This is where you can find the best WebCams on the net! A WebCam is a small camera which take pictures in a fixed interval from a specific place in the world. These pictures can be viewed on this page.
Considered as one of the most effective marketing tools, e-mail fliers have become quite a rage and a necessity in the business world, fast providing a cheaper and more focused alternative to the traditional printed flier. An email flier draws the attention of the customer and presents the benefits and features of a product or service or company in an appealing manner. With the capability of reaching out to a large number of potential customers in a matter of few seconds, email fliers provide businesses and effective way to promote their products or services amidst a targeted audience with the help of a select mailing list. To design an effective and professional looking email flier, you need to follow some important steps:
The most important starting point of an email flier is to decide what its objective is – what it intends to do or achieve. An email flier is in other words a beautifully designed advertisement sent out over the email chain. Hence, you must know for sure what you want to convey to your customers - whether you want to inform them about recent launches in your product line or promote a particular product or services or announce a special promotional offer and so on.
Secondly, define your target audience so as to ensure that the email flier reaches the most high potential target group. Prepare a demographic profile of your customer base identifying their age group, location, preferences, gender, education level, etc. Having knowledge of who you are writing for would help you to meet the requirements of your clients.
Build a mailing list containing the email ids of your customers And keep updating your mailing list from time to time.
Review quality email fliers from leading sources. There are email directories such as Adpera.com and iStorez.com that show professional email campaigns from the internet's top retailers. Retailers spend a lot of money on graphic designers, marketing professionals and testing various approaches. You will quickly notice there are some common "best practices" used through out the industry.
Make a rough draft of the design of the email flier by deciding where to put the logo of your company, content, images etc. Decide where you want to place the images, whether on top of the flier or in the centre.
Write a thought provoking headline. Project the main benefit of your product or service in the headline so that the reader instantly knows what he/she stands to gain. Make it attractive and eye catching. Remember that the headline should act like a magnet to draw the attention of the readers.
Use sub-headings to break the text in the right places. Don’t use long paragraphs and long winding sentences. Keep the content short and crispy so that the readers can understand what you want to say at first go.
Write the content as if you are having a conversation with the readers. Directly address the reader and tell him/her about the benefits he/she can get from the products or the services.
Stick to just one type of font. Don’t slap in too many different kinds of fonts in the mistaken belief that it looks creative. It doesn’t. The use of different types of fonts in one fliers creates confusion and makes the flier look amateurish.
Insert appealing pictures in the email flier. For a profound effect, put one large picture instead of a number of smaller pictures.
Use sufficient amount of white space to break up the text. Proper usage of white space makes the copy look interesting and attracts the reader.
Don’t keep the border very close to the text. It makes the copy look too clumsy.
Include a free coupon or some discount in the flier and encourage the reader to take advantage of the freebies. Include the link of the appropriate webpage which you want your customers to visit.
Include a call to action. Encourage the reader to email back or call back. Include information of your website url, email and the contact number.
On April 30, 2007, Google renamed "Google Personalized Homepage" to "iGoogle".[2] As of 17 October 2007 (2007 -10-17)[update] Google had made the service available in many localized versions in 42 languages, and in over 70 country domain-names
Gadgets
iGoogle gadgets interact with the user and utilize the Google GadgetsAPI. Some gadgets developed for Google Desktop can also be used within iGoogle. The Google Gadgets API is public and allows anyone to develop a gadget for any need.[5]
Google also allows all users to create a special gadget that does not require the use of the Gadgets API. The gadgets are designed to be shared with friends and family. The special gadgets must be created using an online wizard and must belong to one of the following types:
"Framed Photo" – displays a series of photos.
"GoogleGram" – creation of special daily messages.
"Daily Me" – displays user's current mood and feelings.
"Free Form" – allows the user to input text and an image of their choice.
"YouTube Channel" – displays videos from a YouTube channel.
"Personal List" – allows the user to create a list of items.
"Countdown" – countdown timer.
"Daily Literary Quote" – displays literature-related quotes served up by ModeRoom Press.
Some of the developer-made gadgets include:
"Meteo-si": displays the current weather and the weather forecast for selected area(s)
Throughout 2009, iGoogle released a sidebar at the side of the home page which also altered the overall appearance of the iGoogle pages. It allows users of Gmail to chat from their homepage without going to gmail.com along with organising the iGoogle tabs vertically instead of horizontally along the top. The addition to this sidebar feature upset many users of iGoogle, many voicing their opinions in the Google Forums, as currently there is no way to opt-out of the change to the site design.
Themes
With iGoogle, users can select unique themes for their Google homepages: some themes designed by Google itself and others by the userbase
Artist themes
In April 2008, Google began offering a choice of themes by professional artists
Experimental iGoogle
On July 8, 2008, Google announced the beginning of a testing period for a new version of iGoogle which alters some features, including replacing the tabs with left navigation, adding chat functionality, and a canvas-view gadget for RSS.[7] Users were selected for this test and notified when they logged in by a link to a brief description and further links to forums. On the forums, it was explained[by whom?] that there was no opt-out, as a control for the test. Further, there was no information on how long the test would continue. Many expressed dissatisfaction with the new version and with the inability to opt-out.[8]
On October 16, 2008, Google announced the release of this new version of iGoogle and retired its older format. The release did not initially include the persistent chat widget. It does include the left navigation in place of tabs as well as a change to widget controls, however.[9] The stated purpose is to prepare for OpenSocial, with the new canvas view stated as playing an important role in that.[10]
On October 17, 2008, InformationWeek[11] reported "a vocal group of users" as unhappy with the changes. They[who?] point out that many users don't want change forced on them, and that this is a general problem with cloud software under a service provider's control.
A workaround to restore the original tab layout was found by attaching "?gl=all" to the end of the iGoogle URL. On June 4, 2009, this workaround was eliminated. Within days, another workaround was discovered. Simply changing the URL ending to "?hl=all" would again restore the original tab layout, with some missing links across the top of the home page, including "Maps" and "more".
On November 18, 2009 this workaround was again eliminated resulting in the tabs being placed on the left and with the links still missing. This led to an immediate resurrection of the controversy over user choice, both in the UK and world-wide, as many people unhappy with the new layout imposed on US users had switched to the UK Google site where the workarounds still worked. Within hours, the most frequently asked question on the help forum was how to restore the old layout, and there was a large number of feature suggestions to the same effect on the Google product ideas page. Other solutions have come to the fore, which require adds-ons, greasemonkey scripts or bookmarklets
