Web Simple

Welcome to Web Simple — a blog for those who want to get more out of the Internet. This blog is designed to help you tap into all the great resources across the Internet that can help you get more things done. There are a ton of power tools, resources, and handy applications (most of which are free) that exist across the Internet that few people use. This is mostly because you have to be a virtual Sherlock Holmes to find them.

We’ll do the work for you. Our team will go out and find all the useful tools and tidbits and bring them here. Aside from great tools, we also will talk about what emerging technologies are on the horizon that will be sure to impact your life. All of this is written in plain English for the non-techie.

Who should read this Blog?

This blog is for the people who are comfortable with the Internet, but are by no means experts. It’s for the average person who wants to find ways to use the Internet as a toolbox to get more stuff done. If you still have someone print out your e-mails, and don’t know what an iPhone app is, this site probably is not for you. On the other hand, if you do Google searches, use the Internet for for work and fun, but wonder if there are better tools out there, then this is your spot.

What will I see on this blog?

The blog is split into three main sections: Home, Tools, and Over the Horizon.

• Home – All of our posts appear on the “Home” page; it’s one spot for everything.
• Tools – The “Tools” page filters the blog posts down to just those that feature useful Internet tools you can use to be more productive. Think of it as a toolbox.
• Over the Horizon – The “Over the Horizon” page filters posts down to just those that deal with emerging technologies. These posts are usually chock full of references and stats, so you can look cutting edge when speaking to friends, family or clients.

Other Cool Stuff

We’ve thrown in a few other features to help  you along:

• uPost – Most of our posts have a comments section, but if you have more to say than fits in a comment (or if you you want to talk about something that was not in a post), we set up a way for you to submit a post. What we really did was re-jigger a contact form, but it should do the job. Fill in you post and send it in. We’ll copy and paste your post into the main feed, under “guest blogger.” (We’ll be sure to give you credit in the body of the post. Please don’t send any spam or anything inappropriate to post. If you submit often enough, we might ask you to become a regular contributor.)
• Toolbox Wiki – We set up a wiki page for web tools. We left this as an open way for anyone to post new, useful tools. The wiki isn’t technically part of the blog, but you can link to it from the side-bar navigation.
• Resources - We listed a few links to useful resources (e.g. Internet dictionary, Texting Terms) on the right sidebar. As we come up with other useful resources we’ll post them as well.
• Tags - We’ve created a tag cloud to help you find articles you care about more quickly. If you aren’t familiar with Tag clouds, don’t worry, we’ll probably have a post about them. The short hand is that they are quick filtering system based on key words we associate with a blog post. So, if you want to filter to just the articles about mobile devices, just click on the “mobile” tab and you’ll see them all. The bigger the font size, the more blog posts (relatively speaking) relate to the key word.
• RSS – If you want to follow us via RSS, just click on the RSS button and copy the link into your RSS reader (again, we’ll probably have an article about RSS).

Who are you yuck-yucks?

Who’s writing the blog? Well, we’re small band of self-designated Internet power users. We’re not technical, but we all have a lot of experience using the Internet to get things done. Some of us are married (see Gretchen and Ian) and some of us just argue like old married couples. Here’s a quick list of us with links to our LinkedIn pages.

• Ian Bramson -  Ian brings 15 years of experience in strategic planning,  organizational development, marketing and communications. He honed his strategic vision as a Senior Consultant at Toffler Associates; Futurists Alvin and Heidi Toffler’s Executive Advisory firm. Ian also brings deep experience to the team from his days with Coca-Cola and consulting fortune 50 technology companies on their marketing, sales and organizational development efforts. Ian started a social web company called Balaya, a software development company dedicated to bringing Internet users a broad set of capabilities to connect them to their groups, in one spot, and in a private, secure online environment. During football season, Ian can be found manning his grill and offering “advice” to the television.
• Gretchen von Iderstein Bramson -  Gretchen brings 20 years of experience in business planning, organizational development, workforce efficiency and operations.  She helped found Balaya, and is its current COO. She has an accomplished record of success consulting technology companies on sales force efficiency, managing corporate and product launches, as well as founding a successful firm specializing in strategic planning, communications and business launches. When she’s not busy with clients, you can find Gretchen in her backyard garden growing way too many tomatoes.
• Brian Drake - Brian Drake is a Staff Officer and social software evangelist with the Department of Defense. Previously, he was a Manager with Deloitte Consulting advising government and commercial clients on a wide variety of collaboration solutions that span behavioral, technical, and organizational change dynamics. His client focus areas included strategy development, innovation strategy, communications, change management, and Enterprise 2.0 solutions. He previously served the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) as the A-Space Program Manager. Prior to this assignment he served the ODNI on the Collaboration Consulting Team. He is one of the founders of D.Wiki; Deloitte’s global enterprise wiki.
• Bob Nunnally – Bob brings 26+ years of international and domestic operational experience. He co-founded Balaya and is its current CEO.  Bob served in a number of senior leader positions in the US Air Force and as a Senior Consultant at Toffler Associates, the Executive Advisory firm founded by Futurists Alvin and Heidi Toffler. Bob has deep experience building award-winning organizations and in developing successful tech solutions for communication and content management. Bob’s primary claim to fame is he grew up with comedian Jeff Foxworthy and lived to talk about it.
• Seth Michalak -  A veteran of marketing and customer service in the cable TV industry and higher education, Seth brings a strong background in marketing and broadcast communications to Web Simple.  Seth is also a former DJ and sportscaster. A native of Western New York, Seth is still waiting for that Bills’ or Sabres’ championship.
• Raq Winchester – Raq is a social media evolutionary with 17 years of international government experience and 20 years of online social and emerging technology experience.  She currently works for NavStar as a thought leader for Intellipedia, promoting Gov2.0 principles and capabilities.  She is known for aggregating the amusing and questionable from the farthest reaches of the Internet.  When she’s not channeling the key lines of the information age, Raq enjoys gaming, painting, and sarcasm…and she’s only six degrees of separation from you.  Follow Raq on Twitter @m3ta4.

We hope you enjoy the blog, and lease let us know how we can make it better (just use the uPost form).

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