.

Option 1: Acquire Snapchat for its assets


I suppose you could argue the biggest asset Snapchat has to offer is intellectual property and it’s mailing list. So let’s assume for a moment that Snapchat makes no money for the foreseeable future, so advertising revenue is off the table, which leaves Snapchat with little more than it’s user base to offer Facebook. The number I keep seeing through around on various sites online is that 26 million users in the U.S., so let’s make it 25 million for ease of calculations that will follow in this post.  

So for the sake of argument, let’s assume Facebook just wants access to Snapchat users and their email addresses. That would make each email address worth $120 each. They can probably find better return on investment than this purchase; I know I’d give up my email address for less than $120.

Option 2: Acquire Snapchat for current cash inflow + future potential


Snapchat isn’t going much in the way of generating revenue at the moment but again let’s take a look at this from Facebook’s perspective. Now, the most common way to value a company by using a multiple based on valuation of established companies that provide a similar service. There are different multiples people look at to value companies but for this discussion I’m going to use the Price/Earning (P/E) multiple. I chose this one because 1) I think it carries the most weight in practice and 2) it’s the easiest to understand. Everyone knows stock price and everyone knows earnings per share (EPS).

If you’re not a numbers person, this is your cue to bow out gracefully…

After getting intrigued by this, I started to do some light research and here are some interesting facts based on a few minutes I spent on yahoo finance:
  • Technology sector has a P/E multiple of 22.03
  • Information service provide industry = 41.50
  • Yahoo = 23.26
  • Google = 28.08
I excluded Facebook because I don’t think it’s established enough in the market to be a reliable comparison point, but if you’re wondering, its P/E is currently 118.24. Additionally, Snapchat doesn’t provide the same breadth of service as Yahoo or Google so I included a discounted P/E of 15 as another reference point. 

You’ll see in the graphic below I made some assumptions about usage of Snapchat and assumed ads are attached to all “snaps” that go out.

Snapchat $3 Billion Valuation
Like many other tech companies, looks like Snapchat is grossly overvalued

Even with the conservative estimates, ads are pricey (impression ads are sold by the 1,000 for the price I calculated above for an individual impression), and once you consider the fact that the ads have a 10 second shelf-life AND the primary audience (call it 18-29) probably isn’t prone to buying on a whim from a phone ad, Snapchat should’ve taken that deal and run as fast they could. 

Amazing what greed does to the human brain.

Think I’m missing something here? Let me know in the comments.

Filed Under: Technology

June 15, 2013 by Eric Butts 2 Comments

Another Chance at a Free (for life) Box 50GB Account

Box 50 GB Promotion

I’ve got some good news for Box fans. Many people showed interest when they saw my post comparing Box to Dropbox (read it here) and a subsequent post on why Box was giving away 50GB free for life (read it here). Well as it turns out, Box is at it again and running several promotions involving free cloud storage.

This time the promotion is targeted toward varoious platform users (iOS though). You can see the details from Box below:

Android:

  • LG phones and tablets: Download Box for Android on your device and sign in to get a 50GB upgrade automatically. Valid through 12/31/13. Get more details.
  • Sony Xperia devices: Download Box for Android on your smartphone or tablet and log in to get a 50GB upgrade automatically. Valid through 12/31/13. Get more details.

Windows 8:

  • HP devices: Anyone that logs in or signs up for an account from the Box for Windows 8 app on any HP Win 8 laptop, desktop, or tablet will receive free lifetime storage upgrades plus Box Sync. 50GB of storage is available on HP ENVY, Spectre, ElitePad 900, or EliteBook Revolve Win 8 devices, or 25GB for all other HP Win8 devices. Valid through 12/31/14. Get more details.
  • Dell devices: Any user that logs in or signs up for an account from Box for Windows 8 on any Dell Windows 8 device will receive a free 25GB Box account plus Box Sync. Valid through 11/21/15. Get more details.
  • Samsung ATIV Tab: Any user that logs in or signs up for Box from the preloaded Box for Windows 8 app on any Samsung ATIV Tab device will receive a free 50GB Box account. Valid through the end of life for the device. Get more details.

RIM:

  • BlackBerry 10 devices: Any user that creates a new account at www.box.com/bb10 will receive a free 10GB account. Valid through 12/31/13. Get more details. 

I don’t know if you read this list the same way I did but it kind of looks like another indicator that RIM won’t be around much longer but I digress…

While the promos don’t always work exactly as designed from a self-service standpoint (I’ve had to contact Box multiple times to follow-up on their promotion to invite family and friends), their customer service will take care of you and make sure your account is super-sized.

Happy cloud surfing!

Filed Under: Technology

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