Fireside21

Just a couple of clips that recently caught my attention…

Don’t let the headline, Political bloggers reach is limited, fool you. The impact of blogs is growing and the internet is becoming the main source of political news.

In a January poll conducted online by Harris Interactive, only 22 percent said they read political blogs “regularly,” meaning at least “several times a month” and only 7 percent said they read them several times a week or more.

Here are the conclusions from Harris and Pew.

Microsoft is bringing their Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software suite to the web. This is definitely the way to go for easy to use and flexibility.

The application’s features and functions are, for the most part, familiar to users and partners. They are largely the same as the Dynamics CRM 4.0 application released in January. The only difference is that Live is hosted and managed by third-party vendors.

Congressman Shimkus’ office recently pitched the Salem Times-Commoner to improve their email recruitment efforts. Reaching out to local media and blogs is a great way to gather new email subscribers.

Congressman John Shimkus (R, Illinois-19) is reminding constituents that his office provides a weekly e-mail newsletter to those who have signed up for this service via his Congressional Web site.

“I have received numerous notes or responses about the useful information my staff gathers for this weekly newsletter,” Shimkus explained. “We include topical news items, consumer tips, information on upcoming votes in the House, and a Did You Know section.”

And here’s something you many have seen back in January. The Library of Congress has started a pilot program to publish their photo archives on Flickr. The goal is not only to improve access to these historical images, but also to gather tags, comments and captions to improve the archive.

The project is beginning somewhat modestly, but we hope to learn a lot from it. Out of some 14 million prints, photographs and other visual materials at the Library of Congress, more than 3,000 photos from two of our most popular collections are being made available on our new Flickr page, to include only images for which no copyright restrictions are known to exist.