This week I continue my series on e-mail deliverability inspired by the Lyris Inc panel featuring Michael Kelly of Click Mail Marketing, Craig Spiezie of the Online Trust Alliance, and David Fowler of Lyris Technologies.

Beyond Compliance and Authentication

CAN-SPAM compliance defines the bare minimum standards you must observe to keep from being legally culpable.  Authentication guarantees that nobody else’s actions will impact the deliverability of your e-mail.  However, it is entirely possible that your own actions could impact your e-mail deliverability, even if you never …

White space is a term of art referring to any portion of a physical or digital page that is left unmarked.  This includes margins, gutters, paragraph breaks, column divisions, and the space around and between graphics and illustrations.

These areas are not necessarily white, but they are traditionally left empty.  Because white space is characterized by the lack of content, it is sometimes known as negative space.

Why Should a Website Have White …

This week I continue my series on e-mail deliverability inspired by the Lyris Inc panel featuring Michael Kelly of Click Mail Marketing, Craig Spiezie of the Online Trust Alliance, and David Fowler of Lyris Technologies.

In the Beginning

When the internet began, it was dominated by academic and government agencies.  Such agencies had little reason to hide their own identities or mimic the identities of others.  As a result, a system was built that made it easy to apply domain names (like @stanford.edu or @whitehouse.gov) as …

The American Association of School Librarians (AASL) recently compiled a list of this year’s top 25 free websites for teaching and learning.

Each site comes with a description of how it can be used by teachers or students, and while some of the sites are specifically academic, many provide online and mixed-technology solutions for anyone interested in collaborative, interactive, or long distance projects and communication.

Here are just a few of their suggestions, and how they could be used in the business world:

Mindmeister

Finally an organizational site for the visual thinker. Mindmeister’s mind map format is easy good for …
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Summer is here and we are seeing business people exploring the opportunities. Some want to re-structure their business to adapt to the current market; others want to start anew and follow their true passion. In today’s marketplace, any business endeavor involves the online world. Whether a website is needed just for informational purposes, or whether the website is the business itself, a website is needed—period.

But… not just a website… a good website. And, what makes a good website? Good planning. A website is a tricky thing to plan for.

• It needs to be flexible so it’s successful today and as the …
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There are so many web sites that it is overwhelming to try and decide the best business to hire. Web sites have become really generic because businesses are trying to design them on their own using cheap and uninteresting templates and stock photography.

I am a professional portrait photographer and have the opportunity to work for web site designers that know the difference between a generic site and a personalized site that will set your business apart from the hundreds of other sites selling the same service or product.

The first way to set yourself apart from all the sites that are difficult to navigate …

What is the Definition of Fair Use?

Fair use is a provision of United States’ copyright law that outlines the extent to which copyrighted work can be used or reproduced without seeking the permission of the copyright holder.  Generally speaking, fair use is only meant to cover the limited amount of duplication necessary for criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, or research.

A more thorough definition can be found in Title 17 of the U.S. Code, Chapter 1, Paragrah 107

Room for Interpretation

As Supreme Court Justice nominee Sonja Sotomayor has repeatedly pointed out during her confirmation hearings, changes in technology and …

Earlier this week I had the good fortune to attend a highly informative panel hosted by Lyris Inc and moderated by Dianna Dilworth of DMNews. The speakers were Michael Kelly of Click Mail Marketing, Craig Spiezie of the Online Trust Alliance, and Lyris’s own David Fowler.

It would be impossible to summarize the whole of their webinar in a single blog entry, so for the next several weeks I will use my Thursday blog posts to hit the highlights.

Legal Standards for E-Mail

In 2003 the George …

What should I include on my website’s FAQs page?

A page of Frequently Asked Questions will enhance your site if:

• People really do ask you questions. It’s not a requirement that all your FAQs be literal, actual frequently asked questions.  But if you do get questions from customers, an FAQs page can cut down on your staff’s phone and email time answering those repeated questions, while …
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When you write a blog entry it’s like you’re writing newspaper columns for the ‘net.   To be effective new entries must be a regular feature of your online presence.  Blogs are also more effective when they are driven by the personality and explicitly stated opinions of the author(s).

When starting or reinventing your blog, you should take a moment to think about what sort of voice you would like to write in.

Wikipedia identifies five distinct types of columns.

• advice columns
• critic reviews
• editorial opinions
• gossip
• humor

None of the column types should act as a straightjacket, but each is worth examining for inspiration and organizational themes.

Advice Columns

Advice …