Technology Tips & Tricks
Archive for November, 2009
5 Ways To Buy For Less Using Twitter
Nov 11th
- Image via Wikipedia
Biz Stone, Twitter’s founder, will visit Israel in the end of the month. As a member of his visit planning committee, I’ve decided to write how Twitter could be used in every day life. This is the first post in the series.
If you are using Twitter regularly you already know how powerful it is. Here are some tips on how to buy for less using Twitter:
1. Before you decide what to buy – ask your followers. I do it on a daily basis. For example, I was debating whether to buy Canon 5D Mark II or Canon 7D. Twitter to the rescue! I asked a question and received answers with detailed points of consideration before choosing my next camera.
2. Find out what’s the best price – after you decided what to buy it’s time to ask followers how much they paid for it. You will be surprised how much prices vary.
3. Get better deals when buying products – a friend of mine twitted from his bank, while negotiating a loan, asking his followers how much intrest they are paying. Needless to say, he got pretty good rates….
4. Show your dissatisfaction – I was unhappy with my ISP. I twitted about it, and was immediately contacted by their customer service. Quicker then waiting for someone to pick the phone, that’s for sure.
5. Recommend products to your followers – every time I am happy with a service or product, I let my followers know about it. I think it is a kind of good twitter karma to do so.
Excellent HTML Newsletter Templates – Best Of
Nov 5th
A well designed newsletter/email template can be the difference between success an failure. Whether its to update customers about a product, or to share information, having a well designed template can be a great starting point to guide your readers and give them a clear coherent flow when they read your email. This is crucial, considering how important the first impression is.
Here is round-up of some of the best free HTML newsletter templates on the Internet you can download without paying a penny.
Here are more related entries you might be interested:
Full list after jump.
Top Five: Free Newsletter Templates We Like Best
- Campaign Monitor – 30 FREE HTML Newsletter Templates
Here is a neatly sorted collection of 30 well produced templates which have been tested against all major email clients and web mail, for example Outlook, Thunderbird and Gmail. One of the feature is that it already pre-sorts all the templates into those with left or right sidebars, or single column templates
- Carbon Graffiti – 10 Free email marketing templates
Carbon Graffiti is a great design website, and one of the cool resources theyve made available are 10 free email marketing templates. Designs range from very simple basic ones to custom complex templates.
- Aweber: – 5 Awesome Functional Newsletter Templates
Aweber has some of the best newsletter templates out there, and some of them go beyond a good design and are pretty darn functional as well. Here are 5 of the best from Aweber.Download
This is a great email template to use when sending over a note asking someone to download a file. This template also comes in 3 flavors – one for PDFs, one for audio, and one for any other files, as well as 6 colors – so youre able to easily customize your readers download experience.
Welcome
This is a perfect email template to use send when youre welcoming new members to your service.
Blog Newsletter
If you write a blog, this is a great template to share your info and updates in a newsletter to build a stronger relationship with your readers.
Malibu
This email template was specially built to communicate promotional offers in a quick and efficient manner.
Outdoorsy
2-column (right-hand sidebar) email template with an organic feel and navigation links available to use in the header.
- MailChimp – 4 basic flexible HTML email templates
Mailchip four basic, flexible templates that you can use to get started. They’ve been tested to render properly in all the major email programs, like Outlook 2007, Lotus Notes, Gmail, and more.
- Cakemail – 17 Well Designed Newsletter Templates
More Free Newsletter Templates
Here are some other sites which also offer up free newsletter templates for download.
- Interspire – 30 Free Newsletter templates
- Stock Layouts – TechTimes theme
This is a beautifully designed theme, although it requires you to register (for free) on the site.
- Octeth – 10 Free Email Templates
- Hot Email Templates – 28 Free HTML Email Templates
- Active Campaign – 11 Free Email Templates
- Mach5 – 4 Free Email Templates
- Omnistare Tools – 10 Free Email Newsletter Templates
A variety of free templates, but it requires (free) signup.
- Benchmark – 3 Simple HTML Email Templates
- Delivery Success – 10 Free Newsletter Templates
- Templatesbox – 84 Free Newletter Templates
Jimmy Wales wins Nokia Foundation Award
Nov 5th
Henri Tirri, left, with Jimmy WalesHELSINKI, Finland – Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales is the 2009 recipient of the Nokia Foundation award. Wales, the man behind the community-driven encyclopedia that has become the web’s de facto reference site, was honoured for his contributions to the evolution of the World Wide Web as a participatory and truly democratic platform. In presenting the €10,000 award at the Nokia Foundation scholarship awards ceremony today, Henry Tirri, head of Nokia Research Centre and Nokia Foundation chairman, said the award was both deserved and timely.
“The theme for this yearís award is Open Innovation, a way of working which is very important for our activities at Nokia Research Center, and a value which we believe is embodied in the participatory and inclusive approach of Wikipedia.”
When Wales launched Wikipedia in 2001, its approach of letting its users compile and edit entries was revolutionary. But it’s a formula that has met with huge success: Wikipedia attracts an average of more than 330 million visitors a month, and contains more than 14 million articles in more than 260 languages.
Previous recipients of the Nokia Foundation annual award include Lauri Kuokkanen (1995), Pekka Tarjanne (1996), Linus Torvalds (1997), Arto Salomaa (1998), Kullervo Nieminen (1999), Osmo A. Wiio (2000), Ilkka Haikala (2001), Veikko Rintam‰ki (2002), George Metakides (2003), Heikki Lyytinen (2004), Moncef Gabbouj (2005), MÂrten Mickos (2006), Pekka Abrahamsson (2007), Aapo Kyrölä and Sampo Karjalainen (2008).
In addition to honouring Wales and Wikipedia, the Nokia Foundation also awarded doctorate scholarships worth €385,000 to 77 post-graduate students in the field of information and data communications technology.
Facebook New Marketing Rules – A Cheat Sheet
Nov 5th
- Image via Wikipedia
Facebook is slowly removing many of the elements that made it a marketer’s wet dream.
Facebook announced several major changes that affect marketers using the platform to promote their services:
1. Splitting feeds to news feed and live feed – users see, as defualt, a feed with only content and comments from their friends. Information about groups etc was moved to a separate feed.
2. Removal of app notification - Facebook apps will not be able to send notifications to users.
These changes reduce the virality of the platform in a major way.
For example, if in the past one could invite friends to become fans of a page, and his friends would have seen that he joined, now they wouldn’t see it unless they look for it. This effect was crucial for virality of fan pages and applications. The same goes for notifications.
While many users rejoice, as they see more relevant and focused information on their feed and notification tab, marketers should rethink the way they interact in Facebook.
The two most important consequences for marketers are:
1. Advertising becomes more important in creating traffic to Facebook applications and fan pages - without virality, paid advertisement within the platform, or in other channels, is an important part of any Facebook marketing activity
2. Fan pages and apps should provide more value to users, as it will be more difficult to attract repeat visitors.
In the next part we will discuss additional changes in the platform and what are the opportunities for marketers in this area.