The Green Apple Blog

Many lessons can be learned from Google’s hiring and recruiting practices. Consider this:

• Keep em’ Fed: They have 11 FREE gourmet cafes
• Keep em’ Healthy: There are gyms, massages, language classes, and more for the body and mind.
• Errands at Work? Google takes care of some basic health care, laundry, hair cuts and other needs

How can you apply this to your business?

• Hire a concierge service, for around $25-$35/hr like this one in Jacksonville - East Coast Concierge. (we did their web site).
• Do something that is not too expensive and unexpected - like pay for a haircut, a massage, etc…
• Give employees some flexibility to run errands on the job. You should be measuring them by productivity, not by how long they sat in their office chair!

Check this amazing video from CNN, scroll down in this blog post.

The web is all about sharing information. The things you received for free you should spread for free. This excellent web statistics package falls in that category. 

Some time ago, Google bought Urchin web analytics software. It allowed you to track number of visitors, from what search engines and keywords, and so much more. From what I understand, Urchin used to cost upwards of $500/mo. Google aquires it, improves it, and releases it for free. It is a snap to install on any website, not taking any more than 15 minutes for your webmaster to put on there.

Learn more about Google Analytics here.

You can’t read any business magazine these days without stumbling over the term “web 2.0″. So what is it? The covers of Newsweek and Forbes feature sites like myspace.com, wikipedia.org, and youtube.com; which have mushroomed into household names. You may have even stumbled across some cutting edge sites like zillow.com or noticed that your webmail (Hotmail, Yahoo, AOL) feels a lot more like using a Microsoft Office program than the simple web pages they were a couple of year ago.

So just what is this new face of the Internet? In a nutshell web 2.0 represents the second generation of the Internet that features social networking, user driven content, and the shift to the Internet as a platform for every business. Below is a quick whirlwind tour of web 2.0:

For your web 2.0 education, check out these sites:

• The official web2.0 definition on wikipedia.org (a web 2.0 site)
• The shift to the Internet as a key business platform explained by Tim O’Reilly who coined the term in 2003.

To experience web 2.0 check out these sites (there are many to choose from, but these are particularly noteworthy):

• Discover the best Internet sites with ease using StumbleUpon.
• How much did your friend pay for their new big house? Try zillow.com.
• Use this comprehensive list of many web 2.0 applications at go2web20.net.