Pssst. Wanna Thwart Spam, Telemarketers and Junk Mail? - posted by Day Tooley

Remember the frenzy in January, 2003 when the National Do Not Call Registry promised to block unwanted phone solicitors from calling us at home? Your phone-free dinners may come to an end soon.

Stop Telemarketing Calls - Unless you opt-out again before December 1st, you’ll have to put up with 31 days of telesales calls while your new request goes active. Telesales companies are gearing up to make your life a living hell for those 31 days.
Stop eMail Spam - Stopping it at the source is better than blocking it at your computer. I don’t have big hopes on this one.
Stop Junk Mail - Trees are disappearing by the millions and showing up in our mailboxes in the form of junk mail catalogs. I carefully remove the label from soup cans and put it in the paper recycle box before smashing the can for its recycle box. A years worth of can labels don’t weigh as much as 1-day’s worth of holiday catalogs.

Today, I spent 20 minutes and $2.64 (4 postage stamps and $1 Visa charge) to eliminate part of this avalanche of unwanted marketing junk. And I did it at a new one-stop website: ProQuo.com. Here are the 16 bad actors responsible for a ton of cr*p that I hope I stopped:

Four of these global-warming marketing mills required me to print out a letter and mail a signed copy. The Credit Card, Mortgage & Insurance Offers service (OptOutPrescreen.com) asked for my Social Security Number (I gave it) and charged me a dollar on my credit card so I won’t get offers for more credit cards.

The National Do Not Call Registry required an email confirmation but was really quick (30 seconds total). Here’s the success confirmation screen:

Now to sit and wait for the storm to pass. You might want to give ProQuo.com a visit.

October 25th, 2007 by Day Tooley
Posted in General, eMail | Enter a comment »

My Daughter, Cisco And Now Microsoft Is On Board - posted by Day Tooley

Unified messaging is finally official. Business communication will catch up.

My “non-technical” 13-year-old 7th grader was collaborating with classmates on her Mac the other night as she was doing her homework. Others were being contacted and added to the conversation. Emails and files were being exchanged. And, of course, some music was playing. These kids had their new school-issued iBooks for 2 weeks and were masters of them already.

Yesterday Bill Gates took the pulpit at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco to announce that Microsoft was committing to take the parents of these kids into “unified communications,” a term that refers to combining voice calls, e-mail, instant messaging and videoconferencing into one application.

Here’s the deal: In three years Microsoft believes there will be 100 million users of unified communications, which should provide companies with a 50 percent reduction in communications costs. It represents a $45 billion annual market opportunity (and that’s not counting the kids).

This is good news for businesses and for parents. In three years we can be buying stuff from Microsoft so that we can save some money on communication costs and understand what our kids already do today for free.

October 17th, 2007 by Day Tooley
Posted in Collaboration, General | 1 Comment »

Does Your Website Make The Grade? Try Website Grader. - posted by Day Tooley

As any parent knows, it takes more than good looks to make good grades. And good grades have proven to be critical indicators of future success.

School is now in session for your website. Website Grader is a tool that helps measure the effectiveness of your website from a marketing perspective. The resulting score is based on a variety of data points about a website including the structure of the site, popularity, traffic, search engine optimization, marketing features and a slew of other things.

Does this EasyStreet Business Blog make the grade? Well, everything’s relative. Here’s our grade as of today:

Website Grade: 71 (70% of websites scored lower)
Google Indexed Pages: 240
Readability Level: 7th Grade

Putting ego on the line, I compared this blog to a couple of larger efforts:

The New York Times website
Website Grade: 99 (highest possible)
Google Indexed Pages: 1,360,000
Readability Level: 7th Grade (ideal)

The Oregonian website
Website Grade: 81
Google Indexed Pages: 565,000
Readability Level: 9th Grade

The reports include analysis and suggestions for improvement. You can try it for free (for now). It just takes a couple of minutes. Go to WebsiteGrader.com and see if your website makes the grade.

October 5th, 2007 by Day Tooley
Posted in Websites, Search Engines | Enter a comment »

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Pssst. Wanna Thwart Spam, Telemarketers and Junk Mail? - posted by Day Tooley

My Daughter, Cisco And Now Microsoft Is On Board - posted by Day Tooley

Does Your Website Make The Grade? Try Website Grader. - posted by Day Tooley