Bnpositives Blog

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Use LinkTiger to Hunt for Broken Links

I’ve been doing at least some kind of web development work now for around 13 years. It started with nothing real official, just a new computer and this thing called the world wide web. I wanted to get some personal space out there somewhere and decided to teach myself HTML and web publishing.

LinkTiger

In all that time of development one of the things you always had to pay attention to is making sure your links on your web pages were always valid. Whether you’re linking to content within your own site, or linking out to other pages a broken link is more than useless, it’s annoying! If the Internet’s not about connectivity and linking, then what’s it really about?

The LinkTiger website and service lets you enter the URL for your site and it will run out there and hunt down any broken links on your site.

Haven’t you ever clicked on an interesting hyperlink and got a "page-not-found" error? That was very annoying, wasn’t it? Can you imagine how many customers have left that website in that way? LinkTiger.com alerts you on those broken links, so you can have it fixed, before your customer sees it.

Just like LinkTiger says about their own service, let’s face it, if you get a dead-link while you’re surfing a website you’re pretty irritated right? Most of the time do you really start trying to figure out what’s wrong with the site itself, or do you go somewhere else looking for the answer? I’d say the latter. Use LinkTiger to help keep your visitors successfully enjoying your website longer!

Uncover all those broken links on your websites with LinkTiger.

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FlowBreeze Brings Flowcharts Into Excel

When working in business there’s going to come a point where you’re probably going to need to put together some kind of flow chart. Flow charts are used for a few different reasons, the most common of which is probably documenting some type of business process.

flowbreeze-excel-flowcharts

The other common use of a flow chart in business is for putting together an organizational chart for an organization. Listing employees and lines of reporting between individuals can be a helpful little guide.

The challenge is that not everyone may have a program like Microsoft Visio in your office that you can use to put together a flow chart. It is highly likely that you and just about everyone else in your office will have Microsoft Excel though.

The 3rd party application, "FlowBreeze" from BreezeTree Software gives you the ability to build flowcharts within and share them with Microsoft Excel.

FlowBreeze is a Microsoft® Excel® add-in that automates the flowcharting process by converting your text into flowcharts. FlowBreeze lets you create flowcharts by just typing. You simply type in each flowchart step, and press <Enter>. The text is replaced by a flow chart symbol. Formatting is applied, symbols are aligned, and a connector is added automatically.

The FlowBreeze software works with versions of Excel going back to Office 2000 running on Windows XP, Windows Vista or Windows 2000. You can download a 30-day trial version of the software to give it a try. All the features are available in the trial. After that you can either purchase the basic version of the software for $39.95 or the standard version for $59.95.

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I’m A Blindy Award Nominee

I just can’t help but say it. You know you’re expecting it!

"You LOVE ME! You REALLY LOVE ME!"

jim-carrey-the-mask

This week is the 2nd Annual Blog Indiana conference on Thursday and Friday here in Indianapolis. This is a great event and if you’re in the area at all you should plan on registering and attending. It’s well worth the price for the information and opportunity to network with bloggers from all over Indiana.

As part of the events this year they’ve started the Blindy Awards, which are awards to recognize area bloggers in a variety of different categories.

The 2009 BLINDY Awards will recognize Indiana’s best blogs, bloggers, and social media magnates for their efforts across a spectrum of categories. Help put your favorite blogs & bloggers in the Hoosier spotlight by voting!

I found out over the weekend that I’ve been nominated in three different categories for some of my work in the blogosphere.

  • Best Social Network / Local Blog for I Choose Indy
    • I started writing on this blog as I transitioned out of another blog I was writing about Indianapolis. Working with Douglas Karr and Pat Coyle on this project has been a great experience. I’m not the only writer on this site so it’s not "my" award by any means. Up against some serious competition with the Smaller Indiana website as well.
  • Best Business Blog for Indianapolis Convention and Visitors Association blog
    • Again, I’m not the only one responsible for the work on this site. Casey Mullins and I were recently brought on to help write some content for the city. Other staff members also regularly contribute to the site. Another great partnership and it’s great to see the work being noticed by others.
  • Best Hoosier Blogger for =) Bnpositive’s Blog
    • This is by far the biggest honor for me. I can’t imagine this being for my blogging on my personal blog as this one has quite a bit of dust collecting on it. The challenge these days is I’m so busy blogging on a variety of other websites that hopefully that’s where the recognition is coming for on this one. I’m absolutely ecstatic about his nomination and honored to even be included on the list.

I’d love to blast all my social networks letting people know about this honor and ask them to vote for me on these awards. There’s part of me that I feel would belittle that honor though. I want to receive votes from people who really know my work and are readers and hopefully that’s what will happen. May truly the best blog and blogger win!