Semantic HTML

photo credit: Kofoed

Flash can be used as effective eye-candy for your designs. I know that there are many issues regarding the use of flash components and semantic, web standards based, designs – but I also know of the great many ways to use flash effectively.

From CSS FiR techniques (using CSS as the means of “Flash/Image Replacements”), to using flash movies strictly as eye-candy – flash components, used properly, can be done without any issues.

I especially like the video loops (raster based animation) from FlashLoaded.com, which are great in creating special effects or for sophisticated logo area movies on your web site.

Again, using flash responsibly (taking accessibility into account) can be done.

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photo credit: LiveU4
Again, I must say that your sites will benefit from using standards compliant coding. Anyone who says different is most likely an internet marketer who loves to make money off of spam

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I have been dealing with designers who just don’t care about web standards. Their clients don’t care either…do you?

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photo credit: roney

And you thought you enjoyed your privacy, read what they have to say about your ISP and your browsing habits:

Last July, a research team from the University of Washington released an online tool to analyze whether web pages were being altered during the transit from web server to user. On Wednesday, the team released a paper at the Usenix conference analyzing the data collected from the tool. The found, unsurprisingly, that ISPs were indeed injecting ads into web pages viewed by a small number of users. The paper is available at the Usenix site. From PCWorld: “To get their data, the team wrote software that would test whether or not someone visiting a test page on the University of Washington’s Web site was viewing HTML that had been altered in transit. In 16 instances ads were injected into the Web page by the visitor’s Internet Service provider. The service providers named by the researchers are generally small ISPs such as RedMoon, Mesa Networks and MetroFi, but the paper also named one of the largest ISPs in the U.S., XO Communications, as an ad injector.”

So you see, you are being watched…

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Email Marketing can either be one of those marketing blessings or marketing nightmares. I remember when I began to contemplate starting a campaign to reach opt-in members to one of my websites, I searched the internet for the right Email marketing services to use.

photo credit: Mzelle Biscotte
And let me tell you, finding a company on the internet that offers these types of services to your clients and perspective opt-in members is not as easy as it first seems to be. Yes, you can find any old company that will send mass emails to a list, but how many of those fly-by-nights are flagged as spammers? Many of them, let me tell you.

And so while there very many website companies that offer email marketing, I have found a great service that offers both online marketing software and services that are affordable and reliable. And with two different plans to select from, they offer you a great way to ease into your campaign, or jump in head first.

Their first plan, the Campaigner, offers these services:

• Ability to create and send daily emails, weekly emails, or even monthly emails to your subscriber opt-ins.
• Personalize email templates that utilize customized tags for: “message greeting, the header, the body, the subject and from fields.
• CAN-SPAM compliant service.

The second of their services, the CampaignerPro, has these great services offered:

• True personalization and integration of email marketing – and that automatically run.
• Highly targeted and personal content utilizing these features: gender and geographic areas, and more attribute-based information.
• Automated scheduling of sending out the email messages based on certain contact information, dates, previous campaigns, and/or automated imported information from database systems.

You can check out their site for specific pricing, but as a whole, their online marketing software & tracking solutions for your email marketing is one of the best services you can receive.

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