Why couldn’t they just put a “transfer” option under the “applications” tab in iTunes?

Here is quick and easy way to transfer apps to your computer:

1. Right click your iPhone on the left side of iTunes.

2. Select “Transfer Purchases”

Those sneaky buggers at Apple!

Dimension Four Painting Inc. is a commercial and industrial painting business located in West Michigan. Their focus is on hospitals, schools, factories, and office buildings.

LongerDays.com was hired to provide virtual assistance with general internet tasks such as website maintenance and basic search engine optimization.

Over the past year of working together, we ave developed a great relationship with Jay Thornton from American Gymnast. On a daily basis, we help process orders, keep up with basic book keeping, take calls from customers,  and coordinate shipments or order changes with distributors. This daily interaction has given us a “behind the scenes” look at how Jay runs his business, and I feel completely comfortable saying that American Gymnast is the place to buy gymnastics equipment online.

As a World Championship Team Member, Goodwill Games Medalist, and Olympic Trials Qualifier, Jay provides the customers of American Gymnast with access to knowledge and experience that can rarely be matched by any other gymnastic equipment suppliers.

We helped Jay put together a web page specifically geared towards answering customer questions. You can view it by clicking this image:

In the course of processing thousands of orders, there have naturally been a few snags. On the rare occasions that there is a problem, or an order is delayed, we have watched Jay do a Back 2 1/2 twists punch front to make sure his customers are happy. American Gymnast employs plenty of customer support staff, so when things do go wrong customers are not waiting on hold for 20 minutes to find out the status of their order. In general there is no wait time, and all customer service employees are English speaking Americans.

In addition to our daily responsibilities, we help Jay with projects, and special promotions. These ads were run in USA Gymnastics Magazine:

Jay’s passion for the sport of gymnastics and his honesty as a business owner has earned the respect of everyone at LongerDays who on his projects. If my own children become interested in gymnastics I will happily purchase everything they need from American Gymnast. You should too!

PS: Did you ever wonder if gymnasts closed their eyes or left them open when they were doing all those spins and flips? If they keep them open wouldn’t they get dizzy watching the room spin around? If they close them  how would they see the floor to land?

After being sworn into the gymnasts club of secrecy … Jay told me the answer to this age-old question!

I’m happy to announce another client of LongerDays.com: Sue White, a business coach based out of the great state of Texas!

Sue’s particular Virtual Assistance needs focus around website maintenance, such as opt-in forms, newsletters, custom codes and mini sites. We’ve also been researching online marketing opportunities.

Feel free to take a stroll around her website.

A client recently asked us to design a “newsletter” postcard for his business. This is a postcard that lets your customers know what is happening in your business, special deals that are being offered, etc.

Post cards, being what they are, don’t offer a lot of space to put your news, so it is important to utilize as much “real estate” as possible. When the space on the front of the postcard was used up, we started to look at what we could do with the back…

What can you do to the back of a postcard? How do you know the United States Postal Service will deliver it? If 250 custom designed post cards show up on our client’s doorstep stamped “RETURN TO SENDER” I can be sure it will be the end of our relationship!

Will the post card below be delivered? Can the return address be so far to the right? What are the rules about Colors?

We researched to find the answers to these questions, and this is what we put together:

In the future, there will be no “WiFi hotspots” – there will simply be WiFi, everywhere you go. To my children, the absence of internet access will be as strange as it would be for me to turn on the radio and hear nothing but static on every channel. If that happened I would assume my radio was broken!

Don’t believe me? Well the future is fast approaching. A client  in London recently asked us to find a way to create a personal, WiFi hot spot. One that will follow you wherever you go. This is what we found out:

MiFi Device:

Link: http://www.three.co.uk/Mobile_Broadband/MiFi

Get wireless internet whenever you want with MiFi. The  mobile Wi-Fi dongle works with anything Wi-Fi enabled, connects up to five devices at once, and fits in your pocket. Take it everywhere.

Speed:
Maximum – 3.6Mbps
Average – 2.8 Mbps

The company is currently investing millions in their 3G network.
Future theoretical speeds are predicted to reach 7.2Mbps!

Key Features:
- Fits in your pocket.
- No wires, no installation
- Get online with up to five devices at once.
- Macworld Awards 2010 winner.

Price:
Pay As You Go. From £49.99
Pay Monthly. From £39.99

Monthly cost after setup:
15GB Plan – £22
5GB Plan – £15
1GB Plan – £9.50

iPhone Internet Tethering

Using your iPhone for an Internet access point is another option. Tethering is the use of a mobile device such as an iPhone to supply Internet access for another device which is otherwise unconnected. This is made possible by using Bluetooth, or a USB cable.

Tethering will allow you to connect your iPhone to your laptop, your iPhone will act as the Internet access point.

iPhone Tethering Speeds (3G):
Average download speeds – 1.69 Mbps
Average upload speeds – 0.35Mbps

Key Features:
- Service will be provided through your cellular network so unlike other options (MiFi, O2 Broadband) you will have a single monthly bill instead of two.
- Use your iPhone – No additional equipment to carry, (or drop, break, lose ect.)

Monthly Price:
~ £10

Enable tethering on your iPhone:
On your iPhone, Go to Settings > General > Network > Internet Tethering

Click Internet tethering; from there simply follow the iPhones setup process. You may be prompted to call your service provider so you can be informed of billing information.

O2 Mobile Broadband

Link: http://www.o2.co.uk/broadband/mobile/

Overview:
Get unlimited access to 7,500 Wi-Fi hotspots through The Cloud & BT Openzone in places like McDonalds and Starbucks – that’s on top of the data allowance in your chosen package.

Speed:
Up to 1.8Mbps — increased to 3.2Mbps in June, and up to 7.2 Mbps later in the year.

Features:
- USB dongle – Connects directly to your computer

Drawbacks:
This will provide Internet access to only one computer at a time. This does not create a Wifi hotspot.

500MB + Unlimited Wi-Fi (30 days) – £5.00
1GB + Unlimited Wi-Fi (30 days) – £10.00
2GB + Unlimited Wi-Fi (30 days) – £15.00

LongerDays.com is not affiliated with any of the services or devices listed above.

We are pleased to welcome Jason Goorman as a new client of LongerDays.com!

Jason is an entrepreneur who is developing a state-wide competition in Michigan. LongerDays.com is assisting with the creative and legal process, as well as building the website Unemployed-Entertainment.com.

We’re excited to be involved with the project!

Overview:

When search engines like Google or Bing scan sites, they look through the code to find the content. Oftentimes, a website might look great, however the underlying code can be unreadable to search engines resulting in them skipping over the site. Thesis helps prevent this from happening!

1. No coding required.

2.  Thesis presents a highly optimized readable code to the search engines, while still allowing you to customize your website to your own needs.

3. Thesis also offers built-in SEO options, so without any code, you can input tags, meta descriptions, meta keywords, etc.

4. Thesis comes with lifetime upgrades.

5.  Thesis is easily navigated and edited via two control panels, allowing you to set up the layout of your content and change design options with all clicks and no code.

6. The efficient coding of Thesis not improves the SEO of www.Your-Website.com, but it can also help make it more efficient all around.

7. Using the built-in design options of thesis, you can keep the Thesis “theme” but change the outward appearance of your website without having to worry about sacrificing your SEO.

8. The site you are currently at uses Thesis, so if you arrived here from a search engine….. point made.

9. Thesis provides an awesome tutorial/support section that you can access here: http://diythemes.com/thesis/tutorials/

10. And the big finish!?! At LongerDays.com… we wouldn’t steer you wrong! I know, I know, that is a cop out. But I’m late for dinner and my wife doesn’t care how cool her geeky husband thinks Thesis is!

For this project, our client needed assistance summarizing “counts” on an ongoing basis. We would take the raw data provided by the client, and insert it into a standard Excel template. This made the raw data much more readable, and aesthetically pleasing.

Initially, we completed this work by hand, manually searching, then entering the data into Excel. However it didn’t take long before we came up with a more efficient way:

To view the following video in a larger window, click here.

To view this video in a larger window, click here.

Summarizing a full count by hand would take us about 25 minutes. As the video shows, this work can now be finished in just a few seconds. Considering that we only bill our clients for the time it takes us to finish a task, some might say that we have just shot ourselves in the foot… but we don’t really feel that way.

The sappy truth is that to us being honest, and keeping our clients best interest in mind is more important than anything else.

It’s been such a great experience to work with Manisha! Every conversation with her seems to leave me with a smile on my face. The work we have helped Manisha get done has been a run of the mill variety of virtual assistant tasks.

Basic things like:
- Uploading YouTube videos of Manisha’s television appearances on PBS, CNBC, CNN, ABC, Fox, ect.
- Researching the best online backup services.

To more complicated tasks like:
- Adding hidden fields to Manisha’s various newsletter sign up locations, which makes it possible to keep track of where her subscribers are joining from.
- Using FileMaker Pro relational databases to automatically tag newsletter contacts into groups.

Here are a few kind words from Manisha:

“…in one month [LongerDays oversaw] literally 6 months of “backlog” work I could not get anyone else to do. I have found every single piece of communication with [LongerDays] to be professional, timely, detail-oriented, responsive”

“If every single piece of my business worked as smoothly as my interaction with Longer Days, ahhh…. what a beautiful life that would be. And huge kudos should go to Chad – he really has been an ABSOLUTE delight to work with.”