All of us in the online marketing business have to admire the Obama Team’s mastery of the internet as a campaigning tool for the USA 2008 Elections.

“From day one of his bid for the White House, the President-Elect grasped the potential of the web to spread his message and organise party activists in a way that no other medium could achieve.

As well as sending out millions of emails to potential Democratic voters, in particular first-time voters, the Obama camp created its own social networking site, my.barackobama.com, after Chris Hughes, the co-founder of Facebook, was brought onto the campaign team.

The website attracted more than 1.5 million members who organised themselves into 35,000 separate activists’ groups, each of which could be contacted instantly from the Obama campaign headquarters to be given specific tasks in drumming up support.”

Read full article “How the internet helped propel Barack Obama to the White House”

Wendy Davis writing for the Media Post publications stated that “the interactive advertising bureau Thursday issued best practices guidelines for online lead generation, saying its recommendations will help the industry grow while building trust with consumers. But the guidelines immediately sparked criticism by another trade group, the Online Lead Generation Association, which says the recommendations don’t adequately protect consumers from being bombarded with unwanted e-mail ads.

The IAB’s voluntary guidelines state that Web publishers should ask consumers for permission to share their e-mail addresses with other marketers. But the IAB is not recommending that publishers name the specific marketers it will share information with. 

OLGA, however, argues that publishers should tell consumers which other marketers will receive their e-mail addresses and obtain consent for each. Otherwise, the group says, consumers might find themselves “receiving hundreds of emails a day as a result of one offer sign-up.”

“Consumers lose confidence in signing up for an offer because they don’t know for sure where their names are going,” said Jere Doyle, a member of OLGA and president and CEO of online marketing company Prospectiv.

OLGA had unsuccessfully pressed for language stating, “Data should not be shared with or sold to un-named or anonymous third party marketers.”

Gayle Guzzardo, who chaired the IAB Lead Generation Committee, said the IAB rejected the suggestion that publishers should name each marketing partner, because doing so might put publishers at a competitive disadvantage.

“We thought it would be not in the best interest of the publishers to specifically list every partner that they work with on their registration page,” said Guzzardo, senior vice president, product management at Q Interactive.

Click here to read the article in full.

Is it time to update your office software, not sure what software is right for your needs. Then a Secure Virtual Office may be the answer for you.

With Secure Virtual Office you can use applications like MS Office over the internet. You don’t need to have the application installed on your computer. Some people call this Software on Demand, Software as a Service or Hosted Applications .

In addition Secure Virtual Office allows access to your data and your applications wherever you are in the world!

There are many other benefits to this service including:

• Remote Access from anywhere – use your work applications from home or on holiday
• Full offsite backups with our continuous backup service
• 24 x 7 technical support to ensure that your applications are always available for you
• Monthly subscription provides flexibility as you grow or shrink
• A rich choice of the latest applications – if we don’t host one you need tell us
• Reduced IT administrative and support costs
• Reduce costly hardware upgrades and software rollouts

Make Secure Virtual Office your office today. Sign up for a FREE TRIAL! 

If you are a Small Business, Enterprise, School, Family or group, then you may find ‘Google Applications’ as your communication and collaboration tool very effective. The Application enables users to access all communication tools even if you are low on technical resources. We highly recommend that you have a look at this tool as it’s a very easy and efficient way to increase communication for your enterprise.
 
“Communicate…
Give your users Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Talk accounts that use your own custom domain, helping them to stay connected and work together more effectively. New! IMAP support for Gmail

Collaborate and publish…
Google Docs lets users share files and collaborate in real-time. The Start Page is the first place your users will look to preview their inboxes and calendars, access your essential content, and search the web.

…and get on with business.
It’s all hosted by Google, so there’s no hardware or software to install or download, and minimal setup and maintenance. You can get up and running quickly, even if you don’t have technical resources.”

For Small Business, click here to learn how.

If you are an Enterprise, click here. 

Google Applications for Schools, click here. 

For Family or Groups click here for Google Applications.

To get started, click here.

To learn fully how Google Applications can benefit you, click here.

Does your business need reliable and effective software? At Equilibrium, we have been trying out the software products being developed by Mozilla. This software is both inventive, sympathetic and people friendly! So have a browse…

Since 1998, a group of people globally have been committed to developing‘world-class open source’ software. Innovation, openness and opportunity for the users are ideals at the forefront of their approach. Firefox, Thunderbird, SeaMonkey, Sunbird, to name a few are such innovative and imaginative software created. Below is an outline of what the software promises to deliver:

Camino
Camino® is a Web browser optimized for Mac OS X with a Cocoa user interface, and powerful Gecko layout engine. It’s the simple, secure, and fast browser for Mac OS X.

Firefox
The award-winning Web browser is now faster, more secure, and fully customizable to your online life. With Firefox® 2, we’ve added powerful new features that make your online experience even better.

SeaMonkey
SeaMonkey® is the all-in-one application formerly known as the “Mozilla Application Suite”, containing a web browser, a mail and newsgroups client, an HTML editor, web development tools, and an IRC chat client in a single software package.

Sunbird and Lightning
Sunbird® is a cross-platform application that brings Mozilla-style ease-of-use to your calendar. The Lightning extension adds a fully integrated calendar to Mozilla Thunderbird.

Thunderbird
Thunderbird™ is Mozilla’s next generation e-mail client. Thunderbird makes emailing safer, faster and easier than ever before.
Featured Mozilla-Based Applications.”

Click here to explore further

Amara’s software promises a lot and delivers for novices and professionals alike. Their facilities such as the Banner Builder, Photo Animation, Menu Builder and News Ticker for Horizontal and Vertical Flash Player are a must for any business small or large looking to improve their website. The products promise that very little or no knowledge is required and can be downloads and learnt within a matter of minutes. We have highlighted five such products which will provide you with the tools to enhance your websites and therefore assist your business potential.

At Equilibrium we use there software to create flash movies for various clients – such as The Art Ministry. To view this site, click here. 

Provided below is a summery of what the products can offer you and your business requirements for that essential public face.

“With Flash software now the standard for website animations, Amara Software™ provides affordable animation software solutions to create a wide variety of Flash Player compatible text and photo effects and web animations.

Amara Software’s easy-to-use animation software saves your creations in the popular SWF file format, which can be used in any website and viewed in the Adobe® Flash® Player. No knowledge of Flash is needed to create animations with Amara Software.

Amara currently have 5 Flash Player compatible animation software applications:

Amara News Ticker creates horizontal and vertical Flash Player compatible news tickers instantly. It only takes a few quick steps to create a complete news ticker or scroller. No knowledge of Flash required to use the Amara software.

Amara Menu Builder
With Amara Menu and Button Maker you can create professional Adobe® Flash® Player compatible buttons and menus that can be inserted into any website in a snap.

Amara Intro and Banner Builder
Amara Intro and Banner Builder is the ultimate Flash Player compatible text effect tool to help web designers create and design animated intros, ads, banners, and any other textual animation. No knowledge of Flash required.

Amara Slideshow Builder
Amara Slideshow builder is a no-nonsense slideshow builder to help the web designer create and design Adobe® Flash® Player compatible photo slideshows and photo albums. Amara Adobe Flash player compatible files can be used on any website and are supported in all HTML editors.
 
Amara Photo Animation Software
Amara Photo Animation Software™ allows you to bring motion to your still photos in a slide show, with lots of options such as pan and zoom (the ‘Ken Burns’ effect), as well as pauses, text over picture, hyperlinks and background music”.

Click here, to read further.

This is the bi-line on Google’s Checkout for AdWords. Does it do the job? Indeed! According to Google for every £1 you spend on AdWords, you can process £10 in sales for free through Google Checkout.

Google states that “Every online merchant has two goals: sell more and spend less. Google Checkout is a new way to process transactions that helps you achieve both. Customers who use Checkout can buy from you quickly and securely, using a single username and password – and you can use Checkout to process their orders and charge their credit or debit cards.

Attract more customers.

Shoppers who see the Google Checkout badge on your AdWords ads will know shopping is fast and secure. 

Convert more visitors into sales.

A fast, secure checkout process means shoppers are more likely to complete purchases with you. And as shopping is so easy they’re more likely to return and buy again.”

To learn more, click here