Marketing Tips: How to Track Direct Mailings on the Web

Plus, Andrew Lock offers a small business marketing lesson on solution selling and an interview with business success coach, Marc Accetta on the value of edutainment.

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Holiday Season Saw Slight e-Commerce Rebound

Capping off a year of flat growth, holiday online shopping showed modest improvement over disastrous 2008 season, according to new data from Web metrics firm comScore.

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Google Buzz's Rocky Start May Lead to Gmail-Free Version

There's no question that Google Buzz has been the topic of the week. Google took the tech and social media industries by storm as it launched its new social media product.

Already, Buzz has shown a great deal of potential, but it has also created more than a few problems and concerns. Privacy has been the key concern. The most heavily publicized and perhaps most illustrative example of this can be found in this story from a woman who was automatically connected with her abusive ex-husband. Her post begins...

I use my private Gmail account to email my boyfriend and my mother.

There's a BIG drop-off between them and my other "most frequent" contacts.

You know who my third most frequent contact is?

My abusive ex-husband...

Google is evidently reconsidering its strategy for Buzz. Google is rolling out additional privacy adjustments to Buzz, reportedly in response to this woman's post. People you block in Buzz still show up as following you in Google Reader and there has been no ability to block people from Google Reader, but Google is working on changing both of these. Google has issued a statement to this effect.Meanwhile, Danny Sullivan reports that Google is considering a version of Buzz that would be independent from Gmail:

“It’s clear that interest in Buzz may extend beyond the current Gmail base, and we’re open to serving that community,” said Bradley Horowitz, Google’s VP of Product Marketing, when I spoke to him about some Buzz issues at the TED Conference.

Horowitz stressed that Google would still offer a version of Buzz within Gmail, in addition to any independent version.

“We think that Buzz within Gmail is a great experience, and we’ll keep offering that as well,” Horowitz said.

Google Buzz may have gotten off to kind of a rocky start in some aspects, but many others have paid the service plenty of praise. Google said as it was announced that it was only the first version, and they were counting on user feedback to help them improve it. At least they appear to be making good on that.

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Quality Institute gets $11M from ARRA

PROVIDENCE – The Rhode Island Quality Institute has been awarded more than $11 million in federal stimulus grants to support the development of a statewide health information exchange and to set up …

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News and Information Blog 13 02 2010

Marketing Tips: How to Track Direct Mailings on the Web

Holiday Season Saw Slight e-Commerce Rebound

Google Buzz's Rocky Start May Lead to Gmail-Free Version

Quality Institute gets $11M from ARRA