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IIMA, the International Internet Marketing Association just launched a new blog at iima.wordpress.com

The blog, a result of their current e-mail marketing events, replaces their previous discussion forums. Thes forums were disabled due to a high amount of spam posted. The new IIMA blog is still not linked to the IIMA web site, but such a link is expected in the near future - as soon as the new board has organized the responsibities of the newly elected chairs.

Disclosure: I’m the IIMA Treasurer.

roar at roarweb dot com

The IIMA is bringing together some of the leading email marketers in North America for two intensive and interactive email marketing events. If you’re responsible for email campaigns, these are the “must attend” events of 2006.

roar at roarweb dot com

liveplasma music, movies, search engine and discovery engine

While I was touching on music I thought I would mention liveplasma.

What a great site. Type in the name of a band and you’ll get to see similar bands and “how popular they are”. Great transitions from search to search too.

Their database still has lots of room for improvement though. Many of the artists I search on could not be found. And some of the “popularity” results was a bit surprising to me. As a follow up to an earlier posting I decided to search on Rolling Stones. I was surprised to see Neil Young [wiki] being so much more popular. Maybe he is or maybe it reflects a North-American view of the world? Something to think about anyway if you’re not from this part of the world.

roar at roarweb dot com

Note: This post moved from Blogger on December 6, 2005

What a busy week on the Blogging event front. Monday there was Blogging 101 at the International Internet Marketing Association (IIMA). Wednesday the IIMA hosted “Advanced Blogging”, where Arieanna Foley and Tris Hussey continued to teach a group of Vancouver marketers about blogging and blogging teqniques.

Yesterday (Thursday), the BC Association of Integrated Marketers (BCAIM) hosted its Christmas Luncheon with Darren Barefoot. Darren “demystified blogging” and gave the audience some good insight in the power blogs are starting to have in many fields. Especially interesting was his examples which showed how important it has become for organizations to be a part of the conversation, to monitor what is said about them before they have a major public relations disaster at hand.

roar at roarweb dot com

Note: This post moved from Blogger on December 6, 2005

This post moved from Blogger on December 6, 2005

Tonight I’m at Blogging 101 at the International Internet Marketing Association (IIMA). Arieanna Foley and Tris Hussey are presenting.

The IIMA has chosen an interesting format for this event. It’s hands-on with everybody having their PC station. Arieanna and Tris are taking the audience through the basics of blogging from both an informational perspective and on a practical “click there” level.

On Wednesday they will be back with an advanced blogging session (SOLD OUT)

roar at roarweb dot com

This post moved from Blogger on December 6, 2005! Thanks to Arieanna and Tris for their ideas.

Business Week wrote, under the heading “The Business Of Blogging” (Dec 2004): “A new medium, though still a work in progress, is coming into being.“

When I wrote my first blog post (note: different domain than my current blog) - September 2, 2004 - a bit earlier than the Business Week article was published, blogging was still something “new” to many in the Vancouver business community. Now it seems to be gaining respect as a valuable tool.

Not that we have not had people around blogging for some time (Wikipedia suggest we go back to 1994) - I’m still a newbie in that sense - but the exposure blogging is currently getting in our local marketplace seem to me to indicate we are now past the early Introduction Life Cycle stage and are moving into Growth.

For example, Technorati’s Dave Sifry wrote in an October 17th post that Technorati is now tracking nearly 20 million weblogs and that this number seems to double every 5 months. He goes so far as to indicate they see 33,000 new posts every hour! Growth allright.

What do I mean when I say blogging is gaining respect in Vancouver? I’m suggesting this based on the number of events local marketing related organizations are doing on this subject at the moment.

I currently serve on the Board of Directors for the IIMA and left the Board of BCAIM earlier this summer. The frequency of blogging related events is higher than I’ve ever seen before and thus I conclude we’re at a new stage for blogging.

Instead of proving my point by showing both 2004 and 2005 data on blogging events, I’ll just show some of the events I have noticed over the last few weeks:

-BCAMA, October 12: Hyperfragmentation: The Rise of Personalized Media, presented by Rick Sanderson and Barbara Davidson of OMD Vancouver.

- HTCE/STC, October 15: Online Influence: What Blogs Mean to Your Business, presented by Susannah Gardner

- IIMA, November 28: Blogging 101 and November 30: Advanced Blogging, presented by Arieanna Foley and Tris Hussey

- BCAIM, December 1: Blogging Demystified, presented by Darren Barefoot.

- Banf New Media Institute, December 4-8: Blogs and Dogs

- Northern Voice, Feb 10-11 2006: Moose Camp and Blogging Conference

I’m sure there are others. In any case, it looks like growth and respect to me.

roar at roarweb dot com

Note: This post moved from Blogger December 6, 2005

I occasionally read the e-mails I receive from the Ziff Davis Web Buyer’s Guide. The Skype headline caught my eye and I decided to take a closer look.

Skype End User Licence Agreement
Article 4 Permission to Utilize
4.1 Permission to utilize Your computer. In order to receive the benefits provided by the Skype Software, You hereby grant permission for the Skype Software to utilize the processor and bandwidth of Your computer for the limited purpose of facilitating the communication between Skype Software users.
4.2 Protection of Your computer (resources). You understand that the Skype Software will use its commercially reasonable efforts to protect the privacy and integrity of Your computer resources and Your communication, however, You acknowledge and agree that Skype cannot give any warranties in this respect.”

When I signed up for Skype I was a bit concerned about this. The agreement did not limit the use of my computer to my own use of Skype. I still signed up. The computer I use for Skype is not a part of an enterprise network and thus a limited security risk.

I can see the issue on an enterprise level though.

It also brings to mind other “enterprise” issues. A few years (late 1990s) ago I was researching chat and message boards for use in communicating with a distribution network of financial advisors. The research did not take very long - the corporate IT department had shut down any access to chat forums and I was not about to take them on to get access to such tools for the marketing and sales departments. Maybe I should have, but with limited resources you have to “pick your fights”. The bottom line is that IT ended up deciding on my communication strategy - without discussing the impact with me as a user

roar at roarweb dot com

Note: This post moved from Blogger December 6, 2005

Marketers, Meet AJAX: “Marketers, Meet AJAX”

In his ClickZ article, Sean Carton points out that marketers will have a measurent challenge with AJAX.

Why? No additional page views! In his words: “That’s right, no page views. The whole site can, in effect, be one huge “page.”

One of the great things with the web - from a marketers perspective - is that activities were measurable. Many people have stayed away from Flash due to the challenge of measurement and Search Engine visability. While we lately have seen vendors developing technologies to measure what happens withing a Flash site, it has taken a long time to get there.

I love Google Maps! And I believe AJAX will have a huge impact on usability. So, as a marketer - and someone who really believes in analytics - I hope we’ll see measurement tools for AJAX coming soon.

Sean Carton writes: “…measurement technologies and serving software will catch up — in time”.

Soon, I hope.

roar at roarweb dot com