Life is change. Growth is optional. Choose wisely. Karen Kaiser Clark Cathy Carlton & Kim Bloomer KickTheEmailHabit.com (Browser must be java enabled to view the slideshow.) Kickin' It Daily Brought to you by KickTheEmailHabit.com This Month's Sponsors: Business First Aid Kit Grab the Freebies 30-day free trial Keep the freebies http://ezinfocenter.com/8367685/IAHBE Boutique Decor For Less! Our home accessories make your decor sparkle, everywhere in your place. Beautiful bedding. Cute kitchenware. Fabulous furnishings. Gorgeous garden statues. E-mail us your name and mailing address for free catalog and $5 off certificate. Send your e-mail to: gpamgay@aol.com. Please visit online at http://www.vogueboutique.net/to look over all our freebies including free gift with purchase, free catalogs and purchases without a credit card! Get in on our web exclusive discounts! There's never been a better time than now to be in vogue! Thursday, March 31, 2005 Life reflects your own thoughts back to you. Author: Napolean Hill Wednesday, March 30, 2005 Results! Why, man I have gotten a lot of results. I know several thousand things that won’t work. Author: Thomas A. Edison Tuesday, March 29, 2005 The qualities of a great man are "vision, integrity, courage, understanding, the power of articulation, and profundity of character. Author: Dwight Eisenhower Monday, March 28, 2005 ENTHUSIASM is one of the most powerful engines of success. When you do a thing, do it with your might. Put your whole soul into it. Stamp it with your own personality. Be active, be energetic, be enthusiastic and faithful, and you will accomplish your objective. Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson Saturday, March 26, 2005 Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier. Be the living expression of God’s kindness: kindness in your face, kindness in your eyes, kindness in your smile. Author: Mother Teresa Friday, March 25, 2005 Sow an act and you reap a habit. Sow a habit and you reap a character. Sow a character and you reap a destiny. Author: Charles Reade Thursday, March 24, 2005 We need to teach the next generation of children from day one that they are responsible for their lives. Mankind's greatest gift, also its greatest curse, is that we have free choice. We can make our choices built from love or from fear. Author: Elizabeth Kubler-Ross Wednesday, March 23, 2005 I respect faith, but doubt is what gets you an education. Author: Wilson Mizner Tuesday, March 22, 2005 My father gave me the greatest gift anyone could give another person, he believed in me. Author: Jim Valvano, Basketball Coach Monday, March 21, 2005 Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not. Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson Sunday, March 20, 2005 What goal would you pursue if you knew it was impossible to fail? Author: Robert Schuller Saturday, March 19, 2005 The more I help others to succeed, the more I succeed. Author: Ray Kroc Friday, March 18, 2005 A word of encouragement during a failure is worth more than an hour of praise after success. Author: Unknown Thursday, March 17, 2005 Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter. Author: Mark Twain Wednesday, March 16, 2005 You've got to take the initiative and play your game... Confidence makes the difference. Author: Chris Evert Tuesday, March 15, 2005 Some succeed because they are destined to, but most succeed because they are determined to. Author: Henry Van Dyke Monday, March 14, 2005 In order to succeed, we must first believe that we can. Author:Michael Korda Sunday, March 13, 2005 Enthusiasm: a little thing that makes a big difference. Author: Unknown Saturday, March 12, 2005 The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams. Author: Eleanor Roosevelt Friday, March 11, 2005 Failure is the opportunity to begin again more intelligently. Author: Henry Ford Thursday, March 10, 2005 If opportunity doesn't knock, build a door. Author: Unknown Wednesday, March 9, 2005 The greatest mistake a man can make is to be afraid of making one. Author: Elbert Hubbard Tuesday, March 8, 2005 The first wealth is health. Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson Monday, March 7, 2005 People often say that motivation doesn't last. Well, neither does bathing—that's why we recommend it daily. Author: Zig Ziglar Sunday, March 6, 2005 Outside show is a poor substitute for inner worth. Author: Aesop Saturday, March 5, 2005 Courage is the power of the mind to overcome fear. Author: Martin Luther King, Jr Friday, March 4, 2005 where you start is not as important as where you finish. Author: Zig Ziglar Thursday, March 3, 2005 Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving. Author: Albert Einstein Wednesday, March 2, 2005 The best way to destroy an enemy is to make him a friend. Author: Abraham Lincoln Tuesday, March 1, 2005 Quote: You don't have to sit on top of a mountain to discover what's right for you. You always know in your heart what you need to do. But you do have to ask yourself if you're willing to make choices. Put yourself in a position where you're making choices about your life, rather than letting other people make those choices for you. That's what balance is all about. Author: Liz Dolan         This article or ad was created on behalf of a syndication marketing client of KickTheEmailHabit.com. Visit our website for more information. ©Copyright 2004-2005 - KickTheEmailHabit.com All rights reserved.

Frenzy Begins Over Cookie Alternative
By Zachary Rodgers | March 31, 2005

An existing technology offering cookie-like functionality is gaining attention from publishers, marketers and others as a possible replacement for the ubiquitous, but potentially endangered, text files.

The technology, based on Macromedia's Flash, is getting attention as awareness spreads of an apparent increase in user deletion of cookies. A JupiterResearch study recently found nearly 40 percent of Web users clear these text files from their machines on a regular basis. Because of the enormous consequences of cookie deletion for online marketing, analytics experts and ad technology vendors have since begun overtly addressing the potential of the "Flash cookie."

CLICK HERE to continue reading....

Internet Phones Likely to See Price Competition
CHICAGO (Reuters) - The booming market for phone calls using Internet technology has created a bonanza for telecom gear makers such as Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO.O: Quote, Profile, Research), but aggressive pricing could squeeze profits.

Price competition for so-called corporate VOIP products, particularly among the three big North American players -- Cisco, Avaya Inc. (AV.N: Quote, Profile, Research) and Nortel Networks (NT.TO: Quote, Profile, Research) -- may be intensifying, prompted by lackluster information technology spending and moves to capitalize on a replacement cycle for phone systems, analysts said.

CLICK HERE to continue reading....

Finding Your "Niche" Market by Accident

by Sarah J. Doyle

How can you possibly find a niche market by accident, you ask?

Think about it. When was the last time you needed or wanted something and couldn't find it? I can guarantee that if YOU are looking for something and can't find it, there are many others looking for a similar item as well!

[Read More!]

This week's All God' Creatures Educational Seminars class is being taught by master dog trainer, Christopher Aust. This Thursday night, March 31, 2005 at 9PM EST. Here is what he'll be teaching:


1. A little on breed selection

2. Preparing to bring the dog home
[Read More!]

Anti-Spyware Companies Promote Cookie Deletion
By Rob McGann

Search for terms like "Coremetrics," "WebSideStory," "DoubleClick," "ValueClick" or "Atlas DMT" on Google, and some of the most prominent paid results seem to cast aspersions on these well-known interactive marketing brand names.

You'll see ad text like "Coremetrics Removal Tool," "Kill AtlasDMT.com Now" and "Websidestory Removal." These ads -- promoting anti-spyware tools like NoAdware, XoftSpy, and PC Orion -- urge users to buy and download software that remove these companies' cookies from their computers.

Such campaigns -- many of them run by the anti-spyware companies' affiliates -- may provide some explanation for the findings of a recent JupiterResearch study, which reported that 40 percent of online consumers delete cookies from their primary computers as often as once a month.

CLICK HERE to continue reading....

Will Spam-Blogging Be The Death Of Blogging?

by Priya Shah

Technorati reports that 30,000 - 40,000 new blogs are being created each day.

According to David Sifry, part of the growth of new blogs created each day is due to an increase in spam blogs.

What are spam blogs? They are fake blogs that are created by robots in order to foster link farms, attempted search engine optimization, or drive traffic through to advertising or affiliate sites.

[Read More!]

More E-Mails Blocked, Return Path Study Finds
By: Christine Blank
Contributing Editor

E-mail marketers still need to monitor ISPs' e-mail blocking vigilantly, as the problem has worsened.

Twenty-two percent of permission-based e-mail was blocked by top ISPs in 2004, up 3.3 percent from the second half of 2003, e-mail management firm Return Path, New York, found in a new study.

CLICK HERE to continue reading....

Hello Online Marketers! I wanted to share with you what Penny sent to our International Virtual Women's Chamber of Commerce list. She is also a publisher here on Quikonnex and uses our podcasting system which is sooooo easy to use. I haven't used it yet because I was having a bit of trouble with my media player but hope it's fixed and you'll be hearing excerpts from me on my other channels and soon here on Kick The Email Habit from all of us! Here's Penny's exciting statement:

I tried an experiment - I started podcasting and got my Comedy Clip of the Week podcast listed on the iPodder.org directory. I checked my stats for March, and my hits and downloads for comedy went from 50 unique visitors to 247, in less than a month. The hits were over 2200!

[Read More!]

Those Darn Nigerians
by Bill McCloskey

THERE IS A NEW VERSION of the 4-1-9 e-mail scam that has been going around auction sites and the "For Sale" sections of various Web communities lately. Known as the 4-1-9 scam after 4-1-9 section of the Nigerian Penal Code, most people are familiar with these scams usually from some "barrister" of some foreign country who has heard about me through a trusted source and wants me to help him get money out of the country by depositing the money in my account. I get so many of these letters I figure I must be on some Nigerian telephone booth somewhere: "for a good time and a trusted source to transfer money contact Bill at..."
[Read More!]

Top court to hear landmark P2P case Tuesday

By John Borland
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

Ken Fuhrman's Colorado-based start-up company is a television junkie's dream, making powerful home media servers to hold digitized versions of television shows, movies and music.

But Fuhrman is worried. On Tuesday morning, the Supreme Court will hear arguments on whether file-swapping software companies Grokster and StreamCast Networks should be held responsible for the widespread copyright infringement on their networks, and he's afraid his company, Interact-TV, could be affected too.

CLICK HERE to continue reading....

Study: Wireless Spam Proliferates
by Gavin O'Malley, Tuesday, Mar 22, 2005 7:00 AM EST

ONE OUT OF FOUR COLLEGE students surveyed online reported receiving ads on their mobile phones, according to a Ball State University study of 1,171 students conducted last month. Of the students to receive wireless spam, nine out of 10 said they were annoyed by the unsolicited text message advertisements or instant message ads sent to their cell phones, What's more, 68 percent of respondents who received wireless spam said they were less likely to purchase a product from businesses responsible for serving the unwanted ads. Fortunately for the advertisers responsible, only 5 percent of students receiving such spam could even recall the name of the business or product in question.

CLICK HERE to continue reading....

Details of Getting a Blog

by Daniel Punch

Blogs, the abbreviation of Web Logs (online journals), are becoming more and more popular all the time. People are starting new blogs at an astounding rate so it’s safe to assume that there are constantly people out there who want to know how to get a blog going. Despite personal feelings about the actual quality of the majority of blogs out there on the Internet, that’s what I hope to be able to help you do with this article.

[Read More!]

Warner Brothers Sponsors Podcaster
By Zachary Rodgers

After getting into some trouble for its early marketing practices in the blogosphere, Warner Brothers Records is dipping its toes in the blog waters once again. The company will sponsor podcasts of the Eric Rice Show and provide exclusive audio content from one of its bands.

The Eric Rice Show, which is produced by Rice and three of his colleagues, features audio musings on entertainment, technology, and culture. Podcasting, the practice of publishing extended audio recordings in a Web feed format, still reaches a very small audience, but many expect it to take off as digital music players proliferate. Financial terms of the deal with Warner Brothers weren't disclosed.

CLICK HERE to continue reading....

Happy Easter from all of us here at Kick the Email Habit -
Cathy, John and Kim wish you all the most blessed day!

Search Engine Optimization for RSS Feeds

by Sharon Housley

Tips for Helping Your RSS Feed Perform! In some ways RSS is very similar to HTML, the language commonly used to create websites. Just as with HTML, webmasters using traditional search engine optimization tactics when creating an RSS feed will find that their RSS feed receives additional exposure and interest.

Simple steps to optimize an RSS feed for search engines:

1.) The title should contain important search terms.

[Read More!]

Firefox Snags Market Share From MSN
by Shankar Gupta, Monday, Mar 21, 2005 7:00 AM EST

THE FIREFOX BROWSER CONTINUED TO cut into Internet Explorer's market share, according to statistics released Friday by NetApplications, an Aliso Viejo, Calif.-based company that offers Web-monitoring products. By the end of February, the open source Firefox browser accounted for 6.17 percent of browsers--up from 5.59 percent in January, according to NetApplications. During the same period, Microsoft's browser fell from 90.31 percent to 89.04 percent. Some say that the downward trend for Microsoft's Explorer could be significant for the company--which just entered the search space last month--because browsers can play a key role in search. "The browser has become central in terms of driving revenue opportunities," said Michael Gartenberg, an analyst with Jupiter Research.

CLICK HERE to continue reading....

Selling Your Way to Success

by Geoff Payne

Sales. I wonder when we decided to become a sales person. I know when I was at school all I ever wanted to do was join the Navy and see the world. My best mate wanted to be a truck driver or Fireman, Policeman, Soldier, Banker, Doctor, Pop star, Football player and so the list went on.

[Read More!]

Yahoo buys photo-sharing site Flickr

By Jim Hu
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

Yahoo has purchased online photo-sharing service Flickr, less than a week after the Internet giant launched a beta test of a new blogging tool.

Vancouver, British Columbia-based Flickr lets users upload digital photos from computers and camera phones, put together photo albums, and post photos to blogs, among other things.

Joanna Stevens, a spokeswoman for Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo, confirmed the deal Sunday but did not disclose the terms.
CLICK HERE to continue reading....

Marketing Yourself, Your Writing

by Pam White

Last week I was invited to a Women in Business workshop at the local community college. The topic of that evening's seminar was marketing, a topic I am familiar with yet always seeking more input on. We started the evening by introducing ourselves, sharing what our business was and telling each other what benefit we could provide the other businesswomen.

[Read More!]

Yahoo! 360 Melds Social Networking With Blogging
by Gavin O'Malley

YAHOO! THIS WEEK UNVEILED PLANS to introduce a combined social networking and blogging service called Yahoo! 360 at the end of March. The free service will allow users to integrate a series of existing Yahoo! services--discussion groups, restaurant and music reviews, photos, music, instant messenger, and addresses--with a new blogging feature. At first, Yahoo! 360 will be accessible only to those invited to participate by the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company, which in turn will be able to invite others to the service. Yahoo! employees have been experimenting with the service--known internally as "Mingle"--since last year, a Yahoo! spokeswoman confirmed.

CLICK HERE to continue reading...

It Takes Two - How to Cultivate Profitable Alliances
by Heidi Richards, MS

Cross promoting with other businesses can give you a significant advantage over the competition, with many benefits and cost savings.” -Heidi Richards-

More and more competition in the marketplace is making it necessary for companies to find creative ways to connect with customers and prospects, to enhance brand identity and attract top-notch employees. In order to enhance competitiveness in today’s marketplace, more and more companies are forming strategic alliances. Strategic alliances can maximize your position in the marketplace. When you learn how to leverage partnerships you increase your market share. It is also a very smart way to grow a small business. Cross promoting with other businesses can give you a significant advantage over the competition with many benefits and cost savings. [Read More!]

Study Showing Consumers Purge PCs Of Cookies Casts Doubt On Analytics, Targeting
by Gavin O'Malley

IN NEWS THAT UNSETTLED MANY in the online advertising world, a new study by Jupiter Research revealed that four out of 10 Internet users delete cookies from their primary computers at least once a month. The report found that about 12 percent of Internet users delete cookies on a monthly basis, 17 percent do so weekly, and 10 percent purge cookies every day. What's more, more than half--52 percent--said they had rid their computers of cookies at least once in the last year. For the study, announced yesterday, Jupiter Research surveyed 2,337 U.S. online consumers in March.

CLICK HERE to continue reading....

Simple Syndication (RSS) -- Where's The Payoff?
By Scott Frangos

How RSS really does pay off...

Have you heard of RSS (Really Simple Syndication)? Did you know you can syndicate your news stories from your website? You probably have seen some orange buttons around the web with the letters "RSS" on them. They allow other websites to link to your news stories with just a click. Simple. Syndicate.

Ok. Now, you know about Really Simple Syndication... but where's the payoff? Let's look at the ways that RSS can pay off for you. And, pay off, it does -- when you use this emerging technology effectively.Now by "emerging technology," we mean it is relatively new, and people are still learning about it. But already many savvy webmasters are "aggregating" RSS feeds -- pulling common topic feeds together at their websites. And, big players like Yahoo, and Amazon are offering up RSS solutions. You can "subscribe" to a selection of news feeds on your personalized home page at Yahoo, for example.

[Read More!]

Study: Blog Readers An Elite Minority
by Gavin O'Malley

BLOG READERS MIGHT STILL BE small in number, but they are among the most influential groups in the United States, according to a study by blog ad network Blogads.com, released Friday. The report, issued by Blogads.com founder Henry Copeland, concluded that most blog readers were "involved, upscale, intelligent, individuals who also read Atlantic Monthly, The Economist, The New Yorker, National Geographic, The Nation and WSJ.com." For the Blogads study, Copeland surveyed more than 30,000 Internet users; respondents had visited at least one of 100 blogs to which he forwarded links to the survey.

CLICK HERE to continue reading....

Why You're Missing Out on Hundreds of Visitors If You Aren't Doing This

by Tinu AbayomiPaul

our tip today starts with my own shocking secret - I used to HATE listening to audio online. I'd still rather pay to download a transcript. I'm just a print-oriented person.

But I’m an oddball- that’s why you need to remember this one very important fact:

Almost everyone in the online world would rather listen than read if they can.

(And people like me will buy your audio if you let them - I’ve paid for free audio streamed seminars to be sent to me on a CD.)

[Read More!]

Hands Off the Web, Bloggers and Lawmakers Say

By Andy Sullivan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Internet bloggers should enjoy traditional press freedoms and not face regulation as political groups, lawmakers and online journalists said on Friday.

In separate letters, Democratic lawmakers and Internet commentators urged the Federal Election Commission to make sure that political Web sites that serve as focal points for political discussion, like Wonkette.com and Freerepublic.com, don't have to comply with campaign-finance rules.

CLICK HERE to continue reading....

The WRONG Way To WRITE Articles

by Steve Shaw

As you no doubt already know, writing articles is probably the most effective way to promote your web site. It's a very simple principle - publishers want a vast quantity of good quality content that they do not have to pay for; you provide that content, with the proviso that at the bottom of your article, they include your resource box with a link to your web site. It's a win-win situation. With your article published on heaps of web sites, and in several ezines, it's enough to set your traffic counter spinning.

[Read More!]

5 Marketing Mistakes You Can’t Afford To Make

by Debbie Allen

In virtually every area of business, there will be pitfalls along the way. Marketing is no exception. Time and time again, retail stores of all sizes make the same costly mistakes. But knowing how to avoid these mistakes can save you energy, disappointment – and money.

Mistake #1: Eliminating marketing efforts when times get tight.

[Read More!]

Cookie Monster
By Jim Meskauskas

The cookie has been a subject of debate from the moment of its inception and throughout most of the life of the commercial Web. From the time the first crumb of a cookie allowed for tracking of actions taken by a particular individual surfing the Web, marketers and advertisers grew excited by the prospects. Tracking media consumption at a user level foretold of great things to come in marketing.
[Read More!]

New Weapons in the Antispam War
By Neil J. Rubenking

As spammers devise new ways to fill your in-box with porn, pills, and prime mortgages, antispam companies scramble to keep up. Here we evaluate three current weapons in the fight to keep spam from overwhelming your work day: InBoxer 2.0, OnlyMyEmail Personal, and SpamCatcher 4.

CLICK HERE to continue reading....

Innovative Business Use of RSS as a Technology

by Sharon Housley

RSS, or Really Simple Syndication, is a new way to broadcast corporate news and structured information. RSS offers a quick, easy corporate communication channel. The RSS contents are published as a feed and the feed's content keep customers, partners and journalists abreast of corporate news and information. The RSS feeds are read using a tool referred to as a news aggregator, or an RSS reader. The aggregator periodically checks to see if the RSS feed has been updated. As the feed is updated, new information will automatically appear in the RSS reader.

[Read More!]

Broadband killing off newspapers

Iain Thomson, vnunet.com 08 Mar 2005

US consumers with broadband used the internet rather than newspapers during the last presidential elections as their primary news source, a survey has revealed.

"The last election was a breakout event for the internet," said Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project and one of the authors of the report.

CLICK HERE to continue reading....

It Takes Two - How to Cultivate Profitable Alliances
by Heidi Richards, MS

“Cross promoting with other businesses can give you a significant advantage over the competition, with many benefits and cost savings.” -Heidi Richards-

More and more competition in the marketplace is making it necessary for companies to find creative ways to connect with customers and prospects, to enhance brand identity and attract top-notch employees. In order to enhance competitiveness in today’s marketplace, more and more companies are forming strategic alliances. Strategic alliances can maximize your position in the marketplace. When you learn how to leverage partnerships you increase your market share. It is also a very smart way to grow a small business. Cross promoting with other businesses can give you a significant advantage over the competition with many benefits and cost savings.

[Read More!]

Bigfoot: Spam On Decline, But Spyware Plagues Consumers
by Wendy Davis, Wednesday, Mar 9, 2005 7:00 AM EST

THE GOOD NEWS IS THAT consumers report receiving less spam than in the past, but the bad news is that most say they've been infected with spyware, according to a study commissioned by e-mail marketer Bigfoot Interactive and released Tuesday at a conference hosted by the company in New York. For the study, RoperASW conducted interviews in February with 537 adults who have Internet access at home. Fifty-seven percent of respondents said they thought that the quantity of spam they received in the last year decreased; at the same time, about the same proportion-- 55 percent--said they had been infected with spyware.

CLICK HERE to continue reading....

By Evan Hansen
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

update Yahoo is stepping into social networking and blogging, with a new service that promises to offer a simpler way to keep in touch with people.

Dubbed Yahoo 360, the new service is accepting invitation-only beta testers for now, the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Web giant said Wednesday. The test will be opened to a broader audience on March 29.

CLICK HERE to continue reading....

Build It And They Will Come. True or False? Why So Many Online Businesses Fail.

by Jill St. Claire

Build it and they will come! Well . . . sometimes. If you're real lucky, and I mean REALLY lucky.

Now you have your beautiful website boasting your amazing products or services. It's out there, just waiting for people who want what you have to offer. You're going to dazzle them with your dynamic website and the sales are going to come flooding in. Wrong. The dream is over. It's time to come back to reality.

[Read More!]

FTC Ponders: Is 'Adware' Spyware?
by Wendy Davis, Wednesday, Mar 9, 2005 7:00 AM EST

COMPANIES THAT INSTALL AD-SERVING SOFTWARE on consumers' computers and serve them pop-ups--such as WhenU, Claria, and 180solutions--bristle at being called "spyware," rather than the more neutral term "adware." But is spyware really the wrong word for such companies? Perhaps not, according to participants in a spyware workshop convened last year by the Federal Trade Commission. An FTC report on the workshop issued this week, "Monitoring Software on Your PC: Spyware, Adware, and Other Software," stated that panelists and commenters differed widely about whether adware should be considered spyware. Some participants held that the most important factor was whether the software led to the serving of pop-up ads; if so, they argued, then it was spyware. Others argued that the adware/spyware distinction hinges on whether users had adequate advance notice of what the program would do; if so, then it's adware, but if not, spyware's the appropriate name. Still others maintained that adware could only be spyware if it monitored where users went on the Web.

CLICK HERE to continue reading...

Seven Bloggers Named to Media 100 List

Micropersuasion
Seven bloggers have been named to The Media 100 (PDF)

Increase Traffic to Your Blog from Search Engines - The Top 5 Tips

by Tinu AbayomiPaul

Your favorite thing about having a blog may soon be this - they naturally attract search engine traffic.

Blogs already have optimized site architecture. Most are set up with a clear navigation, where every page is set up to link back to the other main pages.

They also have the inherent potential to be well-linked.

[Read More!]

Yahoo! Mulls Expansion Of Contextual Program
by Gavin O'Malley, Wednesday, Mar 9, 2005 7:00 AM EST

YAHOO! IS EXPLORING EXPANDING ITS current contextual advertising program, confirmed a Yahoo! source Tuesday. Rumors that Yahoo! has been quietly testing a contextual advertising program for blogs and small publishers to rival Google's Adsense have been circulating the blogosphere in part because of contextual ads that were spotted on the blog of Ken Rudman, a product manager at Overture.

CLICK HERE to continue reading...

Internet Passes Radio for Political News -Survey
Sun Mar 6, 2005 4:08 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Internet surpassed radio as a source for political news in the United States last year as more people went online to keep up with the presidential election campaign, according to a new report released on Sunday.

Twenty-nine percent of U.S. adults used the Internet to get political news last year, according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project. That's up from 4 percent in 1996 and 18 percent in 2000.

CLICK HERE to continue reading....

Hello Online Marketers! Here are more PR tools to help you promote your business online!

Annie Jennings PR Digital MEDIA POWER PACK! Four of our favorite publicity
teleseminars on digital for the price of three. Digital MEDIA POWER PACK
includes the following titles: How To Create A Media Site (this teleseminar was
a runaway success!), Advanced Media Training Techniques (you won't believe what
our national media trainer tells you to do), Create A BIO The Media Will Love
(best of the basics in this one) and your free teleseminar digital Mystery
Producer X Reveals All (Info so HOT our guest producer could not reveal his name!)

CLICK HERE for more information [Read More!]

FEC Chairman Unsettles Bloggers With Talk Of Online Regulation
by Shankar Gupta

FEDERAL ELECTION COMMISSIONER SCOTT THOMAS unnerved some prominent bloggers last Friday when he spoke publicly at a conference at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. about the agency's plans for regulating political donations online. While the media is generally exempt from regulation under campaign finance laws, Thomas indicated that the agency might nonetheless regulate expenditures to blogs and some online publications. "We have shown at the FEC a willingness to extend the media exemption to some Internet-based news services. But this media exception inquiry will go to the question of: 'What is a periodical publication?' and 'What is a legitimate press function?' It will also get into: 'What is news?'...'What is commentary?'...'What is editorial content?'" said Thomas, according to a transcript of his remarks posted at the blog RedState.org.

CLICK HERE to continue reading....

Ad Tracker: Strong Growth Across All Media In '04
by David Kaplan, Wednesday, Mar 9, 2005 8:15 AM EST

TOTAL AD SPENDING FOR ALL media last year rose 9.8 percent to $141.1 billion over 2003, TNS Media Intelligence reported on Tuesday. While media spending devoted to television--the category that benefited the most--was boosted by the Summer Olympics and the Presidential election, that doesn't explain the robust ad growth for 2004, which has expanded at a faster rate than the general economy in nine of the last 10 quarters, said Steven J. Fredericks, president and CEO of TNS Media Intelligence.

CLICK HERE to continue reading....

This is from our friend and fellow International Virtual Women's Chamber of Commerce member, Penny Haynes and eMedia Touch....

<BIG SMILE>
Imagine having a small handheld MP3 player (portable player that plays audio files - music or spoken word).
Imagine hooking it up to your computer at night, and when you wake up, you have audio files (like talk-show segments) on subjects you are interested in learning about loaded into that player. Imagine walking away with your handheld player and listening to hours of fresh, original content from people all over the globe (instead of commercial-filled radio).
Imagine most of it costing you NOTHING.



[Read More!]

How Podcasting is Used

by Sharon Housley

Although podcasting is new, it is well on its way to becoming a mainstream communication medium. Podcasting, simply put, is audio files that are delivered via RSS. Many people believe that podcasting is solely for the distribution of music files, but really, nothing could be further from the truth. This emerging method of audio file distribution has opened an array of marketing and communication opportunities to businesses. Currently, most who are familiar with podcasting are technically savvy, but it is clear that podcasting will be more than a passing fad as many businesses are adopting podcasting and employing it in unusual yet powerful ways. Podcasting can be used for talk shows, tutorials, music demos, educational training, stories, comedy clips, debates or even foreign language tutorials.

[Read More!]

Friendster Launches Blogging Platform
by Gavin O'Malley

SOCIAL NETWORKING SITE FRIENDSTER YESTERDAY announced the launch of Friendster Blogs, giving its 16 million members a platform to rant and ramble, buzz and bemoan, divulge, and divine to their hearts' content. Friendster is betting that the blend of two evolving Web trends--social networking and blogging--will placate the fickle tastes and expectations of consumers in an extremely competitive market. The underlying technology--which allows users to post and archive their thoughts, pictures, and links as dated entries in chronological order--is provided by San Francisco-based Six Apart, a blogging software company, which offers a similar paid service by the name of TypePad.

CLICK HERE to continue reading....

Yahoo! Offers Mobile RSS

by Gavin O'Malley, Friday, Mar 11, 2005 6:30 AM EST

IN APPRECIATION OF THE ADVENT of both RSS and mobile Internet access, Yahoo! yesterday said it will now offer users who have signed up for e-mail or other services access to their personalized My Yahoo! headlines, including RSS, stock portfolios, sports, weather, and My Email, through Yahoo!'s Mobile Internet service. "This will allow the 20 million Americans using My Yahoo! to take the customized news platforms they've created anywhere their mobile phones can go," Scott Gatz, senior director of personalization products at Yahoo!, said.

CLICK HERE to continue reading...

The Uncertainty Factor
by Bill McCloskey

THE OTHER DAY I WAS reading one of my special interest e-mail newsgroups and someone posted to the moderator of the site that they had received a request for information from Topica, who hosts this particular e-mail group. They were concerned because of the rash of phishing going on with fake eBay e-mails, bank credit card e-mails, etc.
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Tentative ruling favors Apple in blog case

By Dawn Kawamoto
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

A California judge has issued a tentative ruling that Apple Computer can force three blogging sites to divulge their sources, according to reports.

In the preliminary ruling, issued Thursday, a Santa Clara County Superior Court judge said that the three blogging sites, which had disclosed information about Apple's upcoming products, did not have the same legal protections that shield journalists, according to the San Jose Mercury News.

A hearing in the case, which is scheduled for Friday, could have a significant ripple effect on all blogging sites that disclose information about companies.

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What Can Napoleon Teach You About Building Business Empires?

by Ankesh Kothari

Napoleon Bonaparte has carved his name in the history books. Some say he was a masterful soldier. Some say he was a very charismatic statesman. Others say he was the best strategist who ever lived. Yes, he was all of that. But he dominated the world only because of one of his tactics. He created and ruled an empire only because of one secret.

He gave away baubles.

What are baubles you ask?

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Will Blogs Become the Ultimate Marketing Tool?
by Gavin O'Malley

BLOGS--ONCE CONSIDERED THE DOMAIN OF all that is not corporate--will soon be an indispensable marketing tool, agreed a mix of public relations, marketing, and research professionals who gathered this week at the Search Engine Strategies Conference in New York. The blogosphere is increasingly portrayed as neutral ground where businesses can tackle issues head on in a sort of preemptive damage control, and attract consumers to their products and services with compelling content. Experts and professionals at Search Engine Strategies discussed how to find the right voice, get it out, and achieve the greatest reach possible.

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Bloggers Protest Possible FEC Crackdown
by Shankar Gupta, Thursday, Mar 10, 2005 7:45 AM EST

A PROMINENT ONLINE POLITICAL MARKETING firm for Democratic candidates, with some help from a group of bipartisan bloggers, will take concerns about potential new Federal Election Commission rules to the chairman on Friday. The regulations could extend campaign finance laws to blogs and other Internet sites. Campaign finance laws normally limit political advertising, but in the past, the FEC took the position that those laws didn't apply to Internet campaigning. But late last year, a federal judge struck down the blanket Internet-activity exemption. Last week, FEC Commissioner Bradley Smith created a storm in the blogosphere when he stated that the commission might start regulating blogs or other Web sites that link to campaign Web sites, send out mass e-mails, and perform other possible fund-raising functions.

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Throw Out Your "Selling" Language - Unlock Your Natural Voice

by Ari Galper

I was sitting at my desk last week when my phone rang. I picked it up and said, 'This is Ari with Unlock The Game.' The woman on the other end of the phone said, 'Hi, my name is Julie Jackson, I'm with XYZ company and we are a...and we offer...'. As she continued to speak, I stopped her in mid-sentence and said, 'Hi, Julie.'

There was dead silence on the phone.

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Google's secret of success? Dealing with failure

By Martin LaMonica
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

BURLINGAME, Calif.--The technical wizardry behind Google's successful search engine may come down to a blindingly obvious insight: PCs crash.

On Wednesday, Urs Hoelzle, a vice president of engineering and of operations at the search giant, shed some light on how Google's data centers operate. Many people consider the company's operations expertise more valuable than the actual search algorithms that launched the enterprise.

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Kanoodle Debuts Local Targeting Tool
by Gavin O'Malley, Tuesday, Mar 8, 2005 7:15 AM EST

CONTEXTUAL ADVERTISING SERVICES PROVIDER KANOODLE yesterday announced the addition of a local targeting tool to its content-targeted suite of products. Local Target, currently built into Kanoodle's ContextTarget program, means to give advertisers the ability to reach local customers via a topic-matching approach to listings on market-specific pages. The product will allow local and national businesses to better target customers in specific markets, drive them to brick-and-mortar outlets, and increase brand penetration in specific geographic areas, according to Kanoodle CEO Lance Podell. "It's the first sponsored links product built solely for local targeting on content pages," Podell said.

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By CNET News.com Staff

The Voice Over the Net conference in Silicon Valley this week puts the spotlight on the fast-growing trend of Internet phone calling. Google, AOL and Michael Powell have all taken the stage.

VoIP providers work to lasso smaller businesses

New products and services puts Internet telephony into the reach of smaller companies.
March 9, 2005

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Blogs And Your Work From Home Internet Business
By Tom Worsley

As a work from home internet business entrepreneur you have several really good tools on the internet you can take advantage of in order to build your work from home business. A blog is just one of those tools that you can use and should be taking advantage of.
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The coming crackdown on blogging

By Declan McCullagh
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

Bradley Smith says that the freewheeling days of political blogging and online punditry are over.

In just a few months, he warns, bloggers and news organizations could risk the wrath of the federal government if they improperly link to a campaign's Web site. Even forwarding a political candidate's press release to a mailing list, depending on the details, could be punished by fines.

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Google Launches Desktop Search
by Shankar Gupta, Tuesday, Mar 8, 2005 7:15 AM EST

SEARCH GIANT GOOGLE Monday announced the release of Google Desktop Search 1.0, marking the official release of the company's desktop search product that has been in open beta testing since October.

Users can search the files on their hard drives, including word documents, e-mails, AOL instant messenger chat sessions, recently viewed Web pages, and audio, video, PDF, and photo files.

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New virus found in phone messaging
'Commwarrior.A' is a virus designed to spread through multimedia messages and drain phone batteries.
March 8, 2005: 1:36 PM EST

HELSINKI, Finland (Reuters) - A new mobile phone software virus started spreading this week via messages containing photos and sounds, the first of its kind and a threat to cellphones globally, data security firms said Tuesday.

The Commwarrior.A virus tries to replicate itself by sending multimedia messages to people on the phone's contacts list, and also tries to do the same via Bluetooth wireless connections with other devices, eventually draining the battery.

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Hot Publicity Techniques That Are 100% Legitimate!

by Paul Hartunian

As in any business, once you've been the publicity business for a while you start to discover those little insider secrets that make life so much easier. Those little tricks of the trade that typically give the old pros an unfair advantage. That's what this article is about. We try to cover some of the little know facts of the publicity game that might make your life a bit easier. I'm going to cover some of the little know facts of the publicity game that can make your life a lot easier.

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Infinity to Stream 11 Stations Over Web
By Katy Bachman

Infinity Broadcasting, owner of many of the preeminent News brands in the country, advanced its Internet radio strategy Wednesday with the announcement that it will begin streaming online 11 of its news and News/Talk stations.

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The 3 Cs of Effective Marketing

by Julie Chance

Complicated definitions of marketing abound. However, when you think about what you are trying to achieve through your marketing activities, it is simply changing and then maintaining the behavior of your target market. You want to change their behavior from not buying your product or service to buying it and then you want to maintain that behavior.


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Hello Online Marketers! Would you like to add Video Streaming to all the other cool things to market your business. Then you'll want to come to this teleclass:

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Fallacies Regarding Online Home Based Businesses

by Kirk Bannerman

In the course of my home business coaching activities, I have often found that people head into the startup of their online home based businesses with a wildly unrealistic mindset.

Many have been told that they can sign up for a few programs, build a website around them, add a bunch of banners and links onto their site, then sit back and watch the money roll in and never have to work again.

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Coming Soon to a Computer Near You: Original Video
by Chris Young

THERE ARE FORCES AT work in the online marketplace that assure online video will continue to grow as an essential marketing tool. You are familiar with most of them:

1) The Internet is breaking the bandwidth barrier as more than 50 percent of online users now have high-speed Internet connections. This makes it possible for a critical mass of online audiences to experience sight, sound, and motion somewhere else besides their TVs.

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3 Strategies to Market Your Business Even When There's No Money

by Kathleen Gage

Many small and home based businesses know they need to market and yet, have little or no money to do so. Sadly, many use this as a reason not to market. Even on a limited budget you can promote and gain visibility for you and your business.

The following three strategies have proven extremely effective for countless businesses as they can for you.

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Kanoodle To Serve Ads To RSS
by Gavin O'Malley

CONTEXTUAL ADVERTISING SERVICES provider Kanoodle today is expected to announce a new service, BrightAds RSS, which will serve ads to RSS feeds. The ads will be inserted directly into site owners' RSS feeds within posts, or as individual posts.

Moreover Technologies, a provider of aggregated online news service systems for companies including MSN, Yahoo!, and Ask Jeeves, will power the RSS feed hosting and distribution components of the service.

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Top Five 2005 Required Marketing Tips Needed to Succeed

by Catherine Franz

When marketing your practice, as well as designing your brochure, web site, business card, flier, advertisement, or other marketing effort, we recommend investing the time and effort needed to effectively address all these tips. Not one of them can be omitted.

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News Brief

NewsGator Offers New RSS Platform

Friday, Mar 4, 2005 7:47 AM EST

RSS PLATFORM COMPANY NEWSGATOR TECHNOLOGIES, Inc., announced yesterday the launch of its 'NewsGator Media Platform,' a private label RSS service intended to help media companies maximize their reach via RSS. The platform is powered by NewsGator's NewsGator Online system, which currently manages hundreds of thousands of RSS feeds for tens of thousands of individual end- users. --G.O.

For more info CLICK HERE

It's Not Graffiti, It's Grafedia

By Rachel Metz

What if the internet extended beyond computers and high-speed connections, with web pages expanding down city streets and onto the sides of buildings?

This is the vision behind an interactive new media project called grafedia, which enables folks to make the world their canvas by publicly posting e-mail addresses or keywords that, when punched into certain mobile phones or an e-mail account, retrieve corresponding images.

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Radio days fade; Net turns up volume
Earnings take hit; new formats pose threat

By Leon Lazaroff
Tribune national correspondent
Published February 27, 2005

7 Reasons to Switch to FireFox

by John Gergye

The Firefox browser has exploded on the scene. At the time of this writing there have been 23 million downloads of this innovative competitor to Internet Explorer. Minor drawbacks aside, most who use it love it – myself included.

One stand out feature is the customizable search bar that’s built into the Firefox menu bar. As a long time AOL user I had 10 hot keys set up for sites I visited all the time. With Firefox all I did was set the search bar up with those very same links. Suddenly what seemed like a reason to mourn the loss of AOL vanished.

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Firm eyes RSS feeds as ad vehicle

By Stefanie Olsen, CNET News.com

Kanoodle, a search-advertising specialist, wants to help turn blogging into small business.

On Monday, the company introduced a self-service system that lets online publishers pair advertising with their RSS feeds. Called BrightAds RSS (after the technology format known as Really Simple Syndication), the service takes advantage of Kanoodle's keyword advertising system to match Web content to relevant ads. Once a publisher signs up, an advertising link will piggyback on its syndicated feed sent to third-party news readers.

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Top 10 Blog Writing Tips

by Patsi Krakoff

Most of the 'rules' about writing for ezines and newsletters apply to writing posts for your blog, but there are some important differences. Keep these 10 tips in mind and you'll be publishing great blog content that attracts prospects and clients in your niche market.

1. Write with the reader in mind. Remember WIIFM? It's marketing jargon for What's In It For Me? That's what you should be keeping in mind. Your reader will read your post looking for what's in it for them.

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Broadband Via Electric Lines Could Challenge DSL, Cable
by Gavin O'Malley

PROVIDING BROADBAND SERVICE THROUGH ELECTRIC power lines is a potentially competitive alternative to high-speed Internet connections via cable and DSL, but infrastructure and regulatory issues loom, said participants in a conference call yesterday held by the New Millennium Research Council, a Washington, D.C.-based lobby and policy group. If broadband-over-power-line service were offered for $30 per month, estimated Barry Goodstadt, vice president and senior consultant for Harris Interactive, it would reach 13 million households and present a $4.5 million revenue opportunity over the next three to five years.

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RSS: News You Choose
by Sharon Housley

Why is RSS So Magical? The answer is simple: RSS is news you choose.

How Does it Work?
Publishers and webmasters provide content and news in an RSS feed. Users view the content of interest in an RSS reader or news aggregator. The aggregator or reader contains the collection of feeds that are of interest to the user. As the RSS feed is updated the content in the reader or aggregator updates with the new information. At any point, users can remove a feed from their aggregator or reader and no longer receive information from that source. Ultimately, the user is choosing the news and content they wish to view. [Read More!]

What Is About.com All About?
by Chris Schroeder, Tuesday, Mar 1, 2005 7:00 AM EST

I WAS OUT ON A lovely Washington evening, when my BlackBerry began to vibrate repeatedly with friends and colleagues alike notifying me: The New York Times Co. acquired About.com for north of $400 million. By some reports, this was 10-15x NEXT year's revenue; 25-30x NEXT year's EBIT. The reactions:

"The bubble is back!"

"Newspapers are dead, so Dow Jones and The New York Times have to do SOMETHING, and few properties of size are out there. It's the hail Mary!"

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Firefox fix plugs security holes

By Steven Musil
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

The Mozilla Foundation released on Thursday an update to the Firefox Web browser to fix several vulnerabilities, including one that would allow domain spoofing.

The open-source project released Firefox 1.0.1 to fix, among other bugs, a vulnerability in the Internationalized Domain Names (IDN), a standard for handling special character sets in domain names that lets companies register domain names that appear to be the same in different languages.

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Tips for Better Blogging - Promote any Product or Service
By John Barbour

People start blogs for all kinds of reasons. Ego. Political comment or agenda. Staying in touch with family and friends. Marketing. Why did you start your blog?

If you want your blog to get read, and your readers to be loyal followers, you had better structure it to their liking. Here are some tips for better blogging and basic blogging advice for anyone who wants to promote a product or service using blogs and RSS.

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