If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

• Microsoft giving free software to startups

  Microsoft is giving free software to startups around the world to encourage them to develop products that span the Web, PCs and phones, the company said today.

  tags: microsoft, getanewbrowser, startup

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

• 0 Comments

I’ve been loving Diigo since I ditched Delicious a few months ago. They are constantly adding awesome features and today I stumbled on the groups feature. Basically it allows you to create a group of like-minded users (it can be public or private) to share links, comments and it has a forum baked right in.

This is HUGE… It allows you to create micro communities and adds much greater value to “social” bookmarking. You can be a part of multiple groups - which are often topical in nature. There are all kinds of different options that allow you to discuss bookmarks in comment threads and in a forum. There are RSS feeds for each group - so you don’t even have to join one to get some benefit. And there’s a great “slideshow” feature that will allow you to quickly lopp through the bookmarked sites.

If you are a Diigo user (you *have* to be if you do Social Bookmarking) - check out the group I made today - Web Strategy. If you are interested in Web Strategy, Social Media, Internet Marketnig, etc… you are advised to join the group to share great articles and get in on the Web Strategy discussions.

If you aren’t a Diigo user… join today. Then, join our group.

If you still need convicing, read my post or read “7 reasons diigo tastes better than delicious”.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

• 4 Comments

Last week Kramer’s veterinarian sent me an email newsletter…

Can you point out all the problems with this? If your email marketing campaigns look like this - you need to talk to me. This is completely ineffective… as effective as not using email marketing at all…

So what’s wrong with this email? Let’s dive in…

Let’s start with the subject… They used the horribly generic “Newsletter” in their subject. What most people don’t realize is the easiest way to fail at email marketing is to use generic, non-descriptive subjects in their emails. A subject must be compelling, brief, and indicate the content of the message. This fails at all three and it doesn’t even indicate a brand. This will be passed up in most users’ inbox.

Secondly, let’s look at the reply-to address (aka the “from” address). Proper, branded email addresses can do wonders in many aspects of your web strategy. First off - you HAVE to use your brand (your domain) in your email address. This is a huge FAIL. First off - it in no way extends or relays your brand. Secondly, and most importantly, this gets lost in an inbox because the receiver cannot clearly tell who this is from.

And last - no message body. This is a HUGE mistake. I, personally, would never send my newsletter in PDF form. But if I did - I would definitely include a message explaining what was in them to entice the reader to open them. In this format I bet 90% of receivers do not open these PDF attachments. Lesson for them: take the content out of the PDF and put it in the message body in a nice template.

If you use aWeber - they’ll help you take care of all this. If you still don’t get it - come talk to us. We can help.

Do you have examples of good or bad email marketing? Have email marketing tips? Share your thoughts in the comments!

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

• 8 Comments

Even though we chose Basecamp at 48Web, I wanted to share with you another very promising project management solution in DeskAway. DeskAway is a hosted project management solution for teams to collaborate on projects and/or activities. I found it to be perfect for freelancers looking for a simple, affordable solution with time tracking baked in. So if you are ready - it takes about 30 seconds to jump in and setup an account. Get more details on DeskAway here.

Features:
- All paid plans have unlimited users
- File Sharing
- Document Creation and Sharing
- Time Tracking on all plans
- Branding on paid plans
- Full export and backup

DeskAway has a lot of great features at an affordable rate. I’d definitely check out their free plan if you are in the market for a project management solution. Their free plan offers far more features for free than comparable plans. If you are a freelancer who needs to manage a few projects with clients and track time, their free plan is perfect.

Do you use DeskAway? Let us know how it is in the comments…

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

• 2 Comments

That’s why today we’re launching voice and video chat — right inside Gmail. We’ve tried to make this an easy-to-use, seamless experience, with high-quality audio and video — all for free. All you have to do is download and install the voice and video plugin and we take care of the rest. And in the spirit of open communications, we designed this feature using Internet standards such as XMPP, RTP, and H.264, which means that third-party applications and networks can choose to interoperate with Gmail voice and video chat. via GMail Blog

Unlike many current video chat products, Gmail Video and Voice uses a proprietary plug-in, not Flash. The small (2MB) download supports Firefox, IE, and Chrome on the PC, and Firefox on the Mac. Support for other browsers and platforms (Linux and mobile) may come later. - via WebWare

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

• 0 Comments