Blogging

Crucial Firefox Plugins For SEM Professionals; Put Google To Work To Meet CPA Goals by Search Engine Land

Josh Dreller reviews seventeen helpful Firefox plugins, such as FireFTP (a fully functional and free FTP client that runs within Firefox), FireShot (a free screenshot capture tool with annotation capabilities), SearchStatus (a “Swiss army knife” for SEO pros) and Google Global (lets you search as though you were sitting anywhere in the world).

6 All-in-One Tools for Quick SEO Diagnostics by Search Engine Journal

Prolific SEO blogger Ann Smarty reviews a half-dozen SEO diagnostics tools including Quarkbase (a new addition to my arsenal), HubSpot’s Website Grader (one I use all the time), and Cubestat.

17 Online Free Web Based Applications That You Probably Would Love To Use! by SmashingApps

AN Jay reviews a variety of helpful and cool online tools here, from free web conferencing service Dimdim and URL shortener BudURL to Skydeck (an online tool for keeping track of your cell phone calls and text messages) and PDFescape, a free online PDF reader / editor / form filler and form designer tool.

Previous posts in this series:

Best of 2008: SEO Guidance, Part 1
Best of 2008: Interactive PR, Part 1
Best of 2008: SEO Tools, Part 1
Best of 2008: Search Engine Marketing
Best of 2008: Web Analytics
Best of 2008: Email Marketing Tips
Best of 2008: SEO Keyword Tips & Tools
Best of 2008: Sales & Marketing Copywriting
Best of 2008: SEO Link Building
Best of 2008: Website Design
Best of 2008: WordPress Tools and Tips
Best of 2008: Web & SEO Copywriting
Best of 2008: SEO Guidance, Part 2
Best of 2008: Social Media Optimization, Part 1
Best of 2008: AdWords Tips and Tactics, Part 1
Best of 2008: SEO Tools, Part 2
Best of 2008: SEM Landing Pages
Best of 2008: Blogging for Business, Part 1
Best of 2008: Interactive PR, Part 2
Best of 2008: SEO Guidance, Part 3
Best of 2008: Social Media Optimization, Part 2
Best of 2008: AdWords Tips and Tactics, Part 2
Best of 2008: Strategy and Branding, Part 1
Best of 2008: Cool Web Tools, Part 1
Best of 2008: Blogging for Business, Part 2
Best of 2008: Random but Interesting, Part 1
Best of 2008: SEO Guidance, Part 4
Best of 2008: Social Media Optimization, Part 3
Best of 2008: Strategy and Branding, Part 2

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Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentralDOTcom

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Best of 2008: Cool Web Tools, Part 2

Skydeck is just one company using the in-box metaphor to manage text messages and voicemail.

(Credit: Screenshot by Jessica Dolcourt/CNET)

In the tech world, if you can’t beat ‘em, you can always join ‘em, or at least integrate their service into yours. This is the approach that mobile phone manager Skydeck is taking with Google Voice, and it’s a good one.

When we demoed Skydeck in April, it struck us as a useful service for managing your contacts, calls, and voicemail online as you would your e-mail. Never mind that its online interface isn’t as slick or easy to use as competitors’ services (like RocketVox or Dashwire). And like its technological cohort, we figured Skydeck was surely in danger of having its users swallowed up by Google Voice once that behemoth of a calling service opened up to all.

Skydeck’s solution, unveiled earlier this week, is to integrate partial support for Google Voice. The gist is that you keep your original cell phone number
(which otherwise you would have to change to use Google Voice). Skydeck will forward your missed calls to Google Voice, which can then route them to your other phones (landline, work, etc.) for you to pick up. If someone leaves a message, Skydeck can still log the voicemail with its service. You’ll lose Google Voice’s call blocking and routing features, but you can retain its voicemail in-box and automated voice-to-text transcriptions. There’s a video to explain it more here.

The mashup lets you use Skydeck’s core features for free while gaining Google Voice’s transcription service. Skydeck is otherwise happy to sell you its own $15 premium voicemail transcription. As that’s powered by SpinVox, the cost comes from employing human helpers, versus Google’s machine transcription.

Skydeck’s offer won’t appeal to all. Even in closed beta, Google Voice, which was once the GrandCentral service, already gathers many of Skydeck’s features and more, and if your goal is to take advantage of Google Voice’s offer to replace three numbers, say, with one new number, then using your old mobile phone number with Skydeck while adding a new Google Voice number isn’t going to sound like much of a deal. You’ll wind up with one extra number, not one less. Yet if you’re not a fan of Google Voice’s current setup (reviewed)–which has you sign up for a new number and routes outbound calls through their service–but you still like the idea of free voicemail transcriptions and call-forwarding to multiple phones, then this could be a happy medium.

Skydeck is available for Windows Mobile 6.x, Android, and BlackBerry phones running version 4.2 of the operating system or higher. Skydeck and Google Voice are currently available in the U.S.

More:
Skydeck mobile in-box mashes in Google Voice

Skydeck makes a very cool product, but it is destined for smallness

The product: It’s a service the mobile phone carriers can use to make their Web pages actually useful for their customers. Instead of just showing a bunch of marketing pitches and the minutiae of the customer’s bill, a Skydeck-powered site shows phone users who they talk to, either in chronological order or by frequency, and in an extremely comprehensible format. For users whose phones have the necessary software enabled (SyncML), it will also let them manage their phone address books.

A better phone bill.

(Credit: Skydeck)

Add-ons for social network sites let users coordinate their online networks with their phone’s dialing directory. Very useful.

Why the business won’t work: Because CEO Jason Devitt is angry at his potential customers, and makes no bones about it in public or in front of Congress. At the Supernova conference yesterday, his presentation had a visible effect on the gentleman from Verizon I was sitting next to. “Carrier sites suck,” Devitt said, and the guy next to me took sharp notice. “There oughta be a law,” that makes the sites more useful, he continued, and the Verizon rep just started shaking his head.

Devitt is right, of course. The mobile carriers don’t leverage the Web. They’re certainly not wise in the ways of Facebook. But being right is one battle; running a business is another. It’s one thing for a guy like me to say that the carriers suck at Internet. I’m not trying to get contracts with them. Devitt is — or should be. He might win over end users one by one, but success for Skydeck lies in the big deals. It’s going to be a long road to winning those giant carrier contracts if he keeps insulting potential customers and attacking their lobbyists in front of congress.

Here is Devitt’s articulate 2007 rant to Congress:

See also:
Braving the telecom lobbyist backlash, by Jason Devitt for News.com
Skydeck API: Turn Your Phone Bill Into a Facebook Application (Mashable)

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Skydeck’s cool mobile phone book site being undone by its CEO