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8.09.2010

The Truth About Google, Verizon and Net Neutrality

A fairly good article outlining some points that the NYT missed (partially because they were too busy making it spectacular)

"The New York Times and other publications failed in their journalistic mission to tell the truth about the potential Google-Verizon deal. Here's what an agreement between the two could mean for net neutrality."

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Government-IT/The-Truth-About-Google-Verizon-and-Net-Neutrality-371606/

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8.05.2010

Ipad or Netbook...

The Ipad has many many cool points in its slim and sexy case, but... What if I want to offload all my pics off of my camera on vacation? Type up a medium sized report? Start my great-American novel? Hmm. Was reading a Toshiba netbook review and came across this... "I have an Ipad as well as well as this Toshiba and find my usage split 50/50, the Ipad for sheer reckless indulgent consumption of media and reference material, but I have to resort to the Toshiba for actually doing anything creative or office work. Due to the fact that the Toshiba is barely noticeable when stuffed into a briefcase, if I had to have one or the other I would take the Toshiba."

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6.07.2010

Iphone 4

Nothing too earth shattering, better/optimized camera, video calling (WIFI only for now), multitasking (like droid and others, somewhat limited to which apps you are multi-tasking with) and $199 for a 16gb model. Slick as usual. Pretty nice price, now if only I could use it with a different mobile company. Sticking with Blackberry for now.

Good review of features in blog of developers conference here:
http://live.gdgt.com/2010/06/07/live-wwdc-2010-keynote-coverage/

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3.29.2010

Posting to your blog successfully with Word 2007

If the final resting place of your content is going to be the WWWeb, then using Microsoft products (Word, Outlook, etc) to create that content can be problematic. Generally, when copying and pasting from these products to the web, a good deal of Microsoft proprietary HTML code is copied with it. This non-standard code causes a myriad of formatting errors and is a major source of aggravation. The following is a good illustration of this point (don't get distracted by the code, just make the relative comparison between simple and…well…er..NOT simple.)

Blog post (as shown in Firefox):

"Art is a personal gift that changes the recipient."
-
Seth Godin

Same exact Blog post (as shown in Internet Explorer):

"Art is a personal gift that changes the recipient."

-
-
Seth Godin

Valid HTML to make this Blog post happen:

<p>“Art is a personal gift that changes the recipient.”<br />
       -Seth Godin<br />
</p>

Microsoft Word Code to make this happen (stick with me and keep scrolling):

<meta equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><meta name="ProgId" content="Word.Document"><meta name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 12"><meta name="Originator" content="Microsoft Word 12"><link rel="File-List" href="file:///C:%5CUsers%5CMARK%27S%7E1%5CAppData%5CLocal%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_filelist.xml"><link rel="themeData" href="file:///C:%5CUsers%5CMARK%27S%7E1%5CAppData%5CLocal%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_themedata.thmx"><link rel="colorSchemeMapping" href="file:///C:%5CUsers%5CMARK%27S%7E1%5CAppData%5CLocal%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_colorschememapping.xml"><style>  </style> <p class="MsoNormal">

"Art is a personal gift that changes the recipient."</p><p class="MsoListParagraph" style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style=""><span style="">-<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 7pt; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal;"> </span></span></span>Seth Godin</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p>

WHEW!
But, there is good news! Now, Word 2007 gives us the ability to publish a post to a blog directly in a few simple steps…and without formatting issues (or so we hope). Follow this CNET tutorial video below and enjoy blogging directly from Word 2007. (BTW, this was posted from Word 2007)

http://cnettv.cnet.com/how-blog-word-2007/9742-1_53-32154.html

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3.22.2010

Google in China

Google sidestepped some Chinese legislation recently by rerouting all of their search traffic through Hong Kong. This allowed them to no longer censor search results...let's see how that goes over. To keep you finger on the pulse of what is available from Google in China, click here.

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2.02.2010

Blogger, FTP vs. Custom Domains

This was a great resource that many of Elatum clients are using. Custom domains can be used instead, but not as good from an SEO standpoint. In the end, it's a good lesson as to why service agreements exist in certain segments of IT. But to Blogger/Google's point, and I understand, high cost for 0.5% of customers doesn't make sense.

From: http://buzz.blogger.com/2009/05/ftp-vs-custom-domains.html

"Bloggers who rely on our FTP service to publish their blog to their own domain had a rough week last week. In fact, it's been a bumpy month or two. Let's start with the most important comment on this state of affairs: this sucks, and we're sorry... If you use FTP today, I'd like to start a conversation about whether this is the right approach for your blog. I've been talking with bloggers over the last couple weeks on this subject, and have found most users, when presented with the option of hosting their blog using Blogger's Custom Domain option instead of FTP, find Custom Domains to be a far superior option. That's not to say there aren't compelling reasons to stick with FTP, so I'm not interested at this point in trying to convince everyone to switch over to Custom Domains. But I do think it is preferable for most of you still using FTP, and hopefully this post will help lay out why."

read more about the switchover at Blogger/Google

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1.11.2010

Five Tips To Better Email Marketing

The email Subject is designed to force the client to open the mail (e.g. You may have a hidden problem in your datacenter) or pique interest (e.g. Top 10 issues that plague our clients' servers)...make it interesting, would you feel the need to open your emails?
An item for sale does not an Enews make. It's a good idea to keep them topic driven, this helps establish your expertise on your products. (e.g. we've seen these market trends and in order to keep up with them are offering an updated selection of products)
Email is an opportunity to touch your clients often, but all it takes is a few irrelevant emails to get people not opening future ones, so be diligent in trying to create good emails. Proof them twice, fix formatting, look professional.
Email should come from a different email address than an personal one...this puts the person's email address out there as a bulk sender and then that person will most liklely get all of the out-of-office, please unsubscribe me, etc reply emails. You can always change or redirect an address that you made up for the purpose of sending emails, this is harder for personal email addresses (e.g. enews@, info@,. no-reply@, etc.)
An email is a limited medium for marketing. It is limited by size, coding and content restrictions (as well as several laws). The goal of most email marketing is to keep you and your business in the mind of your clients and to push them toward your website. Your website has the potential to be your best, low-cost marketing endeavor, so adverts print or otherwise (i.e. enews) should push back to it. On your site you have many more options as to what you want your client's experience to be, so refine it to match your branding, goals, etc. Then, show it off every chance you get.

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