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Do you grab your phone to find out the latest news? If so, you're not alone. According to a new study by comScore, Inc., in January 2009, 22.3 million people accessed news and information via their mobile devices, up from 10.8 million people a year ago.

With a whopping  107% increase in only one year, it's clear that there's been a significant shift in the way we fill our heads with content. Not only do we want quick and easy information, but we also want it the quickest and easiest way we can find it; this "one touch for information" movement is growing like wildfire.

So, is a picture really worth a thousand words? If the picture's on your website, it could be worth ten times that many.

Considering that the average visitor spends less than a minute on your website, the design of your site needs to quickly and easily communicate who you are and what you do. When you have a small window of time to say, "I am a friendly, thoughtful, customer-service-oriented business with happy customers," good quality images may be the perfect way to do it!

What do you know about a content management system {{CMS}}? Simply put, a CMS is like installing Microsoft Word on your website. With it, you and your staff can change many elements of your website, including the copy and images. You can also add or rename buttons, upload videos, even add or delete whole pages!

"Why," you ask, "would I want to give myself more work to do? My plate is full enough, thanks!"

While having a CMS is certainly not necessary for every website, it can provide several real benefits. With it, you can:

Google is taking the message of conservation to a new level - below zero elevation. Earlier this week, Google launched the new Google Earth 5.0 with more options than ever before. Google Earth has always been impressive, letting me virtually visit a sunny beach in Southern California while I'm sitting in chilly Rhode Island.  However, the features in 5.0 blow the previous versions out of the water, literally.

Facebook. The name has come to be synonymous with fun... a way to reconnect with the past and renew old relationships.

Did you know that, in addition to its ability to find your best friend from high school, Facebook also offers some strong, effective marketing options? Just imagine: with access to entire networks of people at once, your message can spread virally to all the corners of the planet in record time.

When was the last time you thought about the internet browser you're using? Most of us use the default browser that came with our computer and, more often than not, that default is Internet Explorer.

Did you know there are other browsers you can use to get to the internet? It's true. There are several products that you can use to access websites, and they're not all created equal.

2008 has been a pivotal year in our world. Just think about it: in the course of 12 months, we've experienced the most incredible Olympics ever in China... the rebirth of Saturday Night Live with Tina Fey as Sarah Palin... a wave of Obama-mania which resulted in the first African-American president-elect in our history... and a huge economic upheaval that is {{even now}} redefining our entire economic structure.

Not only do these events impact our everyday world, but they also have huge ramifications for the digital world where we all spend so much of our time...

Online social networking may be a foreign concept to you, but trust me: it's not foreign to the new group of Gen Y adults who will be your clients tomorrow. Succeeding in the coming years will mean embracing (or at least, accepting) this technology and understanding how it can work for you.

And rest assured: it can work for you.  Let me tell you how:

Do you know how private your email really is?

Most of us assume that our work email accounts are fair game…that our employers have the right and the responsibility to monitor the email sent from their employees’ accounts. After all, if the person down the hall starts sending threatening emails to Bill Gates, wouldn’t you want to know?

A common inquiry we hear from our clients is, "We want to make sure our customers think of us when they have a need, but how can we guarantee that? Short of camping out in their office or calling them every day, how can we make sure they keep us in mind later?"

One simple way we recommend is to use direct email, also known as email "blasts."