You have probably seen this video and heard about it from multiple sources. A homeless man in Columbus, Ohio named Ted Williams is recorded using “his God-given gift of voice”. The video is posted on Youtube on January 3rd, then begins the viral spread.

January 3: Original video is first posted on Youtube. It begins to spread initially through Facebook according to the Youtube video stats.

January 4: Less than a full day in and already over 2 million views on Youtube. Everyone and their mom is on Facebook so naturally news organizations pick up on it. Then the bloggers and the internet echo chamber is in effect.

January 5: Williams appears on a local radio morning show where he is offered a voice over job with the Cleveland Cavaliers as well as a house.

AOL News detailed his job offers:

• The Cleveland Cavaliers: A representative of the Cavs called into “The Morning Zoo” on WNCI, a local Ohio station, this morning to offer Williams a full-time voice-over job and a house.
• The NFL: No offer has been made yet, but a director of post-production from the NFL told The Columbus Dispatch, “My boss said to me: ‘If you don’t get him hired, you’re fired.’ … I can’t make any guarantees, but I’d love to get him some work.”
• The Ohio Credit Union League: Also on WNCI this morning, Williams was offered a $10,000 opportunity to do voice-over work for the Ohio Credit Union League, pending a background check.
• MTV: Someone claiming to be from MTV called into “The Morning Zoo” to say that they’d love to work with Williams.
• ESPN: According to WNCI, ESPN has expressed interest in Williams, too.
• Radio: A Pennsylvania radio station is apparently interested in Williams.
• Giving back: The television station WBNS-TV wants to use Williams as a narrator for One Day To End Homelessness, a telethon planned for Jan. 31.

January 6 – As of this posting the video has nearly 12 million views but has been taken down claiming “This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Zeiger, Tigges”. There goes lawyers to ruin all the fun.

Quote on Youtube from the guy who took the video:

“Well everyone. You can give yourselves and Ted a high-five. He’s being given offers hand-over-fist over the air. He’ll be set for life.”

Behold the power of the Internet. Homeless on the street corner Tuesday. Flown to New York to appear on TV shows Thursday. Not bad.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

We all use email in our daily lives to do business but are you making the most of it?

Get to the point

Most professionals are busy and receive many emails a day. The reader needs to know the action requested of them right away. Be clear with the purpose of your email. Remember these questions when composing your email:

• Why are you emailing this person?
• What do you want them to do next?
• Why should they care?
• What’s in it for them?

Put the “call to action” near the top and don’t bury it below a paragraph or two of introduction. (e.g. “This project needs approval from you by Thursday” or “Can you call Joe and handle the details of this project?”) Don’t let the reader skim and lose the important purpose of the email.

Don’t neglect the subject line

Write concise descriptive subjects. Make it easy on the reader to gather a good idea of the content before even opening the email. Include a point of action if you can. (e.g. “Decision needed on proposal by Monday.”)
If you change topics in a reply, change the header subject. Reading an email with the subject “Re: Re: D.C. Trip” a month later on something completely unrelated because the sender replied to an old email is not productive and may get lost.

Keep your subject lines short but not too short. Most email clients cut off the subject line after 40-50 characters anyway. Be concise but not vague. Good subject: “Your October Website Stats”; Bad subject: “Here you go.”

Be concise

Have a clear goal for the email. Don’t ask too many questions at once. The responder won’t know where to start and what is most important for them to decide on now.

When forwarding an email state why you forwarded it instead of leaving it blank or saying, “See below”. E.g. “I thought you might be interested in what Mary has to say about the purchase.”

When adding a link or URL for someone to go to be descriptive on what it is. If the link is really long then use the hyperlink button that is built into most email clients to add a descriptive sentence instead.

Name your file attachments. Just because you like to name your file “JIMMY’S NoTeS (1) (2) ver3-2 edited by Mike and then Carol on tuesday.docx” doesn’t mean your recipient needs that. Attachments will download as they were named. Try instead to rename your files to something more useful for the recipient that will be saved on their computer.

Proofread

Take twenty seconds to read your email aloud in your head. I know that’s contradictory but even mouthing it to your self will catch something poorly written.

Shorter is better

After writing your email look over it and see if you can cut down the length. Just include important points and cut out unnecessary wording. Simplify sentences and don’t run on too long. Try using bullet points but don’t go overboard. Bold important words or phrases but not too much. People skim online, they don’t read. Make it easy for them.

Shrink your signature

Your signature doesn’t need to be ten times longer than your message. Don’t clutter the bottom of every email message. Don’t double-space every line. Be careful with using an image in your signature. Keep it as small as possible and link it via HTML. Sometimes copy and pasting it in will send an attachment of your logo jpeg to everyone you email.  Remember, people are going to have to scroll by your mammoth signature in a long thread of email replies so make it easier on everyone.

Be wary of tone

If your email may be misinterpreted or construed as negative, it will. Emails almost always come across with a bit of an attitude since you don’t have tone of voice. Jokes barely work either. Keep that in mind.

Pick up the phone

More amicable business gets done over the phone anyway.

When we turn on our computers most of us go straight to the browser and on to the internet. We can now do more than ever without installing any software at all. Web apps have become more sophisticated and are being used by people on their personal computers and in businesses. Nowadays applications ranging from business level SAP® and Microsoft®, to music services, to personal email are being run on shared servers over the internet (“the cloud”). Cost reduction and increased scalability are reasons companies are adopting it. Ease and reliability are reasons many people are using it at home. The data and software are not stored physically on your computer but rather in the cloud.

Here are some interesting (and mostly free) personal uses of cloud computing you should check out:

Spotify

Imagine if the entire iTunes store was your library and you could listen to any song you want, whenever you want, and create playlists from them. This is what Spotify does, and it’s free. It’s a new service where all the content comes from the cloud so you can access your music anywhere. It’s currently not available in the US, but where there’s a will there’s a way around it. This could be the next big thing. Spotify is currently in Europe and Sony BMG Sweden says, “Spotify is a success. Not just in terms of users but also with regard to revenues for music companies. Spotify is now bigger than iTunes in terms of our monthly revenue in Sweden.” The basic plan is free but ad supported. You can purchase premium plans for higher quality streaming with no ads. Expect Spotify in the U.S. soon.

DropBox

Who needs a thumb drive to move files from one computer to another? This dead simple service gives you two GBs of storage free and lets you sync files anywhere you want. It acts just as another folder on your computer where you can copy and paste files into it. Take work home, bring it back. Copy your iTunes library there and sync your iPod on multiple computers. Also share files with whomever you want.

Xmarks

Sync your bookmarks and passwords across multiple computers and browsers securely. Right now it works in Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari with Chrome coming soon. You can also set up separate profiles on one account.

Gmail and Google Apps

You should be using Gmail. It blows away all other email services. I never see a spam email because of its powerful spam filter, which uses user input to weed stuff out. They also give you more storage than you’ll ever need. I’ve been using my account for three years and have only filled up 15% of the almost eight GBs they give me. I figure as long as Google’s around I’ll never have to delete another email.

Google apps is a great way to save and store documents for access anywhere. It’s loaded with tons of user submitted templates to get a quick document started. In response, Microsoft is launching its own free online version of Office.

Google’s Chrome OS

Now here’s a great example of cloud computing. Google is launching an OS, like Windows and Mac OS, that will run almost entirely in the clouds. Rather than be a competitor it will first be installed on netbooks with internet-only in mind. This will aim to be an ultra-portable and super fast system. Expect this on a tiny laptop sometime next year.

Photoshop.com

Uploading and sharing photos for free is no new idea but adding in editing tools that come with Photoshop Elements and you’ve got a pretty nice web app. Get your yourname.photoshop.com domain name and send your photos out to anybody you want.

Mint

Mint is a free service for tracking all your money in one place. It will do it all automatically including downloading bank transactions. You can track credit cards, bank accounts, mortgages, loans, investments and more. You can also keep track of spending trends and budgets. Definitely check this one out.

Mozy

Why don’t you backup your whole computer to the cloud? Mozy is offering $4.95/month for unlimited backup. I don’t know how “unlimited” that really is, but it would be nice to have peace of mind that you won’t lose everything.

Evernote

Evernote is a free service for your computer and phone that lets you track notes on anything and everything. It indexes them so you can always find them later. You can even take photos on your phone to send to it. It can also search text in images. Take a picture of someone’s business card and then search for it on your computer or your phone. Clip stuff off the web and save it forever. Evernote is very advanced and has tons of features.

A big issue with cloud computing is privacy and data security. Just be smart about it and use personal responsibility. These decisions are up to you whether to do it or not. Most of these companies usually keep backups of backups of backups so losing data should not be a problem. For putting personal info online, I could see an issue. Companies like Mint have a strict approach to security as well as others. And finally, don’t use the same password for everything!