Month: November 2008

A surprisingly easy to read and affordable book for learning the SAS language as well as other aspects of SAS software  is SAS for Dummies by Stephen McDaniel. Its only 30 USF full price and at Amazon you can get it even for 20 $ ( which is variable- today’s price). I found the contents of the book really interesting, great reviews by others, and given the high quality of Stephen’s contribution to the SAS -L list cant wait to get my copy before I give a detailed review.

Also you can read the man’s blog here at http://stephenmcdaniel.us/ to check the quality and simplicty of his analytical teachings in SAS.

No surprises here- The best Internet campaign belongs to the Obama Political Campaign .They raised a record sum of money from a record number of people thus changing the political fund raising game by eliminating the middle men also known as lobbyists.

Between January 2008 and Today the Obama campaign sent some 201 emails. Some innovative fatures –

1) Multiple Email Senders – Michelle Obama,Barack Obama, Campaign Managers David Plouffe Campaign CFO Marianne Markowitz , John Kerry and John Carson Joe Biden etc. These made for a refreshing change in the usual sender list.

2) Communication Style- The messages started positively and always ended with an urgent note to send atleast 5 $. Some more innovations were sponsoring T shirts front row seats ,matching donations or even helping with calls if not making donations.

3) Use of Links – Instead of long emails , the messages smartly used links to direct people to the appropriate places .

Here is a summary paste of the whole campaign-A detailed quantitaive note could have been done with the public disclosures to see corelation between messages and funds raised- but that can be done later 😉

David Plouffe, BarackOba.

1:46 AM

Before anything else‎ – Ajay — Our friends at the Democratic National Committee laid it all on the line to bring change …

Obama for America

11-Nov

Your Victory T-shirt‎ – Obama for America Ajay — In the months and years ahead, we’re going to accomplish amazing …

Barack Obama

5-Nov

How this happened‎ – Ajay — I’m about to head to Grant Park to talk to everyone gathered there, but I wanted to …

Marianne Markowitz, Bara.

2-Nov

Obama campaign finances‎ – Election Night: Get a front row seat to history Ajay — I’m the Chief Financial Officer for …

Veterans and Military Fa.

2-Nov

How you can make the difference‎ – Obama for America Ajay — America’s veterans, security experts, and military families have …

Obama for America

2-Nov

Your backstage pass‎ – Election Night: Get a front row seat to history Ajay — When you look back on Election Day years …

Continue reading “Best Internet Marketing 2008:”

For more web based internetaintment  check out www.hulu.com whose structure way of presenting video content especially television episodes and movies make it a favourite over www.youtube.com .For the really heavy duty movie watcher , there is www.netflix.com too.

the catch – its only for US based audiences. Their IP geo tag helps them filter you out . 😦

Still on the mind numbing trip for shopping – I am thinking can governments give  a deadline for transitioning out offline shopping.

Offline shopping should be banned as compared to online shopping because-

1) It leads to lots of needless inventory so that huge stores do not look empty. The excess inventory benefits the manufacturers ( mostly Chinese) and hurts the retailer ( mostly local).

2) Demand prediction is obviously worse so it will lead to spare inventory anyways. 

3) It encourages excess debt consumption.

 

Now people might want to sit up and say that both 1) consumption and 2) retail sector jobs are good for the economy.I agree transitionally this will lead to job cuts .But customers would be better off and retailers would save huge costs ( no more land for huge malls)

This is an ideal solution for Asian countries like India that can simply leapfrog from Mom and Pop stores to internet marketing malls than go in for the epensive intermediates of big offline malls. Though the Chinese may not be so happy it ultimately could lead to huge benefits to the West as well it would create huge jobs in the online space.

And yes bars and resteraunts would still be offline. You can not make dining out as an online experience —

Dragged to yet another shopping trip by the better half I could not help but thinking- What if all plastic bags were banned. Then people would have to carry bags from home .

Thats doable – right ? And a small price for saving the environment – right ?

So how about banning plastic bags.

Ps- Also it makes shopping/retail sales lesser atractive  ……………………………but thats true anyways.

Image from-

http://www.sustainableisgood.com/blog/2007/03/plastic_shoppin.html