This morning, we’d like to welcome back Ryder Daniels to Spend Matters. Ryder is Spend Matters resident tech-ed columnist.

We all know by now that Al Gore invented the Internet and President Bush summarily renamed Google "The Google." Now that that’s out of the way, let's talk about a few simple Google search tricks.

Google can be used as a no-cost method to do lots of interesting things. We'll touch on a few tips today:

• How to use Google to do some competitive intelligence research using the "filetype:ppt" technique
• How to use Google to see if suppliers might be advertising or referencing my company as a client using the "site" technique
• How to look for RFPs to examine questions, strategies, etc.

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This morning, I'd like to welcome back Ryder Daniel's, Spend Matters' resident Tech-Ed expert.

We've all been subject to "Slow Death by PowerPoint" while listening to a pitch or a talk so tedious it makes your organs hurt. Sometimes the pace is like the speed of trees growing. If you’re lucky. Sometimes it's clipart from hell, or the dreaded reading of every bullet point -- and they're all in 8-point font.

Presentation tools, as with desktop publishing in the 80s, brought design and communication abilities to anyone with a PC. The problem is, we haven't quite caught up on teaching folks how to actually use these tools. Learning to present effectively is an ongoing process; when I look at presentations I did even four years ago, I cringe. It's always a good idea to take some time with Google to see whether you can improve your presentation kung-fu. Presentations, like it or not, have become the default metaphor on how to communicate in a business context, in front of a large audience.

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This Monday, we welcome back Ryder Daniels as he continues his tech-ed series.

To begin our weekly series about tools and technology for March, we're highlighting a service called BillShrink. Billshrink helps consumers and small businesses reduce costs for things like cell-phone plans, credit cards, and the like by providing them with comparisons of various services. These kinds of comparison services aren't new (think bankrate.com and lots of mortgage and loan-comparison sites), but newer services compare a larger number of products and services. For example, there have been some pricing changes with cell-phone providers like Verizon, Sprint, AT&T, and T-Mobile in the last quarter. The line between corporate and consumer discount plans is beginning to blur, especially at the high end with smartphones. Billshrink has done a good job of summarizing the new pricing here. It points out that there are over 10 million rate plan combinations out there, which is stunning.

In 2005, some companies moved their billing address and cell-phone phone numbers to a location with more favorable taxes, even to the point of giving up New York City cell numbers. Forbes did an article on this, showing that a whopping 15% was saved in taxes as a result. Back then, New York had the highest tax rate on cell-phone plans (16.2%), while Nevada had the lowest (1.1%). Whether you're managing just a personal phone or tens of thousands of phones, that can add up quickly.

Services like Mint go about this differently by first acting as a value-add account aggregator, then presenting competitive offers to reduce your costs. Mint was purchased by Intuit last year, and you can see some of the changes Mint is already making with QuickBooks. Have any SpendMatters readers used a comparison service to make a personal buying decision? As BillShrink and others offer more price comparison services to businesses, do we see using this model for purchasing as a viable option?

-Ryder Daniels

Spend Matters would like to welcome back Ryder, our resident tech-ed expert.

We've all received a file in a format we can't open or manipulate properly. It might be the quintessential Mac vs PC problem; sometimes, it's just part of a PDF we need to include in a presentation. When you have file-compatibility and -conversion issues, productivity can go off the cliff Thelma and Louise-style: you spend countless hours emailing back and forth to get the right format, or trying to import or convert. Below are some links to tools that can help you convert files to myriad formats quickly. Most of them are free, but prepare your eyes for enough ads to make Times Square look muted.

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Over the last several weeks we blogged on running phone surveys with InstantLoop, and doing basic research on consumer-purchase behavior with Bundle. This week we'll look at a low-tech option for simple reverse eAuctions.

- Ryder Daniels, Capsaicin, LLC

Six years ago, I began running some simple MRO reverse eAuctions for a client unprepared to take the plunge on licensing new software. This method can work for very simple reverse eAuctions involving just a few suppliers. It's designed to drive price reductions through live bidding, which essentially accelerates the negotiating process from phone calls, emails, and meetings into a single 20-minute auction. Much has been written about the success and failure of eAuction strategies. A quick trip to Google provides a number of viewpoints; suppliers, academics, practitioners, and software providers have weighed in on the various pros and cons. Despite the lively debate, reverse eAuctions arguably can often provide a fast, market-driven approach to achieve further price optimization faster than a traditional process. This simplified solution uses your Instant Message client (MSN, AOL, Yahoo, Google, Jabber, etc). Obviously, this doesn't compete or replace the offerings of major software providers; instead, it's designed to help you test the waters with a constrained (read: zero) budget.

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Last week we featured an intro to low-cost automated phone surveys using InstantLoop. This week, we'll examine how to quickly look at some consumer-spending trends.

- Ryder Daniels, Capsaicin, LLC

Bundle is a new service that uses a node-based taxonomy metaphor to provide fast, simple visualization tools for exploring consumer spending habits all the way down to a zip-code level. It also allows for the comparison of different demographic data including age, income, and household. What is the percentage of income spent on electronics vs. restaurants? At which retailers do consumers spend most? What about transportation vs. house and home costs? How does healthcare stack up against charity?

Bundle's data comes from "... the U.S. government, from anonymous and aggregated spending transactions from Citi, and from third party data providers." There's also a useful "Discovery" section, and an active community that addresses spending and consumer issues. Bundle is also planning to explore how consumers save in the coming months. With the beta, data is updated quarterly.

I'm very pleased to be working with Jason and Spend Matters on a new Monday blog post series highlighting some interesting tools and technologies -- some established, some emerging. Each week we'll focus on a tool and how we might use it, and ask your thoughts on how to best take advantage of the myriad technologies available. We'll discuss technologies targeted at both consumers and businesses, with a twist on examining how we might creatively apply them in a day-to-day work context. Some weeks will feature a quick tip; others, a more detailed discussion.

- Ryder Daniels, Capsaicin, LLC

For our first post, we'll take about a new beta offering from Instantloop. This basic service allows you to conduct automated telephone surveys by following a few simple steps. Before the availability of services like Instantloop, phone surveys were fairly expensive and time-consuming to conduct. With Instantloop, you can set up an automated ~10 question survey for ~50 people in about 15 minutes. Outgoing automated calls are placed in parallel, so based on the availability of respondents, you may get answers the same day, and you can view response rates and response data online. The automated voice is fairly clear to understand, and there are plans to allow survey admins to record their own greetings and announcements.

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Ask a friend or colleague: "What's the biggest single budget item in your monthly expenses?" You'll probably hear the answers that most of us give: mortgage, car payment, maybe a boat. For some, it's education, or even debt. The real answer, of course, is none of these. It's our taxes.

President Obama's very first executive order when he took office in 2009 was the Open Government Directive. The idea was to provide transparency, participation, and collaboration, powered by new processes and technology, for a wide variety of government data sources. The first rounds of action for each agency were due on Friday, January 22nd.

In the meantime, the U.K. has in some ways crafted an even larger vision that recently launched. The U.K. open government initiative already has about three times as much data available than the U.S. initiative.

Delib, a U.K.-based company focused on Open Government projects, put together a 14-minute documentary on the U.S. Open Government initiative.

"Open Gov the Movie" - from Delib from Delib on Vimeo.

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