Today Google released street view for the city of Kingston. I hope everyone was smiling all day back in July 2009.

I’ve also noticed that the facial blur isn’t 100% accurate. Same with the license plates. » Read more: Google Street View for Kingston, Ontario

For almost every business professional, contact management and networking go hand in hand. How about when you don’t have your contact list available to you? What now?

Over the weekend I started playing with a website called Soocial. You may have heard about it. I have only just begun using this service, but I can immediately tell you it solved one of my biggest problems that I have had for many years in about 30 minutes.

Soocial.com is a contact management service that takes all your contacts from different sources (Gmail, Outlook, Windows Live, Yahoo, Windows Mobile, Blackberry etc…) and allows you to merge them so you have one consistent list. It lets you clean up duplicates, add more details to contacts, and overall makes life easier.

I highly recommend this service, even though they are still working hard at developing it.

Good luck Soocial!

Last October the Canadian Marketing Association secured several key changes in Canada’s anti-spam law. It’s important for marketing professionals not only to be familiar with these laws, but also to know who has an influence in their writings. The fact that the CMA is able to help guide these laws might just be a good thing. The anti-spam law, and most laws of this nature are designed to protect consumers rights to privacy, and civil rights. Details below. » Read more: CMA changes Canada’s anti-spam law

A big push these days for email marketers is the idea of having streaming video right in the email. Although it sounds like a great idea, a majority if not all email clients do not support it. The work around? An image that looks like the video player with a play button.

The point of putting the image is so the end user establishes the link that if they click it, they will watch a video. What they do not always think of is that “Clicking here will take me to their website”.

It is a great way to get more visitors through your newsletters, and possibly guide them to other content on your website, and then possibly a conversion.

A very useful process if done effectively.

**** UPDATE ****

Since writing this article, I have been contacted by an organization named “EyeMail” and they claim they are able to do video in email using a variety of methods, programming and technology to bring streaming video to your inbox. Although I haven’t seen this personally, it sounds promising.  EyeMail can be found here: http://www.eyemailinc.com/

**** UPDATE  #2****

Another company to mention is Goodmail Systems based out of California. They are partnering with Time Warner’s AOL unit. You can read the full article here.

photo credit: Robert S. Donovan

How do you tell the difference between a spammer and an organization?

Simple. They give you the option to Opt-out. That wonderful little unsubscribe button at the bottom of the email is pretty handy. Yet some companies who choose to “DIY” their newsletters often forget to add this option.

» Read more: Stay out of the Junk Mail folder