Office is dead...

Everything you know about emailing, chat, editing and sharing documents, photos, even asking your friends to the movies... is about to change: Google Wave
If you have a spare hour, sit back and be amazed.

Ad Words can add big costs if you are not careful...

For those of us who have used Google Ad Words, it can tend to be a bit of a mixed bag in terms of results. However, if you really look into the detail of the options available, you can save yourself a lot of head scratching and unwanted cost.

Content...
You may have seen ads appearing in other blogs... this is so these sites can make money from Google when people click on ads loading in their website. This is called "Content" in Google's Ad Words content management control panel. You have the option of listing your ad in these websites as well as in Google and partner search results.

One the big things to be aware of, is the automatic placements of your ad under "Network" tab. If you allow Google to automatically select the websites your ad will appear in based on your keywords, it can be very broad, and not the exact audience you may be after.

A test of a campaign I recently ran for my own business resulted in 180 odd websites recommendations for one particular keyword in Sydney, that had nothing really to do with the audience I was aiming at.

So manual or automatic... it is up to you, but remember to go into the automatic results and review the suggested websites. You can manually adjust this list at any time.

Need help with SEM? Contact us!

Looking for inspiration?

Thanks to the many bloggers out there exposing the work of countless designers and coders, you can now get a good dose of inspiration to save you from a mundane Monday, solve a technical problem or get the latest tech and design news...

Here is a list of some of my favourite sites, in no particular order:

The FWA
Abduzeedo
Smashing Magazine
Web Design File
Ants Magazine
FaveUp
Best Web Gallery
Design Flavr
Speckboy
Webdesign Inspiration
Design Is Kinky

For random snippets of design related goodness visit The Cool Hunter. If you really have a lot of time up your sleeve, get lost in time with Mood Stream.

Cool free fonts for designers!

Thanks to Ants Magazine, here is a list of 50 free fonts to download. Warning, these are for designers... :-)

Want an alternative to Google Analytics?

Check out Piwik! http://piwik.org/
See a comparison for these tools at Clazh.com

(Thanks to Weblenium for the Piwik tip!)

Are you complying with Anti Spam laws?

According to the Australian Government, Department of Broadband Communications and Digital Economy, the "The Spam Act 2003 prohibits the sending of spam, which is identified as a commercial electronic message sent without the consent of the addressee via email, short message service (SMS), multimedia message service (MMS) or instant messaging. The requirements under the Spam Act apply to all commercial electronic messages, including both bulk and individual messages."

The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has enforcement responsibility for the Spam Act. However, there is more to this law than just not sending without consent.

The three main things to remember are:

1. Consent - make sure you have consent to contact the recipient and can prove you have obtained it.
2. Identify - include accurate information to identify yourself or your organisation as the authorised sender of the message
3. Unsubscribe - make sure your messages have a functional unsubscribe facility, so that recipients can unsubscribe (also known as "Opt Out") at any time.

If you are broadcasting or engaging a 3rd party to do this for you, make sure you are familiar with all the Spam Act requirements.

Some organisations are exempt, such as charities, educational institutions and the government of course!

Read more on the Spam Act and Code of Practice here

IE8 out now...

IE8 is out of BETA and being pushed on the Microsoft website.

So does your website display OK in IE8? It's time to find out! You may need to throw a META tag into your website so it renders as IE7 until you fix any issues... "X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=7" Personally, I prefer Firefox.

View the tour of Microsoft IE8