Good Reasons To Send Email Cards Instead

I love technology. I love all of the ways that technology has made my life easier and more simple. I guess I'm a guy that likes things as uncomplicated as possible, so that is in fact why I have come to treasure the gift that the internet truly is. There are so many ways that the internet has affected my life that I'm not sure where to begin. I guess I'll share that the internet has affected my relationships immensely and hence my life is different too. One small but significant way that the internet has affected my life is by giving me the ability to send email cards for various occasions.

One of my downfalls is that I'm always the one among my family and friends to forget important days and events in the lives of those that I love. I don't do this intentionally, but it seems like life gets busy and that sending a card is quite often the last thing on my mind when a special day approaches. In fact, I could probably say that I have forgotten more birthdays and other signficant days in the past twenty years than I have remembered. But not any more. The ability to send email cards has literally transformed my world.

Sending email cards is great because it is so easy. All I have to do is search the internet for a card that fits the occasion and then push click to send it in an email to a family member or friend. What could be easier than that? If there are people out there that have no trouble remembering all the important days on their calendar, then you can discontinue reading this when you like and keep on sending normal cards. But if anyone is like me, then you need the help of email cards to make your life easier.
Another thing that I have grown to love about sending email cards is that there is such a variety of cards to choose from. As soon as I do a simple search for email cards I receive a ton of good options and usually have no trouble finding the perfect email card to send within minutes. The variety and the simplicity of the process makes it quick to do during your day.

One of the ways that I have become effective at sending email cards is by having a calendar system on my email account that lets me enter in important birthdays and other events and then it reminds me of them a few days before they happen. This way I have time to send email cards and I have time to purchase gifts, send flowers or do anything else that is necessary in the process.

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10 Reasons Why People Don't Buy From You

1. You don't make people feel safe when they order. Remind people that they are ordering through a secure server. Tell them you won't sell their e-mail address and all their information will be kept confidential.

2. You don't make your ad copy attractive. Your ad lists features instead of benefits. The headline does not attract at your target audience. You don't list any testimonials or guarantees included in your ad.

3. You don't remind people to come back and visit. People usually don't purchase the first time they visit. The more times they visit your site, the greater the chance they will buy. The most effective way is to give them a free subscription to your e-zine.

4. You don't let people know anything about your business. They will feel more comfortable if they know who they are buying from. Publish a section called "About Us" on your web site. Include your business history, profile of employees, contact information etc.

5. You don't give people as many ordering options as possible. Accept credit cards, checks, money orders, and other forms of electronic payments. Take orders by phone, e-mail, web site, fax, mail, etc.

6. You don't make your web site look professional. You want to have your own domain name. Your web site should be easy to navigate through. The graphics should be related to the theme of your web site.

7. You don't let people read your ad before they get your freebie. When you use free stuff to lure people to your web site include it below your ad copy or on another web page. If you list the freebie above your ad they may never look to see what you're selling.

8. You don't attract the target audience that would buy your product or service. A simple way to do this is to survey your existing customers to see what attracted them to buy. This information will help you improve your target marketing and advertising.

9. You don't test and improve your ad copy. There are many people who write an ad copy and never change it. You have to continually test and improve your ad copy to get the highest possible response rate.

10. You don't give people any urgency to buy now. Many people are interested in your product but they put off buying it till later and eventually forget about it. Entice them to buy now with a freebie or discount and include a deadline date when the offer ends.

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How to Prepare For an Interview

Once you get the call for the interview, the next thing that you have to do is prepare for it. You can never over prepare for an interview. The more prepared you are, the harder it will be to make mistakes. It is best to prepare yourself emotionally as well as intellectually for an interview. Giving a great interview is not as hard as some may think, but not as easy as others do either. Here are a few things that must be done in order to prepare for your next interview.

Remember, during an interview, you are a salesman. You are there to sell yourself to your prospective employer. You want to market yourself in the most interesting way possible. Great preparation for the interview is your best bet. A salesman that is knowledgeable, friendly and positive always gets the close.

Do Your Research

It doesn't matter how much knowledge or experience you have about the position that you are trying to get in a company if you don't have a clue who the company is or what they do. It is disastrous to enter into an interview and not be able to tell your interviewer what their company is about. How else are you going to tell them why you feel that you would be a good addition to their company?

A good and less time consuming way to get to know about a company is to look up their website. You can get all of the general knowledge about them that way, including the names of key people and their job titles. You should sift through most of their pages, including the pages that show samples of their work and/or products. You can also look them up in the media files if there are any. Read the articles about them and soak in as much information as possible.

Another thing that would be nice to do is to check out the surrounding area around the company. It makes for a nice breaker during the interview. You can make a comment about a particular monument or resting place nearby.

A trickier way to get a little extra information about the company is to call them on the phone and ask general questions, without referring to yourself as a potential employee. It's a nice way to get the goods on upcoming promotions etc.

Know Your Contact

When called for an interview, ask to whom you will be talking to. It is nice to be able to greet your interviewer by name at the beginning of the interview without first being told who they are. It shows that you are on top of things, and have prepared before hand.

You will also want to do some research on the person that will be conducting your interview. Learn what they do for the company and try to get some samples of their work or achievements in the company.

If you know what department that you are going to work in you may want to get the names of your potential colleagues and superiors prior to the interview as well. This way you can get some information about their roles in the company and the types of work that they have done.

Mention some of the things that you learn about your potential colleagues in the interview and about how much you look forward to working with them in the future. If you can, give an example of their work so that you will appear more sincere.

Practice Your Responses

It is best, if you are prone to nervousness, to practice giving your responses to the questions that may be asked of you. You should practice your wording and the tone of voice that you plan to use; Try keeping your responses as brief as possible, but with as much detail as you can.

When you are trying to work out the proper responses to the interviewer's questions, you will also want to practice the art of getting your nerves under control as well as ridding yourself of any other odd habits while talking; like expressing yourself with your hands.

Practice answering your interview questions with a friend. Get his or her opinion about your delivery and gestures. Perhaps your friend will have some nice insights for you to use during the real interview.

Dress the Part

Pre-select your attire the day before your interview. You want to make sure that your clothes do not have any wrinkles or stains on them. Pick an outfit that best suits the type of job that you are applying for. If you are going to work in an office setting, you should dress conservatively. Soft earth tones are best for women. Try to avoid mini skirts and shirts that show too much skin. A nice dark suit is good for a male.

Of course if you are planning to work outdoors or in an artistic environment, you can dress a little more casually. Just be certain to avoid wearing denim jeans, over sized clothing, and under sized clothing. Women should try and avoid wearing too much make-up as well. It gives the wrong impression.

Even in the hotter seasons, you should not wear sandals or gym shoes to an interview. It sends an unprofessional message. The same goes for hats and other accessories.

Get Organized

Make sure that all of the things that you will need for the interview are prepared the day before. Make a checklist of the things that you will need if you have to. You should always have an extra resume handy during the interview. You should also bring with you a note pad to take notes during the interview if needed. (Only write down the important things that you think you will need to remember)If you have a business card, have one handy, it makes for easy contact later, and it also shows that you are professional and may help the employer to remember your name.

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JazzFest In New !!

JazzFest In New Orleans Kicks Off Without Jazz

The Jazzfest in New Orleans, intended to revive the sodden spirits of the land of legendary jazz greats, went off, oddly enough, with comparatively little jazz. There was, in conspicuous unlikelihood, Bruce Springsteen, who did manage a soulful rendition of When the Saints Go Marching In. Also on hand was the legendary jazz performer Elvis Costello.

While all the misplaced rockers do come as a wakeup call to the people who expect the Jazzfest to feature jazz, the sad truth is that jazz hasn't been the leading act in New Orleans, or anywhere else in the lower 48, since Bill Haley and the Comets strolled around Preservation Hall, thumping out Rock Around the Clock, ratcheting up that old backbeat rhythm in the first verifiable intrusion of rock and roll into the sensibilities of the former comparatively civilized ears of now extensively deaf humanity.

Of course, there were some performers with a tad of credibility toward the appellation of jazz artist, such as verifiable regulars Dr. John and Allan Toussaint.

It's time deal with the indisputable encumbrance that we're living in an age when the big music stars are not, despite their passing pretensions, exponents of the jazz mode, except perhaps in the persona of the skillful New Yorker trumpeter, Wynton Marsalis. The giants of jazz, from raspy voiced trumpeter Louis Armstrong to smoothly elegant pianist Bill Evans, have long been sleeping in the arms of time.

The truth of music in New Orleans has for many years been in the sound of music one hears when he or she strolls through the fabled French Quarter. They have been, not the lilting lines of jazz, but the raucous thumps of rock.

Since popular music is unlikely to return to those golden days of yore, it seems that the least irritating way to return consonance to the Jazzfest is simply to rename it the Musicfest.

Then, while our ears might be just as troubled, at least our minds could ease off the incongruity that persists in troubling them.

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Functional Web Specification

Ineffective functional specification for Web projects such as Web sites, Intranets or Portals contribute largely to delays, higher costs or in applications that do not match the expectations. Independent if the Web site, Intranet or Portal is custom developed or built on packaged software such as Web-, enterprise content management or portal software, the functional specification sets the foundation for project delays and higher costs. To limit delays and unexpected investments during the development process, the following pitfalls should be avoided:

Too vague or incomplete functional specification: This is the most common mistake that companies do. Everything that is ambiguously or not specified at all, developers do not implement or implement in a different way of what site owners want. This relates primarily to Web features that are considered as common user expectations. For example, HTML title tags, which are used to bookmark Web pages. The Web steering committee may specify that each page contains a page title, but does not specify that HTML Title tags needs to be implemented as well. Web developers therefore may do not implement HTML Title tags or implement them in a way, which differs from site owners' visions. There are other examples such as error handling on online forms or the definition of ALT texts for images to comply with the disability act section 508. These examples look like details but in practice, if developers need to modify hundreds or even thousands of pages, it amounts to several man-days or even man-weeks. Especially, the corrections for images as business owners need first to define the image names prior that Web developers can implement the ATL texts. Ambiguous functional specification can result due to the lack of internal or external missing usability skills. In this case, a one-day usability best practice workshop transfers the necessary or at least basic usability skills to the Web team. It is recommended, even for companies that have usability skills or rely on the subcontractor's skill set, that an external and neutral consultant reviews the functional specification. Especially, as such reviews relate to marginal spending as compared to the total Web investments (e.g. about $10 K - $15 K dollars for a review).

Future site enhancement not identified or not communicated: It is crucial that the Web committee identifies at least the major future site enhancements and communicates them to the development team. In the best case, the development team knows the roadmap for the coming three years. Such an approach allows the development team to anticipate implementation choices to host future site enhancements. It is more cost effective on mid- or long-term to invest more in the beginning and to build a flexible solution. If Web teams do not know or even ignore future enhancements, the risk for higher investment increases (e.g. adding new functionality in the future results in partially or at worst in totally rebuilding existing functionality). Looking at the financial delta for a flexible solution versus a solution just satisfying the current requirements, the flexible solution has proven to be more cost-effective in practice from a mid- and long-term perspective.

Planned functionality not aligned with internal resources: Many companies look at site functionality only from a site visitor perspective (e.g. facilitation of searching information or performing transaction) and corporate benefits (e.g. financial benefits of self-service features). However, there is a third dimension the impact of site functionality on internal resources. Site functionality that can heavily impact internal resources are for example:

- Web sites: providing news, online recruitment, online support, etc.
- Intranets / portals: providing content maintenance functionality for business managers

It is crucial for the success of site functionality that the Web committee analyzes the impact and takes actions to ensure operations of the planned functionality. For example, providing the content maintenance functionality to business owners and product mangers with an associated workflow. This functionality is effective and can generate business benefits such as reduced time to market. However, in practice, business owners and product managers will need to write, validate, review, approve and retire content. This results in additional workload. If the Web committee has not defined in the Web governance (processes, policies, ownership and potentially enforcement), it may happen that this functionality is not used and hence becomes useless.

Wish lists versus actual needs and business requirements: The functional specification is not aligned with user's needs or business requirements. This is more common for internal applications such as Intranets or portals. In many cases, the project committee neglects to perform a sound internal survey and defines functionality by generalizing individual employees' wishes without any sound proves. Capturing the feedback of internal users across the organization allows determining the critical functionality. To effectively perform a survey a representative set of employees need to be questioned. Further these employees need to be categorized into profiles. The profiles need to be characterized by for example, frequency of usage of the Intranet, estimated duration by visit, usage of the Intranet to facilitate their daily tasks, contribution to the business, etc. Based on this information the Web team can then prioritize the functionality and choose the most effective and relevant functionality for the next release. Less critical or less important functionality may be part of future releases (roadmap) or dropped. If such a sound decision process is not performed, it may happen that functionality is developed but only used by few users and the return of investment is not achieved.

Not enough visual supports or purely text based: Textual description of Web applications can be interpreted subjectively and hence leading to wrong expectations. To avoid setting wrong expectations, which may are only discovered during development or at worst at launch time, functional specification need to be complemented by visual supports (e.g. screenshots or at best HTML prototypes for home pages or any major navigation pages like sub-home pages for the major sections of the site such as for human resources, business units, finance, etc.). This allows reducing subjective interpretation and taking into account the users' feedback prior development. Such an approach helps setting the right expectations and to avoid any disappointments at the end once the new application is online.

We have observed these common mistakes, independently if companies have developed their Web applications internally or subcontracted them to an external service provider.

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Good Web Design

In today's highly technical world, everything is online. There is nothing you cannot buy, sell, trade, research, find pictures of, or play if you have a computer and Internet connection. These days, there is a web site out there for anything you could name.

Which means that someone probably has a web site a lot like yours? As competition for page views grows more intense, web design more technical, and the Internet more popular, good web design becomes more important than ever before. If you have a web site, then you want visitors to view that site. Good web design is the only way to make that happen.

The average Internet cruiser is more jaded these days, harder to impress. Good web design is the only way to get repeat visitors. There are several basic key elements to good web design that every web designer must know how to use.

Content. Internet search engines have grown very clever about searching content on web sites these days. Good web design is centered on your web site's content. What keywords will people search to find your site? Once you know what your keywords are, you have to have plenty of content on your site that features those keywords. There are several free web sites that allow you to check your keyword content. Use them. Content is what search engines look at first, so it is here that you must make your impression.

Links. Search engines, and your visitors, love links. You want links that connect to other pages of your site, internal links, as well as external links that connect to pages outside your domain. The more links you have, the better, so use them liberally throughout your site. Links also improve the navigation of your site, which is incredibly important to good web design.

Graphics. Bright colors, pictures, and fun fonts will make or break your web site. Graphics are going to fly at Internet cruisers every way they look, so you want to make an impression with the graphics on your site. Good web design is about a pleasing flow of colors, pictures, graphics, and text. Don't over clutter your pages, but make them exciting and interesting to look at.

Good web design is about learning how to balance key elements that appeal to search engines and your viewers. Your pages should flow together, your navigation should be easy, and your site filled with content. The only way to increase traffic to your site is through good web design that is updated regularly. This will ensure repeat, and new, business to your site. The more visitors you have, the better. Good web design is the only way to make that happen.

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