Over the past two weeks we’ve all been reeling from the news coming out of Victoria, of the devastation wrought by the bushfires.

Although I’ve been silent here (and on my personal blog) this has been primarily because I simply don’t know what to say. That said, there are times for words and times for prayers – an event like this is a time for prayer in my opinion…

Needless to say my thoughts and heart join all those at the memorial gatherings today in sending my best wishes to all those touched by this tragedy.

Zumio is proud to support the Australia Tibet Council (ATC).

I feel truly blessed that the last four donations I’ve made are to organisations I have a personal connection with through friends and colleagues. ATC is no different – my long-time friend Ashley Brown and his wife Tahne are very heavily involved with the organisation.

Both they and the volunteers and staff at ATC have done a tremendous amount of work to increase awareness of Tibetan culture in Australia, including participating in the organisation of visits by the Dalai Lama, as well as advocating for the human rights and democratic freedoms of the Tibetan people.

This included last years team up with GetUp on the Olympic Silence is not Golden campaign.

Please consider supporting ATC so that they can continue their good work.

For those that don’t already know, each quarter Zumio donates 1% of nett profit before tax to progressive causes. ATC is the recipient for the Oct-Dec 2008 quarter.

• Average open rates and response rates for email appeals – "The average open rate for email appeals is 14%" – with pointers to the source.
• Innovators in Social Media – Beth Kanter is among others interviewed for the Business Week video on innovation in social media and networking.
• Is Social Media Bullshit? – An excellent presentation with voiceover by Jay Neely summarising some of the key benefits of engaging with social media and networking tools in business. Well worth the 5 mins it'll take to watch…
• What I learned redesigning the Campaign Monitor newsletter – Great tips from Campaign Monitor based on their experience redesigning their own email template.

(These links were posted to my del.icio.us feed between 16-Feb-2009 and 21-Feb-2009.)

This TED video hit my iPhone over the weekend – more info at the Siftables page and on David Merrill’s page at MIT. I found the concept engaging enough, but the applications that the David, Jeevan and their collaborators have developed are exceptional.

The excitement I feel around this technology is similar to what I felt when I first saw Jeff Han present the multi-touch interface at TED. It didn’t take long for Han’s ideas to reach the mainstream through the iPhone. I wonder how long before we’ll see Siftables translated into a commercial product?

So, you have a good understanding of your participants, have worked out a structure and site design that meets their needs, and now you’re ready to write the content of your site – the copy.

While many of the principles of good copywriting apply in the offline and online world, there are a few tips for copywriting that are specific to on-screen reading and search engines.

Over the jump I’ll review some of the things I’ve learnt about writing effective copy for the web.

Read the rest of this entry »

• API Update: Loads of new methods – Campaign Monitor adds even more methods to its already excellent API. I can see lots of cool uses for this…